Archive for September, 2020

Tree Punching

The nice thing about the first week of school is that there are so many petty tasks—like putting four hundred pages of course handouts into the most gigantickest binder I’ve ever owned—that make you feel like you’re doing something important when really you’re just singing along to Norwegian pop songs. If my entire academic career consisted of three-hole punching articles with impressive sounding titles and having good intentions about reading them all later, I’d be a happy girl. At least until the paper cuts.

I can’t think of any way to make this interesting, but I know my parents will care and others of you might be very bored, so here’s the schedule.

  • Topics in Classical Physics - the title is disingenuous; this is actually an intermediate course in analytical mechanics and by far the scariest thing on my plate this term. However, from all I hear the professor is not cold-hearted but merely an incompetent teacher, which in the physics department is doing very well indeed. 10:30-noon Tuesdays and Thursdays.
  • Complex Analysis - the first part of a three-part series, and I’ve completed the second two parts (go me!). This should be a snap, if a snap can be infuriatingly long and grungy. It should be one of those snaps people do where they whip their whole hand through the air, only they keep banging a wall or scraping their knuckles on sandpaper in the process. 11-12 MWF and discussion section at some time to be determined.
  • The Economic History of the United States - this is the one with the thick stack of handouts. I’m generally in favor of courses that offer a stack of handouts instead of a textbook, as the reading tends to be cheaper and more interesting that way, but at $59 in Xerox fees I’m a little dubious. 8:30-10 Mondays and Wednesdays, attendance required in a hall with comfy chairs. I’m looking for a good snore-stopper and drool-catcher.
  • Introduction to Science Teaching - warm and fuzzy! Warm and fuzzy! The prof sent out an email inviting us to “begin our journey” at the organizational meeting (to be held on Wednesday). Fu-zzy! I’m hoping for happy teachy vibes, and if I don’t get them, I’ll be taking it out on my poor stuffed penguin.
  • Intro to Science Writing - editors who apparently failed seventh grade science correct your Scientific American-style paper. Extra graduation requirements solve all our problems! God motherfucking dammit.
  • Geophysical Data Analysis - to complete the unholy Analysis set. Wavelets R s00pa-l33t. 1 pm Tuesdays, 2 pm Thursdays, 9 am Fridays, in a classroom to be determined. If we get one with comfy chairs I’m doomed.

Er, yeah, that’s it.

yami · 15:02 · 30 Sep 2020
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Phone Books

Phone books in L.A. follow some confused backwater eddy of economics. A new one appears on my doorstep every other month or so, printed by a different company in a different format for a different portion of the Pasadena/Foothills/Greater Metro area. They make a nice ergonomic adjustment for my monitor, but beyond that I never use them - I have an irrational antipathy towards telephones, and besides, the internet has all the important stuff anyway.

However, if you actually need a phone book—let’s say you have gone to see the highly entertaining Pantaleon y las visitadoras at a local yuppie mall, and returned to your car to discover that your keys were locked inside (with the car still running!)—you’re in for a fun surprise: phone books don’t come in modern yuppie pay phones. Perhaps in a poor part of town you’ll find a bedraggled phone book with half the pages missing, but in a yuppie mall the pay phones will be sleek and shiny, with no room for accessories. You will have to walk a few blocks to invade the Hilton lobby - hotels always have phone books. Then you will be able to call a locksmith, who will come and break into your car for you, and on the way out of the parking lot you will scrape a fender on some hideously painted concrete pillar. Ooops.

yami · 17:48 · 28 Sep 2020
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Invaded

There’s an entire womens volleyball team in my kitchen. They’re making lasagne. I almost feel like I’m living in the plot part of a porno, and any minute now one or two of them will ask to “use the shower,” but they’re all wearing proper clothes.

Contrariwise, Cooking with Porn Stars is exactly as horribly ridiculous as you’d expect from a movie about, well, cooking with porn stars, even though there’s little nudity and less sex. But in this case “horribly ridiculous” did not turn into “delightfully awful,” so it’s back to Naked Chef Jamie Oliver, who has a rather dull and hard to navigate diary to boot.

yami · 21:02 · 26 Sep 2020
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O Autumn

I have been desperately trying to convince myself that it is actually fall here in seasonless Southern California, and time to go back to school. I’ve been eating soup, and staring dully at Halloween displays in grocery stores. But this is just too much (L.A. Times login required, user annoying, password annoying) - it smells far stronger than a pleasant autumnal hint of burning leaves, and the sky is kind of yellow.

yami · 10:06 · 24 Sep 2020
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Signs of the End Times

We must, as with the literature of any culture, take an intertextual approach to the literature of Sweden. Swedish, being an Indo-European language, shares its vocabulary in one way or another with most Western languages, and all of these languages share many characteristics, particularly when it comes to word derivation. Thus, if our heuristics seem pointed, one need only refer to the commonalities that all Indo-European languages share, despite superficial temporal and topographical differences.

After this intertextual approach is properly applied, we find that Evil has a name, and that name is Pippilotta Viktualia Rullgardena Krusmynta Ephram’s Daughter Longstocking.

yami · 17:46 · 23 Sep 2020
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Collective Typography

If you’ve voted on a bunch of pictures and you’re still of the mind to aimlessly click on things, try some hive mind font design.

yami · 1:41 · 22 Sep 2020
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Photocontest: the Sequel

I hereby present Photo Contest #2: Malibu. Fewer images here than in the previous round, and I don’t think they’re quite as good - we didn’t get to the beach until almost sunset, after all, plus my camera broke. But you should vote anyway!

yami · 14:08 · 21 Sep 2020
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Incredible Finds

photo: a glass container with pictures of smiling fruits and vegetables
Finally made that trip to Goodwill to drop off a bag of clothes (not enough to really earn that sudden feeling of lightness, but hey) and purchase necessary kitchen items. Our kitchen is done up in Classic Bachelor—splotchy linoleum, blandly finished cabinets, yellow tiles, dim lighting—and we have been slowly improving upon it with a layer of fine kitchenware. Ye Olde Pot With No Lid, Ye Olde Lid With No Pot, be-logoed mugs, commemorative wine glasses from other peoples’ weddings, that sort of thing. I’ve even got an avocado pit that I’m trying to sprout next to the microwave. But the fruits of this trip really put the kitsch back in kitchen: drunken eggplants on a popcorn jar! A bowl with cherries on the bottom! A demo tape (which is in the kitchen, at least for now) from a band called Wank!
It all reminds me of… er… actually, it reminds me of nothing so much as some of my previous thrift store experiences, which probably means I need to take a step back and start reading some glossy Modernist publications.

Also, my camera arrived in the mail, and all my penny-pinching regrets have instantly dissolved. I think I’m falling in love.

yami · 23:39 · 19 Sep 2020
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The Bright Side of Global Warming

Global warming is opening new areas for oil and gas exploration.

…continued growth at current rates in infrastructure, gas, oil, and mineral extraction may, within 40-50 years, seriously impact wildlife populations and ecosystems across 50-80% of the Arctic. Migratory species, like birds, will carry the impacts with them far beyond the Arctic region.

The upcoming UNEP report points out, that while many of the larger oil companies may have strict environmental regulations, the secondary more uncontrolled bit-by-bit development of the road network associated with oil and gas exploration and development activity is the one that produces the greatest impacts on indigenous people and wildlife through more increased access, recreational cabins, resorts, roads, power lines, hydro power dams and wind mills for local electricity supply, non-indigenous settlement and traffic.

But fuck the birds. We’re going to need this oil to run our air conditioners.

[link via Industry Seismology and Stuff]

yami · 8:19 · 18 Sep 2020
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A Beach between the Airport and an Oil Refinery

Memo to the city of Manhattan Beach: you may have little close-together houses and narrow streets, not to mention inhabitants who drink a lot of wine, but you are not in Europe. You are still supposed to have sensible street signs, even in your residential areas slightly too far from the ocean.

Sometimes it’s good to go driving on a Saturday night. It reminds me of why I don’t want to get left behind in L.A. while some other part of me runs off to live in a little Swedish cottage painted red.

yami · 13:08 · 15 Sep 2020
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