August 3, 2009: this has been refactored along with the blog; its closest analogue now lies over here. goodbye, homegrown webpage; hello, web 2.0.
April 30, 2009: there is an entire screen of numbers in front of me: literally about a thousand numbers in the six-digit range, with more of the same that the display doesn't currently feature lurking aroud. on one level i'm happy as a clam, but the numbers really don't bode well for the future of this project.
April 3, 2009: i want one person, just one, to stand up and say "i'm pro-gay marriage, but i admit that according to my best interpretation of the law it's unconstitutional" or "i'm against gay marriage, but i admit that according to my best interpretation of the law it's constitutional." just one.
March 4, 2009: the odds of you regretting that you wasted a minute sixteen on this music video are small.
February 27, 2009: right now there's an email in my inbox with subject "i picked up at least 3 hrs of work a week with a 7 yr old girl." in the abstract, where i sometimes parse it, it sounds horribly illegal, but actually it's just my mom, who works as a private tutor.
December 10, 2008: from a cnn article about unemployment, i find this hilarious: "Since mid-September, she's been applying to an average of 40 jobs a day, but, she said, "it just sort of feels like my resume is going into a giant stack with everybody else's."

hey lady, you are part of the problem -- if everyone is applying for 40 jobs a day, then on an average, yes, there will be a giant stack of 40 resumes a day that yours is going into, even if the number of applicants equals the number of jobs. i'm not saying that hers is a bad strategy, but it's awfully naive to defect and not expect other people to defect with this conclusion.
December 8, 2008: what i don't understand is why a radio station that doesn't play kid rock, and would never play sweet home alabama, is playing kid rock's version of sweet home alabama. marketing is a weird, weird thing.
September 8, 2008: is it illegal to park a car in while parallel parking on the side of the road? obviously it's quite unethical, but i'm curious if it's illegal, and, if not, what the hell you are supposed to do about it as the victim.
March 6, 2008: i find this typo incredibly amusing somehow: "in particular when the brokerage house they work for has investment baking relations with the firm they recommend." investment baking! yum _and_ profitable.
February 26, 2008: aha! "The reluctance to violate standard procedures and to act innovatively can also be an effective defense against subsequent regret because it is easy to imagine doing the conventional thing and more difficult to imagine doing the unconventional one." of course! makes perfect sense.
February 19, 2008: "The pass statement does nothing. It can be used when a statement is required syntactically but the pgraom requires no action." that's right, it's a language (python) containing a command whcih does... nothing.
January 22, 2008: something really ironic happened to me today. so california has this new cell phone law, no non-hands-free cell phone use while driving. today i was driving and this woman next to me was talking on her phone. i didn't like the cut of her jib, so i was going to call the CHP to report it, but then i realized the horrible insolubility of the situation.
January 11, 2008: i receive an inordinate thrill from typing times like "2:70" into my microwave.
January 10, 2008: i would just like to note that negative indexing notation (array[-1] referring to the last element of an array, etc.) makes me really, really happy on many levels.
December 5, 2007: not that they are telling us to do anything illegal here, by any means, but this snippet from a textbook i'm reading is kind of funny: "Differential taxation has occurred in the past, continues to occur today, and will likely persist into the future[9]." [9] -- A government's ability to enforce payment of taxes may be lower on foreign than domestic securities. Tax cheating could mitigate tax rate differentials.
August 28, 2007: in case you ever wonder what the output of a background check is...
July 31, 2007: in line for a burrito, the person ahead of me was slated to get 23 cents in change. he rummaged for two cents, gave them to the guy at the register, got a quarter back, and put the quarter in the tip jar. i'm not really following this train of thought. then, i was booked for 14.79 in change, and the guy asked me if i had a quarter. i gave it to him, he incorrectly gave me 24 cents in return, and of course i put the extra 20 cents along with the correct 4 back in the tip jar. what a world.
April 4, 2007: this is amazing: there are no chili's within 27 minutes of my house, but there are 22 within 58 minutes! TWENTY-TWO!
February 22, 2007: for the past few days, there has been a futon parked supine outside my apartment door. every time i walk out, i think it is an interloping homeless man.

the futon is black. i wonder if that makes me a racist.
January 25, 2007: i did something stupid just now. i made soup, about a bowl and a half's worth. as most people would reflexively do, i poured out a bowl and left half a bowl in the pot. but really you should do the opposite! that way, the seconds will stay warm while the firsts cool faster.
November 10, 2006: i'm always taken aback these days when females refer to their female friends as "my girlfriend." i mean, i know this was standard usage in the 1950's before homosexuality was invented, and it's probably stlil reasonable among older people or in red states, but spoken by a 30-year-old berkeleyan? that has to be some sort of political statement, but i'm too stupid to figure out what.
November 6, 2006: one of the worst things ever is making a bowl of cereal only to discover that you are out of milk. damn.
September 28, 2006: at tea today i had cravings for some things i never have cravings for -- poppy seed bagels, onion bagels, chocolate-covered donuts. i'm worried i might be pregnant. god would that suck.
September 20, 2006: something ridiculous just happened as i was leisurely walking up the ramp to evans. a guy ran past me, got to the door, and then opened it for me! i walked through, he went in behind me, and ran off. how is this even remotely consistent?
September 19, 2006: i'm reading gil carmel's honors thesis.

i bet gil carmel didn't see that one coming!
September 18, 2006: i apparently have a semiofficial fan club, and apparently it's dying. what a world .
September 12, 2006: i've been having a lot of dreams lately, where events happen, and when i wake up i can't tell whether they've actually happened or not. i wonder if this is correlated to anything in particular. probably it's just random fluctuations, but this phenomenon is so curious.
September 9, 2006: i think the headline "Lamborghini drive costs 50 Cent" that's on cnn.com right now is one of the most hilarious things i've ever seen.
September 7, 2006: this world needs more gorilla marketing.
September 3, 2006: i have now played bridge with the two richest men in america. paul allen, you're next.
September 2, 2006: during my dream, i noticed that my cell phone was ringing. i missed it, and then it vibrated for a message. i was curious when i woke up as to whether i actually had a cell phone message; it seemed to me like it could go either way. i did not.
August 28, 2006: jeff reardon not guilty by reason of insanity: Two court-appointed psychiatrists, along with two defense psychiatrists, concluded there was no reasonable or logical explanation for Reardon to rob a jewelry store, according to the report.

i know there's more to it than that, but there's no reasonable or logical explanation for me to rob a jewelry store either. does that mean that i can do it without reprisal?
August 11, 2006: so in thailand, it is common to rent a girl, essentially rent a girlfriend, for some period of time like two weeks. why is this different from having a trophy wife? i am having trouble seeing any reasons.
June 27, 2006: you know what i love? calvin and hobbes.
June 15, 2006: there is a sign here that says "resort shuttle loads here." of course, this means that the shuttle servicing the resort takes on passengers at that point, but because of my genius/insanity, my first parse was that this is where the shuttles come to re-sort their passengers.
April 1, 2006: i'm sorry, but if you message me on okcupid and your profile says "youre intellectual" under "you should message me if," i am not going to message you.

there is so much irony of this form floating around on okcupid.
March 30, 2006: it seems like it must be really hard to be a sports announcer. there must be certain teams you hate, but when they do good things you are still supposed to get excited about their love for the game, or compliment them anyway.
March 23, 2006: so my marie page, which has not been updated in literally more than seven years, and which contains at least two-thirds defunct links, has been visited 16 times since the beginning of march. who are you people? how are you getting here? this page is not linked to from anywhere. curiously, you can get there from google, which doesn't make sense to me; this page is not linked to from anywhere, so why is it not just a hit but the third hit out of eight for one of its protagonists' full names? so many questions.
March 22, 2006: it's been several days and i still haven't stopped laughing at this.
March 1, 2006: today's spam of the day is subjected "Medicines before Valentine Day !!!". well, i guess it's always good to stock up on viagra eleven and a half months in advance, before the rush.
February 13, 2006: i find it hilarious, in a juvenile sense, that the harvard alumni association's emails to me show up in pine as being from "Harvard Alumni Ass". it's a pretty good description of the people involved, i'll wager.
February 2, 2006: i realized last night while lying in bed that the fifth roots of unity are precisely the points on the unit circle where x^3 - x^2 is pure imaginary. this is easy to show if you think about it, but i had never realized that before -- it's sort of a strange condition.
December 15, 2005: oh yeah. this is the most hilariously misguided thing of all time. not that bridge isn't the coolest thing of all time.
October 6, 2005: i'm not really following baseball right now, but this tim mccarver thing is a cause i can get behind.
August 3, 2005: one thing i've noticed about people is that they are always less likely to come to events than they say they are. it seems to be a rather drastic difference. my sense is that if someone says they're about 50% likely to come to something, it's around 25%, and if someone says they're 80% likely to come to something it's around 50%, but i would be interested to see some actual numbers.
July 18, 2005: JACKPOT! i have hit my sleep cycle absolutely perfectly today. it's only seven and a half hours, but boy do i feel refreshed.
May 19, 2005: every state seems to have its idiosyncratic road signs. here in oregon, i've seen "dumping rubbish is illegal"; "abrupt left edge"; and "snow zone." not to mention that their speed limit signs don't contain the world limit, and they call flagmen flaggers.
May 17, 2005: it's hard not to develop an at least platonic crush on a bridge director who sends out an email at 4 am, subjected "4 am and total confusion" no less.
May 15, 2005: i'm listening to my mp3s in alphabetical order by song title. this is not proving to be very epiphany-inspiring.
May 9, 2005: eHarmony agrees that i will die alone: Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time.
April 24, 2005: i mean, seriously, how do you LOSE A PILLOW?
April 17, 2005: the most amazing thing just happened. i walked in from my car to find the same song playing on my computer. the odds of this have to be something like 1 in 782. amazing.
April 14, 2005: at 1:30 pm on thursday afternoon 80W/580E is a total clusterfuck. i do not understand bay area traffic.
April 1, 2005: i am sitting on a 10th floor balcony, sun pouring down on me, looking out over the glittering bay, nature in all its glory, while at the same time hooked into an endless repository of entertainment and information. technology is amazing.
March 29, 2005: if there's anything sexier than syntactic ambiguity ("John loves ice cream more than Mary"), i have yet to find it.
February 6, 2005: i just got e-mail from "Mohammed Schwartz." come on -- at least pick a believable name!
January 19, 2005: so the city of minneapolis has this 24-hour snow hotline which you can call to see if there's a snow emergency (and you have to move your car.) it's in four languages: english, spanish, somali, and hmong. what the hell?

the english number is 348-SNOW. i wonder if the other numbers spell SNOW in their languages. then i thought, is there even a word for snow in somali or hmong? why would there be?
November 14, 2004: If you have, like, a six-year-old, send them here. It's astonishingly fun and educational. No, really.
September 20, 2004: on a block near my house there is a sign: PARKING WITH PERMIT ONLY 9AM-2AM. i have to wonder: what good does it do anyone to allow them to park there from 2 am to 9 am?
July 6, 2004: someone needs to invent a microwave for cooling. let's say you have a milkshake you want to keep quiescently frozen; you can't do it. if you stick it in the freezer it will freeze from the outside in. same thing with, well, anything else.
February 2, 2004: is it more arrogant to say that something you've done well on and other people haven't is easy or hard?
October 18, 2003: my fingernails have grown exceedingly slowly over the past two weeks. i wonder what, if anything, this is correlated to.
September 25, 2003: the flip side of using gum as a social comforter is that when the social event in question is dinner, it's really not viable.
September 18, 2003: GUARANTEED TO BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE! Simply live life as usual, except:


August 11, 2003: i just got a box of safeway-brand honey crackles. according to the box these are "corn flakes with honey and almond bits." the thing is, safeway makes a lot of cereals, and all the others are knockoffs of major-cereal things. but i can't figure out what the heck this is a knockoff off. it isn't frosted flakes -- they have a separate such product. it isn't honey bunches of oats -- they have one of those too. i mean, it just tastes like sweet cornflakes, but i'm mystified as to what it's imitating.
August 8, 2003: i've developed this odd pavlovian response where hearing my alarm makes me tired, presumably because i usually hear it when i'm very tired.
July 24, 2003: yesterday i saw a woman driving with a dog sitting on her lap leaning out the window with its head facing back towards her, and also talking on a cell phone. leaving aside the danger-based implications of the scenario, i was struck by the fact that it really, really looked like she was talking on her dog.
July 15, 2003: UPDATE: the mystery of april 9 has been solved.
July 15, 2003: ingredients on a box of see's butterscotch candies. corn syrup. sugar. cream. brown sugar. butter. vinegar. salt.

VINEGAR????
July 10, 2003: i'm not sure which of the following four facts is most disturbing:

  1. the carpool lane on a freeway here starts at 5 am.
  2. it's actually necessary.
  3. it's not even the right part of the freeway.
  4. i actually know this from experience.

June 14, 2003: you know what's really cool about writing? we remember and forget things all the time, but with writing you only have to remember it once, regardless of how many times you forget it.
April 9, 2003: while investigating my car, i discovered a cd case for goldfinger's stomping ground, with two cd's inside: the one that was supposed to be there, and a copy of death rides a pale cow (burned) by the dead milkmen. if this belongs to you, let me know.
April 4, 2003: thirty-one seconds of thunder following that last lightning bolt. even more for the previous one, but i wasn't timing. i do love the weather here so.
March 23, 2003: some of the grape tomatoes i am eating are frozen because they got too close to the cold-producing part of the fridge. the really odd part is that none of them are partly-frozen; it's all-or-nothing, with no obvious pattern. i am, again, baffled.
December 31, 2002: last link of the year (and a damn good one): the amish tech support dead pool. hurry hurry before 12 midnight.
December 27, 2002: UPDATE: it barely rained today. now the powers that be are predicting rain for the next four days.
December 26, 2002: yesterday, they predicted that it would rain that day and the next four. it didn't rain. today, they predicted that it would rain that day and the next three. it didn't rain. i don't like where this is going.
December 20, 2002: it is now a quarter to one in the morning. it has been getting continually warmer ever since i woke up ten hours ago. i have no explanation.
December 7, 2002: i just noticed that the toothbrushes we got from costco came in a 7-pack. no crowing about "buy 6, get 1 free" -- it's just a straight up 7-pack. bizarre.
November 24, 2002: i think you can tell a lot about how you feel about someone by whether you think of them in terms of their similarities to you or their differences. i'm just not sure what it is.
November 16, 2002: i'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but one thing about my sleep schedule (i've been going to sleep around 5:30, getting up around 3, the 9.5 hours of sleep i need right on the nose, day in, day out for the past week) is that i get a deluge of email the first time i check after waking up, and then paltry trickles for the rest of the day.
September 5, 2002: this unquestionably tops all other response-type emails i've gotten as the most cryptic. if you sent this, i'd be curious to know what's up.
September 1, 2002: imagine the following incredibly useful invention: a gadget for car radios that turns the volume up as you go faster, to counteract the increased noise from the rolled-down windows. i can't think of a single reason why this doesn't exist.
August 29, 2002: i'm faced with an odd capsule of a sleep situation here. my tomorrow-day will be long indeed, starting at around 8 am and ending at around 3 am (if past data is any indication as to how the event in question will last.) so it behooves me to take a nap. of course, this means that i should not get a good night's sleep, since if i do get one i won't be able to take a nap at the time which i want (probably 5-8 pm; i have something to do every three hours, which is somewhat inconvenient, but everything is either mandatory or worthwhile.)
August 18, 2002: i was typing something just now, and i instinctively typed in "July 22" as the date. this, of course, is nearly a month ago. i'm still trying to figure that out, or at least figure out the meta-structure that causes us to do this.
August 16, 2002: it's a gorgeous friday afternoon. don't read this. go outside.
August 14, 2002: what i write is often related to the music i'm listening to, i think. but what is there to write when the music is so beautiful and has no words? maybe someday, i too will be beautiful and have no words.
August 6, 2002: a little blurb about music.
August 1, 2002: surreal experience of the day: taking a hot shower with an ice cube in your mouth. try it.
July 31, 2002: i started to think that my life would be much better if the world were flipped and time here were three hours later than time on the east coast. but then i realized that if that were the case ocean currents would go the other way and it would be a lot hotter here.
July 17, 2002: something about nevada: gas is cheap because the sin tax is low, but gas is expensive because very single gas station in nevada (well, outside of reno and vegas) is the only gas station for miles.
July 17, 2002: i need to get quarters to do laundry. i need to put on clothes to get quarters. i need to do laundry to have clothes to put on.
July 13, 2002: i think i've figured out the two hours i most want to spend. i want a whole bunch of individual people i can think of, in the same room, playing mafia. a game of pure social interaction. i want to see these wonderfully complex and thoughtful people figuring things out. it's beautiful.
June 23, 2002: there's a really clever ongoing prisoner's dilemma game going on on campus here. there are these berries, let's call them raspberries, which are ripening: cooperating, of course, is waiting until they're fully ripe to pick them, while defecting is picking them early, before anyone else gets to them.
June 6, 2002: quote of the day (from my advisor): "the awful thing is that you need to have car insurance to get [affordable] car insurance. like credit cards, or girlfriends."
May 23, 2002: the best web site ever: whatsbetter.com. get there before it gets slow, inundated with popups, extraneous, or dead.
May 18, 2002: i wish only intelligent people cared about what i have to say. then i wouldn't have to bother figuring out who i like. ("intelligent" in the general sense, not the colloquial sense.)
May 7, 2002: you can tell a lot about people by the usernames that they pick. try it and see.
May 4, 2002: UPDATE: by my count, i have now had 2300% of my USRDA of vitamin c today, not counting incidental stuff that may be in whatever i've eaten.
April 28, 2002: fun thing for a rainy day: practice juggling three subpieces of gum (or whatever) with your tongue.
April 23, 2002: your friends are the people you're most likely to tell the honest, unflattering truth to. however, your friends are also the people who you have the fewest unflattering truths to tell to. i'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg.
April 15, 2002: causality lesson: paul got these glasses from ikea awhile back. they're really nice glasses. because of this, i drink far more fluid (and more often) than i did before.
April 11, 2002: i wonder where the US RDA for vitamin c comes from. it seems misguided, since it's virtually impossible to get between 50% and 500% of that amount.
April 11, 2002: unprovoked advertising: beulah, a great band, might be coming to a locale near you. i highly recommend them. see here for tour dates.
April 4, 2002: i was waiting for the elevator with this other math grad student who i don't like. i played out the following conversation in my head.
"you don't like me because i'm chinese."
"what makes you think i'd like you if you weren't chinese?"
April 2, 2002: if you're thinking of offering me a job in a not terribly urban climate (seattle or lower), i will probably take it. optimal states include colorado, california, oregon, washington. operators are standing by.
March 23, 2002: every now and then i think of something nice that someone could do for me unprodded -- always little things. i'm so pleased with myself for coming up with a gauge to measure ingenuity or, well, cleverness. but of course no one ever does it, because it's totally out of the blue and unmotivated.
March 19, 2002: i wonder what it says about me that i haven't needed to update my introduction in three months. i guess it's obvious: my life is settling down. i have actual characteristics instead of being an all-purpose fickleness outputter.
March 19, 2002: i'm typing really well today. i wonder what other skills that's correlated with.
March 13, 2002: pawtucket has the bay area beat: both directions of a single state route (rhode island 114) on the same one-way road. see this map for details.
March 10, 2002: i feel like i invent a lot of cliches daily.
March 10, 2002: "I once had a dream when I was on lead with the KQJT987654 of a suit. I led the king and declarer ducked. I led the queen and he ducked again. In my dream I led the suit nine times and declarer ducked all of them! I woke up before I was able to set up the suit." -- Mike Lawrence, Opening Leads
March 4, 2002: it seems like everyone at some point goes into a death spiral about how nobody likes them and how they have no redeeming qualities. everyone, of course, except those people for whom it is true.
February 25, 2002: lie always. then no one will be hurt when you tell them the truth because they won't believe you.
February 20, 2002: the problem with being a misanthrope is that it leads to insecurity, for every time i find a flaw with someone, i back-complete the analogy to ascertain that someone finds that flaw with me. after all, if you're not on an end of the spectrum, there are people on both sides. (yes, i know this is overly simplistic.)
February 19, 2002: i suddenly have this distinct feeling that i reached my peak last saturday. i haven't been thinking much for the past few days. it's really unnerving.
February 11, 2002: revelation of the day: i am completely, utterly incapable of swallowing two pills at once. this is because i get so caught up in considering the dyadic ramifications of the situation that i can't bring myself to do it. it's the same sort of fear as when you are scared to jump across a 4-foot chasm which is 1000 feet deep.
February 11, 2002: it's nice to know that even when i have nothing to say, i can output words that aren't incredibly tedious to read. uh, i think.
February 6, 2002: how's this for a jacket blurb?
"Professor Hartshorne is married to Edie Churchill, educator, musician, and therapist, and has two sons and one daughter. He has travelled widely, speaks several foreign languages, and is an experienced mountain climber. He is also an accomplished musician, playing flute, piano, and traditional Japanese music on the shakuhachi."
February 5, 2002: this has to be the most incisive onion article i've ever seen. seriously. read it.
February 4, 2002: a lot of emails i get are timestamped in various time zones. this makes it exceedingly difficult to actually figure out relative chronology. with hilarious consequences.
February 1, 2002: it's amazing how ending something with an exclamation point completely changes the tone. consider, for example, in a talk conversation or email, "hi!" versus "hi.", "bye!" versus "bye.", "i haven't talked to you in a while!" versus "i haven't talked to you in a while." i can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
February 1, 2002: top ten things about berkeley: 10. berkeley bowl, 9. racial integrity, 8. music scene, 7. tilden park, 6. the oakland athletics, 5. ocean beach, 4. proximity to california coastline, 3. berkeley marina, 2. the rose garden, 1. jamba juice.
January 28, 2002: i think the reason people don't work hard is that it just doesn't generate any stories.
January 23, 2002: maybe it's time for me to revive my marie page. unfortunately, essentially all of those links are now broken.
January 22, 2002: the problem with always having ulterior motives is that i have no idea how to act when i don't have ulterior motives.
January 18, 2002: you know, my room literally looks like a tornado hit it. random items appear to have been thrown against walls, there's a circular pattern to the debris on my floor, and everything is a few degrees off.
January 16, 2002: parity: i just realized that right now i can't think of a single couple i know which seems blatantly unfair to me. everyone deserves each other. well, with one possible exception, but i honestly don't know enough to say that for sure.
January 16, 2002: am i too forward? i only say what i think. sometimes it is scarily positive; sometimes it is scarily negative. i have been taught in writing class to not preface things with disclaimers, but i have been burned by this so often that i slip them in until someone says that the lady doth protest too much.
i honestly do not understand why people are miffed or put ill at ease by others liking them "too much." i can understand annoyed, but what the heck is going to happen that's bad? i guess i can answer that question, but i hardly think that the life and times of john skywater generalize to contemporary society.
January 13, 2002: what do you do when you're starting to really like a band, only to find out that your favorite song, the one that forms the centerpiece of your attraction, is really by someone else? and i don't mean it's actually a cover. i mean that the song i've been listening to has absolutely nothing to do with the band i thought it was by, and is written, recorded, and created by another band entirely.
January 12, 2002: i seem to be encountering a plethora of songs with 25 perfect seconds. it's a pretty interesting phenomenon; they're usually at the beginning of the song, and one wonders why the artists in question don't just follow these perfect schemata through. but there's always something: a key change, a tempo change, excessive lyrics, or new twists that clash.
January 12, 2002: why is it that football passer rating is accepted among the mainstream, but equivalent average -- which is a much better comprehensive rating stat -- is still scoffed at as an obscure sabermetric contrivance among baseball fans?
January 7, 2002: "mr. mastodon farm," by cake. i realized yesterday that this song actually makes sense. it's kind of surprising, since the lyrics are presented a way which casts a strong aspersion on their lack of sense, but if you actually listen to what's being said the words really do fit together into thoughts. it's an insanely clever trick, an inside joke if you will.
January 4, 2002: UPDATE: i managed to slice a bagel correctly today. i am now officially unstoppable.
January 4, 2002: type mismatch: just now i was walking back from our kitchen to my bedroom. joon was and is in our living room playing the playstation. i instinctively, mind elsewhere, emitted a kiss in his direction. only later did i realize that the instincts for the totally wrong schema had come out.
January 3, 2002: something i'm horrible at: slicing a bagel. i just can't do it in a way that both halves will fit into the toaster, even though this is clearly possible. i think this is related to me being unable to fold a straight crease in the land of origami.
January 2, 2002: one of the interesting things about the peer review system: at least in mathematics, they give the paper typically to someone who's a specialist in your field. but of course to advance the field, they will lean towards publishing your paper, since it gives them more legitimacy if there are more papers about it published.
January 2, 2002: you know that weird physical state where whenever you flex your bones and muscles, it feels like you break something? i'm in that. it's not as scary as you might think, at least this time around, but i feel that my left elbow will crack any motion now.
January 2, 2002: i am in love with myself again. for the first time in a long time. i don't want to go to sleep because i'm afraid if i do it will disappear. i'm just sitting here and listening to music and not doing anything in particular but not in the terrible way that categorized 2001. it's more serene, more secure in the knowledge that life is good.
January 2, 2002: you know what i'm not when i'm drunk? brutally honest. when you're drunk, you're supposed to go ballistic on people, tell them all your resentments and all their flaws, but i did none of that last night. flattery? compliments? yes, and that stuff is all true stuff i might not say sober. but the real shit, the real problems i have with people don't come out. i don't know if there's anyone i've ever really been comfortable criticizing in a way that hurts them or might make them resent me.
January 1, 2002: i have this weird train of thought sometimes. it goes like this: person X is someone i don't respect or don't think is terribly worthwhile. person X is good at activity Y. therefore, so the logic goes, activity Y is not worth being good at. i didn't say it was a good train of thought.
December 29, 2001: i was at safeway the other day, and they have those coin dispensing machines that give you the cents part of your change. it seems to me that we are very close to switching to coin-entire currency and basically implementing this system. thing is, the machines are very old. i suppose the cashier's lobby is more powerful than i realize.
December 29, 2001: for the longest time i thought the crystals in our refrigerator were crushed ice. then paul told me they were salt. in retrospect, i was a fool; crushed ice would not keep in a refrigerator.

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