the power of human emotion

Been dying to post something about Paul. I wish I could wait until I have time to write down the whole story, but I just can't.

Our first date was 4 days in Jamaica. How dreamy is that? a rendezvous with a handsome stranger in a foreign country. furthermore, we spent so much time in bed, his friends began referring to us as "John and Yoko" and joked that we would be the first people ever to come back from Jamaica paler than when we left.

I love this photo. It makes me so happy every time I look at it. I like the way that our foreheads are touching. we are looking at the camera, but we could so easily turn and kiss. and i like how innocent my nakedness seems, so barely concealed. and i even like the "what are you,16?" hickey on my neck that embarrased us so much.

Last night, I was getting dressed to go out into the cold and couldn't find my usual hat, so I wrapped myself up in a big brown scarf. Then I searched through a drawer for some gloves (i always lose one and ended up wearing a mismatched pair) and found an odd pair of sunglasses I had forgotten I owned. I tried them on and looked at myself in the mirror. my god, i looked just like one of the sand people. So, of course, out with the camera. I have since looked up the sand people from star wars, and I really don't look too much like one. The funny thing is, when I put the scarf on at work, Brendan exclaimed, Hey, Tusken Raiders. and that was even without the glasses.




There was recently a request for more photos of me, so I won't be shy about slapping some additional ones up here, sans glasses.

Last month I got my first cell phone ever.

This month I finally broke down and bought a digital camera. There was a wonderful misty night with fog last week, so I took it out for a test run. I admit it was the harshest of conditions, I was shooting in the dark with long exposures, but it has some major problems. Everything was pixilliated and all the dark skies were covered with red dots. The camera just doesn't understand darkness very well. I was disappointed. Luckily, shooting fog at night wasn't the main reason I bought the camera and i'm sure it will work fine during the day (i have yet to find some good free daytime hours to play with it). I am mainly just excited to have a camera that will fit in my pocket.

a few of the night time shots (not bad at this size)

Somehow, a few weeks ago, I started reading David Byrne's Web site, My Backwards Life. This is odd because I have never been a fan of his (and even was mistakenly thinking of David Bowie through most of my first visit here). But I have really been enjoying the way that he thinks.

There are great little moments when he simply records interesting things that happen during his day, without even making any commentary.

A man in a leather jacket strides down the street punching the various movie posters as he goes. "I'll watch that one", he barks to himself.

And then there are more lengthy musings, largely about politics and art, always thoughtful written and informative. He posts entries almost every other day and reading them never feels like a waste of time. Highly recommended bookmark addition.

I was very taken with December 8's post on the "war on terror", as he has expressed very well my personal views on the issue. so i thought it was worth repeating here.

In an editorial in the NY Times by Roger Cohen posted from Brazil he muses that most of the world does not see the "war on terror" as a priority. He reports that much of the world sees this "war" as a front for US hegemony and the establishing of a "civilization of fear", as one Brazilian called it.

I tend to agree.

He reports that many Americans, however, tend to see the "war on terror" as needful, legitimate, necessary. They feel that America is protecting the world from rogue states and maniacs. In their view American boys are laying their lives on the line to defend the values that all these ungrateful nations take for granted.
I am not surprised at this reaction and opinion, but in my opinion it once again confuses 9/11 and terrorism with Saddam Hussein and Iraq when there was never any connection. (Hence the quotation marks around "war on terror"- it is anything but) The invasion of Iraq is not a war on terrorism. Not even close. If anything it has served as a recruiting poster for terrorists, confirming their opinions about US intentions abroad.
 
How to fight a legitimate war on terrorism?
In my opinion, there is no way to "fight" it, period. It is the stuff that oozes out of the cracks when you try and stomp down on it. The harder you stomp the more it spreads out, and the more you get on you. I'm referring to both terrorist and guerrilla actions as they are commonly known in the press- though institutional terror is just as common, but because it's a policy and backed by a nation state it goes by other names in the press. Breaking into peoples homes with no warrants, large men in high tech video game drag dragging people out into the street. Institutionalized abuse and torture in prisons worldwide. Etc etc.
 
The answer would be- With compassion, with aid without strings or an agenda attached, by not supporting oppressive regimes. By not playing kingmaker. Not too much of this is likely, given the world's history, but sometimes the pendulum swings that way.

I went to the movies last week for the first time in months. It was Tarnation that I had really wanted to see, but I had waited just a few days too long and it was gone. That really sucked, because I had my heart set on seeing it and had walked by the movie theatre a few days earlier and the poster was still up and it wasn't until i searched for the times that it was playing did i realize i had missed it. In it's place was What the bleep do we know?, which had actually been recommend to me by Paul. So, after changing my mind three times in half an hour I decided to go check it out. My expectations were not particularly high.

For the most part, I enjoyed myself, although if I had not been alone, I would have groaned and rolled my eyes at my partner a few times. There is definitely a layer of cheese in this movie, but that doesn't mean you can't eat around it. The worst part was the fictional story that runs through the movie as a support for the various interviews and animations. This story was weak on plot, cliche, and overacted. One key groan moment happens when the "overly happy artist roommate" is painting by dipping her feet in pigments and dancing all over a large canvas on the floor. The best part of the movies was what I have heard others call "the talking heads". I guess most people couldn't watch a feature length film of interviews, so they threw the rest of that fluff in. Well, I think too much fluff and not enough of the really interesting ideas that each of these scientists had.

I don't know much about quantum mechanics, but the movie did seem to be more aligned with philosophy than with science. There were a few things that I didn't quite get. One was about how we usually think of things being solid, when they are really just mostly empty space. They said that two things don't really touch one another, but rather the electrons on the surface of one object push off of the electrons on the surface of another object. The way I see it, if this was true, no matter how much you pummeled someone with a baseball bat, they wouldn't get hurt. Am I misunderstanding something here?

There were bizarre new-age parts of the movie that I enjoyed even if I didn't believe in them. One was when the photographs of water were being shown down in the subway. The idea was that words taped to the outside of a bottle of water actually changed it crystal structure. Adds a whole new importance to proper branding. Which water do you think is more pleasing, Evian or Deer Park? Then of course they move on to the idea that the body is mostly water, so we should see some sort of an increase in affirmative body art. (I guess that's why the girl draws hearts all over herself at the end.)


Before going to the film, I had read about one of the interviews in which a guy talks about how he wakes up each morning and "creates his day". This was one of the concepts that interested me the most, but they barely gloss over it. I remember listening to a motivation speaker (a good one, but I don't remember who, he had the perfect voice) who really stressed that the most important element in being successful was one's own expectations. He even suggested an exercise in which you wrote an essay about yourself in which you claim to be everything that you would like to be, no matter how extravagant. The guy in bleep is a little vague in his examples of what sort of things he has created in his day, the only one i remember is that he is going to think like a genius. Doesn't sound like much more than a scheduled version of what most of us do at times when we are trying to pump ourselves up when we need a little confidence.

I think that this is a good movie for all mental health workers to go see. A good part of it would be useful in psychotherapy (there are definite threads of Jung running through). I liked the bits on how receptors in the brain work. Seems there are certain types of receptors for certain feelings and as you continue to have those feeling those receptors gain prominence and when the cell divides, that call has more receptor for that particular feeling. This can be a problem, because those receptors start to take over, and that cell stops developing components necessary to receive nutrients and get rid of waste, and focus more and more on creating that one type of receptor. This is the physical basis for addiction.

All in all, it's a decent film that's a bit heavy-handed, but will force you to walk away thinking about some new things and feeling like you have more control over your own life.