Californication

I love living here!

First off it is Feb. 27th:

I've been driving home in the mornings between 9am-10am from my night shift in Palo Alto. It's been raining alot lately so stuff is blooming. Yesterday morning, I was driving home and there were no flowers on the sides of the road. This morning there were the beautiful yellow dafodils all over the place!

We've also been experiencing lower than normal temperatures upper 30s at night. This is just cold enough for the local mountians to get a bit of snow up at the tops. So, I'm driving home, the rain stopped last night, the sun is shining brightly, and there's some night post rain fluffy clouds, with a mountian range in the distance with a dusting of snow on the top! How can you ask for more?

Movies to see

I just got done watching a movie called "Out of Order"

Really cool movie about the imperfection of humans. Its written/directed/produced by this couple who is doing an autobiography about their relationship. So its told in the first person, from the persepective of the person making the movie. Very interesting narative form that I haven't really seen before in film.

Also, you have to see "The Science of Sleep." It just came out on DVD last week. Its gotta be one of the richest movies I've seen.

A New Day

Ok I feel better. I'm all over that shit.

Went climbing yesterday and met some randoms who held my lifeline. That was nice. I also went for a walk around the neighborhood and found this cool barn house. It has skylights all the way down its main roofline. Check it out:




Life is just too short to wallow in self pity, especially when there's so much beauty around all of us. I guess I just wish I had a thicker skin sometimes. I guess I just really value the people I have in my life.

Who Cares?

I don't want to feel feelings anymore. They straight suck. Highs and Lows? Who needs em? Give me a dose of apathy, good ol' fasion not giving a flying fuck. I wanna commune with my inner asshole, and give the world a taste of his cranky ass, and not care that I'm being an asshole. Why can't I? I'm too friggin emotional for my own good, and its wearing me out.

The only thing I can't shake is that fact that the truely strong person can be emotional, and feel all these damn things while being rock solid and dealing. FUCK

Getty Museum LA

For Thanksgiving last Fall I went to LA with Matt and Katrina. We went to the Getty Museum one day so I took pictures. I love museums. So much cool old stuff. I really like the renissance sculptures of the Greek/Roman Gods. Such cool stories.

This is a picture of Hades stealing Persephone away from her mother Demeter. Demeter was pissed to say the least, so she and Hades made an agreement. Half of the year Persephone would stay w/ Mom, and half with Hades. Demeter is the godess of the fields, harvest, etc. so hence the seasons.

This is Aphrodite(Venus) and Adonis, Goddes of Love, and basically God of the young ladies (virginity I think).

Zeus- do I need to say more?

I think this is Aries (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus). God of War and Godess of Love who are 'married' which probably meant something different than it does today.

So this scuplture tells part of the story of the origin of the universe. Before there was the Gods, there was the Titans. The leader of the Titans was Cronus (base word for 'time'). He was uber paranoid b/c he has rebelled against the begins before the Titans ususally called the Monsters or something like that, I think I also remember reading something about a prophesy that said Cronus would be overthrown by his offspring. SO, paranoid Cronus would eat everyone of his babes, hense this sculpture. Finally, Rhea, Cronus' wife, stole away her son Zeus- and well the rest is history. Final cool thing about this origin myth is that the three brothers (Zeus, Posideon, and Hades) that were instrumental in the rebellion decided to divide up the world and each take reign over one division. They decided who would choose first, second, third over a game of dice. Zeus won, and chose the heavens, which was fine w/ Posideon, b/c he wanted the sea anyway, and the unlucky brother, Hades got the underworld.

A final note, I simply love how women were included in this religion. Why the fuck did we take the turn we did w/ patriarchal Christianity?

ZOMG Podcasts FTW

Holy shit, Podcasts rock check out this story about Green Homes (Link). IHOPEIHOPEIHOPEIHOPE that people in the US are really getting the IDEA (DUH) about some of these problems.

Widgets

So I recently discovered widgets. I told Liz about this, but I thought that a picture is worth 1000 words. This is (I believe) a Mac thing, but they've managed to convert it to Windows or something. So my idea was to remove all of my executable files from my desktop, put all of the files in a folder, and only leave the necessary file folder shortcuts on my desktop. Here's what I ended up with. Link

The Form of Praise

So I was listening to an NPR podcast the other day (LINK) where the topic of discussion was how to praise your kids. So appearantly out of the 60-70s came the idea that you should alway praise your kids, at whatever they do, telling them they are GOOD at it. It doesn't matter if they really suck, you should still tell them they did well as a way to build their self-esteem. Sounds reasonable right? Well appearently the best way to motivate your kids is to tell them that they did good at WORKING hard. The idea here is to promote the idea of hard work over inate excellence. It makes sense if you think about what happens when something difficult comes along, the always praised kids might think, 'Oh I'm just not good at that, I just won't do it anymore.' Where as the kids who were told you really worked hard might think, 'Man that was tough, I need to work harder.' Interesting....

Triathalon

Anyone interested in signing up for a triathalon?

Random Patterns Become Faces

I've had a number of experiences where I'll see faces in everything. Specifically walls w/ swirly drywall patterns, and really really easily in wood. I've wondered why we see faces in randomness like the man in the moon, the face on mars, wood grain, etc. This article (NyTimes) in typical empirical scientific fasion talks about how people process faces, but not why we see faces. My hypothesis is that its because a human face is probably the first thing we see, or at least make sense of what it is we're seeing. Out of the grey fog of non-vision your mothers face comes into view. Thoughts?

Changing People

So this came from my mom. I'd really like to hear what you guys think of it.

To sculpt the other into our own likeness fails before it begins. People can't change form no matter how much and in what manner we require them to. Form is inherent, ingrained, indelible. Ask a snake to swallow itself. Ask a person to change form-think or want differently-and you ask the impossible, for it is the thinking and wanting that is required to change the thinking and wanting. Form cannot be self-changing. Of course, some change is possible, but it is twisting and distortion of underlying form. Remove the fangs of a lion and behold a toothless lion, not a domestic cat. Our attempts to change spouse, offspring, or others can result in change, but the result is a scar and not a transformation.