1. she claims the covers end up on my side of the bed in the morning because i pull them that way in the night. i claim it's because she rolls exclusively to her left (toward me) all night, converting her own rotational energy into linear motion of the covers. in these last five nights that i've had the bed to myself, the comforter has mysteriously remained perfectly centered, without having to pull the frakking thing four feet back over to her side every morning.
2. by the narrow definition of the word, i have no actual proof that fast food eaten in a girl's presence tastes better than fast food eaten not in a girl's presence, but i have some anecdotal evidence to that effect.
3. sometimes, fast food eaten not a girl's presence does not taste as good as fast food not eaten.

   by the way. 'froots?' i seem to have a vague memory of these 'froots,' and their odd-sounding cousins the 'vej tubbles.' will you please tell me more?

4. the freedom to leave the seat up is a pretty minor one. i cite the fact it's a well established habit for me to put it down each time, cover and all; leaving it up requires conscious effort and just leaves me acutely aware of the act's underlying emptiness.
5. bulldog kisses are a damn poor substitute for wife kisses.
6. pulling on yesterday's socks is way easier than going downstairs and collecting the clean laundry.
7. cynical schadenfreude is most satisfying when it has the opportunity to annoy someone.
8. measured in terms of wakefulness, appetite, and leg-jumps per hour, the dog is less happy when chelsey is gone.
9. measured in terms of wakefulness, appetite, and leg-jumps per hour, the boy is less happy when chelsey is gone.

girls, you just don't know the power you have over boys. if you do know it then you are evil geniuses. evil, pretty geniuses. we just don't stand a chance.

1. the car thing that's supposed to save the world. you see, those awesome batteries occasionally die. and apparently they're awesomely expensive. but i have some good news! i just paid a bunch of money to someone to basically let me keep using what i had already paid for.
2. the iphone. though at&t doesn't know it's an iphone, and that's kind of at the root of the problem. in order to avoid allowing them to ream you on the data plan you have to perform some digital magic, among other steps. but this magic has certain side effects, including people can't call you. ask your doctor if ultrasn0w is right for you—i should have.
3. the roof. it has holes. in it.
4. the stereo of my other vehicle. a long time ago i turned the ignition in my truck a certain number of clicks so i could listen to the radio or whatever, but went one click too far, and then back a click, all in rapid succession, and this let the magic smoke out of the shiny lights of the faceplate. and magic smoke, as any scientist will tell you, is hard to put back in a device after it has escaped.
5. the nail of my left index finger. and now every time i use it it's like the terrorists won their war against the kittens.
6. the dog. i've made clear my thoughts on the matter of sub-sentient life forms. they exude smelly substances and totally ignorant of this fact. they whine for attention. and not one of them has a job.
7. the internet. conservapedia.com will eventually become skynet.
8. my liver. and i have the other items in this list to blame.

it is time for an unordered noun list.

• greek food!
• greek food. i mean, seriously
• ouzo?!
• inbred kittehs
• long hikes and almost-sunburns
• siestas
• ingenious monks
• culture, and history and stuff
• a healthy dose of perspective

ahem. w.r.t. this last. the world is enormous, beautiful, and full of everything. i just can't even begin to explain the immensity of what i feel. it's like this: take the biggest deepest breath you can, force the air in till your lungs hurt from it, and then in your utter engorgement imagine how much air there is left in the sky. the most you can contain is nearly enough to rupture you, and yet is absolutely nothing.

more soon.

firstly: obama with guns and lightsaber, from ted. this is the change i can believe in. also the change that can kill me silently in my sleep.

secondly: a perfect example of the male mind's filter, from walter.

thirdly: the one ring claims another victim.


also. i'm getting over a cold. at least i think that's what it was. i mean, if you feel sick in the morning, but fine for the rest of the day, that might mean you're pregnant, right? OMG LOL

i urge you to read at least a couple of these. true: i will never know whether you did, but i will sleep easier knowing i asked.


the mandelbrot set
when we finally isolate the higgs boson, we will smash it apart and julia will emerge and open her eyes.

kolmogorov complexity
and not just because it links to the mandelbrot set.

the lorenz attractor
credo, sine ratione, reality is fractal. there is no smallest grain.

quaternions
these little guys are all tangled up with my thoughts of the grand unification theory. it's out there, and it will extract a terrible price, you mark my words.

hyperbolic geometry
what a difference one little axiom makes: the universe (at one extreme) ends in fire, or (at the other) in ice, or (at the lack of extreme) neither.

the normal distribution
every, repeat every field of knowledge can be seen better when cast in the warm light of the bell curve.

euler's identity
cthulhu fhtagn euler—it is the source of his power.

the laplace transform
as the article says, these buggers will not only drastically reduce the time and effort required to solve the problem, but will fundamentally change the way you think about the problem.

turing machines
reductionism! reductionism! reductionism! HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU

the unary magic square
and, of course, it works with arbitrarily lonely values of one.

separatiőn
i saved the best for last. this is basically the holy grail of the mathematical universe. (i'm a simple guy, and i don't say that with pretense.)



p.s. happy birthday, harry.

in the house of representatives, centrists. communists and fascists strictly verboten.

in the senate, leftists. i'll stop short of saying downright baby-eating marxists but part of me wants to.

in the courts (especially the supreme court), conservatives all the way. i hate the phrase 'strict constructionist' but the shoe fits.

for president, someone who is simultaneously 1. not affiliated with either party of the current two-party system, 2. ideologically libertarian, 3. economically paleoconservative, 4. socially progressive, 5. an actual scientist, and 6. neutral good in the i-roll-twenties etymology (which naturally eliminates any sith lords—huzzah!).

an independent and unmolested media armed with the much-hyped shield law.

and finally, for every single state and local office in the entire nation, from governor to county comptroller, this guy. (though as a condition of his holding office, he must uphold his election-season promise to frickin' blog more, yo.)

elections are instant runoff and are fewer and farther between, with single-term limits at every level.

there is, of course, always more, but this is the gist. in my head this guarantees that the government itself finds the balance between current and stable. pipe dream? oh yes, but a healthy one.

highlights:
stale nerd sweat
six-person descent
finally being the least nerdy person in the crowd
artwork more powerful than you can possibly imagine
gabe cursing at tycho, in real time
actual jedi

lowlight:
food. as happens all too often on the road, i wound up with too much fast food in my belly. fried food is not food. it's like yoda says: chew or chew not; there is no fry.

with that in mind: from the top, every girl i've ever loved—at the time. the careful reader will note that this reads like a list of french military victories.

1. age 6-7: emily ashlock.
i swear she was smarter then than i am now. she gave me a note one day saying i was doing well in math class—getting a lot of questions right or something—and drew a rainbow that made my little heart go pitter-pat. i saw her one day recently here in town and tried to strike up a conversation. she didn't remember me. that wasn't awkward or anything.

2. age 7-8: elizabeth burt.
jeremiah's cousin, though i didn't know jeremiah existed at the time. she kissed me on the cheek one early summer twilight. being young, i told a friend about it; she didn't take too well to that and our relationship cooled significantly. she moved away. i tell myself it wasn't because of me. when i was eleven i called her and we talked for about two or three hours. to this day i can't remember how i found her phone number, and it's a little disturbing that i could.

3. age 8: teasha hyer.
she was cute, and she didn't know i existed. the first of many. in the interest of saving space i have suppressed the forty or more who warrant this same description.

4. age 10-11: tina bradshaw.
my first kiss—sort of. truth or dare on the day before some vacation or another, literally underneath some desks. we "went out," which means we sat by each other at lunch and had boring recesses "talking" and boring stuff like that. by the end i was mean to her. when i broke up with her, i actually told her, by proxy, to go to hell. it's not my proudest moment. eventually we were friends again, and i was better for it.

5. age 11: mallory what's-her-face.
we went to summer camp together; someone told me she liked me and so of course i immediately liked her back. i don't remember talking to her—a good thing, otherwise it might not have lasted as long as it did. by which i mean for the remainder of the week.

6. age 11-20, on and off: tristi terrell.
in a plurality of all possible universes, i end up married to tristi. my first and only time "going out" with her lasted less than a month because i ignored her because at that age—some would say and still—i didn't know how to communicate with girls in any meaningful way. my strength was in writing beautiful, flowing, sappy, wretched "will you 'go out' with me" notes, and once that was all over with, i had nothing. she was infinitely more socially competent than i, and it was over before it was properly begun. as with tina, we stayed friends and again i was better for it. she once told someone—after our time was up—that for a very long time, she thought we would end up together, in the marital sense; independently i told this same person the same thing. you can imagine my shock. i never really got over tristi until one summer she found the right guy (or at least one of the many right guys) and never looked back.

7. age 12-13: sara kattenhorn.
against my better judgment. her cuteness devastated me and through it all she was immune to my charms. in retrospect, i'm glad.

8. age 14: naomi mendoza.
the package had a very nice wrapping job but was utterly empty, if you take me. i totally don't want to talk about it. nor, i'd wager, does jeremiah.

9. age 14-16: morgan johnston.
i now think of our relationship back then as very similar to that between tim & dawn or jim & pam, only without the reciprocated romantic interest. perhaps something might have come of it had i mentioned anything to her, or at least shown some depth of character, but no: i instead chose to act silly. so that's all over with. i recently found out she got married to precisely the wrong guy. not that i'm judging you, punk, but you don't deserve her.

10. age 15: malinda hessel.
nearly every male i knew spent at least a week desperately infatuated with malinda, and rightly so. she was probably the sweetest girl in my life at the time—and she spoke to me on occasion.

11. age 17: heather kellogg.
my first proper, official, healthy, publicly acknowledged relationship: three months, called on account of graduation. we had conversations that shimmer in my mind like chopin put to words. we could keep up marvelously with each other.

12. age 18: megan lacey.
once she touched my right pinky, and you'll never convince me she didn't mean to do it. she was just outside-the-box enough, and just british enough, to make me fawn, swoon, and otherwise twitterpate. we flirted well. at least she did. i'd give a dollar to find out what she thought of me then.

13. age 18: courtney gravett.
wide-set blue-green eyes, short hair, almost deitific skill with the written word—what more could a romantic idealist hope for? oh, right, steamy kisses in my dorm room. well, there might have been some of that.

14. age 18-20: kara cockrum.
you flirted in oh-such-a-sly way, had that smile, and that hair, and you expect me to be too young for you? (i repeat: i recently found out she got married to precisely the wrong guy. not that i'm judging you, punk, but you don't deserve her.)

15. age 19-20: avril atkinson.
older than i by a significant margin and so far out of my league i might as well have been playing a completely different sport, we still had some good talks. she calmed me. she was working on an advanced psychology degree and i've always liked to be analyzed; we were like two puzzle pieces. unfortunately we were not two adjacent puzzle pieces. i don't know where she ended up.

16. age 20-present: she who must not be named.
i win.

whenever i do either i create some sort of meaning from the sensory input.

occasionally i'll do both simultaneously and the meaning gets all tangled in my head so that later when i encounter the patterns of one i'll inevitably recall the other without regard for its relevance at that particular time.


i have brilliant examples, roughly sorted by date read:

jurassic park: jon secada
2001 series: lost world soundtrack
the rama series: u2
the stand: nirvana
1984: the cranberries
atonement: fischerspooner
the dark tower series: in various places, out of africa soundtrack, future sound of london, beck, bad company (who make an important thematic cameo in book seven, not to give anything away), moby


and the input is not necessarily linked to books and music. it could as easily be location and music, and often is, viz.:

my honeymoon: muse
the dormitory in which i spent my fourth year of college: audioslave
the shitty basement apartment where i spent the first third of my fifth: the flaming lips
the road: always beck, always to the dismay of my wife



since i have you here, i feel the need to direct your attention to the most powerful weapon in my geek arsenal. oh how i love to analyze data, and, in the process, to be analyzed.

ten things i once quite liked but don't much care for now:
1. television
2. hotmail
3. proper capitalization
4. *mart
5. dinosaurs
6. e-cards
7. cell phones/ringtones
8. grade school, then high school, then college
9. winter (yes, even christmas)
10. horrible music

ten things i once didn't like but quite like now:
1. politics
2. tea; certain species of coffee
3. dissenting opinions
4. apple
5. npr
6. eminem
7. girls
8. pens
9. heroclix
10. the star wars prequels

ten things i've never quite liked and likely never will:
1. licorice
2. the sound of metal hangars on metal racks
3. commercials
4. extremism
5. waste
6. onions
7. country music
8. champagne
9. michael jackson
10. insomnia

ten things i've always quite liked and likely always will:
1. histories of war (esp. second world war tactics and the third reich)
2. being left alone
3. backrubs
4. organizing
5. reading and writing
6. a good sweatshirt
7. foolish excessive computer gadgetry
8. strategery games
9. sweets
10. staying up, sleeping in (often caused by one of the above)


tag; you're it.

anyway. i hope that in posting this, it'll get me back into the habit. how many entries were there last month? ouch. i've let you down.

and rabbit rabbit.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length—
But no matter!—I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead—
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

[...]
(edgar allan poe, 'for annie')


unlike some certain lucky/skilled people i know, the results for me are in the air. i'll certainly survive failure, should it come to that; we're nothing if not utterly adaptable. what i might not survive is the interminable six- to eight-week waiting period between being examined and receiving the results. they'll arrive just in time for the christmas season to start getting really, really annoying (i.e. still weeks before christmas actually arrives), so the other thing i might not survive is having to divulge the results (and, by extension, having to explain just what in the hell an actuary does, for the n-thousandth time) to each family member i have. at least twice each.


downers:
fog
sinuses
actual downers

uppers:
kleenex
firefly
invader zim
plastic superheroes

(TED your once-proud phoenix will tremble before the onslaught of my shiny new veteran hypersonic superman and kingdom come shazam!, she would do well to turn tail and run)