Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Resolution #9: I will find a better way of dealing with bullies.

This weekend I discovered (or, rather, was pointed to) a movie called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It is... interesting. It is a great deal like Persistence of Memory (memories get removed, people are expected not to mention the things that have been erased to the people who underwent the erasure, leading events to repeat...), and yet very different (warm & fuzzy, etc.).

Speaking of Persistence, I revisited it recently, and I had an epiphany - specifically, I think I may finally know what the underlying metaphor is. Of course, A wanted me to explain this, and it was hard, but it was worth it. We had a fascinating conversation about what may be the underlying question of the novel: what does society demand we do when people we care about divorce themselves from reality, and does it help them or hurt them?

Hmm. Apropos given current events, both personal and otherwise. Is it still unethical to post e-mails other people sent to you? Curses. I thought so.

Speaking of current events, DDR club lives (in theory). Now I just need to clean all the oldbies out of the mailing list, add all the newbies into the mailing list, and send out a meeting notice. How I wound up being the Obi-Wan Kenobi of a club I have no idea (I didn't even know it was a formal position until recently), but apparently I am, so I'm not going to argue with it.

And likewise, my schedule lives. Dr. Clifton has expressed interest in letting me take Compilers despite prerequisite issues. If any of you faceless audience members are Rose-Hulmanian (I know of at least 2) and wanted to take Compilers but got stung by the new CSSE474 requirement, talk to him. He'll be nice.

Club, schedule... however, I won't be living much longer if I don't get the Last Round of E-mails sent to Drs. M & M. Personal issues last week cut short my good intentions to finish the documents in a reasonable amount of time, and now I can only pray that maybe, somehow, it might still be possible for them to come to my aid. (And that I'm not screwing them over too badly... hmm.)

And I won't be living at all if I don't have my affairs in order come 9th week - M will (rightfully) kill me.

Skimpy clothes and summer plans

Resolution #8: I will finish the *&@$ skirt.

So, the good news is that there are still all these scholarship and internship opportunities available for the coming school year/summer. The bad news is that all the deadlines seem to be within the next month, and I don't know who I can ask to write recommendation letters on such short notice.

Oh, and it's 1:00 a.m. and I can't sleep. But that's not a *new* problem.

DIMACS/DIMATIA, IBM Watson or Almeda or Austin, MSR (or plain vanilla Microsoft), Google, MIT-LL... there are so many cool things I could end up doing next summer. It's not precisely that I wasn't aware there were cool internships and research positions out there; it's that before, I didn't have the hubris to think I would ever be selected for them.

Now I know better.

IBM-Austin might in fact be the most promising right now. While I don't know whether I'll like IBM overall as much as I like Microsoft, the experience may build a better foundation for graduate school and will almost certainly be looked upon more favorably by graduate school admissions committees.

I wish I knew whether it was necessary to put grad school above life, but I don't.

If nothing else, I'm sure my mother would turn cartwheels at the Austin job description, particularly the fact that it's publication-oriented.

And any way you slice it, the possibility of an APS/IBM scholarship on top of the regular internship salary helps.

We shall see, though, if I actually get letters for any of these things.

Blogjacking and Dr. Laura

Resolution #7: I will always check to make sure the power is on.

L made an interesting post on her blog today that provoked a lot of responses, one from yours truly. One very *long* one from yours truly. Oh well, she's got plenty of bandwidth.

I'm somewhat surprised, though. Between last night's SnS run and that post today, my concerns about her relationship with G have rotated a hundred and eighty degrees. Before, I fretted that she was letting her attitudes become dangerously inconsistent, losing the capacity to find anything he does or says objectionable no matter how much she would (theoretically) have been irked by it in another person, and in the process destroying her personality like so many other well-meaning people I've known in my short yet glamorous career.

Why do blogging utilities never allow footnotes? Grrrr.

Now, I'm worried that she'll get tired of his fanciful nature and end the relationship out of pure frustration someday, thus killing a (potentially) perfectly good thing. (Or that he'll get tired of her factuality and do the same thing.)

I know it makes me a generally terrible person that I consider the first of those possibilities to be significantly worse than the other, but part of me is still relieved at the revelation that it's probably not an immediate danger.

That said, I feel bad for both of them individually. I suspect that neither of them quite understands how much they don't understand the other.

I want a recording of "Across This Silence" now.

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I was in Wal-Mart the other day (picking up a copy of Einstein's book on relativity - no, seriously), and I flipped open a copy of what appears to be Laura Schlessinger's new book, Bad Childhood, Good Life. The chapter I idly, innocently browsed to was Chapter 4 - a discussion of how to know when to break off a relationship with a parent (ex-parent, a term which she steadfastly refuses to coin throughout the chapter).

All things told, it was a rather demoralizing experience.

I really don't think I will or would ever be able to make that kind of decision.

Stupidity pays dividends

Resolution #6: I will do more stupid stuff that works and less stupid stuff that doesn't.

I still haven't finished going through the e-mail stack - nor, in fact, made significant inroads on it. I'm sending e-mails to a couple of professors (with apologies), but other than that my inbox is just as intimidating as ever.

"You have three HUNDRED new messages." Joy.

Nonetheless, the saga of pre-break stupidity (mine) and during-break stupidity (my computer's) is more or less at an end, if I can just find my *&@$ M3 assignment.

There's a bright spot, though: my vicious abuse of H during our last M3 meeting didn't scar him for life, and may in fact have borne fruit. He presented a problem today, and his solution was far more interesting than mine. His presentation was also far less nervous than his last one, and probably ranks up there as one of the nicest, concisest [it is so a word] ones we've gotten in the seminar so far.

Which means I've indirectly helped myself, because I can now take that as an example of a good expository balance and (hopefully) improve my own.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I don't think it's a good one.

The 'good' fight

Resolution #5: I will not run away from a fight. The fight will find me again and again, and each time it will be more confident.

The past week has found me nurturing my own twisted version of bipolar disorder far more than can be justified by any rational argument. It's also found me reading and writing. (And breathing too, while I'm at it.)

In particular, I ran across a network of sites on gifted and highly gifted children, which inspired a couple of long-overdue rants that I may post later, when I'm in a cheerier and more caring mood. (Now isn't the time for reasons that will shortly be obvious to the astute angel-watcher.)

Right now, a dead letter for the archives:

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I have felt, for a long time now, that I don't have a tolerable relationship with you.

For an equally long time I have tried to fix this and failed badly. I've swung back and forth between trying to tell you all the things that I think should change and backing off when this enrages you and you either righteously chastise me or unrighteously throw a tantrum.

I've begun to see in the past few months that this was perhaps the worst possible thing I could do for both our sakes. I have deluded myself into believing that I can build a calmer and deeper relationship with you, but I have never succeeded in doing so. More importantly, I have made you my unwitting accomplice in misery: my alternately obstinate and conciliatory moods, which must to you seem opaque and causeless, have trained you that when I am angry the correct approach is to verbally attack and denigrate me until I relent, and that when I am amicable it is a fruitful tactic to say hurtful and misleading things about me to your friends (in my presence), perhaps in the hope of shaming me away from future complaints or arguments.

I do not know where this leaves me, or you. Some part of me may always believe that it is possible and desirable for me to have a more meaningful relationship with you, but I no longer am naive enough to think I know how to bring it about, nor even to think it can be formed through any effort of mine. Faced with this, all I can do is stop trying.

So stop attacking my ather when he doesn't agree with you, and I'll stop voicing my dissent. Stop insulting me and I'll let you insult others with impunity, save they be people I love. Stop couching your words in doublespeak and I'll stop disobeying your orders while I'm in your house. Stop demanding my gratitude for those orders and I'll countenance whatever else you demand of me, until I can obtain by other means such freedoms as adults allegedly enjoy.

Should auld antipathy be forgot...

Resolution #4: I will spend more quality time with my enemies.

I was at the mall today, against my better judgement. Specifically, I was at Waldenbooks contemplating gifts for my bibliophile friends. (Through some miracle, I actually survived the experience and came away with a few worthwhile ideas, but that's neither here nor there.)

Normally when I go to the mall I do so to play DDR. In this case, I really hadn't come for that purpose, but since I was there anyway I felt I'd be derelict in my DDRly duty if I didn't play one quick game of doubles.

So I started off said game with Holic, probably the easiest doubles 8-footer in the game and one of my favorite warm-up pieces. Given that my cold is a bit better and there were no annoying little kids in the vicinity for the first time in weeks, I should have been able to do quite well. Right?

Apparently not. I think I pulled a B after bombing all the major runs and multitoes. Oh well, I think to myself. At least no one's watching.

"What are you doing on my DDR machine?" piped a familiar voice from behind me.

Well, shit-in-a-basket.

I contemplated the available options and realized that 1) I wasn't really in the mood to deal with people (am I ever?), and 2) I wasn't really in the mood to deal with Archnem's neverending posturing, which I didn't think was entirely serious but which I was *sure* he'd never admit to joking about.

So I said, "Fine, it's yours," ala Angry Smiley, and gathered my stuff.

And Archnem, who never admits to being less than serious with his full-blown hatred and inability to stand me, looks over from the token machine and says, "Did you take that seriously? You really don't understand me at all."

I blinked, and muttered, "Okay. Fine then." Unfortunately, I don't think Archnem heard the follow-up of "So explain yourself, bitch." But I resumed and finished my game (doing equally badly on Luv To Me Disco and Electrotuned).

When all this was over, I stepped off the machine and did stretches so as to have an excuse to watch Archnem converse with HatBoy. But it wasn't too long before:

"Oh, who beat my score on Dancemania Oni?"

Who knows? I thought to myself. The mysterious 'Arka' could be anyone. Clearly it's a guy who...

"Her!" HatBoy points at me.

Traitor, I muse grimly, and ponder revenge.

"Oh, so you finally beat my Dancemania score, huh? Good, I was wondering..."

'Finally?' Rrrr. Some fetuses should not be allowed to crawl out of the womb intact.

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I'll spare you, my nonexistent reader, the [rest of the] blow-by-blow account. But all in all, I had a good, long back and forth with Archnem, interspersed with several rounds of DDR that I did abysmally on (and that's always the best kind of DDR!).

It offers a little bit of reassurance that I haven't completely lost the opportunity to have meaningful antagonistic chats.

Also, it renews my resolve to give him the damn skirt already.

The persistence of painting

Resolution #3: I will leave more art in inexplicable places.

Narrative in everyday living

Resolution #2: I will allow fewer people to harm me.

It looks like someone has stolen my key. Possibly. Or possibly I'm just an idiot and left it sitting somewhere. Or maybe both - I left it sitting somewhere, and someone said, "Oh, this is her key! I should destroy this and screw her over!"

How cute of them.

In other news, I wound up relating The Persistence of Memory (the short story, not the painting) to L the other day. She thought the idea was cool and interesting, which I more or less expected, and made an intriguing comment about the analogy between Gray's experience and time travel.

I should show her a copy of that story. I should also show one to G. He would love the pretentiousness of the whole thing, the alleged artsiness and the overblown symbolism (ooh! it's a clock! how original!). He would also probably like the story on its non-presentational merits. And, hey, it is a cool story.

Their reactions to the whole story-behind-the-story would be interesting, too.

Na en... so tired. And the irony is, I feel like I could probably sleep tonight, but now I don't think I have *time* - I need to do something about my P4 homework and my E5 lab, both of which I was supposed to turn in today and didn't because I got sidetracked looking for my accursed key.

At least my profs are inexplicably understanding.