THINGS just got more interesting. i just read some of the new entries on chopstick's blog, as well the girl with whom he's having a lite "feud". and besides that i'm impressed by his accomplishment in pulling other people onto the blog wagon, i'm also moved to make a few comments tomorrow on the matter. because amazingly people actually check this blog often enough to tell me i need to update it. what better way to show that yes i am still alive? just wait a bit..
-- 1:00 AM

"PORN files on your computer?" i'm getting sick of all the pop-under ads with these captions, appearing without consent, flashing their icons in the taskbar, pandering for my attention as if they were real reminders from my outlook appointments. for every ten browsers, at least two of them are ads, it seems. and none of them are any good, no cheezy beer ads written by Dick that make you chuckle, nor epileptic playstation 2 videos with high-flying colors for the mtv generation, not even the annoying dell guy. it all amounts to desensitization. like leonard shelby (don't call him lenny) from memento, i've been conditioned, to prune my taskbar with right-click-close's, to aim straight for the top-right X buttons on unexpected windows, the throats of the beasts. master of the control-w i am. but don't you dare perform on that on my blog page!

by the way, if you haven't seen memento, and would like to work that muscle between your ears at a movie for a change, go out and rent it now!
-- 11:29 PM

FOUR thirty in the afternoon.. i'm tapping my left foot because i drank too much water earlier. but leave the cube and i risk losing the train of thoughts on my code. bah, writing this blog is distracting too. my beat quickens, no choice. off to the washroom..
-- 4:37 PM

WELL i realize i don't update this page that frequently, maybe once or twice a week, and likely in long, sinuous streams rather than the usual short spurts of other blogs. i bet following my blog seems somewhat like owning a second mailbox for all your junk mail. things don't arrive in little timely intervals, instead every once in a while you grab a whole handful of various sizes and colors to sort and weed out. but actually, i'm always writing ideas down. when i started working i realized that unlike at college i spend a lot more time going between places, driving between my apartment and office, to and from appointments, or simply in the middle of doing something but having nobody with a free ear or a leisure mind around. an idea pops into my head and has nowhere to escape but onto a scratchpad i keep, or if i'm in the car, on the back of last week's gas receipts. same goes for interesting music that catch my attention, book titles that people recommend, random search results off google, phone numbers from all the cute girls approaching me. hehe.. i know, bullshit, right? =)

here's giving ya an example. know who ludwig wittgenstein is? he was an important 20th century austrian philosopher who worked at cambridge on the foundations of mathematics and logic. now, i've no memory *why* his name is written on a yellow post-it note next to my laptop, alongside the words 'zubrowka' and 'lech walesa'. (former is a polish vokda, latter is the first post-communist president of the same country who lead the workers' union in his younger days..) in fact, i wouldn't even be able to tell you any of wittgenstein's works without cheatin' and searchin' the web. but a few weeks ago when i scribbed it down, i must have placed some confidence in the chance that some day i'd look them up again, become wiser in the process even.

other things of random from the scratchpad!

"gerhard glück"... here's a postcard entitled 'sandburg' that i bought on a trip with jess and marcus. found it at a souvenir shop in downtown santa cruz, a place so laid back and inherently 'beach-town' that i didn't even suspect of finding a good collection of novel postcards. that's serendipity my friend! (need a definition? this word, btw, comes from sri lanka, or rather it refers to the island's ancient name, serendip.) anyways, maybe you've seen some caricatures like this before. well the artist is Gerhard Glück and he's prob better known for a few other works like this one or one of these.

"psychology of music"... so what is the meaning of music? i mean, why do certain notes make us feel sad and sympathetic (or maybe just pathetic =) while others empower us to do everything short of conquering continents? and if you wanna look at it from an scientific perspective, what's the evolutionary advantage? i've been meaning to get a book on music phychology. but seeing that i haven't even finished book two of the Godfather, this side-quest for knowledge might have a wait a bit..

"bebop, delta blues, zydeco"... i need to find some albums in these genres with less improv and stronger melodies, other than my cowboy bebop and neia_under_7 anime soundtracks.

"twin towers, replaced by goddess statues"... as the 7am sun awoke me one morning i managed to hold on to a burst of creativity born from those random synapses at the brink of conciousness. at least, thoughts like these felt creative yet made perfect sense at the time of conception. it must have been that earlier that week i had read about some of the proposals for the wtc reconstruction plans. at that moment vivid imagery of nyc's lower waterfront, with two huge statues of greco-roman goddesses, light-gray and luminous, where the tower once stood, filled my mind's eye. the statues, their long hair flowing and faces peering skyward, gave me a sense that they were somehow supernatural, as though they could summon up some force field to dispell any misguided planes coming their way. sadly, the closest thing i can find on the web is something of a cross between these statues of hebe and of winged victory.

and i see it's getting late. time to head home to practice some guitar.. tomorrow you can read about my weekend involving a furry pink hat, some damn good electronic jazz, and a brush with perhaps the best porsche ever made.
-- 11:30 PM