533. Theorizing Vic's Alcohol (Drug) Consumption (W Thought Sketches "Earthworms in Strong Beer" "Manufactured Emotions" and "Alternative Addictions")

The last couple of days I have found myself constructing a rather elaborate narrative on Victoria's relationship with alcohol. It is a rather intriguing topic because what is presently occurring, as it did the night I went to watch Mia Doi Todd and Michel Gondry perform at Spaceland Silverlake, I was the only girl in the club who was drinking coffee and reading environmental history papers while everyone else was drinking quite a bit of alcohol and was ATTEMPTING to dance (because strangely, I felt that about 90% of the music played that night, by all four groups of musicians, was ridiculously slow for a club... I was like... where's David Guetta? Where's the fast-paced jazz? Where's the boom-boom-boom fast-paced chicka-chicka-boom drum-and-bass jungle techno?! None to be played... *sigh*).

Yes, that is the case. I am about the only girl in the bar or club or party drinking coffee or diet coke while everyone else was hammering down on the alcohol. As Einstein recommends to "simplify but nothing simpler," the going theory on Vic's alcohol consumption is "I'm more drunk when I'm not drunk." And to elaborate even further, when people claim for some reason that "I'm smart," I simply state, "It's not that I'm smart. It's just that I have this very hyperactive brain that chronically needs a mental work out because I didn't drink enough alcohol in college to kill enough brain cells such that I could consciously and pacifyingly follow suit to society's expectations of my own desired road to life." Hence, I seem a little more rebellious merely because I didn't go through the protocol ritual of university frosh drunken purposelessness. Oops! I guess I skipped a few steps in life... besides the alcoholic rite of passage and 6 years of menstrual cycles (due to over-thinness) which makes me structurally seem like a 21-year-old female with the hormones of a 16-year-old and strangely the mind of a 60-year-old. Oops. Talk about differential timing of body rhythms. Oh well.

This "I-didn't-kill-enough-brain-cells" theory was actually derived from my undergraduate-advisor-parasite-invertebrate expert, Armand. One day Armand told the class as to how he ended up being an invertebrate zoologist and parasitology. In short, Armand started out in economics, and then by accident he took a zoology course in his third or fourth year of college (?) and right then and there he fell in love with invertebrates and went to the chair of the department and asked him to allow him to complete all requirements for a zoology major in one year, in which he did, acing courses in flying colors. In a brief description of his improved sense of identity and self-esteem, I vividly remembering Armand stating (paraphrased), "It was a simple decision. I would rather count worms and bugs for the rest of my life than counting dollar bills. Life was getting better since I found my calling. I had to slow down my alcohol consumption so that I could save a few brain cells to pursue this career pathway. Heck, I even started dating girls again." The last thing I remember, Armand applied for a Ph.D. in zoology (?) at Berkeley, and apparently his father wanted him to be a medical physician. Armand was upset with this parental pressure and never conceded to this road to life. Perhaps that is why Armand has made such research break-throughs in ecological and evolutionary approaches to parasitology... he simply has refused to see these little buggers from the typical lens of a doctor.

Getting back to the point of alcohol, Armand pricked my interest in terms of his "conscious decision to slow down his alcohol consumption such as to spare some brain cells to pursue this calling to life." Alcohol? Killing brain cells?! Apparently alcohol kills everything that it touches.

And hence, Armand ultimately set up my Existential Moment that has largely solidified my own personal relationship with alcohol. Let's consider this paragraph as an exploration of a future poem entitled "Meditations on an Earthworm in Strong Beer." (or Booze? what's more poetic?) During my first attempt to take Invertebrate Zoology (with my ultimately cool TA Lise Goddard-Schickel, now teaching at the Midland School out in the Santa Ynez Valley), one of the first labs required us to dunk a living earthworm in a transparent bowl halfway filled with 70% rubbing alcohol. Aka. or substitute as "Very Strong Beer." In other words, we poor students had to kill the worm (we had to chop the head of the chicken, carve out the sides of the cow, etc etc etc). And so, my being naive, I dunked an earthworm (derived from this lasagna pan full of dirt in front of the classroom) and to my great shock and surprise, after three seconds of immersion, the worm started to violently wriggle and convulse and shake and squirm and contort and twist and tie itself into knots and it wouldn't stop shaking and shaking and shaking and forming these wild shapes part fractalous part complete chaos, the most bizarrest wild dance around the fire I could barely even replicate myself just thinking like is this what all animals and organisms could possibly experience when they die? I mean, is this what people went through when going through the gas chambers of the Holocaust? It reminded me of this horrible dream I had early on last quarter where I was a human-fish and my whole body was chopped up into parts and my body was stacked on all these other human-fish bodies, you could see the patterns-serration of the bloody muscle and it just smelled so bad and we were on the bottom of this ship, and then for some reason the ship started to sink to the bottom of the ocean and my fish body started floating around and I was following my Mumsy, Bubsy, and Jen-Jen around trying to tell them that I had passed on, but they never even noticed that I was there, and I was frustrated... and this other bad dream that I had lost all my hair from cancer therapy! And god, it just kept happening how this worm kept wriggling and contorting in streaks of fast-slow-fast fast fast-slow motions and I had to watch this for three very long minutes, but the last minute the worm started to slow down and calm down its sine and cosine waves of violent bodily chaos and eventually it stopped moving and I wondered where its poor soul went (it certainly went into me to some degree), and I think I was so shocked I didn't cry at the time (I was in class) but I was silent for the rest of the lab, and I think I cried that night.... After that, I spent time dissecting that worm, figuring out where all its body parts were... and I couldn't help to think of the ways and values of science, "Sacrifice a few, so as to save the many." And since then, all I could help to think, "If alcohol, whether 70% or 5% does that to a worm in three minutes, imagine what it would do to my own body, my own brain!" And I never really established an appetite, desire, thirst for anything alcoholic. And then I really didn't understand the University Frosh (and Beyond) ritual of drunken purposelessness. Why would people perceive self-bodily destruction as fun?! Oh I know... the goal IS to make most of your brain dead, strip nearly all layers of consciousness (logic, emotions, social sensitivity, motor skills) so that the only thing left that is possibly operating on your mind is... of course... the sex center... yes, yes... all that left is sex, uninhibited reptilian painful pleasure. Yay to Isla Vista! Kill the brain cells for primordial beastliness! Yaya!

Sooo... back to the Earthworm... that poor earthworm. I feel so bad. There are so many better, more instantaneous ways to go to the AfterWhateverWorld. I'm very sorry.

I turned 21, and my Uklan best friend Lauri took me out to Alcapolco (chain Mexican restaurant) in Westwood, CA. I only had half of a strawberry margarita. I didn't feel I passed through any Societal Rite of Passage. All I could think is that this 21-year-old age law was stupid because in Europe you can drink at any age and people usually don't binge like how that earthworm got dunked in alcohol. Get over it.

Basically, I am hypothesizing that my mind and body are wired to a "natural" sense of drunkedness at nearly most or all states of wakened consciousness, and that if I actually do consume alcohol, it would transform me into a quiet stupor, which would render my state of being as "boring," as described by my aunt-cousin-Jeri Lyn. Last summer, when I was having a super dinner with Jeri Lyn and Chris Lods up in Sebastopol, she gave me a glass of wine, and as soon as I had some, I stopped talking and chattering and I was fairly quiet and non-participatory. Both she and Chris agreed that I was "boring" and soon after I remember myself wanting to go to bed.

As I remember at grad student parties I attended when I was at UC Riverside, if I consume about half of a light beer, I tend to become loose and giddy and was more willing to socialize and take chances with social interactions than before, in which I am always a little nervous and apprehensive when I first approach a party, and think (way too much) about strategies on how to blend in with the crowd. After that, if I drank more, I became extremely conscious that I was becoming slower in my thoughts and actions, and because of that I started to feel vulnerable, and that I felt like everything inside me was caving in. I felt like I wanted to crawl into a corner, hide under a table, curl up into a fetus, and cry myself to sleep. I ended up leaving parties early because I felt such a heightened sense of vulnerability.

On the other hand, I have made several observations that other people become more and more extroverted when they drink more alcohol, and that they release-expose either "subliminal skill sets" and-or "subliminal emotions." My cousin and a fisherman friend of mine say that they both get very angry when drinking too much alcohol, and that anger can lead to horrible events with regrettable consequences. (An aside: My cousin said he's been a part of Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles for ten years... stating that it's some form of social club... some form of alternative to the alcohol. I quizzed him, why do people in Alcoholics Anonymous folks identify themselves with the addictive substances they are trying to resist, not the positive alternatives they are trying to pursue? Why does one have to change a state of mind through chemical intervention? Why can't your neurochemical composition and interactions shift through behavioral shifts, through environmental changes? He said that was a good point, and a day later, I created the the new AA, essentially called Alternative Addictions.) My friend Talei, on the other hand, becomes more bipolar--extremely happy, extremely sad, singing loudly, doing the chicken dance, and kissing girls on top of a table in front of ten people at a fancy Mexican restaurant, revealing her bisexual properties, in which she was not so able to reveal in China. Other people find alcohol a total release, ritualistic exposition.

At the same time, I was guinea pigging myself at UCR grad student parties and Getaway or "Get-a-life" pub-across-the-street-from-the-U bar-hopping a couple of times to the mock-British-pub Falconers in downtown Riverside (lame, it had no pool table! but heck, I had some pretty intense existential conversations with folks over there, much more so than at the Getaway!), I was doing some observational investigative studies of optimal playing of pool and darts and mini-basketball depending on the amount of alcohol that was consumed by the particular individual. Of course alcohol tolerance level had to be calibrated. I have come to realize that people tend to optimally perform at a certain low level of alcohol in which the "social sensitivity sensor" in the brain is ultimately bathed and non-operational and one establishes some level of critical hyperfocus on the game of pool, and only pool, tuning out all other distractions, while motor functions remain intact... but as more alcohol is consumed, not only the social sensitivity factor is dysfunctional, but also the motor portions of the brain are affected and eye-hand-body coordination ultimately deteriorates to a point in which you become a social disgrace to watch in terms of skill level in pool. Tragic. This theory ultimately needs to be illustrated in a cartoon. Though, when one comes to an "art party," as I had been invited to an art-grad student party at Riverside in which grad students brought their artwork and engaged in "art therapy" painting and sculpting and writing existentially humorous poems while drinking beer, it is not that there is a level of "deterioration" in the art produced as more alcohol is consumed, it is just that the art tends to become more "Picasso abstract" and "unexpected in outcome" than one's more predictable routines of art skills when in a completely conscious state.

So, the discussion of alcohol seems to lead to conversations about the generic comparisons of drugs and what drugs do to alter the human mind and body. I seem to have accrued a group of experts on such a subject matter... or let's put it this way, though not formally indoctrinated, I know a whole bunch of people who deserve a Ph.D. in Drug Consumption and Experiential Analysis, or maybe it should be an MFA in creative science writing on experiential drug analysis. Members of these informal professionals include this dude Todd? who was an insect-ologist at UCLA (professional in mushrooms), Trixl (professional in crystal meth and weed), my invert-parasite lab partner Aaron (expert on weed), my whole Greek family in Greece (professionals in chronic smoking, heart bypasses, extreme medical therapy, and stints), and Lauri (expert on the whole buffet of options and comparative psychological effects... but she has bonus knowledge in the family, her mother was a shrink!). Heck I'm neighbors with a weed doctor in Goleta!

So, Todd claimed that when you take mushrooms the world become extremely psychadelic Austin-powers like and you're able to connect the dots in ways you would have never connected before. I remember Trixl emphasizing the use of mushrooms by native american peoples (shamans more specifically, neurological phosphenes in the eyes as a biological universal in cave drawings by several indigenous groups around the world) when we were by the Painted Cave up in the mountains here in Santa Barbara (on my birthday, August 12, 2008). Well, the issue is, that I can place myself in some form of more dulled psychedelic trance form if I don't eat, don't sleep, and don't exercise for 2.5-3 days or more. I've done it several times since late March of 2001, and now I usually do it when I'm in a manic film editing mode. So, I don't exactly need mushrooms.

I've received extensive 2-3 hour long dissertations from Trixl on the experiences, addictions of crystal meth... aka... tweaking.... Though he had claimed that he only did it once, tweaked once, that he described his knowledge so vividly that I wondered whether his experiences were more than once.... But nevertheless, he was in a circumstance in Oregon in which he had to live with tweakers... and they were pretty amazing people... they were so focused, no narrow, so obsessed... and SOOO paranoid... but so 120-miles-per-hour, they had the ability to clean the entire kitchen with a toothpick (like cleaning the grout between tiles)! Trixl emphasized that the worst part about tweaking is the crash after the high.... You go super "low" and it drives you mad... I'd assume, so it's better to stay in a tweaked up state just to avoid the crash... I saw clips of a film called Spun that kind of detailed the crazy, irrational paranoid lives of tweakers... The visual representation was profound... their minds WERE going 120 miles per hour.... But then I was thinking about the pace of my own mind. Most certainly for at least 4-6 hours in the beginning of the day, my mind does go about 80 miles per hour... I essentially have to give my brain a marathon work-out every day to beat out its hyper ADHD-like energy, but why would I want to make my mind go 120 miles per hour, at the price of thinking more narrowly paranoid, with horrid crashes?! Not worth it.... And besides, if I want to crank up the speed of my life and my mind, all I have to do is listen to wordless techno, jungle house drum-and-bass... getting high on a behavioral-environmental change rather than a chemical-ingestion.... I look back at my time interacting with Trixl and especially toward the end of our relations, his behaviors were so "cut-the-strings" and even so negative and paranoid that... I was wondering that... if tweakers take in crystal meth long enough... do they have brain damage and remain forever... to some degree paranoid?!

I've met dozens upon dozens upon dozens of weed/marijuana consumers. I could say though it's supposedly illegal to smoke marijuana in California, I could say that it's pretty dxmn rampant... all over the place.... The most extreme circumstances is that I met two weed dealers at the Kinkos in Goleta I'm working at right now, and I found them to be kind of overly enthusiastic liars, and very dirty, kind of looking like hippis in the hills. And when I was traveling for Roadtrip Nation last summer, I met this jovial young man eating a sandwich at a gas station up in Yreka (Weed County, most appropriately). He politely asked me about Roadtrip Nation, and we ended up having a lengthy conversation. He told me about his marijuana operation up in the forested hills, and pointed out where the reflections where. He also explained to me how he survived this dire circumstance of two guys mugging him, beating him up with a baseball bat, placing him in a bag, and dumping him in a ditch. He was lucky to be alive, awake in an emergency room. He had some brain damage and lost all sense of taste (he couldn't even taste his sandwich), let alone losing his appetite. He also further explained how he was shipping his weed all the way over to the East Coast (so he has a huge market over in the Boston area) and that there was no point in establishing distributions down in southern California, particularly Isla Vista (so I heard, most IV weed comes from Humboldt... so I've heard)....

Sooo many people around me smoke weed... my two former roommates... my neighbors... my friends... people with chronic illnesses... Trixl.... He even encouraged me to try it out... and I had a few puffs and I was just thinking, "How in the hxll could this stuff be illegal?!! Sure, I felt a little bit lighter and giddier, but there's no comparison as to what alcohol does to my brain versus what weed does to my brain. Alcohol is by far much, much more dangerous." As a matter of fact, if someone gave me weed/pot/whatever versus alcohol at a party, I would choose weed because I remain functional and just feel a little bit lighter. I noticed that Trixl consumed less when he was less stressed (when school was out during the summer). So, this realization led to Trixl extensive 2-3 hour lecture to me on the history of "why marijuana was made illegal, and why it continues to remain illegal." The part of the story that I remember was how marijuana was competing with other forms of drugs for the market, and that presently many psychiatric pharmaceuticals are replacing the function that weed essentially carries for folks.... Primarily what I heard is that marijuana can allow one to function and focus and not feel pain, and essentially have some level of control of ADHD. My invert-parasite partner Aaron told me toward the very end of the year that he came to lab stoned for the whole time, and he asked me if I could tell. I said, "No! I didn't know that! You were fine! You were functional! You got your work done!" And then Aaron said, "Well, that's the point. Being stoned helps me slow down and focus, otherwise I would be rapid-firing-scatter-brained and all ADHD." I heard since then (and a while back) that his parents found out that he was smoking pot, and that they converted him to taking Ridlin... but that's such a long, long time ago... who knows what's going on.... Nevertheless, Jxlees, back in his wild wild days, used to be a grower and he just tells me, from his own simple, first-hand experience, just stay away from heavy pot users.... They're so lethargic and apathetic losers and just sit their xsses on the couch all day doing nothing... which I'm not sure how true that is...

What can I say? I could state that "my big fat greek family" back in Greece contains a few family members which I consider to be pathetic... in terms of their level of chain cigarette (or cigar) smoking and lack of consumption of healthy foods. I don't need to name names... my two uncles.... News from Greece... heart attacks, quadruble bypass surgery, stints, death from cancer in the gums, spread to the brains, with brutal radiation therapy frying my grandmother as if she were a roasted pig and not a human… the usual.... I guess what makes the whole experience in a state of "abstract pain" rather than the real, agonizing, tormenting pain, is that we have thousands of miles between California and Greece. The only true pain I felt was when I saw my mother's ghostly pale, blank face, after watching her mother (my grandmother) pass away after radiation therapy in Greece. Yet overall, from a distance, these forms of behaviors seem absurd, but if I were right in the thicket of the lives of my relatives in Greece, I am bound to feel very different about this subject matter. I can remember a grad student named Jimmy in environmental sciences at UCR who was asked on his written exams how to measure the health and environmental impacts of smoking. All my mind did was flashback to the vaulted, smoke-filled rooms of Circus Circus and especially Caesar's Palace, as I was choking and coughing trying to get through these casino rooms with my family. Jimmy stated that he would measure impacts of first-hand and second-hand smoking. And then I said, isn't there a measure of "cumulative impacts"? (just as there are cumulative impacts on the ocean, as investigated by Ben Halpern). Mass accumulation effects? Like the effect of smoking in an entire massive vaulted ambiance of Las Vegas?! He said no. No one is doing that. It didn't make sense. He only focused on proximate impacts of the smoker and potentially someone who lived with a smoker. But what about all those people who are stuck working or gambling in these Las Vegas environments? There must be a cumulative effect!

As for Lauri, the Comparative Expert on the Buffet of Drugs (I vividly remember her giving me a lecture on this topic when we were both looking over the balcony of a swanky hotel where the Western Society of Naturalists was being held, back in the fall of 2003). Though the lecture-conversation was sooo intense, I don't remember any of it. Nevertheless, what I do remember is that she is the source of the Buffet of Knowledge, so when I need some guidance (perhaps to seek some non-consumptive inspiration for new approaches to artwork... ha ha...), Lauri is the go-to person. Other than that, I've had run-ins with former cocaine and crack addicts (dudes who seem to function being bartenders for 8 hours straight), and our neighbors in Riverside used to be drug dealers, also illegally dumping oil in the ground... they were eventually arrested and evicted from the household... other than that....

Alas, alas! Returning to the alcohol!!! Coming to think of it, one would think that my modern theories of alcohol consumption must hold some historical roots! When Lingxuan and I were driving to Oran's house, he stated that some research has shown that if a child likes alcohol, then there is a high chance that the child will like alcohol as an adult. Well! I happened to tell him what happened to me! When I was eight years old, my mother stopped me in the kitchen and gave me some sips of red wine. I had one or two sips and I had an instant aversion, stating that it was sour, bitter, disgusting, and that I didn't want to finish it. My mother laughed and said that was fine. She also said that she gave me wine because I wouldn't get all alcohol-crazy later on in my life... Alcohol is not a big deal... My aversion to booze continued when in Greece. The whole family was at a giant dinner in Spetses, and my uncle Panos plopped a half jar full of beer and asked me to drink it. I tried some and didn't like it. I blurted out, "You adults are crazy! Why do you like things that taste sooo bad?!" Then the dinner came, and it was quite salty, so I drank the rest of the beer out of desperate thirst, not out of any form of liking.

In conclusion, the signs are good and not good in terms of my relationship with chemical-induced society-classified drugs, with observational backing from my ontogeny. My own body and brain chemistry indicates that I go on these "all-natural highs" that could possibly be induced by alcohol and other forms of drugs, but why do I need to take drugs when I'm already giddy, when I'm already manic, when I'm already slowed and calmed (after jogging) when I'm already in some desired existential trance state. I change my brain chemistry by learning something new, by changing my behavior, by changing my environment, not by ingesting additional chemicals beyond the regular food. In fact, if I am addicted to anything in the world, I'm very much addicted to learning new things (which is why I want to stay in the university!). With mounting evidence of such an addiction, a geology professor at UC Riverside stated "Scientists and heroine addicts are one and the same. We both wake up in the morning, surging with life, racing after our addictions, stimulating the same pleasure centers in our brains... except that scientists typically have their brains strapped to a computer and the heroine addict holds a needle to his arm. But really, what's the difference?" Strange enough, being addicted to learning is perceived as a positive, socially acceptable addiction... but with some consequences. If I learn too much and attempt to absorb too much information at once, then I get overwhelmed and vulnerable and mentally collapse and hibernate for several days at a time. Aka being "drunk with information overload."

My brain is hard enough to manage in a state of waking consciousness, why would I need any more chemical substances to alter a system that is already altering too fast for me to keep up?!

It is an endless Myth of Sisyphus, an endless quest to stimulating your pleasure center and feel some sense of self-satisfaction and content with yourself and your life circumstances. Or for me, to maintain some level of SANITY.... Society keeps throwing all these pills at me, pills for alcohol, pills for bipolar disorder, pills for ADHD, pills for depression, pills for anorexia (at one time), pills for all sorts of things, claiming that they will somehow help me and and enhance my life somehow. But after at least 10 years in the real world, I can proudly state that I have managed not to become hooked onto any of these candies that society keeps marketing to us, trying to figure out ways to convince us that we're all "sick" and "need a life" or need a better life.... Instead I've come to look at other organisms. I have come to look at evolution and ecology. I have come to explore and unearth my "caveman-girl instincts" that lay dormant in all of us but can be courageously expressed and released in the arts. I have found my addictions, my mental chemical alterations through being addicted to learning, exploration, being addicted to freedoms of expression, being addicted to change, change of behavior, change of environment, being addicted to clean air, water, healthy minimally processed foods, exercise, sleep (working out my brain while resting my body, working out my body while resting my brain), my family, my friends, and a sense of absurd purpose in life presently chilling out at the university (the whole Maslow Hierarchy Millenium Ecosystem Impacts). Evolution has already thrown enough addictions and drugs toward my direction, each of which if I explore enough, will help me achieve that sense of pleasure, maintain a sense off sanity... so why in the world would I need to acquire and latch on to any more superfluous pills so well proliferated (and promoted) by human society? (Or at least the first world, the "First World" is in mental warfare and the "Third War" is supposedly in physical warfare).

I shall end in a four-liner poem
(which I tried to expand, but it didn't work so well):
Manufactured Emotions:
It's not really me, It's not really me.
I'd rather go through the down days, knowing,
just for a moment, I was truly happy.

Vic's Official Theories of Alcohol and Drug Consumption:

General Observation of Vic's Life History Strategy:
"The coffee drinker in the corner in a bar full of drinkers."

Conclusions:
"I'm more drunk when I'm not drunk."
"Drunk... in context, by context."
"It's not that I'm smart. It's just that I have this very hyperactive brain that chronically needs a mental work out because I didn't drink enough alcohol in college to kill enough brain cells such that I could consciously and pacifyingly follow suit to society's expectations of my own desired road to life."
"Alternative Addictions: Why define yourself by the negative elements that you're trying to resist, rather than the positive, alternative solutions you're trying to actively pursue?"
(what's the new crutch, the new prosthetic?)

Some old blogs I wrote related to the subject: Blog 356, Blog 294 (States of Consciousness, Poem Pure Being to Self-Aware Being), Blog 330 (Addicted to Learning, The Science of doing Science), Excerpt Poem from "Another and Again"

356. Chez Mike Dillin: Une Nouvelle Maison (A Big Hug, Long Overdue)

Last night, I decided before I left to Riverside to spend a couple of "peaceful" days with my parents, that I would finally go and visit Mike Dillin, my "acquired third cousin." But, such a title is a bit too harsh and unrepresentative of our relationship. To me, Mike is more like a protective, witty (super-intelligent), rebellious older brother that I never had, but could only dream of having. But now I have him, and I sincerly felt that I took his presence for granted--especially ever since he left to New Orleans for a lengthy period of time (since Fall of 2007, I clearly remember).

Ever since Mike left, I went through Los Angeles and Santa Monica feeling empty, withdrawal. Not only I missed Mike, but I missed his experience of reality: his abode near by the Santa Monica pier, his stories working on TV and movie sets, his deep knowledge of Los Angeles, which to me I probably can play the Los Angeles Video Game at Level 2. And Mike plays Level 10, or Level 20. I don't know how to calibrate his knowledge of the area. To me, this city is a daunting, unmanageable, graspable zoo... still to this day. I also missed Mike's unique character: insane problem-solving intelligence not channeled through the university--but a little bit anti-university through the lens of his grandmother--who attempted to go to UCLA for graduate school but was discriminated back in the day because she was a female. Such stupidity of thought. I can barely imagine such a day. My being a female in the university was never really an issue--until I saw all these strange funding and scholarship opportunities that were catered toward "women in science." What's the big deal about "women in science"? I suppose I am to take a science / history of science course to understand the gorey details of misrepresentation of brains in science.

I also missed Mike as a mentor in the media business. Mike guided me towards signing up with Central Casting (http://www.centralcasting.org) in order to be an extra on the Giant Movie Sets. I must say that 95% of businesses revolving around "make-it-in-the-movies-and-get-famous" are scams, and 5% are true in terms of having a working job as an extra. But once you know what are the "true gigs" from the scam, you are connected to 95% of all the movie production in Los Angeles. "You're in," so to speak.

I had two Extras experiences for "Made of Honor", a cheezy CHEEZY film with Patrick Dempsey (I did an airport scene and a Halloween scence, in which I was a punk rock hippi in the middle of spring 2007 at Occidental College, worked well, met an intelligent, thoughtful guy by the name of Matt Something-err-other, good guitarist and singer, has the whole Nick Drake feel to him). Never even hit the movie theaters. Just sold as a silly love flick in the front stand of Vons Grocery Stories. Patrick Dempsey is SO SHORT and SO YESTERDAY. I saw Patrick twice--live. He seems really cool as a human being, and in the end, that is all that matters. You are a human being at the core and whatever society makes you to be is an illusion just so society can make money off of you. Society's biological puppet, so to speak--what most actors are. Anyhoo. Mike also got me quite a few resume items to enter into the UCSB Environmental Media Program. Which reminds me, I never finished off making his business card, which I should make ASAP.

One time Mike even offered me a Production Assistant job, which... in the near future... I may actually pursue (as an internship experience for the summer, so to speak, during my Ph.D. ness). During Spring of 2007--during my horrible year of "Medieval Dark Period," being rejected by my family and academia (at least UC Riverside Academia) for being a scientist breaking out into pursuing art (I was also a housekeeper and caretaker for Momma, a Persian grandmother with severe arthritis in Mission Viejo, California, where my cousin Jennifer Harber lives). What I was doing--integrating science and art--made sense to me, but there was no place for this type of endeavor in the family or in society--where I could be "institutionally accepted for my individual identity"--but Mike Dillin always cared about me and helped me out during those trying times of extreme dichotomy between exploring individual identity despite the lack of support in society. Mike has his photography business shooting off--skyrocketing in terms of a very cool job with nice salary--he most certainly has a financially-well-to-do audience in Los Angeles, through the movie industry. Mike has a Nikon D100 and D200 (he may have a D80 or D90 now), which inspired me to get my first SLR camera, the Nikon D80 (graduated from the Nikon Coolpix 5700, which I used for a couple of years, but started to feel stifled). I remember Mike vividly telling me, "What is the difference between a talented paid photographer versus unpaid photographer? You don't need a certificate or degree. All you need is a big-chunky SLR camera. The equipment gives you credentials--automatically. You are in a position of media authority by the mere equipment of you use." About a month after stating this, I bought a Nikon D80 package deal (with two lenses) at a Costco out in Ontario or China (despite my desperate financial situation), and soon after that Mike hired me as his assistant for a few photography shoots. We did a string of events that revolved around "little girls one-year-old birthday parties" which was a riot act, taking pix of drooling kids having a blast with toys, living in immense happiness with major ignorance to the full scope of Reality. It was at these events that Mike trained me on using the SB-800 flash and the Gary Fong diffuser. Just last year I finally made a purchase of my own SB-800 flash and imitation diffuser from China (saved 20 bucks in the process!). Mike also hooked me up with an Alcoholics Anonymous Photography gig "Ride to Recovery," which was a lot of fun.

I also remember Mike telling me "You become what you label yourself on your business card. If you want to be a producer or director, place producer or director on your business card. You can fabricate your professional identity just through a business card. You don't necessarily need credentials stampled on your forehead. More so experience, a portfolio, references and contacts." So the message is that you essentially can become what you envision yourself to become. You label yourself and grow into your label. Don't let society label you. So, then, on those terms, I have become a Commonsenseologist and an Ecopistemologist. Which society doesn't really know what it is, so I am still very liberal and free to define myself generalistically in a world of specialists.

After attending my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with Mike, he also fed me chili burgers and french fries at local restaurants off the Third Street Promenade (as well as checking out the Macintosh store). He still goes after ten years of being sober because apparently AA is a massive Social Sphere, and you don't necessarily want to break the bonds of relationships. A cult to some degree, I suppose. Mike said that consuming alcohol makes him angry, and I said that consuming alcohol makes me feel vulnerable: I want to crawl into a fetal position--much like a rolly polly ball and melt in the corner of a party--if I have consumed too much (which is usually over one can of Guinness; my tolerance level is low. One day after attending my first AA meeting (I felt like Mike's and my life are like some kind of Fight Club, continued, you can get addicted to self-help groups quickly because you have an automatically attentive audience: only desperate people truly listen), I drove back to Orange County and coined the new term for AA. It's called Alternative Addictions Program. It's all about consciously identifying any "bad habits," and finding Alternative Addictions to pursue to replace these "bad habits." I told this idea to Jesse Wright, a music engineer and great friend at California Sound Studios (Orange County) and he said that was a BRILLIANT idea, and I should start a non-profit group. He had to attend the formalized AA due to some driving mishap I don't have the full details on.

So, as you can see, through this extensive timeline, Mike Dillin and I have had quite a few adventures together. We both acquired our roles in our shared photography shoots. Mike was very good director and did an all-encompassing job, but as an assistant, I was able to frame some photographs that had a unique artistic flare. I also remember excitedly coming home after these shoots and we both had our little subliminal competitive wars about "who took the cooler shots," as we were frantically comparing our photographs of the day!

We didn't need any training in school or any advanced degrees: we were learning by doing, and we were getting paid for it too. We were living a College of Creative Studies lifestyle that actually paid money. What a concept! We just needed to help and support each other out. We just needed to help and support each other. We had a feedback going and we learned a lot from each other, though I do admit Mike really helped me in equipment training--because he's got all this equipment I can barely afford myself. But through these experiences, I have come to realize the power of teamwork and mentorship, and that two people can do amazing things that one individual could not possibly do. So, my sense of desiring to be "independent" is being challenged by the existence of a superorganismic synergism with a few individuals in the world--one being Mike Dillin. I wouldn't be where I am today as an environmental media Ph.D. student if it weren't for my cousin Mike.

I first met Mike Dillin in the Fall of 2005, accidentally, a day after Thanksgiving, at my aunt-and-uncle Jean's and Chuck's house in Corona, California. During one of the first two times I met him (I think also on Christmas day), he took an amazing picture of me (which reflected my worrisomeness and seriousness at the time, I was one stressed out cookie as a grad student at UC Riverside), to which Jery Lyn printed out, framed, and gave this signature picture to my parents as a Christmas present (I think just last year). That picture is still at home in Riverside. My parents hung it up on the wall near by my father's seat at the kitchen table.

I was intrigued and curious about Mike because he had a suitcase full of camera equipment and a fancy Sony HD video camera in the back of his SAV-like silky-colored Lexus (now it's great to think I have my own semi-pro Sony DVX camera). I learned that not only he is the the nephew of Steve Dillin--the new, totally cool, super-intelligent jack-of-all-trades electrician hubby of Jery Lyn (my super artist aunt of the family who lives in Sebastopol, California), Mike is also an eclectic employee of Warner Brothers Studios. He's met folks like Jim Carrey and Clint Eastwood, etc, etc, etc. His witty, savvy streak and managerial skills came out flaring since the day we met. The presence of Mike Dillin right then and there implanted some Deep Seeds in my head--which took a few years to manifest. And I am sure will take a long time or a lifetime of pursuits to manifest of the full potential meaning of acquiring a familial relationship with Mike Dillin.

This past quarter I have met probably 200 new people, and most of them I have weeded out from my life (more so, failed to maintain relationships with)--and then after getting exposed to all these new humans, you come to realize and value all those few people you come to associate and spend time with, and most certainly one of them is Mike Dillin. I am sure this is perhaps crude for me to say (from the academic point of view), but I strongly feel that my cousin Mike is more intelligent and real-world practical than half or more than half (or more than 3/4ths) of all the people I meet in the academic arena, undergraduates excluded. Mike's far beyond undergrad. Perhaps he is even beyond grad school. He's in his own class, his own world. Of creative pragmatism. I bet he would win the game of Survivor on an island. I would be on his team, of course.

Despite all of Mike's cynicism and skepticism with academia--which I am close to entire agreement with--except for the very few contacts I choose to maintain on the UCSB campus--I think he is proud of me for pursuing an environmental media Ph.D. at UC Santa Barbara. Given the specifications of the programming. Lots of loose conditions at UC Santa Barbara at the moment.

This is the first time in my life I am able to mentally embrace Mike Dillin and all that he has done for me... through writing this blog. As if I had patched up an ailing, aching fragmented, part of my brain. Through carving out a rough sketch of a timeline of my own personal growth through his presence. Many short paragraphs here can essentially be transformed into epic stories on their own right, but those are for another day. I need a baseline timeline here, as if I were reconstructing some form of geologic history, he he. Yet a seeming geologic history in my own life. There are many pictures to follow the dense writing of this blog. Coming to think about it, Mike Dillin and Oscar Flores are my two most solid collaborators in media. I have failed to establish trustworthy, synergistic interactions with anyone else--even in Santa Barbara. Working mutualist synergisms are rare in life to find, achieve, maintain, and innovate. But once they are achieved, they are so beautiful to experience.

I truly took for granted Mike's presence in my life. Now he is back through New Orleans. I have re-acquired Mike, his cynically optimistic essense, his sense of place and spontaneous adventure. His mastery of a zoo called Los Angeles.

Last night I gave him a big hug, and this big hug encompassed all this--all this growth of identity--vaguely sketched and skimming the surface of this blog. It was a big, meaningful hug in my mind, and it was long overdue.

Mike is King of Spontaniety. Last night I called. I came. We hung out. We both crashed, and he had to work 3am to work on a production gig for gxd knows what film or TV show.

Mike is a fundamental building block to my multi-dimensional dualist life: science merged with art, a scientist desiring to have real world pragmatism. Mike is an Abyss of Adventure. Who knows what the future shall unfold--but all I know, it will be a very interesting ride.

Mike Dillin started a blog. I know about 5 people who started blogs this quarter, which is amazing. http://www.mikedillin.com is his Photography Website, which is much nicer than mine. *Sigh.* http://www.mikedillin.wordpress.com is his blog. He now lives on the "other side" of the Santa Monica Pier, from his original apartment--very crammed in space. It was one of the first apartments right on the beach, closest to the Santa Monica Pier from the west. Santa Monica is still the Homeless Capital of the World, to this day. I can testify.

Key Worlds: Mike Dillin, science-art, science and society, Central Casting, photography, iqr question reality website, Santa Monica, Made of Honor, medieval dark ages, Nikon D80, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alternative Addictions, Steve Dillin, Warner Brothers Studios.

Song Excerpt "Another and Again"

I have had this "broken record" song stuck in my head for a long time. It's called "Another and Again" (I have several matching main melodies to "dress up" the song). I only have two verses here, but the song actually extends to 10-15 verses (it ends up being like one of those 99-bottles of beer-on-the-wall type of songs, but most appropriately so), which one day I have a chance to work with. I started with "what's the point of getting a Ph.D" (most rebelliously and most accurately) as well as the "homeless man" verse. Ever since I met two really cool (and really intelligent) homeless "unincorporated" guys at Girsh park in Goleta (their names were Rick and Jason, more on this another time), this "homeless man" part of the song kept echoing in my brain... AGAIN. So I decided to dump it on paper. And voila!

Rick, the older, "more experienced" unincorporated human warned me (hold up! this IS the quote of the day! Thee "quotable quote.") "Never confuse intelligence with education." Ahem! and Amen! to that. Shxt. I figured that out on MY leaves of absence. Again, it's nice for other people to state aloud all the things that have been stuck in my mind for so long! I'm starting to think the "homeless" people of Santa Barbara aren't exactly your typical, regular homeless people. Maybe they figured out that there are a bunch of non-profits around here to pamper them, in addition to the exceptional climate....

I told Dulce (one of the motivated students in the Blue Horisons course) that I would like to hook up with a local newspaper and one day a week interview a random homeless person in Santa Barbara or Goleta, and do a write up for the paper. The series can be called: "Lessons from a Homeless Man." (or woman)

Another quotable quote from Rick (which I wrote a few poems about, a poem called the Theory of Absence, and it's in my QR book): "You never appreciate what you have until you have it taken away from you." It's cliche in my mind, but heck. It's a re-occurring theme in life that you can build several stories on top of, stories with very thick onion layers that just make you cry 'til your eye balls are about to pop out.

Rick told me that he would like to have a book written about his life story, and I told him that I was interested myself in such a task. I even gave him my ACCURATE cell phone (I have given people distorted versions of my cell phone number, depending on whether I even want to associate myself with such individuals... perhaps my degree of distortion of my cell phone number correlates with the degree of aversion from that individual, ha ha ha...). I was honest with Rick--I need to clear my plate, and it might take a little while to do so, but I think doing a co-authorship of a book will help me write my book Surviving the Systems. I would like to write my own life story through the comparisons of notes with a "homeless man." To compare and contrast--the parallels are numerous.

I identify myself strongly with unincorporated, "homeless" people primarily because (1). I thrive under difficult, arduous field circumstances (why I adore geologists, and the conditions of third-world countries...) (2). Homeless people are individualistic and maximally unincorporated, (3). They dress with the rags they got, and don't conform to the Hollywood fashion obsession of southern California, and (4). If I "believed" in re-incarnation, I strongly assume that I'm a born-again cave-girl (well, technically, I AM because cave-dudes and cave-dudettes WERE my ancestors, but in terms of a generalist (non-overspecialized-office-hermit-crab-dweller) know-how of the world, a live-off-the-land-day-to-day-survival, dealing-with-the-elements type of lifestyle, that is what I'm looking for). One thing I do not associate with homeless people is "drug consumption." Everyone consumes drugs--whether physically or mentally. I chose to be addicted to writing, and many homeless people became addicted to beer and cocaine and alcohol and the works. Can't people be a little bit more creative? Can't they find a more socially acceptable form of Alternative Addiction? (I want to create a song called Alternative Addictions). Can't they find a more self-fulfilling, rather than self-destructive addiction? Pete Sadler, one of my geology profs at UC Riverside, blatantly, sarcastically remarked: "Scientists and heroine addicts are one and the same. They are both addicted to something. Scientists are addicted to research and learning new things about their pet pea system of study. Heroine addicts are obsessed with shooting needles up their arms. In the end, we both stimulate the same pleasure center in the brain. In the end, we both experience the same 'mental highs.'" This is not the exact quote of Pete Sadler, but I'll be dxmmed it's dead on true.

So, MY being addicted to things.... I became addicted to writing and learning new things about myself and the world around me. I didn't kill enough brain cells in the ritualistic college process of "endless Isla Vistan partying of purposelessness" to go through life just mindlessly doing things. Doing what I am told to do. I decided to become a slave to my own ideas, otherwise I would be the slave to others. I decided to not accept Reality as it is. For me to survive, I am addicted to creating my own Reality. Every day, I have to do it. Because the existing Reality already nearly killed me. I am addicted to spacetime. I am addicted to applying my right brain to creating Reality (I guess that's why I think Blue Horizons is an optimal program for me, being addicted to creating film and like being addicted creating Reality, or at least a boxed version of it). I think it's a good addiction to have. At least society doesn't seem to find me as a menace or pest (not yet, at least). Oh ya. I'm also addicted to air, water, food, exercise, sleep, a safe-territory and a roof over my head, bare-minimum mammalian eu-social interactions (a.k.a. "the social pill", you know... the basics (I wrote a poem on this too, "I think therefore, I am" type of poem). Stuff that homeless people are addicted to as well (in fact, all humans, and nearly all organisms), but homeless folks struggle more to retrieve them.

How come there seems to be more homeless men than homeless women?

I remember Meg buying a book written by a physicist-gone-non-profit-philanthropist who told the story of a homeless guy by the name of Stuart. It was an interesting story (for what I read of it), but it wasn't structured well. The Present was the first chapter and the Deep Past was the last. I automatically skipped to the last chapter to investigates Stuart's childhood beginnings, because ultimately that is where all bad habits and Markov-chain reactions start (as in my song, Shifting Baselines, "Please be kind, do rewind, all the tangled layers of space and time, back to the point of origins, for where it begins is where it ends is where it begins all over again") (Heck. I'm citing myself, pathetic. Then again. Self-citation is like citing all the random elements of my environment that allowed me to organize and produce a self-constructed idea. I cite myself. I cite my environment. No big deal. I'm not egotistical. I'm just relativistical) Maybe I'd be copying this physicist if (more I hope to be "when") I write this Surviving the Systems book, but it would have an interesting spin--it would be a doubled-up story of myself and Rick.

The last quotable quote Rick told me (Rick actually told me several quotable quotes) was: "The ladies don't seem to understand this, nor seem to think that this phenomenon is feasible, but it IS possible for men to have their hearts broken... most notably by women." This I have yet to witness. I have only experienced extreme desperate circumstances for me to go about crawling on their hands and knees, before their tiny-little sympathetic emotional centers are actually FINALLY stimulated. Until their huge ego-centric alpha-male machismo melts away into some level of social and environmental awareness, to display some feminine sensitivity. I guess I'm going to have to follow up on this quote, perhaps with some systematic self-scientific data gathering. He he. (Do you know I also want to write a book on N = 7, Dating as a Series of Scientific Experiments?) Well, I'm giving away my ideas like I'm donating my heart and my brain to society. Well, I'm doing that anyway. So, nevermind. They are MY ideas. They're self-published on Blogger anyway. They can't be stolen. I'm protected, and I'm going to pursue these ideas one way or another.

I can't seem to Quarantine Reality very well. Nor Quarantine my Creativity. Whenever I have attempted to Quarantine Reality, I seemed to be hit and slapped in the face and mentally bombarded with new elements of Reality, and then the system of my mind changes size and shapes as the new elements are rapidly being attempted to become organized and classified. *sigh*