Dells
They have their piece of crap computers padlocked to the table.
If I were going to take something, it would be the lock.
It's more useful than any Dell,
their insides arranged to make upgrading more tangled
more inscrutable to the average consumer.
I beat the power supply out of the case with a hammer.
I ripped out the cords, scoffing at their dust-covered casing.
The memory I kept, because who doesn't want more memory
when it's so easy to snap out of its socket
and pretend it's always been in the right place?
Poem:
I've been spending quite a lot of time around computers and thinking about computers recently. This will assuredly not be the last poem about them. It's almost too easy to make the analogies, though, so I'll have to try harder in the future. This one was prompted by the fact I was sitting in front of a dell between classes (having forgotten my iPad at work), and had recently taken one apart to use the hard drive in upgrading a different unit. They suck.
Observation:
We were discussing the insanity defense in my philosophy of law class today. One of the working definitions of what excuses a crime on the basis of insanity is if the accused was sufficiently lacking in the will required to not commit the crime. This was intended for those cases where a mentally unstable person simply isn't capable of giving appropriate consideration to the law. Like if a kleptomaniac knows it's wrong to steal, but just can't help it. Or similar cases, as with OCD, etc. But I got to thinking that if all that's required for a person to not be responsible is the fact that they didn't have the willpower to resist, then doesn't that in some respect make every action blameless? In every case where an action occurs, isn't it true that their willpower to act otherwise was proven ineffective or insufficient? I think it holds that the willpower in opposition couldn't have overruled, and this is proven by the fact that it, in fact, DIDN'T overrule. How could it have overruled if it didn't? Now, this is a very deterministic way of looking at the situation, and unfortunately I have grown to endorse a rather deterministic way of looking at many things, though I can't help but hold out some hope for libertarianism simply for optimism's sake. But back to the insanity thing: If you do something, it seems completely reasonable to say that you did it because you couldn't will yourself to do otherwise. So nobody is really guilty, due to diminished capacity of will.
Exercise:
"Five Words"
We all know far more words than we actually use in our writing. Today's exercise is inspired by poet Deborah Ager She wrote:
"The other night, I sat down to write. I took a glass of water into my study -- with its orange walls glowing pink due to a sunset streaming through the western window -- and sat down at my desk. I'd recently RE-found my writing notebook and was pleased to find some notes I'd taken on various poems. I wasn't sure what I wanted to write. I decided to incorporate five words I've never used before in a poem. To do this, I quickly scanned the pages of a book I'm reading and came up with "true," "rice," "anecdote," "beam," and "gentle."
What are five words you know but have never used in your writing? Pick up whatever newspaper or book is handy and see what you can find. You may need the whole five minutes just to find these five words. That's OK.
I honestly can't think of any words I know but haven't used. I guess maybe words like porcine, kumquat, pillory, anabolic, and crumpet would be things I'm not sure I've ever used. It wouldn't be hard though.
Porcine children belong in pillories.
Their obsession with crumpets is maddening in the morning,
when any reasonable person grabs one and is on their way,
yet the greedy-cheeked, crumb-mouthed kids
meander their way back to the breakfast table
like we won't notice their back for their fifth one if they gaze in a different direction
as they make their approach
swooping in their greatest exertion of the day
muscles kicking into their anabolic threshold.
Yesterday I threw a kumquat at one
but he just ate it and smiled.
Okay, that was harder than I thought. I might have picked some pretty bad words. Whoops.
Me:
I'm officially not going to grad school next year, which is actually rather surprising. I guess my streak of never really trying and getting what I wanted had to end sometime. But I think that's all the more reason to keep this blog going. I haven't stopped writing. I've been busy with some rather interesting things recently, but I do plan on getting back to this, and right now my plan is to have a new post up by 9:30 every Tuesday and Thursday. And hopefully by Saturday night, but that will probably mean Sunday morning. So there you have it. A schedule. I've decided I need schedules. How grown-up of me. This means a bit of an end to the whole Friday-in-a-different-style thing, though I will certainly explain in the "poem" section that a poem was the result of that sort of thing. So if you've stopped checking regularly, you can start again. I expect to keep to this schedule for at least a couple of weeks. (I am, of course, planning on doing it indefinitely, but I've learned to have lowered expectations of myself.)
April 8, 2011
April 3, 2011
In which I find time to update, but ramble on and don't say much interesting.
Broken Elevator
"I'm breathing for two now"
Says the pregnant lady
Gasping on the stairs
The baby has stolen her body
Her breath, which used to come
And go so easily
Now catches at strange times
Like now on the stairs
Or at the thought of all those diapers
"Breathtaking" used to be reserved
For mountain sunsets
Or those times when all she needs
Are the two eyes just inches away
The flecks of hazel glinting
Kaleidoscoping out to trap her
Poem:
People always say "I'm eating for two now," and I wanted to investigate/think about other things which would be done for two. This sounded cool. That's about it.
Observation:
In what seems a bit too "meta," today's observation concerns our powers of observation. Specifically the senses. Now, we all seem to take for granted that our senses are approximately equal. That is, while we might use some more than others, they all relate to our experience in a similar way. But I was thinking about this randomly, and I'm less and less sure this is the case. Take sight, for example. While I suppose it's not certain that sight correlates to the external world, at least we can point to things (light's wavelength, reflection, etc.) that explain why the particular sensations our brain interprets come out the way they do. And a similar thing might be said of touch. Our ability to sense things like "sharpness" or "heat" can be linked with some verification to actual qualities in the world around us. Sound is obviously quite similar to sight in the way it deals with waves and their length, frequency, reflection, and whatnot. Which leaves those other two senses. Taste and smell. Interestingly enough, they are quite closely interlinked.
When we describe the way something smells or tastes, is there anything about that sensation that we are claiming corresponds to external qualities. Now, I know the way smell works is the receptors in the nose receive certain shapes of molecule and relay information to the brain, but is this sensation really that useful? On some evolutionary level, I guess, it probably helped in distinguishing between types of substances, which led to us having innate preferences in taste and smell, but when I smell something, it's not like I can tell you anything about the world from that sensation. I'm limited to describing it in terms of other smells, or using terms like "good" and "bad." On a base level, the thing that distinguished between different smells are the shapes of the molecules entering your nose. But nothing about smell tells you what these shapes are, where they originated, or really much useful at all when it comes to linking smell to external experience. And taste works the same way, so I won't go into that. But really, taste and smell are just rather specialized forms of touch. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, sound is picked up by the vibration of a membrane in our ear. I'm a bit foggy about how sight works beyond the whole "rods and cones do stuff" explanation. I just find it interesting that taste and smell are in large part arbitrary. They are not very informative, and calling them senses and putting them in the same category as sight and hearing might be inappropriate.
Exercise:
"Five Ingredients"
Write something--anything--that includes the following five words/ phrases:
~urged
~When the servant entered with the soup
~show him the way
~zeal
~dead flies
When the servant entered with the soup, I was urged, perhaps by the presence of so many dead flies on the ceiling, to show him the way to the table, a task I undertook with zeal. I mapped out a safe route in my head, weaving around other tables in what may have seemed sporadic fashion, though not once did my route cross beneath one of the deceased insects. The servant, while a bit quizzical, didn't protest, and by the time my circuitous route terminated at my table, I was sure I was going to have to tip a bit more to compensate for my disruption. Never mind that I had done his job for him, that he should have been aware of the perils lurking above. But it was a small price to pay for the knowledge that my food was safe.
Me:
Work, handball, and biking when I have time have been keeping me a bit busy. It's so hard to prioritize. Or rather, it's hard to prioritize consistently. One day I feel like devoting all of my time to handball, the next I am on my bike wondering how much I would have to do to become good at that. And then I realize none of those things matter if I don't have a career picked out. Oh boy. So rather than worry too much about any of that, I'm sort of just bending to my whims. Which will probably result in me being a rather good handball player, a moderate biker, and destitute. I guess we'll see how that goes.
"I'm breathing for two now"
Says the pregnant lady
Gasping on the stairs
The baby has stolen her body
Her breath, which used to come
And go so easily
Now catches at strange times
Like now on the stairs
Or at the thought of all those diapers
"Breathtaking" used to be reserved
For mountain sunsets
Or those times when all she needs
Are the two eyes just inches away
The flecks of hazel glinting
Kaleidoscoping out to trap her
Poem:
People always say "I'm eating for two now," and I wanted to investigate/think about other things which would be done for two. This sounded cool. That's about it.
Observation:
In what seems a bit too "meta," today's observation concerns our powers of observation. Specifically the senses. Now, we all seem to take for granted that our senses are approximately equal. That is, while we might use some more than others, they all relate to our experience in a similar way. But I was thinking about this randomly, and I'm less and less sure this is the case. Take sight, for example. While I suppose it's not certain that sight correlates to the external world, at least we can point to things (light's wavelength, reflection, etc.) that explain why the particular sensations our brain interprets come out the way they do. And a similar thing might be said of touch. Our ability to sense things like "sharpness" or "heat" can be linked with some verification to actual qualities in the world around us. Sound is obviously quite similar to sight in the way it deals with waves and their length, frequency, reflection, and whatnot. Which leaves those other two senses. Taste and smell. Interestingly enough, they are quite closely interlinked.
When we describe the way something smells or tastes, is there anything about that sensation that we are claiming corresponds to external qualities. Now, I know the way smell works is the receptors in the nose receive certain shapes of molecule and relay information to the brain, but is this sensation really that useful? On some evolutionary level, I guess, it probably helped in distinguishing between types of substances, which led to us having innate preferences in taste and smell, but when I smell something, it's not like I can tell you anything about the world from that sensation. I'm limited to describing it in terms of other smells, or using terms like "good" and "bad." On a base level, the thing that distinguished between different smells are the shapes of the molecules entering your nose. But nothing about smell tells you what these shapes are, where they originated, or really much useful at all when it comes to linking smell to external experience. And taste works the same way, so I won't go into that. But really, taste and smell are just rather specialized forms of touch. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, sound is picked up by the vibration of a membrane in our ear. I'm a bit foggy about how sight works beyond the whole "rods and cones do stuff" explanation. I just find it interesting that taste and smell are in large part arbitrary. They are not very informative, and calling them senses and putting them in the same category as sight and hearing might be inappropriate.
Exercise:
"Five Ingredients"
Write something--anything--that includes the following five words/ phrases:
~urged
~When the servant entered with the soup
~show him the way
~zeal
~dead flies
When the servant entered with the soup, I was urged, perhaps by the presence of so many dead flies on the ceiling, to show him the way to the table, a task I undertook with zeal. I mapped out a safe route in my head, weaving around other tables in what may have seemed sporadic fashion, though not once did my route cross beneath one of the deceased insects. The servant, while a bit quizzical, didn't protest, and by the time my circuitous route terminated at my table, I was sure I was going to have to tip a bit more to compensate for my disruption. Never mind that I had done his job for him, that he should have been aware of the perils lurking above. But it was a small price to pay for the knowledge that my food was safe.
Me:
Work, handball, and biking when I have time have been keeping me a bit busy. It's so hard to prioritize. Or rather, it's hard to prioritize consistently. One day I feel like devoting all of my time to handball, the next I am on my bike wondering how much I would have to do to become good at that. And then I realize none of those things matter if I don't have a career picked out. Oh boy. So rather than worry too much about any of that, I'm sort of just bending to my whims. Which will probably result in me being a rather good handball player, a moderate biker, and destitute. I guess we'll see how that goes.
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