Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Modernism Week in Palm Springs -
Modernism Week
My weekend excursion: Friday I'll be eating pulled pork sandwiches on the Ventura Harbor and Saturday I'll be perusing Mid-Century Modern furniture and antiques in Palm Springs and Sunday I'll be eating some sort of fabulous breakfast in San Diego. My fun-filled weekend prospects more than make up for tweaking out on Autocad 40 hours a week. For another escape from the 2-dimensional world of CAD I'm going to start learning to use Google Sketchup. I think a fun project would be to do a 3-D model of my new neighborhood, Hillcrest.
My weekend excursion: Friday I'll be eating pulled pork sandwiches on the Ventura Harbor and Saturday I'll be perusing Mid-Century Modern furniture and antiques in Palm Springs and Sunday I'll be eating some sort of fabulous breakfast in San Diego. My fun-filled weekend prospects more than make up for tweaking out on Autocad 40 hours a week. For another escape from the 2-dimensional world of CAD I'm going to start learning to use Google Sketchup. I think a fun project would be to do a 3-D model of my new neighborhood, Hillcrest.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
huevos de la cuidad
I sent my friends back to 15 degree weather yesterday. I am happy that I had company to try 2 new breakfast places, 1 sushi place, 1 chinese place and 1 brewery bar/restaurant over the last 5 days. Specifially, The Diner in Coronado, Adams Steak n' Eggs in Mission Valley, Sushi Itto in Hillcrest, Pick up Stix in Hillcrest and Karl Strauss Brewery in La Jolla - and I have good things to say about all of them. Breakfast in this town could practically be a full-time job. There are so many shapes and sizes and colors of breakfast to be had! If I worked 2nd shift I would go out for breakfast every morning! I intend to start making going out for breakfast on weekends a new perogative.
The over event (that I can speak about) that came out of the weekend was seeing the Annie Liebovitz exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art. (On a side note I think I'm the only person on the planet that didn't know she was a 'mo). The exhibit spans a decade+ of her work and includes the celebrity photographs she's known for along with a selection of her personal photographs. My favorite is the publicity photo for the show of Mikhail Barishnikov, motion paused, on the shore of a beach in Georgia. He's being held up by a taller man and both have the look of not being photographed but being in full joy and enjoyment of their moments of movement.
http://www.sdmart.org
The over event (that I can speak about) that came out of the weekend was seeing the Annie Liebovitz exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art. (On a side note I think I'm the only person on the planet that didn't know she was a 'mo). The exhibit spans a decade+ of her work and includes the celebrity photographs she's known for along with a selection of her personal photographs. My favorite is the publicity photo for the show of Mikhail Barishnikov, motion paused, on the shore of a beach in Georgia. He's being held up by a taller man and both have the look of not being photographed but being in full joy and enjoyment of their moments of movement.
http://www.sdmart.org
Sunday, February 4, 2007
The Wisdom of Homer
Homer Simpson's deepest thoughts taken from a blog called the daily nooz.
I used to love this show!
If you want results, press the red button. The rest are useless.
You can have many different jobs and still be lazy.
There are some things that just aren't meant to be eaten.
The intelligent man wins his battles with pointed words. I'm sorry -- I meant sticks. Pointed sticks.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard "My God! He's covered in some sort of goo," I'd be a rich man.
Be generous in the bedroom -- share your sandwich.
I don't need a surgeon telling me how to operate on myself.
Sometimes I think there's no reason to get out of bed . . . then I feel wet, and I realize there is.
Let me just say, Winnie the Pooh getting his head caught in a honey pot? It's not funny. It can really happen.
Even though it is awesome and powerful, I don't take no guff from the ocean.
I never ate an animal I didn't like.
A fool and his money are soon parted. I would pay anyone a lot of money to explain that to me.
When you borrow something from your neighbor, always do it under the cover of darkness.
I may not be the richest man on earth. Or the smartest. Or the handsomest.
Never throw a butcher knife in anger.
The office is no place for off-color remarks or offensive jokes. That's why I never go there.
My favorite color is chocolate.
Always feel with your heart, although it's better with your hands.
I used to love this show!
If you want results, press the red button. The rest are useless.
You can have many different jobs and still be lazy.
There are some things that just aren't meant to be eaten.
The intelligent man wins his battles with pointed words. I'm sorry -- I meant sticks. Pointed sticks.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard "My God! He's covered in some sort of goo," I'd be a rich man.
Be generous in the bedroom -- share your sandwich.
I don't need a surgeon telling me how to operate on myself.
Sometimes I think there's no reason to get out of bed . . . then I feel wet, and I realize there is.
Let me just say, Winnie the Pooh getting his head caught in a honey pot? It's not funny. It can really happen.
Even though it is awesome and powerful, I don't take no guff from the ocean.
I never ate an animal I didn't like.
A fool and his money are soon parted. I would pay anyone a lot of money to explain that to me.
When you borrow something from your neighbor, always do it under the cover of darkness.
I may not be the richest man on earth. Or the smartest. Or the handsomest.
Never throw a butcher knife in anger.
The office is no place for off-color remarks or offensive jokes. That's why I never go there.
My favorite color is chocolate.
Always feel with your heart, although it's better with your hands.
Feral Citizens
"130 killed by a suicide bomb in Baghdad Market"
I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to experience a bomb in a crowded place. Pictured above, the international sign for explosives looks like it depicts a small fire-cracker going off. In reality the code "1.1D" signifies "mass secondary explosives" which includes the explosive known as RDX or C-4. There's an enormous difference between a fire-cracker and C-4. Pyrotechnic explosive, such as a fireworks, do not necesarily detonate but rapidly decompose or 'deflagrate' at a velocity of 1,316 ft per second. A C-4 explosive does detonate and at a velocity of 24,600 feet per second. When diagrammed at a scale of 1/4" = 1,000 ft an American Footbal field turns into a little green sqaure compared to the detonation time-velocity-distance.
I drew a 3-dimensional version of the graphic on the International Sign for Explosives and it started to look less like a little fire-cracker and more like a individual atom detonating and splitting and more representative of the magnitude of energy produced.
I could never understand how someone could take the lives of 130 men, women and children but after reading about suicide bomber psychology, feral children and metaphysics over the last few days, the notion of "feral citizen" started to emerge in my head.
Here's my version of a definition for feral citizen:
A person who identifies as being a part of an isolationist non-governmental sovereign power and whom subscribes to all of the perceived laws and cultural practices of that sovereign power holding it above themselves and as a substitution for their own personal identity and freedoms and as a group existing in total confinement and rejection of outside cultural information. The isolationism of the group inherently leads to an even deeper isolation of the individuals within the group. Extreme actions by these individuals, while justified relative to their position of isolation-within-isolation, is perceived as savage or wild by traditional nation-state citizens and self-described global-citizens.
Links:
Definition of Citizen
A person who identifies as being a part of an isolationist non-governmental sovereign power and whom subscribes to all of the perceived laws and cultural practices of that sovereign power holding it above themselves and as a substitution for their own personal identity and freedoms and as a group existing in total confinement and rejection of outside cultural information. The isolationism of the group inherently leads to an even deeper isolation of the individuals within the group. Extreme actions by these individuals, while justified relative to their position of isolation-within-isolation, is perceived as savage or wild by traditional nation-state citizens and self-described global-citizens.
Links:
Definition of Citizen
Suicide Bomber Psychology - Univ of Virginia, Vamik D. Volkan
Feral Children - Genie a modern day wild child (from Dameon)
Institute of Metaphysical Science in La Jolla (from Kate Pabst)
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Thursday, February 1, 2007
29.9726027
Another fractional step towards being 30...
As the time of 10,950 days old nears, I've thought about the "zeros", of life or life between the ages of 10, 20, and 30. When I was 10, life was great because my Mom, who taught (and still teaches) 2nd grade brought me to school in the morning and had me stay after school with her in the evening. This was every 10 year olds' dream because I had complete run of the Computer Lab, Music Room, Art Room, Library, Gymnasium, and Playground. Life after 10 went downhill because Jr. High was a popularity contest that I never joined. I discovered Coffeehouses, Ragstocks and thrift store fashion way too far ahead of my time and that combined with being gay and asian in a 99% white and straight school, left me alone in the school art room for 6 years. Sr High was slightly different because I could drive to the art room instead of being subject to the torture of the bus. Life after 20 was a roller-coaster-learning-curve of romantic, familial, friendly, corporate, laborious, exhilirating, disappointing and surpising relationships and where they did or didn't lead me. I think 30 will be a good decade with wiser drama, a thicker yet spongier heart to take the ups and downs and an evolving apprecation of the ones that I can't help but stick to.
About a month ago, one of those sticky ones, Dameon said to me, "People don't want to be right, they just want to be understood" - that statement was like Moses parting the sea. Tonight, Steph made the comment that the fatter and fuller our lives are the more excited WE are. She'd said this after I had told her that despite my new job, still working for my girlfriend, going to school, and freelancing on the side, I've felt even more excited, on top of already being excited about being in San Diego. I think the people who stick in our lives are there to diligently observe and to comment (for better or for worse) and ultimately to enlighten us through their own quirks and qualities. To be really esoteric... in quantum mechanics when a wave of light falls on a particle it causes the particle to bounce around like a cue-ball and on occasion a pair of subatomic particles can sometimes become “entangled.” This means the fate of one instantly affects the other, no matter how far apart they are. I think those funny behaviors explain why we stick to certain people.
As the time of 10,950 days old nears, I've thought about the "zeros", of life or life between the ages of 10, 20, and 30. When I was 10, life was great because my Mom, who taught (and still teaches) 2nd grade brought me to school in the morning and had me stay after school with her in the evening. This was every 10 year olds' dream because I had complete run of the Computer Lab, Music Room, Art Room, Library, Gymnasium, and Playground. Life after 10 went downhill because Jr. High was a popularity contest that I never joined. I discovered Coffeehouses, Ragstocks and thrift store fashion way too far ahead of my time and that combined with being gay and asian in a 99% white and straight school, left me alone in the school art room for 6 years. Sr High was slightly different because I could drive to the art room instead of being subject to the torture of the bus. Life after 20 was a roller-coaster-learning-curve of romantic, familial, friendly, corporate, laborious, exhilirating, disappointing and surpising relationships and where they did or didn't lead me. I think 30 will be a good decade with wiser drama, a thicker yet spongier heart to take the ups and downs and an evolving apprecation of the ones that I can't help but stick to.
About a month ago, one of those sticky ones, Dameon said to me, "People don't want to be right, they just want to be understood" - that statement was like Moses parting the sea. Tonight, Steph made the comment that the fatter and fuller our lives are the more excited WE are. She'd said this after I had told her that despite my new job, still working for my girlfriend, going to school, and freelancing on the side, I've felt even more excited, on top of already being excited about being in San Diego. I think the people who stick in our lives are there to diligently observe and to comment (for better or for worse) and ultimately to enlighten us through their own quirks and qualities. To be really esoteric... in quantum mechanics when a wave of light falls on a particle it causes the particle to bounce around like a cue-ball and on occasion a pair of subatomic particles can sometimes become “entangled.” This means the fate of one instantly affects the other, no matter how far apart they are. I think those funny behaviors explain why we stick to certain people.
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