27 July 2002 (Saturday)

gimme summadat nephron love babay

Ms. Technicolor thanks me from the bottom of her kidneys. It's deeper down than the heart, you see.

It's Saturday. I have errands to run and tasks to complete and people to hang out with, and it hit me just now that once I leave job #1, it's going to be Saturday all the time.

I'm not sure if this is like a) getting a lifetime supply of chocolate mousse (shheeeyeah), or b) being confined to a small room containing nothing but chocolate mousse.

Or c) getting trampled by a chocolate moose.

You'll have to excuse me, I've been like this for hours now.

posted by enjelani @ 12:31 PM PST [ link ]

26 July 2002 (Friday)

lemurs are the best you can do?

I have nothing against boring people, really I don't. It's just that I have no interest in associating with them.

I am so glad to be leaving job #1. Yesterday one of the bosses threw an impromptu "happy hour," bringing in two brown bags of vegetable samosas and a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We proceeded to stand around the table munching in awkward silence for fifty minutes, punctuated by the occasional feeble joke. Lenny and I (and a handful of others, admittedly) did our best to get a conversation rolling, but the only thread that survived was one about the most disgusting food we'd ever eaten, and I think that alienated about half the group or so. "There's this coffee where they feed the beans to lemurs, then they harvest the lemurs' droppings and make coffee out of that. It's supposed to be a fermenting process or something. Isn't that weird?"

This marks the second mention of lemurs in this week's posts. How odd.

posted by enjelani @ 05:53 PM PST [ link ]

25 July 2002 (Thursday)

email from dad

Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 18:45:43 -0700
From: Dad
To: Enjelani

E,

The sequoia forest is on fire. The stock market continues to drop and another 30% of our portfolio got wiped out again. Yet, my thought are with the well-being of these irreplaceable magnificent trees.

Remember when you're young, sometimes I asked you to take a mental picture of scenery that you wanted to remember in your heart, instead of using a camera. It's 3D, panoramic, full of vivid colors and details that are forever fresh.

During one of my visits years ago to the Sequoia NP, I opened my arms to embrace the huge tree in front of me, closed my eyes and took a mental picture. Since then I feel that I am a part of this establishment. Another mental picture I took was when I came down Moro Rock. In one opening I
saw Mt. Whitney across the wide span of space. I was climbing down a steep slope on the rock, so there was a thrilling sensation of being in mid-air. It was a clear day. No smog from the city managed to get in to ruin the beauty.

Dad

posted by enjelani @ 07:22 PM PST [ link ]

conversations with the past

Every now and again I'll try to have a little hologram-chat with myself from ten years past, or five, or nineteen. It's usually pretty unproductive -- sad to say, I can't really remember what I was like when I was thirteen, much less four. It usually turns into a kind of congratulatory ritual, wherein my past self gets to be impressed with my present self, and my present self feels a little better about whatever it is she's doing.

>> more...

posted by enjelani @ 04:33 PM PST [ link ]

onward and upward

A trip to the zoo is in order. Ours reopened recently after much fuss and to-do, and apparently now there is a lemur forest the likes of which cannot be found anywhere, including the lemurs' native Madagascar.

Cary Tennis, advice columnist for Salon.com, suggests that a man with genius-level emotional IQ cannot be a terrible father, even if he hasn't, as the letter-writer claims, "a single paternal bone" in his body. I don't know who's right, but both men deserve a cookie.

Seven more days. Must live the lie just a little longer, pretend I actually like this stuff.

posted by enjelani @ 11:12 AM PST [ link ]

24 July 2002 (Wednesday)

when i was young and hopeful

I'm updating my feature functional specifications, so that when I leave, whoever inherits my code will have some clue as to what it's supposed to be doing. This involves reading some rather detailed technical writing that I did several releases back, a little less than a year ago.

Goodness, once upon a time I was so diligent. I wonder what happened.

posted by enjelani @ 05:11 PM PST [ link ]

stretch

Feeling much better now, thank you all for the food-'n-drink tips. I had a light pasta for dinner along with a pot of chamomile tea, and it was all quiet on the esophagal front for the remainder of the evening. This morning I shouted for glee at the absence of pain. Life is good.

Yesterday I also made a small sign and taped it to the bottom of my computer monitor: STOP CLICKING AROUND AND GO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. I wonder if I could write a script to pop up an annoying dialog when my web browser's been active for more than fifteen minutes.

My gas & electric bill came to $7.00 this month. Lenny has been known to describe my lifestyle as "Spartan."

Oh, and it appears that an alternative to AAA has formed: the Better World Travelers Club. Haven't looked into it much yet, but it looks like its intention is to be exactly like the American Automobile Association, minus the unsavory political lobbying.

posted by enjelani @ 11:23 AM PST [ link ]

23 July 2002 (Tuesday)

hypochondria my foot

I'm genuinely sick. Actually: I'm fine until I eat something. Then I'm miserable.

This is a problem, somewhat.

posted by enjelani @ 02:10 PM PST [ link ]

dream 35

Last night's dream involved making love surreptitiously underneath a giant library. We were half-clothed and sitting up when a librarian, wielding a strange pitchfork-like thing, discovered us. Surprisingly, she didn't throw us out. "Excuse me," she said, "but you might want to be aware..." Then she turned abruptly and thrust her pitchfork at the ground, and when she pulled it up again a large snake was curled around the prongs. "They're very poisonous," she explained, one hand clamped firmly on the snake right behind its head, "but really quite friendly."

posted by enjelani @ 09:57 AM PST [ link ]

22 July 2002 (Monday)

thunderheads in my living room

My, aren't we in a state this morning.

I have this recurring disease wherein a bout of quasi-schizophrenia coincides with PMS, resulting in emotional wrecked-ness with a bit of insanity thrown in. Some side effects include
hypochondria ("Nausea! I feel nausea! I'm gonna die!"), general sloth and a remarkable level of self-absorption. My ego feels like condensed milk.

However, I am coming around to dogs. The puppy left bite marks in my elbow and holes in my sweater this morning, but she is a lovely creature. She is currently fascinated with cars backing out of driveways; she sits attentively down on the pavement and her ears perk up as the vehicle comes rumbling out. And she's very pretty to watch when she breaks into a run.

Ah, see, that's the ticket. Think about something else. Snap out of yourself and your little downward spiral.

Another buoying thought: AB 1493 gets signed into law in California today, which will require reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles by 2009.

Unfortunately this is counterbalanced by our dear President's withholding of $34 million from the UNFPA, the United Nations' family planning program. In my high school and college years I had a Unified Theory of the World's Problems, which was that there are too damn many people on this planet. If there were fewer of us, so much of what plagues us wouldn't even be an issue. And to me the solution seemed so simple: don't bring in so many new people. We don't have to kill anyone, we just have to stop creating so many. But I am older now, and while I'm not exactly jaded, I realize that convincing people not to have another child is about the most complicated and uphill endeavor any activist could hope to take on, and morally questionable if it's anything other than education on the available options. Still, it's worth a shot, and their fundraisers always get a check from me.

I was up too late last night re-reading Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga. There's a ritual called "floating the stone," which involves emptying one's mind and taking on the mind of another person, temporarily; one can only survive the experience if the two minds are enough alike. One character, Faith, floats the stone and takes on the mind of Adam, the unspeakably cruel tyrant who rules her world -- and lives. I've been wondering how much evil can live within me, how much darkness, how much indifference to another's suffering. I'm not sure I want to know.

No sunniness for me today it seems. That's all right. Weather patterns.

posted by enjelani @ 10:58 AM PST [ link ]