For anyone who has read Terry Pratchett's 'Making Money':



It's also further proof that although modern computing technology may be smarter, more versatile, and a whole lot less messy than its predecessors, there's something appealingly ingenious about a machine that does just one thing but does it entirely through the application of basic physical principles. (I have probably said this before -- many times -- but, eh. It's still true.)

Technology and I usually get along pretty well, but lately I'm afraid we've had something of a falling out. It's like I've suddenly become toxic to anything with a microprocessor in it.

First my computer at work wouldn't let me log my hours or put the documentation I'd written up for review, then my home computer's keyboard started shorting out and the computer itself to spontaneously crash and shut down every few days, and now my scanner is making horrible gurgling noises and refusing to scan more than slanted, irregular, and uncontrollable slices of the documents I put in it. Nothing's actually physically exploded on me yet, but I figure it's probably only a matter of time.

In some of the rare moments when I've had free time and my computer's been functioning, I've been reading Dickens' novel "Hard Times". So far I'm pretty unimpressed -- his point may be a good and even an important one, but setting up grotesque straw men for his heroes to knock down is not a very convincing way to make said point. Still, Dickens is a pretty entertaining writer, even when he's being preachy, so I think I'll stick with it for a while longer.

Also. Facts != science. Science is an active, creative, often fanciful process that seeks to uncover facts. I really hope that Dickens does get this, and it's only his characters that are being obtuse. [/pedant]

I think I'm actually starting to like the 1h20 commute. There's very little useful you can do while riding a bus and, therefore, very little you have to do. As a result, I spend most of my commuting time just reading or daydreaming, which is very satisfying in a relaxing, undemanding sort of way.

The commute seems to be especially good for reading popular science books. Although I like popular science books a great deal, under normal circumstances I find they're just too easy to get distracted from, what with videogames, internet, sketchpads, other people, &c all vying for my attention as well. However, on the commute there are no distractions, or at least very few. And because commute reading time comes in discrete, 1h20 packets of time, I'm less likely to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the length or density of these very serious books than I might if I had unlimited time to spend with them.

In news more or less completely unrelated, cockroaches may be the greatest diet aid known to man. You just have to watch one scurry across your kitchen floor, and your appetite simply vanishes. Or at least mine does. My Bahamian housemate, who's used to roaches at least 10x the size of ours, doesn't seem at all bothered.

So now I'm engaged in a cleaning frenzy of a sort, although it's difficult to work up much of a frenzy with only an hour or so of free time a night, if that. A slow motion cleaning frenzy, maybe. Anyhow, I'm throwing out all food that hasn't been securely sealed, wiping down the counters, mopping the floors, and maybe if I get really brave I'll even try to clean out that tricky area around and behind the appliances, which probably hasn't been touched by rag, mop, or human appendage since the building went up.

It's a good fight, no doubt, but it's hard not to be bitter when I know it's probably going to take up pretty much all of my free time for the rest of the week. And that it still probably won't have a noticeable effect. And that I have cartooning and school newspaper pseudo-work I should really be doing instead. And that I really, really want to watch the rest of Dexter. And the first episode of the new Torchwood, because I have no taste.

And now my alloted ~ hour of free time is up. Must sleep, so I can get up early tomorrow to retch at cockroaches and read about string theory.

This last month -- okay, month and a half -- has been an utter maelstrom. I must have added approximately fifty new people to my roster of friends and aquaintances, including my new housemates, my housemates' friends, my classmates, the rest of the staff at the Student Federation office (where I sometimes work), the rest of the staff at the student newspaper (where I also sometimes work), and miscellaneous security guards and siblings of housemates. For an introverted type like me, I reckon that counts as some kind of traumatic cataclysm all by itself.

I've also been doing a lot of writing, mostly for class-related stuff, none of it for my own amusement. If I haven't been terribly active on LJ lately, it's got to be at least partly due to sheer exhaustion with the writing process. Still, it's a fun change of pace from my physics days, and I find I'm hardly missing the obscure mathematics and brain-braking concepts at all. I suspect that this means I am fundamentally a weak and lazy person, insufficiently invested in understanding the deeper truths of the universe. But I'm too well satisfied with my new arrangement to care.

Of course, not all is school and work and desperately trying to match new names to new faces. I've already gone on an impulsive evening drive to Niagra Falls, been to a concert with my good friend Stephen (formerly of Queen's U, now of U of T), stayed up past 7 A.M. for the nocturnal art festival Nuit Blanche, and -- thanks to my sweet gig as arts editor / reviewer for the student paper -- been to a ton of free movie premieres. I've also been doing a fair amount of reading. Notable novels (and graphic novels) include: The Great Gatsby, Watchmen (again), The Edible Woman, Y: The Last Man, and Death Comes To The Archbishop. The list would probably be longer, but I've developed a certain wariness towards novels of late. Once I pick them up, I can't seem to stop reading until I reach the end. It's quite debilitating, really, and it's seriously interfered with my work and my sleep schedule not a few times.

I picked up a DVD of 'The West Wing' episodes from the local movie rental place the other day. I'm not entirely sure why, although I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Wikipedia had Aaron Sorkin as one of their featured articles last week.

I don't remember finding this show nearly as ridiculously optimistic and idealistic back when it was first being broadcast. It's a little alarming how much it plays like pure fantasy wish-fulfillment right now.

I mean... A super-genius president with a heart of gold? Dedicated, selfless (well mostly selfless) staffers who ultimately only want what's best for the country? Maybe I'm still just suffering the after effects of reading Al Gore's 'The Assault of Reason,' which is liable to leave anyone with a rather dark opinion of modern American politics, but I'm finding it all awfully hard to swallow.

I finally cracked and started reading 'Sweet Thurday', a book which my mom's been recommending to me for years now, and which I've never quite gotten around to looking up. I blame this partly on busyness, partly on laziness, and partly on the fact that I'd always assumed from the title that it would be just the sort of saccharine, heart warming, coming-of-age type story that I tend to abhor.

How wrong I was! It turns out that (so far at least) it's actually a dry, absurd, and slightly dark observational comedy about a bunch of small time crooks and vagabonds. It reminds me very much of Catch 22, actually. It successfully manages that same trick of taking situations and characters that are plainly mad and often immoral, and rendering them in plain, sympathetic terms which at the same time make them seem even more ridiculous, but also perfectly reasonable and internally consistent.

Highly recommended. Five stars. (Although I'm only on Chapter 9, so that's not exactly definitive. I still loved Snow Crash when I was this far into it too.)

I used to swear I wouldn't turn into one of those annoying people who gets a new job / relationship / whatever and promptly drops off the face of the internet completely. So much for that. Although, to be fair, it hasn't been my job keeping me away from the internet so much as the recent Graduation + Family Vacation Extravaganza, which has kept me either playing hostess or touring the wireless-free wonders of Ontario for much of the last couple of weeks. Which was fantastic, but also sufficiently exhausting that once I got back it took me another couple of days to recover (and get the house back into a livable state).

However, since I happen to be confined to my bed today due to some malady of the uterus (how medieval of me!), I might as well say a few words. Hmm... let's see. Well, I have a new external hard drive, for a start! This is pretty big news in my life. I've been desperately conserving MB for months now, deleting anything and everything I could possibly do without, including roughly half of my music, all of my movies, and a sizable chunk of my applications folder as well.

But no more! Not only do I have a new 250 GB external hard drive (as compared to the suffocating 40 GB inside my laptop), but I put the thing together myself! ...By which I mean I slid the pre-made hard drive into the pre-made hard drive case, connected some wires, and screwed the back panel on, but still. For someone as nervous and klutzy around expensive, delicate electronic devices as me, just not having it blow up in my face is a huge deal. Besides, I kind of like knowing its got my fingerprints on the inside.

What else... I've been reading Al Gore's book, 'The Assault on Reason' lately, and enjoying it a great deal. Normally I try to stretch and challenge myself when reading political literature by reading publications whose opinions I'm not entirely comfortable with, so it's a treat to read an opinion piece like this with which I mostly tend to agree. A lot of the institutions he attacks (e.g. Television Conglomerates, the Bush Administration) are pretty conventional whipping dogs, but he makes his arguments with enough force, clarity, and factual evidence to make them seem not only fresh, but of immediate and pressing concern.

I do worry a bit about where his argument is headed, though. If I read his foreshadowing right, his contention is that the Internet may one day serve as a way to bring back a culture of reason and accountablity to the U.S. government, and while I can certainly see the logic that would lead to that conclusion, I'm having serious trouble connecting the words 'reason' and 'accountability' to the absurdist, extremist, anarchist Internet I love so much.