concocted glimpse

So Brain and I were doing the same thing we do every night. Neuro. I like to tell him things I learn, which he then corroborates, challenges, or does a little armchair research on. So he hit up neocortex on Wikipedia. The disambiguation tagline for the page told us that this article was about the brain. Were we perhaps looking for Doctor Neo Cortex, a video game character? We weren’t, but we looked anyway. Doc Cortex has an article of proportions embarrassingly greater than those devoted to the brain. Of course, half of neuroscience is “not well understood”, so there is some real-life correlation to the paucity of neuro information to be had, but it was clearly an occasion for wikigroaning. I’m humorously sympathetic to some of the classic wikigroans, like that Raphael, the postpubescent genetically aberrant martial artist reptile, has an article of greater length than the eponymous Renaissance painter. But actually I can kind of understand why the entry on “Japanese toilets” has as much bandwidth as “Japanese mythology”. Those things are complicated.

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So far I zone out less than I ever did at school before. This is good. Once in second grade my teacher was going on about something or other, blah blah blah, why does David White always wear pink shirts with alligators on them?, “does anybody know a song about comets?”

My mouth said “Me.”

“Why don’t you come up and sing us your song.”

I realized that my song probably wasn’t what she had been talking about. After all, it has a word that is, if not exactly swearing, at least vulgar, like those boatmen. I demurred, but she vetoed my declination. I slithered up in front of the class. When I was still reluctant to sing it, she said I must; they all wanted to hear it very much. I tried to tell her this was not the song she’s looking for; she told me my Jedi mind tricks wouldn’t work on her. I changed tactics and told her I couldn’t remember the words. She insisted that I had to remember them, to ask my parents at home; I would sing the song for the class, tomorrow if necessary. So I did:

Comet! It makes your teeth turn green!

What do you know. It was not the song she was looking for.

The best thing about that teacher was that she broke her leg and asked us all to sign her cast. It was my life’s ambition to sign a cast. See, teachers do help students fulfill their lifelong dreams.

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We’ve begun planning when we can go back to Japan this year [yeehaw!]; where we’ll go, what we’ll do. We’re looking at the Kansai area — Kyoto, Osaka, etc. We only have one big window of time left this year, because I’m going back to school [yeehaw!], yet we wanted to make sure that the weather will be bearable; last time, we melted into puddles and the concierge of our posh space-age hotel had to collect our remains by sopping us up with two fancy artificially antiqued handkerchiefs — the kind we saw for sale in the shop at the Mori Art Museum that were labeled in English “this look of fade touch Japanese sense of beauty”. We flew back to the States in high-tech ziplocs and had to be reconstituted. It made the CIS officer really mad.

So, for a weather check of our target area during our available window, Roscivs queried Google for “kyoto climate”. When he told me about this I began giggling and couldn’t stop. Somehow no relevant matches were returned.

* * *

I don’t believe that humans are making Earth’s temperature unstable, but I’m pretty anxconscious about being green. I have only bought gasoline twice this year, and only partial tanks both times. I’ve switched over to reusable grocery bags [yeehaw!]. I don’t buy list paper; I reuse the entrails of slaughtered trees stuffed into our mailbox. I designed moving cards out of boxes we used to move, which, by the way, were made locally. The stencils I created for the cards were even made out of reused paper. This is a tiny and exceptionally positive list: usually my approach is not “Ten Fun Ways to Rereuse”; it consists of “The Five Hundred Ways I am Failing to Consume Conscientiously”. It’s not usually “I got reusable grocery bags!” It’s “It’s embarrassing how long it took me to get reusable grocery bags. I’m so ashamed”.

That’s because my idea of being wildly optimistic is discovering that I have not contracted a fatal disease today. But don’t worry, I have hope. Just because I don’t have cancer today doesn’t mean I can’t go purblind tomorrow.

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I went to the zoo with my sister Sioux. We saw four hundred and three crows, fifty squirrels, two dozen hairless apes, and a dozen other animals. The place was practically deserted. And while we were in the lizard house, we saw a fake alligator, taxidermied and masqueraded as the real deal. We’re sure it was fake.

1. Its eyelid was propped up over a big black marble with a fake glint painted on it. Alligators have beady little eyes.

2. One of its back feet was buried under a layer of sediment that was starting to petrify. I appreciate that cold-blooded animals can bask in one place for a long time, but this was unreal. And

3. one of its front feet had its claws lifted unnaturally like it was expecting the mani-pedi man for an in-home appointment.

Who were they trying to fool? What a croc.

We did see a hippo. I hate hippos. On a wall in the hippo house at my childhood zoo there was a display of human accoutrements recovered from animal displays. It included remains of a child’s shoe, a child’s doll, a child’s toy mutilated past proper recognition. When I ventured into the hippo house years later, it had turned into a warning against littering. But many years before, it had said

WARNING: THESE ARE THE ITEMS OF SMALL CHILDREN WHO HAVE MET AN UNTIMELY AND GRUESOME DEMISE IN THE MURKY WATERS OF THE HIPPO LAIR. WATCH OUT. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.

So one day, my mother had a baby, and my father took us to the zoo. At the hippo house, my father lifted me up, all the better for you to see the hippo, my dear, and then wondered aloud if he should toss me in? Should I end your life, little child? Should I have tuna for lunch? Should I wear my orange shirt? Adults, you see, still have important questions. They just treat them in unimportant ways.

I began screaming; blood curdled; eardrums exploded; hippos licked their chops. My life hung in the balance. I made an impossibly great scene and gathered a concerned audience. I decided, with the frenetic probability calculations of a person about to be thrown to the hippos, that chances were one in ninety-five that the crowd was large enough, fast enough, and valorous enough to form a rescue team. One in ninety-five again that they’d succeed. I screamed even louder. He set me down.

I’m afraid I was ruined on Hungry Hungry Hippos, and I wouldn’t ever sing that I wanted a hippopotamus for Christmas. However, I love the hiphopopotamus.

not a large water-dwelling mammal. Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis? Did Steve tell you that, perchance?

Chez nous we’ve been tuning in to Flight of the Conchords for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My sister grew to love ‘em too. Band addiction never felt so GOOD!

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I coordinate a conversation group at work. I talk with people from all over the world, and I get paid for it. I feel like I’m getting away with something!

Most of my regular group students are Korean, so we often end up touching on a comparison of cultures. The other day the conversation turned to astrology. Suddenly, Hwan-chol turned to me, sized me up, and asked, “what’s your blood type?” and when I told him, he was surprised, and informed me that many Americans do not know their blood type. I immediately thought of butt tattoos

‘And when she was a baby, he thought it would be a really smart idea to have his kids’ blood types tattoed on them, in case they were ever in an accident. She has this little teeny blue tattoo on her butt.’

‘Gross.’

‘She thinks it’s gross, too,’ Daphne went on, ‘but not because it’s a tattoo. Because of her blood type — B negative. They write that like a B minus. And her sister was A plus! Mom says she wouldn’t mind having an A plus on her behind, but she hates being a B minus!’

but I neutrally said “why do you ask?” The group then launched into explaining to me a theory—made up by the Japanese, they told me—that one’s blood type is another sort of personality sign. One of the guys’ ex-girlfriends were all type B. [Rh doesn’t matter.] The same guy visited an astrologist who told him he had to marry someone with a zodiac animal smaller than his. He’s a chicken. I suggested, “think of yourself as a giant chicken”, and the whole group burst out laughing.

I wasn’t really kidding.

I asked what the traits are for O types. “They’re very friendly”, said one, “and they like to touch”, said another, “so”, said a third, “they’re usually hookers.” Man. If I had a dollar for every time . . .

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My sister Sioux visited for a week of strawberries, harbor cruises, Super Smash, art sales, and baby armadillos in the dark. We watched The Man From Snowy River together; la crème de la nostalgic crème of films. It’s rooted in the bedrock of my soul. A vision splendid. A film based on a poem. A poem by a man named Banjo. Need I say more. Didn’t think so.

In the dinner scene, Mr. Harrison predicts a glistening future of refrigerated freight cars carrying beef from Australia to the Americas. When I saw it this time, a carnival of carcass carnage flashed before my eyes; the development of the modern meat market. Vision UNsplendid.

It’s all the Michael Pollan I’ve been reading. And it’s from finishing Fast Food Nation—in vogue for popular outrage and denial years ago; yes, I got to it late. [The Jungle put me off meat muckraking for years.] I was upset by the working conditions as much as the meat conditions. My heart bled, liberally. I also just read [by request] and reviewed [by separate request] The China Study, which is more about straight-up nutrition and less about food conglomerate hegemony.

All those books in quick succession almost make a recipe for vegetarianism.

* * *

My beef: The way we feed and process the meat products we eat today is more significant a factor in its problematic effects on our bodies than that it’s meat. I was hoping Campbell would discuss this even in brief in The China Study, but he didn’t. Still, it’s worth the read. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Chase your own rainbows.

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I had one Barbie. I’m not sure where she came from. I’m sure where she went, though. My neighbor friend took her. She had flat feet, my Barbie. She couldn’t wear any of the chic tendon-shortening shoes the other Barbies wore. It was anomalously anatomically appropriate of the Barbie creators to represent how a constant wearing of high heels permanently alters the figuration of the feet so they can’t be shod in any other sort of shoe. I reminisce this now because in a big foot love-in I’ve cleansed my closet of footwear with heels. I haven’t worn any since January. I may just give up shoes altogether. Run free, little piggies!

If you need a dozen pretty pairs in size seven and a half, holler.

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The Seed

I’ve been weaving an idea through a few books I just recently read. When I appellate this idea, it’s the “collective unconscious”. That’s not because of any Jungian tendencies; the phrase popped out at me in the first of these books, Neal Stephenson’s brilliantly wrought The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer:

“The database is full of them. It’s a catalogue of the collective unconscious.”

In the book, a programmer creates—or he attempts—a compilation of everything that has been known in the world before. The idea that the reservoir of knowledge, a thing that is available to and accumulates with each new generation, can be quantified? Programmed? Fascinating.

The Stem

The collective unconscious popped out at me in a different incarnation in the last chapter of Tintin and the Secret of Literature, called “Pirates”. Here and there the book [fantastic and silly, but not for those who don’t want to deal with the meta-hermeneutic] discusses parallels between a Balzac piece and Hergé’s work; artistic thievery is a leitmotif throughout. Think magpies. The last chapter deals explicitly with the idea that artists use ideas not their own, and dallies with complex problematics of intellectual property.

The Buds

When we were getawaying in Vancouver this weekend, I found The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes in one of the used bookstores we visited. One of the rhymes is about the evil Bonaparte, big bad Boney, who’ll come from France to tear apart little children if they’re naughty. It’s interesting to see the historical depth wash up shallowly as a single wave on the shore of the general idea: the bogeyman.

Folk stories, which have been bizarrely relegated to “kid” stories, are a rich source of how people collect and pass on ideas. Part of my CU hunch is that the mind has a supple period where it’s most malleable and pourous for the collective [un]conscious, much like it is for universal grammar and learning language. But even after the wiring gets set, we still interact affectively with the CU like we do with language.

Again, from The Diamond Age:

certain universal ideas that have been mapped onto local cultures. For example […] the Trickster may be deemed a universal; but he appears in different guises […] The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the pacific coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Brer Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny

As a child I was very intruiged by the cultural cartography underlying the stories of Ananzi [another trickster, my favorite], Baba Yaga, the Grimm tales. It turns out that this idea translation is important to understand in my current work. It can be an intensely useful tool, and it can run uglily amok. Which ideas are really universal? Does everyone get the same, the whole, bundle of collective unconscious?

The Pods

A distant cousin of the collective unconscious appeared in The Dance of Anger. As a side salad to the main dish of the book, the author explores the idea that patterns in our family history play out in our present. This seemed at first more deterministic than I could stomach, but the author’s clear that you can change the pattern. The idea emerged less as a psychological past-haunting and more as an idea that we inherit a lot of things we aren’t aware of.

Can we make the unconscious conscious?

The Root

The Worthing Saga plays out this idea in a few ways. One is as an accumulation of knowledge resulting in ever-greater knowledge and power. When Lared asks Jason [God] why God’s daughter is more powerful than God is, Jason answers that after all this time, shouldn’t his children be able to learn more than he knows and be greater than him?

Good question, God. Very good question.

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Before I even ran my first race ever last month, I registered for my second. I felt a little crazy. Just because I love running didn’t mean I’d love racing. A week before I knelt down to check my laces before lining up at my first start, a friend looked at my face as I talked about my upcoming race, pointed her finger at me and declared “you’re going to catch the racing bug. I can tell.”

I woke up before 7:00 AM yesterday, I did it on purpose, I totally loved it, and I’d do it again.

If you didn’t just die of shock, that’s good; you’ve probably never seen me in the morning. [Don’t feel bad; I haven’t even seen me in the morning.] If you did die of shock, check out the disclaimer page before rigor mortis sets in. It outlines how you’ve pre-absolved me of all liabilities for casualties due directly or peripherally to reading my blog. And how you’ve willed me all your chopsticks.

Once upon a time only one thing could happily rouse me from slumber at ungodly hours [godly hours start after 9:00 am]. Now there are two. The second thing’s a race. Morning at my race yesterday was more beautiful than Edvard Greig could make it seem.

Check it out: I’m acutally *grinning*!

This race was different than my first one. It was half again as long, but it was much easier for me physically, even though it was longer and harder: there were hills. [I’ve been finding the slope of hypothetical hills with a student I tutor, and oy, it’s so much easier to find a steep rise than to run one.] I think the extra month of training and race experience helped put me way ahead on this race!

There were volunteers along the course who cheered everyone on. “Keep going!” “You’re doing so great!” I loved the atmosphere of this race.

In good form on the last stretch

The starting line had posts for runners to self select a speed: 8 min/mi or faster runners first, slower runners in minute increments behind. There were no finish chutes at the end this time, but I had a time chip. That was cool. I heard the time device beep as I crossed the finish line!

I win just because I race!

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Over last quarter break I landed a job escorting visiting students from Japan. On the bus ride back to the college on the second day, one of them asked how we write dates in America. That’s an answer fraught with trouble. Americans are ununiform daters. This little date problem has caused big date problems. For example a large online retailer {ahem} botched a release date for a new game due to software glitches caused by disparate date-writing, and have you ever seen a horde of angry nerds? Provoke their wrath and even a level 20 cleric with a loaded eighteen-sided die and a +15 cloak of protection will not save a site from sharing the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter.

Everyone that I know is in agreement that traditional American ordering

• MM/DD/YYYY

makes least sense. I prefer the Asian notation system, largest unit first

• YYYY/MM/DD

because I think it makes the most sense, and it’s best for cataloging. However, on the paperwork I do at work the year is assumed [all paperwork is logged by quarter] so I end up elliding and writing MM-DD, which happens to match most of my peers’ American notation. Most Americans I know who use alternative ordering use the British system, smallest unit first:

• DD/MM/YYYY

It’s not just ordering though. There are a dozen other possible notation alternations, which compound into exponential possibilities. Take leading zeros, for example. Include

• 05.17.2004

or scrap

• 5/17/2005

?

There’s the problem of separators, which can cause software glitches even if uniform ordering is followed. [This is a phone number issue, too.]

• 17/5/2006

vs.

• 17.05.2007

vs.

• 17-05-2008

And then there’s [YY]YY abbreviation. 05/17/04. This can make for twelve cute matches every century, but it’s not the best for serious dating. All the permutations are enough to drive a person crazy — but I’m only interested in the perfect match. And I’ve found it. Yep. I have. I only have one date in my life.

And we’re sailing right into Honeymoon Mambo No. 5, and this is the best. bliss. EVAR. This notation is easy: ∞

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