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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
La Plante
Sunday. 2.11.07 6:55 pm
La Plante

Elle ne parle jamais

Seulement écoute, toujours.

Je lui ai raconté ce poeme,

et la plante a écouté.

Silencieusement.

Maintenant la plante est entrain de mourir.

Mais elle ne peut pas pousser des sanglots, des cris.

Elle va mourir sans faire du bruit.

Qui m'écoutera quand elle est partie?

Comment! (4) | Recommend!

Madness and a Sock Full of Quarters
Saturday. 2.10.07 10:08 pm
Sometimes I think of a conversation, and I turn it over and over in my mind, thinking of how it would go and how I could best tell the story and how everyone would react and what they would ask and how I would respond to their questions and after a long while I think I've got it totally worked out how the whole thing is going to go....

...and then I realize that in order to have this perfect conversation that I've in envisioned for myself, the contents of the conversation (i.e., whatever story I would happen to be telling) would actually have to be true. Then I have to go through a major mental revision because all of the responses that I'd been giving my pretend conversation partner, while self-consistent, are also absolutely imaginary.

I usually have a brief feeling of relief that I came to this conclusion before actually attempting to realize my imagined glorious conversation.... not that I would even actually ever really do that.....so I don't know why I feel that relief for not doing it. But today it kind of occurred to me how sad it is that these imaginary conversations never find a place in real life. For example, today I was getting quarters from the change machine at the laundromat. I put them in my pocket but I imagined that it would set up an interesting situation if you didn't have any pockets but you needed a place to put the quarters so you put them in your sock. Then you'd be walking around with a sock full of quarters. The perfect thing to happen then would be that you'd be attacked by some would-be mugger, and seeing as the only money you had had been transformed into quarters, and they were all in your sock, you could beat the hell out of the robber with it. Triumph! Then the best part would be the part where you'd get to tell everyone about what had happened. You'd start by saying, "remember yesterday when I left to go get quarters?" and they'd remember. And then you'd explain how you had to put them in your sock, and then you'd say how you were attacked, and your listener would be aghast! Then they'd say, "whatever did you do?" and you would say that, incredibly, this was the one day when you had on your person the perfect weapon, and that you'd beaten the crap out of him and escaped unscathed. I get halfway into watching their expressions and thinking about what an amazing coincidence that was when it occurs to me that it was only a coincidence because I just set it up that way in my mind. It would only be an amazing coincidence if it ACTUALLY HAPPENED. So you start to think about how you should find someone to whom this actually happened so that you could relate the story second-hand to your friends.

Then you start thinking that maybe you should get your head examined....

I think that must be the way that authors operate. They must be constantly thinking of crazy coincidences or really witty repartees, but in order for their repartees to be witty, both sides of the conversation have to go exactly as they want them to, and events have to be as such that their witty verbal sparring has a particular resonance with the events that have just been happening which give them extra meaning. Of course the words on their own would have no meaning at all, they would just be the product of the author's imagination, thinking "if this long series of events happened, and then the straight man set up the drift of conversation just so, I could be interesting/witty." But... none of that actually did happen.
That must be why people write books.

So maybe, next time I write a book, I'll put in a guy who was going to get quarters and then beat another guy into the ground with a sock. Because what a crazy coincidence that would be, non?

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Friday. 2.9.07 12:04 am
AND THE PLOT THICKENS

Comment! (60) | Recommend! (1)

Prudent use of Time
Monday. 2.5.07 7:32 pm
Well, life has just been getting more and more stressful as the days go by. First my advisor didn't want me to drop any of my classes, giving me four instead of three (two of which are MATH out the waaaazzzoooo). Since I am eternally trying to weasel my way into the next expedition to Antarctica, I asked early on if I could "sit in" on the Antarctic Dry Valleys class that he teaches. My thinking was that I could make myself a presence that he associates with Antarctica, make some insightful commentary on the goings-on, prove to him that I can carry heavy things and stand the severe cold, etc. Welllll now it seems like I've been upgraded to a full, participating member of the class, complete with presentations and a term paper. Great. So now I'm in five classes.
Then add in La Vida Secreta, which meets four times a week at EIGHT in the morning.... and you can soon see that I'm in waaay over my head. I haven't had this many classes since high school. Yeah, high school, remember that, when my first class started at 7:20 and I usually had one 50 minute period off for lunch and that was it til' 2:44???? Well, at least I got off at 2:44, that seems so early now... but if you think about it, I usually had practice at 3:15 and that went until just as late as I stay now. Only I was in good shape and got to run around and feel the fresh plains air in my lungs instead of the FREEZING, BURNING feeling that comes into my lungs when I ride my bike home at 7:30-9 at night through the Providence winter, making my nose run and my crown ring!

So in order to keep myself from going completely INSANE, I put up a post-it note whereupon I wrote a list of the classes I am expected to attend, just so I can keep track of them all. This way I can go through each of them and think about if I have homework in any of them. I know I can handle this now... but what I don't know is if towards the end of the semester things will, as they always do, spiral so far out of control that I will spontaneously combust. I won't even be around to calculate whether or not the function that described my spiraling predicted for combustion or whether it was a hyperbolic function that predicted WAVES. That's how out of control I will be.

My other idea for keeping my mind together is to write a little bit throughout the day. I've been working on this poem I thought of when I was walking home the other day through the FREEZING cold. It's about someone in the process of going blind. That would be a pretty terrifying experience, you would feel like you had just begun to slide down a steep slope into a deep abyss, and you'd like to use your arms to arrest yourself, but the muscles you need to use are ones that your conscious brain has never known how to control. You can't will your eyes to the back of their sockets in an effort to reconnect your optic nerve. Anyway, I decided that I was going to reorganize this poem and write it in iambic pentameter today during class, but man, that is so hard. My high school teachers used to tell me that Shakespeare carefully considered every single word he used in his poetry, but I never believed them because hello, who thinks about every single word? But truth be told, if you've ever tried to write in iambic pentameter, you have to think about every freakin' word, otherwise they don't fit. And I also like writing in heroic couplets, which adds an extra level of difficulty. There was this guy, I think he was Alexander Pope, and back in the day he wrote in entirely heroic couplets. That's why I personally enjoy reading his poems more than the plays of Shakespeare. Of course, Shakespeare's stuff probably has more enduring meaning and truth, but I love the way Pope's stuff rolls off your tongue, it's like singing. By the end of the class (which is like 2.5 hours long) I had a stanza and a half, and it was in iambic quadrameter, if that's even a word. I guess I'll just have to work on that in my spare time. "Spare time" hahahaHAhaaHAHaha "spare time", I crack myself up.

Comment! (7) | Recommend!

This comes pretty close to my personal motto
Sunday. 2.4.07 3:50 pm
"I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.
I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character-not wealth or power or position -is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might."

--J.D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

another important interent survey
Friday. 2.2.07 8:42 pm
I've seen 108. That's pretty gooood.

SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 239 movies on this list. Copy this list. Then, put X's next to the movies you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun!

( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(X) Grease
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
(X) Boondock Saints
(X) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(X) Neverending Story
( ) Blazing Saddles
(X) Airplane
Total: 7

(X) The Princess Bride
(x) AnchorMan
(X) Napoleon Dynamite
(X) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
(X) The Princess Diaries
(X) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 13

(X) Scream
(X) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
(X) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
( ) American Pie
( ) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far:16

(X) Harry Potter 1
(X) Harry Potter 2
(X) Harry Potter 3
(X) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(X) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( ) Lilo & Stitch
So Far: 21

(X) Finding Nemo
(X) Finding Neverland
(X) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original 1974 edition)
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
(X) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
(X) 13 Going on 30
(X) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 27

(X) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snickt: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(X) Deep Impact
( ) King Pin
(X) Never Been Kissed
(X) Meet The Parents
(X) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
( ) KING KONG
TOtal so far: 32

(X) A Cinderella Story
(X) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(X) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
() Halloween (old version)
(X) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
(X) Flubber
Total so far: 37

(X) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
(X) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
( ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far:39

(X) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(X) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
(X) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far:43

( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Sleven
(X) Ocean's Eleven
(X) Ocean's Twelve
(X) Bourne Identity
(X) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
(X) Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 48

(X) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(X) ET
(X) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
(X) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(X) Rush Hour
(X) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 54

( ) Best Bet
(X) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(X) She's All That
(X) Calendar Girls
(X) Sideways
(X) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
(X) Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X) The Terminator 2
(X) The Terminator 3
Total so far:65

(X) X-Men
(X) X2
(X) X-3
(X) Spider-Man
(X) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(X) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
(X) Freaky Friday
(X) Reign of Fire
(X) The Skulls
(X) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(X) Shrek
(X) Shrek 2
Total so far:78

( ) Swimfan
(X) Miracle on 34th street
(X) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
(X) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old-virgin
Total so far: 81

(X) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(X) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(X) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 87

( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
(X) Elf
(X) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 89

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
(X) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(X) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 93

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
(X) Chronicle Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
( ) Waterworld
Total so far: 95

(X) Kill Bill vol 1
( ) Kill Bill vol 2
(X) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
) Army of Darkness
Total so far:97

(X) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(X) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(X) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(X) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 103

(X) The Matrix
(X) The Matrix Reloaded
(X) The Matrix Revolutions
(X) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
(X) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
( ) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
Total so far:108

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

The Chinese Moon, tm
Friday. 2.2.07 9:28 am
You know, Pluto and its moon (co-dwarf planet?), Charon, are in a 1:1 spin-orbit resonance. That is, the same side of Pluto always faces Charon and vice-versa. Charon and Pluto rotate about each other once in the same time it takes for them to spin on their axes once. This means that in order to see the moon, you would have to travel to the side of the planet where the moon is. Can you imagine how weird that would be if it were that way on the Earth? What if only the Chinese could see the moon? The moon would be a Chinese attraction, and people would have to travel from all over the Earth to see the strange Chinese Moon. The old astronomical maps would have this large white sphere on it and when they brought them to the courts of Europe or the Middle East, they would think that the sphere was a figurative artistic addition to the map, because everyone else would see the stars in the same positions as the Chinese did, only without the moon. Think about how our knowledge of the heavens would have changed... think about how our poetry would be different! Our literary tradition in general! Even the days of the week would be different, because there probably wouldn't be a "Monday".

Another interesting thing to think about would be if a different side of the moon faced the Earth. Right now the moon fulfills its half of the bargain and rotates synchronously with us- meaning that it rotates with the same period as it orbits the Earth, meaning we always see the same side of the moon, but the moon-people don't always see the same side of the Earth. On the other side of the moon in the south is a GIGANTIC crater, the South Polar Aiken Basin. If that side of the moon happened to be pointing towards us, the moon would look like a giant eye-ball instead of a smiling face. I wonder how THAT would have changed our culture!??

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

worrisome
Thursday. 2.1.07 7:11 pm
Well, looks like some of my students from last semester are getting their asses handed to them by the administration for cheating repeatedly (and on the take-home final, no less.)

It's been out of my hands for a month and a half, but it's still stressing me out.

Today they telephoned my professor and called him on the carpet for "not making it clear enough to the students that they weren't supposed to work together". He actually roared into the phone, "THAT'S BULLSHIT!" And then proceeded to yell at the dean for like ten minutes about how cheating is rampant here and the reason that it continues is because every time a professor turns someone in the admin turns on the professor. So I guess finally they are going to take action on the matter. "I've never said 'bullshit' to a dean before" he said pluckily after he hung up the phone. "I'll have to get Nancy to add that to my resume"

What people don't realize is that a bad grade isn't going to ruin your life. But cheating, even if you don't get caught this time, or the next hundred times, WILL ruin your life. Just ask the guys at Enron.

Comment! (4) | Recommend!

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