music is the memory
mina yatteruka?

it's interesting how music affects my mental state. i've noticed that listening to kittie calms me, although a fair amount of my audio library consists of downtempo, chill-out room music. at the same time, music can contain memories and impressions that have a lasting effect.

it took me almost nine months to dissociate the shock of 9.11 from the song "if only you could see" by weed. i was en route to the city when someone a few seats away in the train car reached for her cell phone. an astonished voice repeated, "a plane flew into the world trade center?" i already wrote in a previous entry about looking downtown between the buildings on lexington ave. and seeing nothing but black smoke billowing out over the horizon... i remember sitting in the school cafeteria that day, trying to place myself into the position of someone whose choice was either to burn or jump.

the vicarious experience both made the reality of the situation more grave and immediate than the sensationalized t.v. version, but at the same time, more palatable. suddenly it wasn't five thousand people dying; it was only one. my way of coping -- to keep the fear as close as possible and destroy it at its point of formation. for a few days, i kept that visualization in mind until i was able to resolve the discomfort of making a choice with such a painful finality at either end. now it's just another reminder that life may be much shorter than expected. we always live on the edge of life and death; the important point is not to wish the truth away with false notions about "health insurance" and a "safe lifestyle". i don't expect to have the luxury of choosing the moment of my death -- all the more reason to live fully with the time that i have.

and then there's the music that i can't help but dance to; sometimes, even if i'm sitting at the computer doing something utterly sedentary like writing code, i have to get up and dance. it's a great feeling to have a physical reaction to music like that... almost like the music is the conductor and my body is the orchestra. sometimes i get past vibes from great parties or just everday moments like travelling late at night and seeing the transposition of my face's reflection on the gently pulsating city skyline through the window of the train. the j-rock song "like a hard rain" by aikawa nanase takes me back to the hot summer days that i'd spend watching "hey hey hey music champ" and thinking that the boom was extremely cool. while other kids were watching soap operas, i was watching the weekly dorama that i had taped from channel 31 ;)

no wonder people can never figure me out... i may occasionally wear pants with 32-inch bottoms now, but i was once a confirmed jpop otaku. am i the only one who remembers surface?

summer camp back in my elementary school days, age eleven -- learning to create the "cobra", "box" and "butterfly" knots with lanyard string... a grungy friend of mine introduced me to pearl jam and i fell in love with the song "even flow"... i liked it so much that i cried when i didn't get their album for my birthday. eventually i warmed up to saigon kick, but it just wasn't the same... lol

listening to ravel's bolero gives me memories of a not-so-long-ago childhood; i grew up loving that piece. of course, back then the source was vinyl; now i can't begin to imagine the depth of the sound. but the halcyonic memories still come back, even from listening to an 128k-encoded MP3 file.

audio: ravel . bolero

p.s. >> tm revolution was such a queen back then... not that it was a bad thing... wait, yes it was. very, very bad. but definitely fun to watch ;)

M E L E T A O
breaking the meme machine

inhibition. lack thereof.

to think about, consider -- emptying the self of fear, regret, indecision. visualization, creative imagination, rejection of memetic [ 1 ] [ 2 ] propagation.

the perspective that i take regarding meditation [5.27.2002 @ 3:43 am] is mostly cognitive; i use it to make myself think better. how? think of defragmenting a computer hard drive. or more like untangling the mental maps unconsciously created during the day. in terms of memetics, meditation is the reinterpetation of meme complexes collected throughout my daily existence as a happy viral host ;). it is the rejection of social and informational pressure in favor of logical and interpretive resolution.

as i meditate, the essential aspect is that of releasing broken ideas and allowing the subconscious[?] reduction of cognitive dissonance... the intention is never to console myself about what goes "wrong" in my life, nor to congratulate myself on things done right; more importantly, the point is to release irrational fears and beliefs [example: death/permanence]. a manifestation of the fear of permanence is social fear, or the fear of rejection.

cynicism is easy. rejecting the self-expression of others is easy. how difficult is it to look at someone who is "different" and point out their differences from the perceived norm and construe them as flaws? i have gone through phases of cynicism, even bordering on nihilism... but eventually, i realize that criticism for its own sake is an inherently negative act. there must be something else that i can do with my time other than insult people because i can't see their logic. incidentally, i remember that most of my socially destructive episodes came as a reaction to the fear of persecution in my own self -- don't hate me, let's laugh at him. these are my people and you're not one of them, so, shit, kid, you better run!

an interesting side effect of the misanthropic outlook is that it reflected back on myself. thinking that way made it easier for me to dive deeper into a subculture in order to hide my own fear of individuation and the resultant differentiation. when i was younger, i didn't have much of a place to fit in. so eventually i started to identify myself with the hood-rats in school -- they were the tough ones, the strong ones. i remember going to a high school basketball game one time in a group of about four or five, and we were sitting behind a middle-aged white couple. someone suggested that i move my seat in order to give them more room... and i promptly started mouthing off about not owing them shit, who the fuck was he to dictate to me what i should do, etc. eventually, the couple moved, not me, and even my friends, who were relatively loud by nature, had to tell me that i should quiet down. looking back on the incident, i realize that i was acting from within a group identification. that was the same group identification that i had begun to reject about a year later. i realized that alot of my friends were stuck with a conditioned gag reflex to learning, over-aggressive tendencies that led to fights over inconsequential issues [brawling with kids from other towns and other social groups that sometimes included friends of mine], and an inability to relate to each other beyond macho posture and materialistic envy. i got tired of it, so i disappeared from the scene.

now i look back at those times and i see that all scenes and cliques are like this: they allow for the use of consensus among people who share common values to bolster the validity of the individual's actions. implied groupthink becomes the foundation for an individual's sense of true and false. the other side of that coin is that group identification places limitations on acceptable behavior. while i was involved in one subculture, i found it difficult to "be myself" in other ways: i danced a certain way, talked a certain slang, my skates started to gather dust, and my coding skills started to get rusty, among other things. i was a product of my indoctrination.

think of the "objective truth" of modern science. the story of galileo has relevance not on the basis of science versus religion, but rather as the tragic loss of rational thought to the unimpeachable authority of a dogmatic, self-perpetuating entity. both sides were composed of human beings, and yet "truth" was determined by the group, not the individual.

i see that on a lower level, this happens everday with the often unspoken reinforcement of social rules and morays. but what is the underlying fear that keeps people wearing grey suits and blank faces?

a question that strikes closer to the root: what is permanency? just as a conversation on the subway fades to nothing as we part ways, the details of a life become dusty recollections that fade to nothing with the passage of time. the evolution of societies precludes the possibility that i, even with the most herculean effort, would be able to transcend the boundaries of my social context and be remembered for as long as humans live.

even the greek gods have largely been forgotten.

with this approach, certain aspects of life attain a more immediate flavor. if the future is nothing more than the continuing projection of one's self-identity into an imagined world, what is left but the present? dreams of the future invariably fail to take into account the interwoven causal relationships in the larger world that create "the moment". if control of the future is acknowledged to be impossible [even recollection of the past is unreliable at best], what is left but the ceaseless act of becoming?

group validation may transform subjective value judgments into objective truths, but only the individual can realize illusion within oneself and manifest inner belief in the world.

motion: dominic sena . swordfish

	... he also noticed that jimmy had fallen into a form of narcissism. he would stand in front of the mirror in his dressing room and take roll after roll of close-up pictures of his face, each with only the slightest variation of expression. he'd show the contacts to kazan and ask him which shots he preferred. to kazan, they were all the same picture, but he said nothing. jimmy, he knew, would have to find himself on his own. [167]

i need to find some idea of what i love in life. i wake up in the morning because it's time to stop sleeping, not because i am inspired.

there are negatives:

i don't want to spend my life behind a desk.

i don't want to take it five ways from sunday from some corporate nimrod that i call "boss"

i don't want to spend my life in front of a computer.

i don't want to breathe my last breath wishing that i hadn't wasted my life pursuing comfort instead of happiness.

but negatives just leave me empty. they give me options for a life not lived.

where are the positives? how can i find them?

and why does it feel as if everything that i want to do has been done already?

i suppose that all innovations are less creations than variations on a theme, but i can't help but feel that there must be a rock that i'm not looking under. or maybe i'm trying to crawl out from under the one that hides the greatest inspiration.

sharpen the focus, come back to the moment. don't look so far away; worrying about the future takes time away from the present. i keep forgetting that.

it's four a.m... meditate, watch the sun rise? listening to the birds in the trees, waking up from their night's sleep on a clear morning is reason enough to stave off sleep for a night. they sound so contented and perfectly mindless, chirping away to their fellow birds in a cacaphonous morning conversation on the truth of sound itself.

who am i?
it doesn't matter.

audio: orgy . blue monday [richie hawtin mix]

overqualified, underwhelmed

i love working for someone else.

it's great... and of course, there's nothing quite like being turned down for a job because you're "too techy".

i must ask myself: what the fuck is too techy?!

i was going for a web design/admin assistant job; myself and "she" spent almost the entire interview talking about Microsoft Access and MySQL... or rather, she spent the whole time asking about them. her interviewing skills were shit -- she was so damn perky, so could barely keep herself from interrupting me.

her favorite question was "um, do you know how to do queries?" she must have asked me that about five hundred times. And every time i would tell her that queries in MySQL and Access are the same... they both descend from SQL. "so, um, do you know how to do queries? because i just can't figure them out!" wait, didn't i just answer that question?

and when i mentioned that i maintain a database-driven martial arts-related web site [which i'm actually taking a break from writing the code for to write this entry], she couldn't help but chime in brightly, "oh, really?! I do kickboxing!!!"

i knew billy blanks advertises that tae bo will give you abs and thighs of steel, but i didn't know it would give you a brain of polished stone as well.

that reminds me of an internship interview when i was asked to bring my sketch pad in so that "she" [another person] could see some of my art work [since i don't have a portfolio]. of course, i fell asleep on the train in to the city, woke up at the station and walked away -- without the pad. and as luck would have it, instead of a caffeine junky i get madam space cadet who could barely string together a sentence without drifting off into her own little stratosphere. needless to say, i didn't get the internship.

hyperbole? yes, but not by much.

so far, 2002 has been an utter wash-out as far as jobs are concerned. i'm either too smart or too experienced -- the internship coordinator at the school took one look at my resume and told me straight out: "i would be glad to give you an internship, but i don't think there's very much that you haven't already done."

ordinarily, i would be flattered. but right now, i'm just hungry.

note to self:

if you ever feel like a retard when it comes to flirting, always remember -- don't act needy. here's a little refresher, baby, cuz you obviously need it.

translation: don't even think about sending love letters to people you don't know. that's just cheezy...

i know this now, because it's happened to me.

shuffle through those non-existent archives for a moment, and you'll come across a cute little entry that details the beginnings of a sordid tale in unrequited love. synopsis: some girl in my theatre lecture class thought i was that studly man that she had always wanted so she recruited her cluckhead buddies in the discusssion portion of the class to ask me if i was currently boning anyone, er, i mean, currently dating anyone.

i'm not [and not really looking, either] so senorita misteria decides that's enough of a green light for her to continue with her fantasies... she still can't work up the self-confidence to say what's up, however, so on several occasions throughout the semester her minions update me on the status of her quivering uncertainty, all the while reassuring me that she still wants me. oh, the joy! is all i can say; my mystery lover is still smitten by my vicarious charms.

so eventually, i'm sitting in lecture class and the leader of the cluck squad passes me a hand-written note from my secret admirer. i stifled a laugh and stuffed the note in my pocket to read the next time i felt bored enough to, say, poke out my own eyeballs. anyways, i forgot about the note until i was on my way to the train station after class. unfolding the note, although i already knew what was inside, i read the neat, somewhat loopy cursive writing in blue ink, schoolgirl-style... the gist was

i want to say hi, but it's just too excruciating... so i wrote you a note instead. i hope we can meet sometime soon. signed, [insert name here].

it's getting a little old by now, so i just yawn and stuff the note back in my pocket. i would have transcribed the actual contents here, but somehow it decided to hop out of my pocket before i could put the note in a safe place... imagine that.
but the upshot is that it's always good to know you're being stalked by a nice person.

at long last, somehow her friends managed to forced this silly little girl to talk to me. this is how it went: as i was walking out of the lecture class, i hear a timid voice behind me -- "excuse me?" i turn around to find this dumpy little girl with absolutely no interesting features and no particular sense of style to speak of. inwardly, i sigh, and steel my resolve to accept this fate of freshman-girl-infatuation. i pinch myself to make sure that i don't wake up back in high school and smile valiantly at this somewhat pudgy femme, beaming "oh, so it's yooou!"

fast-forward past an inconsequential meet'n'greet and twenty questions; i soon send her on her way, having swapped phone numbers and a promise to call her soon.

now here's the scary part -- i got back to the apartment later that day and, unbelievably, the slip of paper with her phone number was *gasp* gone! alas, a cruel twist of fate! so i don't get to introduce miss ingenue to the exciting world of dating and sexual avarice, er, exploration and discovery. my loss, i guess. as pepe le peau would say, le sigh...

so the moral of the story is:

when feeling like a flirting retard, step back, breathe, and just remember that it's really not that big of a deal. the worst he/she can do is say "bugger off" and you're back at square zero. but now you have experience so that the next rejection attempt will be less painful and unfamiliar.

and now, my dilemma is something far more pressing and antagonising...

am i straight or am i bi [as in, sexual]? i've only got the whole summer to figure it out... what shall i do?

Population: Density
originally written somewhere near 5.09.2002

Something I noticed while walking uptown recently -- the way people look at me.

I could say the figurative "you" and say "the way people look at you," but I get the feeling that I don't get the same looks as the majority of city-heads. Usually when I walk past, people [read: women ;) ] look me in the eye. Actually there are a couple of other standard responses as well:

a. she'll look down at her breasts, smooth her hair, or do some other preening gesture.
b. she'll look directly into my chest or at my arms -- mostly when talking to women that i just met [whoever says women aren't pigs is lying]

it's all about the body language... but then of course, i have a habit of looking people in the eye as well [male and female]. i am a sufferer of terminal curiosity, and i find a kind of beauty in both men and women. but more about that another time.

alot of the time i feel like a city boy that lives in a small town. i spend most of my time in the city, so pretty much the only times you'll see me in my "home town" is if i'm walking to the dojang [martial arts school] which is in a town away from where i live, or troopin it to and from to the train station. when i'm not in the city, i notice that there is a different vibe between people on the street. when i pass people on the street in East Bumble [the town where i live], usually a very different response from the one above:

a. there are alot of fake thugs where i live, so usually i get the "staring at you cuz i'm such a badass" nonsense... and then they get within arms reach and i realize that Mr. Saggyjeans is all of fifteen years old. that's when i arch an eyebrow, chuckle and keep walking.

b. the "shifty eyes" response - people look at you for a moment, and then suddenly shift their eyes as if they just realized that you're looking back at them. the majority of smalltowners have shifty eyes where i'm at.

but when i'm walking in the city, the vibe does a one-eighty... people move faster, for starters, although i often find myself walking past people rather than following the flow. another distinction is that if you look at people, they look back.

it's not a squinty-eyed, "squirrel deciding which side of the street to run to" kind of look, either. there is no fear in most peoples' eyes in the city. more of a matter-of-factness, like, "i'm here and so are you. move along, droid." but then, especially with females, there is a kind of recognition every now and then... as if there were a person looking out at you from behind the murky haze of ever-changing iconic memory.

did my face just register in your mind?
if i stopped and said hello, would you smile and wave?

but mostly, it's not honesty i see. it's a blank, expressionless gaze, as if the mind has gone on standby while the legs transport the body from point A to point B.

i am sooo jaded.

i remember that link from a year or two ago... it still gets got a chuckle out of me -- i actually tried to battle with a couple of old high school friends when we were out one night and they were like, "huh?"

and i was like, "damn, you already missed half of what life is all about..."

bloody chinstrokers. and one of them is a dee jay, too.

audio: playgroup . number one

dara is not a pretty man.

i've been wanting to write for a couple of days, but my mind has been reprioritizing and the neurons have been rewiring themselves... so i've written a few entries offline that i may post up later.

his desire to better himself was not as strong as his urge for independence...

even as i think of things to write, i scribble a sentence, then delete, revise, then delete... a beautiful girl's face [pretty, but not overly concerned about it] is in my mind, and i have to decide between her and an orange-haired cutie girl with a fairy tattoo on her back [and mad personality]. and no, orange is not her natural color...

o.O

and then i wonder if choosing no one is the wiser choice. but then, it's also worth noting that at this point in my life, i'd rather have a sister than a girlfriend.

no reflection in the mirror?
no moon in the water?

everything i write feels so dry and colorless. all of my thoughts are not truly mine... they have been thought by millions before me. as i look down the crowded city streets, i look into peoples' eyes, and they all seem so important, so fragile. self-perception creates the sense of urgency by which many people lead their lives, and it is self-perception that, when recognized, can allow an individual to understand his ego in the social context. over time, i come to realize that just as nothing is absolute, the relativity of human understanding is a constant reality unto itself. the amount of force applied to an object is dependent on the resistance that the recipient object can supply.

my love is nothing without your love in return.

of course, the question becomes one of egoism versus altruism. is there a love that can be expressed without the craving for reciprocated affection? i wonder if there can possibly be a way to exist outside of that egoistic duality. i would imagine that self-expression is the end result of an individual's decisions regarding his or her choice of lifestyle - and the expression of love is motivated in an identical way. whether that girl is my closest friend or a sex object depends on how i choose to see her.

hm... i have a long way to go. a life of gazing at the moon and seeing nothing more than a reflection. and that's just fine with me. what i feel is what i am.

blogging on boot sectors
 [ ! ] beware of technical jargon

chernobyl. aka "CIH". A.K.A. "omigoshwhereismyharddrive?"

4.29.2002 - 29 April or the 29th of every month... about midnight, or "noon" as I call it, I was writing some more Perl code for this project; no, I was writing the code that would finish the project... and suddenly my screen goes blank.

I'm like "wtf - I miss my linux" and I went to reboot... but the computer didn't come back to life. My mind was still in "hack" mode, so I had the genius idea of downloading a hex editor and r00ting through the physical drive to rescue the project and save it to a floppy. Somehow I found this beautiful little piece of assembly and booted it to the ruined computer... from Friday to Saturday to Sunday, I spent

a: ruminating on how to rewrite my boot sector and FAT [the FAT would be the hard part] by hand, in hex notation
b: writing down the names of sectors of my hard disk and harvesting fragmented bits of Perl and HTML from the mess that was once a semi-functional drive.

Then on Sunday eve, I connected again - via the computer I use as a server [USB networking scheme] for the now-scrambled box - and in a stroke of foolish luck, managed to bust out some magic words on google.... which led me to another programming miracle that restored both the File Allocation Table [32] and the boot sector, all in one fell swoop. Finally I was able to reboot to my beloved desktop image...

To kill the boot sector rapist once and for all, I downloaded kill_cih to wipe the active virus from memory, and then downloaded F-Prot, the DOS freeware version, to scan my drive and disinfect nearly all of my .exe files, which had been touched and glommed onto by this electronic blight. It turns out that I also had the loveletter VBS virus too... but now all my drives are clean...

and any warez that I happen to download [for educational purposes only, of course] will be scanned and re-scanned... i actually caught and squashed the NYB virus trying to scratch up my boot sector earlier today after having installed a crack for a piece of software.

hm... now that I've got every computer crimes investigation unit in the world staring at my web page, i think i'll go to bed... and dream of psychedelic penguins in handcuffs.