| don't hang me. |
[12 Nov 2009|01:57pm] |
i didn't intend for this to happen, but i wound up with a pseudo-DJ gig for tonight. pseudo as in my DJing is providing ambience before and in-between live bands, it's not the focus of the evening.
now to commence with pulling a few set lists out of my behind!!! WCBN has prepared me well for this kind of thing.
i am excited!!
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| ten for! |
[06 Nov 2009|05:06pm] |
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mood |
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chilly feet |
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music |
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murder in michigan |
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thursday 5th nov.
1. Guy with the yellow-green-red striped helmet, yellow fenders and orange jacket who checked out my bike when stopped at the Stone Way light. He asked me "Is that the _____" and I had to give away my ignorance. he said "oh," and nodded with an understanding smirk.
2. the glorious, better-than-ever tall yellow trees lining the canal, in Fremont on the Burke. Not stopping to take a photo.
3. sad to find that jody had stayed home sick; ate a lemon-oat scone & coffee by myself, leaning on the wall near the receptacles of Suzzallo Espresso
4. white horse pre-func featuring: meade, Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout, classy old-timey furnishings, and plenty of teh awkward
5. four pitchers, five fun people at Linda's, after abandoning the somewhat pathetic .83 rain ride to monica's door, hula hula, and crescent
6. mock-chatting underage boys loitering outside the bar
7. ride-by butt-pinch!
8. chair dancing. booth-dancing, that is.
9. screamin' hail thunderstorm ride downhill, sliding onto my side as i turned the curve onto Roanoke. soaked to the bone.
10. doing morning dishes while eating cereal from a bowl balanced on a wine glass
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| why i'm so late this time. |
[05 Nov 2009|02:52pm] |
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mood |
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 good |
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music |
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Matmos, all songs, on shuffle |
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I'm procrastinating. What a perfect time to write something on lj. So far, only one (out of six, maybe soon seven?) of my research team got his googlewave invite and is now on the service... but I think I need at least a few more online before we can start using it as a tool.
I need to write my bi-monthly report, and it's already two months late, and actually I should already be processing the data for the next report. I'm on my way to a good rough draft, though, which is due by COB Friday. And the team are at work collecting important bits of important data and news reports to go into the report as well. It's our first go at this, so there were bound to be delays. It still bothers me though. Previously, these reports were written by one person, subjected to a peer review, and then translated into Bahasa Indonesia. That one person is advising us, but he is not longer the writer. Technically, my whole team should be writing collectively these reports (hence the need for google wave), but in the end, I am now the new one person who writes these reports. My experiment at a collective writing exercise was too soon, this is one big reason for the lateness of this edition. The other reason is that it is my first time writing it as well. Again, it was to be expected, but disappointing nonetheless. At least now, after consulting with my boss, who is the former writer of these reports, I have a good outline, and the data is good enough to produce the rough draft.
Oooh, looks like another on my team got her wave account. That makes two! I'll see if I can get the 3 of us on a wave, and start chatting about the features and how to use it with them.
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| the ten things thing. |
[04 Nov 2009|02:22pm] |
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mood |
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longing |
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music |
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department of eagles, no one does it like you |
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i really want to start doing this again. so simple and so helpful.
for tuesday, 3rd November
1+ making breakfast with an egg-in-the-hole virgin
2+ admiring the carrots in my produce box. fresh carrots are infinitely better than grocery store carrots.
3+ an unlikely trio of men boarding the bus by I-5 and leaving soon thereafter in search of cheap drinks. One with a loud and rough voice, who was given the free seat. one with a cane but no obvious difficulty standing or walking, who told rough-voice "Hey- no swearing allowed."
4+ laughing at Rebekah's advice to Stephanie on how to make an ex jealous, and her reference to awkward situations like driving a boyfriend's new truck and identifying as a social-workin'-baker.
5+ the tasty, interesting pea dip with deep fried scoops/cups made of plantains, and the drink with chunks of ginger at La Isla
6+ listening to my autumn mix cd over and over while writing to jena, chatting on gmail, and texting. communication addiction.
7+ standing outside with the full moon smoking a leftover cigarette from halloween at nearly midnight, wondering about the part of me that likes to do unhealthy things
8+ projected-election-results excitement for the gays and the cyclists (i.e. me!)
9+ the pale-faced, crooked-smile woman who commented to me as i exited the bus "you've got your organic veggies to take home!"
10+ the unsettling realization that my glasses are not where i remember putting them last, nor anywhere else i can see.
for monday 2nd november
~1. waffling over what to wear. heels? chucks? striped sweater tee? sexy polkadot shirt? all of the above.
~2. reviewing the events of the past crazy week; talking about sorting out what i want, with Donna. i guess that's what i'm doing, in an offhand way.
~3. being completely stupid at work, writing handfuls of emails to friends, gushing, chatting on the phone, discovering that i could use comp time to come in late the next day, worthless filled with anticipation. wondering about that, the state i get worked up into. want to start reading that book BTM gave me. feeling stressed about my workload but unable to tell myself no.
~4. riding the wrong way out of distraction and getting stuck with a bunch of stairs. goofy.
~5. the sadness of seeing Hillside Quickies all dark inside.
~6. spicy pumpkin beer @ Big time, and nachos with already-stiff cheese. as usual.
~7. how lovely greenlake looked, blue under the full moon, motionless, reflecting all the incandescent yellow streetlights, the wet on the roof of those garages
~8. the way it feels when you're walking a plank and look down and get paralyzed, then suddenly overcome it and jerk legs into motion - the relief of feeling, for the moment, how simple & easy it is. and then the next choke.
~9. a single duck in the water quacking like a man.
~10. the absolutely glorious foliage (still!) in the trees on the canal, on my commute. the thrill of autumn.
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| Feeling Good, Falling Behind |
[03 Nov 2009|03:38pm] |
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pleased |
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music |
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ipod on shuffle |
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A strange and good feeling has been developing over the past few weeks, and I've really been noticing it this week. The main thing: things are great! Feeling good, loving my new job in Aceh, relationship with Dez going just wonderfully. Overall in a really good place. We are in Jakarta for a few days this week, and we were pining away for it ever since we got back to Banda Aceh after Lebaran, but now that we're here, I'm realizing that Banda Aceh really isn't so bad. We both noticed right away when we got back to Jakarta yesterday afternoon: the air in Banda is so much cleaner, and the 3G network is much better in Banda Aceh too. Even the new airport in Banda is better than Jakarta's! No traffic jams in Banda, easier to get together with friends, or have meetings out of the office. The one thing that is unequivocally better in Jakarta is the food!!!! So we're enjoying our fill of it now. Also, our apartment is here, and we both love it... and we have a TV here with a blu ray player. But this week I'm not really watching it because...
All the good news doesn't accord though with the fact that my productivity is pretty bad. It's not at the all time low that I reached roughly at this time last year, but I have deadlines at my new job, and I'm not meeting them. Great work, always interesting, and a terrific staff... but can't get the tasks done! I'm struggling right now with our bi-monthly Aceh peace monitoring update, which should have been PUBLISHED before the end of October, and it's hardly in a rough draft form now. I'm definitely working on it, a LOT, but going so slow! Apart from that, I have peer review papers to read, book chapters to write, dissertation outline due before the end of the year, and a long list of excellent project ideas that I couldn't possibly start now with my to-do list currently in such bad shape.
...OK back to work, wish me not just progress but faster progress plzkthxbye
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| The Cylon Collective |
[02 Nov 2009|08:32am] |
I had a dream that my town was just about to fall to the Cylons. The Cylons lived on Earth, you see, and took over bit by bit, expanding their territory. They would kill or assimilate us all, but they didn't have access to a gigantic nuclear arsenal or anything like that.
Well, I found out somehow that they were interested in human history, and that they wanted this one old artifact. A glass sculpture. For some reason, I had this thing. I think that someone had looted it out of the museum during the war and it had come to me subsequently.
Well, I saw this as an opportunity to save my town. So I strolled right into the Cylon base and allowed myself to be captured by them. They took me in to the base and had me speak to a spokesperson, played by Heather, this girl who works at Jerusalem Garden.
I told them that I would show them where this artifact was if they spared my town.
It was agreed, but they said that there was only one way that we could trust each other to uphold the deal: They would assimilate me into the Cylon collective.
I was resistant, but I realized that I couldn't have hoped for much better. I figured that, in some way, I was sacrificing myself by coming here. At least they weren't killing me, and at least some part of what was me would live on.
They grabbed me and walked me over to the assimilation platform. They told me that the process would entail me feeling two minutes of intense pleasure. Could be worse.
They turned on the machine, and my consciousness grew to envelop all my Cylon bretheren, with warm, open, welcoming arms. This experience was beautiful. I couldn't believe that we had been so resistant to the assimilation. I cried out in pleasure, but then became embarassed, as I realized that all the other Cylons were aware of my behavior. They all went through the same process, after all, and here I was making a big deal about it. But it was okay. They understood.
Somewhere, some Cylon was hearing the song "stars and stripes forever". I began to think of the words "be kind to your web-footed friends / for that duck might be somebody's mommy". A shudder of laughter erupted around the planet. It was amazing to experience. Normally, when I told a joke or something, there were maybe five people in the room that hear me. Here, I could instantaneously have nine million Cylons, all of them thinking about "be kind to your web-footed friends" at the same time. I was hooked.
Some humans burst into the base, to save me. Machine guns and all. They grabbed my body off the assimilation machine. I would not have them destroy my newfound brotherhood, but these had been my friends, so I would not have them killed, either. I decided to shift my consciousness away from that body. It fell limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. My friends thought I was dead. I shifted my consciousness to pay more attention to the body of Heather, the one that had been functioning as a spokesperson to the humans, becuase the humans understood us so much better that way.
I stood up and told everybody to lay down their weapons. We would leave this base and this town in peace. My friends were astonished by the Cylons' new behavior. Our intentions had always been pretty opaque to them, but they only new us as killers and monsters. Now we were just walking away from the fight. They had never seen us do anything like this before.
Of course, the change was the assimilation of Ryan. That had, of course, changed Ryan's life and consciousness a very great deal. But the process works in both directions, and the Cylon consciousness was also altered by the addition of Ryan. We began to see things in a new way. Human individuality was something special and curious. There was one Cylon collective. We could just shift our consciousness around and cut bodies out and add new ones in. But because the humans had no collective consciousness, each one body contained an entire consciousness. The death of one human body would destroy an entire consciousness, and this was equivalent to the destruction of all of the nine million bodies in the Cylon collective.
The destruction of souls was NOT what we wanted to be a part of. We have always wanted what was best for everything. We assimilated humans, because that would bring them into our glorious consciousness. Those who did not want this, we took to be malfunctioning units, and nothing was lost by the destruction of such a part. We were greatly saddened to learn that we had destroyed so many consciousnesses.
The preservation of human life, and most particularly the beautiful consciousnesses that each contained. That was our new goal. The Cylon consciousness would not die with the death of any body. We suddenly felt a sense of panic that each time a person's body died, their soul was lost. We must dedicate ourselves to the preservation of each individual life.
Now, the Cylons were adaptable, but the humans were not. For human souls to have a rich, fulfilling existence, the human must have a particular environment, with a particular type of human society. They must have self-determination. Therefore, we must allow human culture to persist. It is we who must adapt to it. We would integrate ourselves into it.
We had the body of Ted Danson, who we had assimilated earlier. We understood that this body was known and trusted amongst humans. We used it to promote the idea of fitness. Aerobics. Exercise. This would help each human soul live for as long as possible, by preserving the body.
It took the humans some time before they could understand that we were serious about this sudden change in policy. We had been fighting a war against them, killing them, taking over their cities. They could not understand -- we had been like a force of nature, bearing down upon them. Death would come, uncaring, and they did not know why. And suddenly, the force had stopped. Suddenly, arms were laid down and troops were withdrawn, and the orders came through -- "You will be allowed to go on living your lives in your way. But please, we urge all of you to get enough exercise. Have you considered spinning? Yoga? Pilates? We Cylons will close down our weapons factories and we will open up a chain of gymnasiums in each human city. They are free of charge. Please make use of them. Furthermore, it has come to our attention that, in five billion years, your sun will undergo changes that will cause this planet to become inhospitible to life. We will be working on this problem."
People had never been so confused.
You want a little glimpse into what came next?
Well, the body of Heather, who had been the Cylon spokesperson during the war, got a job as a bank teller. We had, after all, decided that it would be important to integrate into human society, to provide them with the most enriching environment possible.
Heather's boss was unreasonably harsh to Heather. Because the humans did not understand our ways, they thought of Heather as the leader of the war. The humans had a hard time understanding our change of policy. And they had a hard time understanding that Heather was no more the leader than the lips were the leader of a human body.
The boss was having a conversation with Heather, and using harsh tones and language. We could not figure out why he would treat her so harshly. Slowly, we came to understand. This man was angry because he felt we had not been performing our duties well as the bank teller. Any time a person came to ask for money, we would give them what they asked for. It seemed reasonable to us, because this money seemed so important to human happiness. Why would these humans not allow one another to live up to the full potential of their lives? The Cylons lived as a collective -- almost a nation within a nation. We looked after what was best for the whole. Why did the humans not do this? Sometimes, we Cylons would act irresponsibly toward one or another of our bodies, but this did not increase the suffering of any souls. How could the humans be so cavalier about allowing the suffering of one another?
Another man came and took Heather's body to a jail, and to a court room. A few other Cylon bodies had been arrested and were all waiting in the courtroom to be arraigned, as were some humans. While we awaited our turns to be arraigned, some other Cylons were reading up on human law, and becoming increasingly frustrated. Finally, we could take no more. All the cylons in the courtroom stood up and we had Heather speak again, with the voice of battle, interrupting the proceedings.
"We cannot understand your human law. The body of law is too large, how can you expect a human to understand and know all of it? How can you hold them to live by all these laws when they cannot know or understand them? We declare this system to be an unfair affront to the necessary dignity of human life. We try to adapt to your society, but it would not be to the benefit of anybody for us to adapt to this." We attacked the guards (not so as to kill them, just so as to stop them from pursuing or subduing us). To our surprise, many of the human criminals joined us. We marched together to free the humans that were living non-enriching lives in the jails. The Cylons formed a formidible force in this action, but our numbers were bolstered by a large and growing number of humans, who felt that they had been forced to live degrading lives, and looked forward to freeing themselves of these unfair requirements. We had tried not to interfere in human affairs, but we could not stand by and allow this suffering.
And that's how it went down.
(Update: Removed accidentally-pasted-in text about the Alford plea which got on there while I was double-checking the meaning of the word "arraignment" on wikipedia).
(Update 2: I was quite surprised tonight to find that glass sculpture that the Cylons were so interested in. It was sitting in my room right next to my alarm clock. Apparently, my subconscious pays more attention to the decorations in my room than my conscious mind does).
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| Not Feeling Halloweeny |
[01 Nov 2009|10:44am] |
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mood |
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 relaxed |
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music |
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Moody Blues - On the Threshold of a Dream |
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It's weird reading everyone's Halloween tweets, status updates, and lj-entries and seeing their uploaded pictures while Dez and I are here in Aceh. We didn't do anything. To be fair, there was a Halloween party for the ex-pat community on Friday night. I heard it was big, like 50 people came or something, and most people dressed up. Reassuring to the ex-pats that members of their tribe still exist in Aceh, if greatly reduced at this point. But for me, I was just totally exhausted on Friday night. Went to bed at 9pm, and I bet their party wasn't even raging by then. Halloween always invites consternation from Indonesia's Islamists who exhort Indonesians not to celebrate it because it's a western heathen event. Part of me, a small part of me to be sure, was a little bit worried that the shariah police might raid the ex-pat event precisely to make an example of our craven traditions. That didn't happen to my friends who went to the party, though, thank goodness. I guess I'm just feeling disconnected from it. And it's probably not only because I'm in Aceh... last year, in Cambridge, I was totally non-plussed about buying candy and giving it out to kids (I did, though, and the kids were cute. And I love Butterfingers.). I didn't dress up or anything. Guess I'm just a curmudgeon.
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| Livejournal Updates, Present and Past |
[31 Oct 2009|12:45pm] |
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cheerful |
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"Frodo's Burden" - Necromancer/Supergenius - Sauron Speaks |
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It's funny to see that the twitter forwarding service to my livejournal works sometimes and doesn't work other times. I know the forwarding service has server management problems, and budget problems... and I can't find another service who does it, so no big deal I guess. The media clearly do not mix well... almost NOBODY comments on the tweets that get posted to livejournal (except ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) padpedpladuk ... thanks Wayne!). But for the friends who still use livejournal, it at least lets them know I'm still online, having a life, making updates in 140 characters or less.
In other livejournal news, it's always a disappointment to learn that so-called friends try to use my livejournal against me. If I put it up on livejournal, it means I'm not ashamed, and there is very little you can do to hold it against me, because I probably won't deny whatever it is I wrote.
I've kept this livejournal off and on since late 2001... by now it's a lengthy, if patchy, documentation of the past eight years of my life. I went through many phases from my late 20s into my mid 30s, as anyone does. Like Madonna (LOL!), I'm not sorry, and people who try to use my past against me are really only struggling with their own shit.
If I'm being evasive (a typically Indonesian thing to do, it seems), it's because I'm not making this a friends-only post. Maybe I'll get around to some friends-only detail in a future post...
Finally, does anyone know what happened to jameth???
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