The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


Derek Walcott

i am getting up at 3 am to shower and go to san francisco and haven't packed, so it's a great time to make an lj post.

this year has been rough. i continued a lot of last year's mistakes. but they say the third time's the charm, and somehow i believe it. winter vacation has been filled with wonderful experiences & daydreams come true. i put up some pictures and video.

on new year's eve we're going to an om records party and then to breakfast of champions where i will be a mentat.

the om records party says "please join us as we ring in what will undoubtedly be the best fucking year ever!" - and it's strange, but for whatever reason, i believe that.

A little trick I learned from my dad when I was a boy, passed down through the generations of software engineers.

Counting to 31 on one hand is done by using your fingers as bits, rather than as counting numbers. This extends the utility of your digits from 5 to 31.

Protip: using two hands will get you all the way to 1023.

This very timely video comes from user lionn420, regarding a boy who is currently in the hospital after being terribly abused by an older woman.

Please comment, favorite, rate and reply here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM4Tndvf0pY

Made by:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lionn420

------------------
(Original video description)

http://www.redding.com/news/2009/dec/23/cottonwood-woman-pleads-not-guilty-in-abuse-of/

A child in a town near me has suffered at the hands of the worst possible humans imaginable........hopefully this video may lead to him knowing that the good in people VASTLY outweighs the cruelty.

groupon is pretty cool. recent coupons have been table 219, jet city improv, envy, SIFF, yoga and some other stuff. they have it for a bunch of cities around the u.s. (ny, la, sf, austin, chicago, etc etc...)

finally got around to putting up another nadir radio show. 4 hero, kevin saunderson, skream, benga, milanese, echospace... download mp3.

i've had several odd conversations recently where people had thought i'd been quietly judging them on something and i wasn't at all. i say odd because i feel like i'm quick to express when i'm annoyed at someone or thinking something negative about them. granted, i'm also quick to express when i'm stressed out / tired / having a bad day in general. but chances are high that if i'm not telling you an itemized list of what i think is wrong with you, it's because the list does not exist. if i'm not saying something negative about something you're saying / doing / wearing / believing, it's likely because i'm not thinking anything negative about it. it's affection and love that i often don't express very well verbally, not irritation or my opinions on other subjects ;)

all of the people in question i generally consider perceptive, so it's possible that they were picking up on me being moody about some other situation and assuming it was related to them. but it wasn't. if i'm scowling vaguely into the distance and not explaining why, it's usually because i think my problem isn't interesting or important enough to warrant starting a conversation about it... but not because i'll avoid telling you if you said/did something i didn't like.

making this a public post 'cause for all i know there's other people out there thinking that i have some dark secret thoughts about them. (i mean, i might, but more likely they involve you being naked.) i generally like people more than i tell them, not less =P

i went to vancouver last month and put n_o_m_i_c through my usual obsessive process of having the internet decide where the best places to stay, eat, etc. are.

it turned out to be very on point with a cheap-via-priceline stay at the marriott and delicious food at guu and finch's and cafe medina. i particularly loved guu.... mmm, japanese tapas & cocktails. if i lived in vancouver i'd be there nonstop.
navigation without my phone or a local and without the equivalent of a not-for-tourists book was a pain though. it seemed like there were so many less places with free wireless but it was probably just the neighborhood we stayed in.

i'm often more productive on trains than i am elsewhere. i'd probably get better grades and be a more productive employee if i was required to ride trains around and around. i got all nostalgic thinking about taking the train up to visit dw00 years ago and listening to mixtapes. then i felt old.

remembering the delicious food on that trip is making me hungry. i plan on cooking a lot over the next few days. i don't have any money for christmas presents, so i'll be baking lots of bread and cookies and cupcakes. i'm also going to do a trial run of cocktail party fingerfood snacks tomorrow. mmm

so i bid on the strangercrombie charity auction thing again this year 'cause i can never resist... and i won. but not only did i win, they hadn't listed their prizes correctly. so i actually won a fair amount more than what i bid on.

specifically, i won 3 months unlimited at quantum martial arts for two people. and two uniforms. and an hour private training per week with a black belt, although i'm not sure if that's for just me or me + the other person.

so now i want to sell the other person's membership 'cause i'm really broke. the normal price for it would be $300 but i'd sell it for $150 to someone i actually know. bonus points if you want to train with me too ;) according to their website it's Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Boxing, and Wing Chun. i'm terrified of doing things in front of people no matter what they are, so this is a character building exercise for myself.

i also won a free pizza lunch every week for a year at sodo pizza, 3 massage certificates and a buffalo exchange certificate. i <3 strangercrombie.

music: Kleerup - On My Own Again | Powered by Last.fm

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, "See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That's what fish really enjoy!"

Huizi said, "You're not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?"

Zhuangzi said, "You're not me, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"

Huizi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don't know what fish enjoy!"

Zhuangzi said, "Let's go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao."

- 庄子

i am terribly impressed with the work of kncoffey on our upside down living room. it makes me feel like i'm living in the movie labyrinth.

i documented it with some other pictures.

we are having a holiday cocktail party at 8pm on dec. 25. you should come. you're allowed to walk right side up.

i draw practice kanji on the bus a lot. sometimes people who likely know kanji stare at me/them when i'm doing this. recently i learned one that translates to "what". so now the next time someone is looking at what i'm writing, i'm gonna write what. what? what! what. what?! what. (we were told they don't use question marks in japan, but whatever.)

recently we watched visitor q at movie night and i only understood a tiny part of what they were saying. but it was exciting to see when the subtitles didn't match up.