512. Jokesteriology: Strategies Toward Generating Humor, Laughter (And How Scientists and Other Brainiacs Can Survive the Colbert Show Hot Seat)

My friend Maria recommended me to watch the Malcolm Gladwell TED Talk, in which I just did... and now that I have watched two Malcolm Gladwell talks in two days, I am already starting to see emerging strategies of his narrative. And I must say, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the very FEW people in the world who is able to get away with just being on stage and telling a story without needing any powerpoint or visual aid. His fro, lean physique, combined with his humorously absurd narratives in varying tones of voices can render him not exactly a "comedian" but a "humorous lecturer, humorous enough to compliment entertainment with education... a skill beyond the drabby university lecturer, but not Saturday Night Live, though... I bet Malcolm COULD function in Saturday night live."

Actually, I take that back. He BARELY survived nearly every iteration of the Colbert Show, except for one round I could say he left without bad taste. Malcolm is more methodical, logical, and his arguments are more complex to be rapid-paced, quick-witted humor. His answers are more long-winded and he seems annoyed every time he is interrupted.... It's natural but I think he need to learn how to adapt to the Climate of Colbert. Speaking of last night's talk "failure of experts... failing to adapt to the environment you are in." But then again, Gladwell's pop theories and stories are more complex narratives, layered phenomena behind the surface of things... so I'm not sure if quick-witted humor of the Colbert Show can match his efforts. I sympathize, though I think if Steven Pinker can gracefully survive the Colbert hot seat, then so can Malcolm Gladwell, if he changes his strategies.

And then I started to think about the General Theories of Humor and decided that I have reached a tipping point in my knowledge, that I will presently attempt to classify the Theories and/or Strategies of Jokesteriology, from very elemental to complex. (P.S. I have been doing such an immense amount of literature review the last three weeks, though it was on marine environmental history, and NOT on Theories of Saturday Night Live, I bet there are a few thousand books on Joksteriology, and I decided not to look them up. I reconciled to figure out how my mind is synthesizing various disparate experiences in my own life, before I am forced by the academic intellectual firing squad to find other people's work and cite them because their ideas are compatible with my own personal logic structures... such is the cycle... independent synthesis... find references retroactively as a necessary academic pill...).

First of all, laughter or humor or amusement is generated when one element is unexpectedly associated with another element, or suites of elements, and that this unexpected association does not directly harm you (hence you be the butt of a joke, or experiencing a very devastating, ironic event). Most humor strategies end up being very "light" (benign) whereas some other humor strategies are much more intense, because emergent humor comes from telling the truth, rather than distorting the truth. Humor comes from a certain degree of "lying" or distortion from reality, or reality unexpectingly associating to construct a realistic distortion of unexpectedness.

0. Visual humor: contorted bodies, contorted and silly faces. Extremely gestureful. Unusual imagery-backdrop-props. (Jimmy Carrey and Colbert Show as classic examples)

1. Linguistic humor: simple play on words. Words with double meaning. Words said in the same way but different spelling or different meanings. Words used out of context. Inventing new words that you can understand the meaning based on context. (Jules sometimes)

2. The Usual Hollywood Tee-Hee 15-year-old-boy Jokes: Sexual body parts. Burping, farting, peeing, pooping. Anything otherwise is standard socially embarrassing in American culture, at least. (A good chunk of standup comedy, Ali G)

3. The Usual Hollywood Like-Whatever 15-year-old-girl Gossil Jokes, Which Can End Up Being Distortion of Knowledge Through the Telephone Game Mixup: He said, she said. He looks like that. She looks like this. He did that. She did this. (Chick Flick Movies) (Jay Leno and other your-nightly-news-in-humor-show embody rules 2 and 3).

4. Street-Smart Wise-Guy Asking Idiotic Questions to "Intelligent" Yet Highly Specialized, Well-Paid Experts, Demonstrating How Idiotic and Unwise Many Experts Actually Are. (Most prominent in the Ali G show).

5. Fast-paced Interruptive, Out-of-Place and Often-times Counterintuitive Insanity aka The HOT SEAT. Rapid-firing ADHD countering and/or complimenting interrupting everything that you say, attempting to put the person out of place of their comfort zones or arguments, unexpected persepectives. Placing interviewees in the "hot seat." Sell yourself in 10 second or less or then I will interrupt you with an off-the-wall (1) complimenting re-interation of what the interviewer just said (2) self-referential complimenting, or associating with a current news affair (3) fast-paced countering-disagreeing. Colbert will inevitably interrupt you after 10 seconds of straight talking just to maintain conversation and not a monologue. It keeps the show and footage and facial expressions very lively and interesting and very fast paced, but makes the interviewee oftentimes uncomfortable and awkward... except Steven Pinker! Ira Flatow (NPR's Science Friday) in humor is a D and Colbert in humor is an A+ though they do have common guests on their shows. Ira Flatow's hosting is more comprehensible on first shot, but not necessarily memorable... but Colbert is more memorable, though incomprehensible, which may increase comprehensibility in the longer term. Science has a lot to learn from Colbert. Colbert is a genius, not only he is a Faux Republican, he is a Faux Religious Case and Counter-any-Science-Scholar-Argument just for kicks and giggles!

6. Telling the Truth in Vast Space and Time, Revealing Irony, Unexpectedness, Counter-intuitiveness in reality, simply because in cross-generational phenomenon and people forget... and don't connect the dots. And such is the case for human history and environmental history... and Biologically Incorrect. It's humor you have to dig out from the tortures of academia. Invention of true, novel humor. There should be a Joksteriology Department, I do say. Example or irony and contraction that may be told humorously... I just spoke with Peter. You invent laws for predator control. Then too many predators are killed to a point of endangered species. Then you let the predators proliferate, and then the predators become out of control, then predators attack other endangered species. Predator control programs in contradiction with the endangered species act. Contradictory laws. Though science and governance somewhat co-evolve, they seem to be often times out of step with each other. Environmental history = emergent humor in human behavior. I see humor in human behavior all the time since I learned about myself through the eyes of non-human organisms. My knowledge is biologically rooted, projecting into human behavior. This humor is very slow to accumulate, sadly. Complex stories are not quick fixes to acquire and craft.

Just watched a Colbert Report series with Malcolm Gladwell over time. His style of writing is exploratory, an adventure in ideas, emerging trends in anecdotal, sometimes quirky stories (TED X Prize, the story of the dude who diversified mass-produced spaghetti sauce in Prego and Ragu). Malcolm's goal is similar to my own: extracting esoteric ideas from the university and translating them into fun adventures for everyone to engage. Encouraging people to examine their worlds, and the world beyond their own immediate worlds. He's not interested in converting people, more so interested in my similar pursuits "if to laugh, then to think." Dude, he is so flipping left handed. His major pop theories are (1) the tipping point, thresholds in nonlinear systems, whether social or natural (2) blink, thinking without thinking, or the notion of thinking with various different layers, whether your guts, your gonads, your heart and your head, but some layers are conscious to certain people and unconscious to others, some people are not in tune with their emotional, visceral, or sexual brains (for example, Colbert lays everything out on the table, what you see is what you get "I don't even dream!"), education and experience versus making decisions with gut instincts (e.g. with how food industries wanted to seek universals on the bell curve rather than diversity of taste preferences of Prego, hybridizing synthesis and diversity, it's disgusting because economic efficiency demands you produce the same product, imagine you went to a buffet that had all the same food in every section of the buffet, what's the point? corporate SOBs to even think that way! e.g. open niche spaces that are visceral, not rational) (3) outliers, how people are anomalies, and how they got to be anomalies were highly circumstantial e.g. Bill Gates in 1969 had access to a computer portal in middle school, very lucky to have access at such an early age, e.g. Albert Einstein born in an African tribe probably would have not discovered the theories of relativity (4) an article coming out on how the IQ test does not measure intelligence but measures how well you take the test. Well, ALL tests are like that. People used to classify items based on utility (potato with knife) when now people classify based on similarity in shape, size, structure, phylogenetic tree characteristics, origins rather than utility). That demonstrates a different value system regime, not right or wrong, intelligence from idiot.

Just watched Richard Dawkins and Colbert, Steven Pinker and Colbert. Steven Pinker was SLICK. He did the best out of all the people I watched, outperformed Gladwell and Dawkins. He's more adaptive and knows how to boil things down to simple ideas in short phrases. Example. "Explain the brain in five or less words." "Neurons fire in patterns." Patterned firing --> ideas --> thoughts --> actions, etcetera. I'm impressed. Colbert made an insult "pompous Harvard professor" at the beginning, but Pinker rolled that off. Colbert at one point had a 1.5 second pause that left him in this stump that I had never seen him in. Pinker won.... Colbert does the best when it's easy to COUNTER the guest speaker. For Dawkins, it's God. Dawkins failed miserably stating that "natural selection" was a purpose. Even the process of natural selection as a SIEVE is an ACCIDENT that happens to construct order... RETROSPECTIVELY. Overall, Dawkins is trying to convert people by insulting the people he's trying to convert: religious folk. For Malcolm Gladwell, Colbert was a bit more interruptive to Gladwell's methodical thinking. With Pinker, Colbert was more HUMOROUSLY COMPLIMENTARY. Cool experiments performing magic tricks with kids... including Colbert himself. If Colbert knew a little more about evolutionary psychology, assuming that the human mind is more hardwired than softwired, I bet Colbert would have been a better Steven Pinker counter-puncher.

A Blog in Attempt to Focus, Fall Quarter 2007: The Shxt Literally Hit the Fan... The Clash of Information in My MindSpaceTime

I literally just saved my 1300-dollar Nikon camera from crashing to the floor--that was a close call, as I had just seen a Hollywood-hype flick, finishing off "The Perfect Storm." I vaguely remember watching that film, or more-so half that film with Dr. Anderson was performing a root canal operation in downtown Santa Barbara, perhaps about 4 years ago. Oh ya. There's no harm in watching George Clooney... eh ya... Apparently this class is now being co-taught... by a film-philosopher--from another country? Spain? Hmmm. Dr. "Melinda Szaloky." (wow, what a name, makes me feel the abruptness of my own last name Minnich," pronounced Minnick," nothing soft and slurry and gentle about it, like my mom's last name "Davaris." She seems cool. Yes, I'm being very descriptive and detail in resolution. I just met everyone. They are little stick figures in front of class, goodness sakes! Of course, I say "she seems cool." What ELSE can I say? I think I am battling myself from the new world view given to me from Dr. Steven Pinker (cool Harvard pop sci prof). I think Dr. Pinker literally gave me the gift and inquisition to probe my entire left cerebral cortex. My brain of language. Play games with it. I think Dr. Pinker literally trained me to be right-brain creative with my left brain. How fun. Lots of more questions to think about now. So now, I'm very self-analytical of the words I use, particularly cuss words. And now? You can see there is a clash collision of random thoughts from the past to the present, and I don't see a clear future as a result, and I am supposed to be writing an article on Dr. Pinker for the Daily Nexus, and right now since I have been bombarded with my first official class of the quarter, I am no where near this goal, though I can attempt to turn it in... late... sheesh.

Let's see. Where am I? I am in the fourth floor of the UCSB central library in a room all to myself, a very nice temporary office, and I had been going through this ritual of collecting all data and supplies needed for me to stay put and focus, and march through the tunnel hole. I am surrounded by my own chaos and crxp, and the goal is this quarter to channel and integrate all my thoughts related to this film studies class. How can you actually do that? Well, it's simple. Film is the Language of the Right Brain. It's SpaceTime Reasoning. It's beautiful. In film, and in the fabric of spacetime, as portrayed through the helpful technology of a camera, everything integrates to everything else. Everything relates to everything else, just like Ecology, as I have stated in my film. Aside: I told Dr. Walker I would see her tomorrow afternoon during her after hours. Need to prep.

So, I have been going through this ritualistic preparation and this realm of geographic isolation in the library so I can focus and build a solid baseline to have the capacity to focus in this class. It took me a little over an hour, which is shameful and understandable at the same time, especially since I just came from Riverside in the Subaru aka "Talei's Car," which is, as of this moment, literally full of crxp (crxp is transformed into discrete bodies of useful materials once this crxp becomes "organized" later on in the evening). What did I do right after class? Well, at first I tried to talk a little bit to Nicole, Cheryl, and I forgot her name--a grad student of Dr. Walker's--*random thought: asking a professor to be an advisor for a grad student is like asking for a temporary marriage, a few years long, but ultimately mentally scarring for your entire life* but the conversation was cut short, and I think everyone is a bit overwhelmed, lots of stuff to do in the beginning of the quarter--faintly hinted by other people's expressions. Then, I was walking across campus, I couldn't help to notice all these people, all these humans... I mean relative to the baseline of summer of 2007, the whole Blue Horizons stint. Like Humans raiding the bike paths, to a point of threats of being runned over. Humans eating food, making lines in stores. Ugh. I liked it when the campus was bare naked. When the residual population were just the true structure of university intellect: profs, grad students, post-docs, staff on half-time, and maybe a few undergrads. Ahhh. Summer. I guess you only appreciate things once they are gone or temporarily removed.

So, I spent maybe 10 minutes walking over to Associated Students, waited in line for a couple of minutes, only to realize I LEFT MY WALLET IN THE CAR. Grrreat.... So, I was frustrated, having to walk all the way back to north campus, where I illegally parkd in a faculty-staff spot (though ironically for the 10th time in a row of illegal parking, I STILL haven't gotten a ticket, and I still haven't had the need to cuss off a parking service person, as Dr. Pinker advised to tell them to "kiss the cunt of a cow"). Though I never would. I would probably just puppy dog and cry. Forty dollars. Parking tickets aren't cheap around here. So, I drove and moved my car around campus to the other parking lot near by the library and AS. Waited in line. Got the book. It's a green book. We have to read six articles. Great. Well, let me check out this green book, while I'm thinking about it.

DISCLAIMER: THESE STREAM-LINE LIKE JOURNALS ARE USEFUL FOR SEVERAL PURPOSES. TO UNDERSTAND THE LOGIC OF RANDOM STREAMLINE THOUGHTS. TO BERID OF SOME OLD-STALE IDEAS IN MY MIND, AND TO CREATE NEW ONES. AND ADDITIONALLY TO DOCUMENT THE COMICAL ABSURDITIES OF UNIVERSITY CAMPUS-LIFE AND THE INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS (MY BEING THE GUINEA PIG) OF BEING A PART OF A MASS-PRODUCED UNIVERSITY EDUCATION SYSTEM. I GUESS, THE ESSENTIAL GOAL OF "BIOLOGICALLY INCORRECT" ANYWAY. I am only saying this again because people may think this randomness is close to useless. They can think that way all they want. P.S. Out of randomness, I want to create a film on the psychological abuse of individuals in a mass-produced system. Like interview random freshmen who come out of Campbell Hall: "how do you feel about the experience?" Huh. I left all the time feeling like SHXT!

A short list of other things I did. Went back to the car. Slowly extracted useful things from a pile of crxp in my car. Black folder. Punch-holer. Or, I mean hole-puncher. Mouthwash to compensate for the werther's original. Camera. Computer. Went to the library, used the slow elevator, went to the fourth floor, and MIRACULOUSLY found a room, free and open to use for myself. Lucky, lucky me. Hit first time. I felt like I won the lottery. Slapped down my few thousand dollars of crxp (camera + computer + amateur digicam) and left the building, like a stupid mentally-chaotic student would (honestly, I value my stuff, but when my mind is on ADD mode, I can hardly see ANYTHING). Then I plough through my stuff. Call Oscar to relieve my anxiety and isolation in the room. Thinking about calling Bub. Then looked around. Have nothing to drink. Went downstairs. Paid 1.25 rip off for a diet coke 20-ozer in the machine by the 24-hour reading room. Ran back up the stairs than the elevator, for more exercise, and then went back to the room, only to realize that I didn't have my alarm to psychologically and hypothetically an endless perception of space and time. I just tell my housemates and everyone else that my alarm is broken and pretend to be frustrated with it (truth is it's not), and even Julia (one of my housemates) and I had an interesting conversation about how graduate students play all these pscyhological tricks and mind-games, all in attempt to create arbitrary temporal deadlines, just to get things done, and work on a daily basis. I do this all the time, and it's the first conscious conversation I have had on this subject. I think the psychology of graduate students on a daily basis, trying to finish Ph.Ds is a very valid and useful Ph.D. dissertation on its own. So, other people would not usually make a trip back to the car just to get an ALARM, but I panicked and literally went back to the car to get an alarm. Not only that. But an extra t-shirt. Blue. NASA on the front. And my beanie (managed to retrieve from Riverside, it was cold up at UCSB last week). I have to deal with convection issues. Honestly, if I am cold and consciously bxtching about being cold, I would have failed to become successful to create an environmental buffer zone for optimal studying at the library). And before that, I took a picture of some environmental messaging about biodegradeable tampons. It was a picture I had to take. Women's restroom. Fourth floor. Unfortunately, the machine to purchase your biodegradeable tampon souvenir was unfortunately... broken. Through these strings of behaviors, you can honestly detect how my mind is partially resisting this annexation of this course, and fall quarter in general, but I am starting to accept that the shxt is hitting the fan, and if I process the shxt fast enough, maybe it will turn out into something as good as a wilted rose, because I'm not sure if I right now have the capacity to transform shxt into a rose in full bloom. It's due to the rapid speed of the quarter system. Mental metabolism that is too rapid does not render optimal products... unfortunately....

Here, I am, it's amazing! I am actually focusing! Ha ha. Now to get a sip of over-priced diet coke. I am happy Dr. Walker acknowledge my existence in class today.

So, what happened BEFORE class? I will say, in many ways it's quite arbitrary how a human mind cookie-cuts, organizes, and decides to RECORD space and time, so I decided my code-language-based high resolution starting pointis when I enter the 217 highway, zooming past cars over 80 miles per hour, making sure not to be late for Dr. Walker's class. Before that, I left late. Before that, I was scrutinizing the lecture of Dr. Steven Pinker in the car, figuring out where all the juicy quotes were located. And also I was experiencing mental interference because I had some superb ideas about tweaking certain elements of my 1-2 page proposal for my interdisciplinary Ph.D. My dad over the phone, combined with reading Dr. Brendon Larson's Acknowledgments in how certain professors "oiled" and "lubed" bureacracy (or as Shine Ling stated, "Bend Bureacracy" as if you are bending spacetime rules) (in which the nuts and bolts of existing bureaucracy and convention are fastened a little bit too tight), and that ultimately, a Ph.D on my side will come from support of the trenches of the professors, and that I should mentally release any constraints of bureaucracy imposed by the Graduate Division. Their rules are arbitrary anyway. Any rules constructed by humans that are distant from any rules that dictate organism's behavior on the basis of survival... is essentially ARBITRARY, and more than likely, at least in this day-in-age... silly. ("What is rational versus what is bureacratic are two ENTIRELY different entities"). So, I was going back-and-forth in my mind (given lack of sleep, one element I am not in full charge of, though I feel fully charged from returning to Riverside for a mere 12 hours). Did I mention I had to pay 86 dollars for a new AC adapter for this computer? Dxmmit. That is what I say. An unexpected billing. The other AC adapter was so "twisted" (literally) that the plastic-like insulation broke, and you could see the broken electrical neurons coming out of the gaping technological wound. I assume it's the mass accumulation of many days and years of "my fault" for not appropriately handling my ac adapter. Oh well.

So there you go. Lots of mental conflict and turmoil in the car. Now highway 217, checking out the ocean, and the salt marsh, and the new "European Circle" in the car entry to campus (WAY better than a traffic signal, amen), and then zipped to the north parking lot, near by Miriam's office at Summer Sessions SAASB Building (Did I ever tell you that I felt like the university is like this super-organismic structure, designed all around one individual student's need? It's brilliant. If a student has a problem, there is a matching building and institution that has already been created to deal with that problem. Exercise? Gym. Tuition? Fees office. Really bad problems? Ombuds office. I might need to use that. Hmmm. Rental dispute problems? See Community Housing Office. Food? Store. Rip-off restaurant and campus catering. You're bored and want to volunteer instead of sitting on a couch smoking weed all day in front of a television? Okay. Go to CAB. Community Affairs Board. Volunteer hub for Santa Barbara.)

(To me, the university is matrix gestalt of the byproducts of human minds across several generations. It's like exploring every possible dimension of the human mind, and I just run through the corridors, going through windows and doors, trying to find the keys to unlock them and see what's on the other side, and try to figure out how the elements of the University Matrix are all related to each other. And I run, or moreso Terra and Buz run all over the Matrix trying to solve and put the pieces together of the ultimate jigsaw puzzle: MindMirrorsSpaceTime. Yep. That jigsaw puzzle. The Matrix of Science and Art. The Matrix of Human Ecology. The univeristy is riddled with bits and pieces, and Terra and Buz forage for them and collect them all the time, and try to put together their own new Matrix--all for their own survival. It's a fun hobby, perhaps for Buz. For me, a fun necessity.)

Wowee, that was a MAJOR aside, but a long-standing thought in my mind I am absolutely happy to relieve, to intellectually belch out, because it' s been stagnant, and I have now discussed it, in addition to creating a quasi cartoon about it at UCLA.

It's frustrating to think that this quarter will be interference, resurrection of old Demons from my Book of Questioning Reality. I hate having repeat ideas, but the thing is I must be patient to re-tell the story of Question Reality all over again, and listen to people's responses, and hence, which will subliminally (if not consciously) tweak my story again and again and again, modify and strengthen my arguments through the public, through people's responses. As I told Sarah Simpson, the first time you write a book, you are essentially communicating to yourself. The second time you write and revise your book, you are learning how to communicate with the broader society, and that takes a LOT of time to do that... It's like a chronic dialogue with society in general. But I have a base, that I figured out in relative isolation (with the support group of the UCR Geobums Anonymous (GA, aka Geoholics Anonymous)... he he... nah... just the Earth Sciences Department). I can't claim myself to be a geologist, but I do claim myself to be a Geoholics Anonymous member. Still not good enough to wear a geology t-shirt. *sigh* Looks like I will have to create a Geoholics Anonymous t-shirt to suit my current knowledge state.

So, this quarter, as happened today, be patient, and work with your repeat thoughts, look at them again, write them again, revise and build on them again. Why? Because in the end, you will publish writing that is not only your brain, but the summation of your brain communicating with myriads of other brains in society. The more you do that the more universal your intellectual, creative byproducts become. See? There. Now, through isolation, I understand the significance of speaking, giving public lectures. I find it therapeutic to talk to people, simply because I am belching out previously quarantined demons and people give me feedback! Amen! It seems like I am eager to discuss anything but the class itself. One second here, while I reassess mentally "where in the hxll am I at."

Yes, I parked illegally in a professor's spot, north side of campus (as predictably usual), and thankfully police records don't count parking tickets, because I would be notorious (I had this idea to collect parking tickets from every UC campus and make a public piece of artwork out of it). Hmmm. I think I already mentioned this. Sorry, mentioned it to Matt as well. Oooh. Matt. Sore point. Ouch. He never called back. When I'm in the mood, I am going to call and harangue him, or innuendo him as Dr. Pinker stated. Time? Where's my cell phone. 1:56 pm. Close call. Bell rang before entered class. Same as Blue Horizons. Buchanon 1920. I am desensitized by the classroom now. At first I felt cold and dark in that class in Constance Penley's environmental media course, (coming to think of it, if I watch "An Inconvenient Truth" one more time, I think I'm going to shoot myself. I need to talk to Dr. Walker about that. I will tell her that I have old critique notes from Constance' class and I will write a critique on my blog instead of re-watching it again. Dr. Pinker subtley stated that he detests Al Gore, as he is portraying himself as this "prophet" and attacking our morals and values about our decision-making, man, Pinker rubbed off on me immensely! it's like this form of intellectual sex with people that it can be of any age and size and shape, most oftentimes males, and I am so mesmerized by their intelligence that I am on this mental high as I like to call it "intellectual sex" since I am in rational disgust of the physical kind, though evolutionarily that's just how it is, my rational brain is well... uh... always in questioning of my primal components... and I guess that's why people dope up and booze up, to hush their cerebral cortices while expressing their primal animal components of their minds, I myself have to be exceptionally brain-dead and tired to express primality. But intellectual sex is like kissing ideas, consuming abstract concepts of another male mind and it's just so... sooo... perverted that I am writing this way, I am ashamed, but there are so few males who just shake me off my feet and make me re-look at who I am, e.g. Seth gave me the whole Earth, and Dr. Pinker made me go back and question my left-brain, which I have been giving little credit to, and claim it to be largely the PA for my dominant director right brain, but god man). So, I enter the class, and based on statements of Film Studies staff from the previous week, I assumed the course to be relatively empty... uh... Not exactly quite so. More like getting quite full. I am not sure how the beefed up the attendance like that. MTV commercial across campus? I'm sure. Ha ha ha. Well it's good, but it's bad and overwhelming at the same time. Because it provides less opportunity for meeting new people and promoting social interactions. It's just starting from scrap. Meet new profs. New students. Not necessarily new course material, but well, I think it will be a class that will allow me to express myself. Well, there were other things that crossed my head when entering class. I strategically positioned myself in the back, so I could detecte the dynamics of the entire class, where I had a nice electrical plug for my computer, as sharing the outlet with another student. No good internet access there. And? The two profs (at first I thought one of them was a TA) were passing out syllabuses (syllabi, whatever). I think I acknowledged mentally: this is it. The quarter started. The shxt officially hit the fan, and I am going to have to start processing it mad into a wilted flower, AT LEAST. One day I will raise the bar to a full-bloom rose... I already can't wait for the weekend, things are THAT bad.... in my mind.

I mean, I haven't even mentally annexed where I live. No pix of the two story house out in the boonies of Goleta, off of Cathedral oaks, 3-4 miles north of campus. Never really blogged about my now assigned "cool" housemates, who chose me over dozens of people to be a roommate. Though Karl said there was hit hot chick 20-year old who came by the house. She was hot, but not exactly a person to room with. I told Karl that there are friends and there are housemates, and it's rare to have both. Found out that Karl had been living with Kyle nearly all four years in college, so it kinda makes sense why Kyle strategically positioned himself in Santa Barbara though he is officially enrolled for a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon, doing research on climate and energetics and policy and such. And Karl? Remote sensing, modeling snowpacks and run-off in the Sierra Nevada. Long-term indications of El Nino, not global warming evidence. and Julie or Julia, sorry. As interdisciplinary as I am. Using some software and mathematical models to "match management plans with ecosystems" though the math does not account for shifts in ecosystems and the concept of adaptive management. But for her, at least it's a starting point. And ultimatley I think her work should have been more of a philosophical work rather than giving the project the illusion of science since you add this extra filter and mask of dumping numbers into a software program, just so scientists have enough confident to connect their neuron A to neuron B, which equates to component A to component B of their pet pea microcosmal system of study. Scientists use a psychological crutch of statistics to process their data they think their minds can't do. Not to blame Julia at all. Just a general phenomenon. And? Statistics is good, but WITHIN REASON. As Matt says, "Everything in moderation. Even moderation itself." But I think statistics and models are being heavily abused at this point. That was just a cliche run-on of mine. I have nothing against Julia's research at all. It's a great problem. I would just wonder how she would approach her questions if computers and models and statistics never existed. If indigenous people can manage their systems without computers, why can't we? Is it a scale thing? A data volume thing? A psychological crutch thing? Or the difference between an indigenous society and the modern human matrix of interdependence that spans the globe simply is SIZE. So a computer and modeling would kind of be necessary since the volume and scale of information is nearly impossible for one single human mind to grasp. So... we have computers. So, I suppose I should talk about my new house and roommates and my last couple of weeks there, just so I can focus in class. As you can tell, partially so, I have three housemates. I apparently interchange"housemate" and "roommate" a bit too much, so beware. Karl. Julia. Kyle. Character profiles? History? A bit to talk about. Will spare you now. Place where we live? Very cool two-story house. Divorce individual rooms versus the common rooms by a flight of stairs. It's brilliant. Common social rooms are downstairs, and upstairs are rooms of individual privacy. Couldn't ask like a better layout. It's almost like a design for a brothel or strip club. Social happenings in the downstairs. And the extra pay jobs upstairs. Sick design. Wonder who the hxll is the architect of this semi-old house. The architecture of many houses in Goleta remind me a lot of the architecture of houses in Riverside, primarily in the Ellwood area. Just had to say that.

The ceiling of Buchanon 1920 is riddled with overlapping squares and there are regions of black that have no covering at all. Now that I am mentally tired and display no emotion, I can barely recall a sense of tension being in the room, full of so many students--unexpectedly. This environment forces me to play autistic again. No humanity. No knowledge of others. Yet. All shallow human transactions. Such is the norm. But hopefully some time-depth soon enough.

Very swiftly after I had my computer set up, Dr. Walker and Dr. Szaloky (did I get that right? It's the first time I didn't loo at the name) started talking about the class in immense enthusiasm, and in trade-off conversations. You feel warm, and welcome by their presence, particularly Dr. Walker. There are so many subtle elements my mind has detected in the past that makes me scoff upon finding out that Dr. Walker received a distinguished teaching award. Well, DUH!!! I suppose it would be appropriate to describe the static appearance of the two high-energy profs, but I was in the back, and they were WAY in the front. Dr. Walker has blackish hair, of average height (well, I'm biased, I'm close to six feet tall), perhaps in her 4os? What can I say about her. I don't have her facial appearance detailed and resolved, but all I know is that when you stare at her, you know her eyes, her mind is OPEN. When you talk to her, she is LISTENING and she is OPEN, to as much as she has the capacity to be so. And OPEN and humorous people are, well... people I like being around. Simple as that. I have to get used to Dr. Szaloky. Honestly, she is still a complete surprise to me.

Out of spatial-temporal randomness of this blog, I don't know why this popped out, but there is this girl in the back of the class (quite a few chairs away from me, to my right) who bellowed "Are you vegan?" in response to Dr. Walker's asking of the class "Do you have any questions?" People laughed at that. Nearly simultaneously, Dr. Walker and Dr. Szaloky said flatly, "No." She was randomly out of context. And I? Speaking of this occassion out of random context. "Chaos and order are all a matter of perception." And I say this quote in random locality of this page.

Though the shxt hit the fan, I am relieved the quarter started. As long as I am able to associate everything I do with this class, then I think I will be fine. As long as I have PRODUCT by the end of the quarter, I think I will be fine.

The Green Screen folks were there, more towards the front of class. Lots of familiar faces. It's nice to have a class with a merging of grad students and undergrads. It's better that way. Unstratified and collaborative, rather than this ridiculous "dominance hierarchy" as Dr. Pinker talked about "dominance" in human relationships. If I had full capacity to focus on the GreenScreen project with Goleta Beach, well, it would be outlandishly crazy Michel Gondry prism of place crazy, and I am not good with bossing people around, so I would do the film by myself. People only get what I am doing retro-actively, not pre-treatment, not any.... I don't know, I just fear that since in human groups I am adaptive and consensus-oriented and sensitive to what other people think, that if I participated in that project, it would just end up conservative, and? Conservative sucks in a time for the need for immense creativity and radical change. Who knows? Maybe the group ends up with an outlandish director who can pull off a twist of my own extreme radicalness of creativity.

I say "so" a lot. Just as Vonnegut says "And so on." "So it goes." And so it does go, this stream of information from the class....

I can only WATCH so many films. They are so overwhelming in information to me, I really need a friend by my side when watching. The entire time I really wished Maria de Oca were there so I could talk to her about what I thought of the movie after class. Other people are film people. Other people are scientists. But Maria and I have made personal decisions to be "science communicators" with solid science backgrounds, and due to this tricky and slight deflection in perception (mental tweak, I suppose), we have more in common than just yapping with the typical film person and scientist. They chose to wear different hats.

There seems to be quite a few film studies students into environmental issues and the Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) and all that. Film Studies going "green." Goody for me.

I think my mental metabolism has gone down. I am mentally deflated and mentally fading. Not a good thing. Need to finish stuff. I think I need to ... Lost a thought. DISCLAIMER: I think the rest of this blog will be... uh... more choppy and inclomplete sentences. Just because my brain is getting tired, and my neurons aren't connecting the way how I would ideally like them to.

Ya! I got some good techno going here. Whew. I'm going to get a crush of coffee downstairs. One moment.

Biologically Incorrect: Super Survey and Movie-Filming Question: What do students do to slip drinks into the library without the staff noticing? He he he. Just did the sweater trick. Not really a trick. It's lame-ly obvious.

You look at random students, and you stare at them, and you don't know what to say. Because you have no association with them, except they are evolutionarily perceived in your mind to be "good-looking" and they have the appearance of wear-and-tear of a graduate student. But you just long and continue to stare at them, and longed to have a medium or a device to open the door of conversation. Dxmmit. Where is my film camera? Where is my cute black lab that everyone wants to hug and pet and cuddle? (Kristin Hepper trick :-). I have a long road of writing ahead of me before I can jump to a film camera. And a long road before my door is wide, wide open and free again, like with the rock crab project...

The powdered chai from the Arbor (the new Arbor near by the front of the library) is very good, and is warming me up in this cold room in the library.

Time lapse allows chaotic randomness to subside and the larger, bigger picture ideas to emerge. A Size Sorting of Thoughts. But I will have to deal with the detailed resolution of recent memory. Just so I can get things done and not procrastinate.

I guess, all in the end, all of this was just a mental exercise, just so that I could start focusing in the class. It's been a painful process, but I think I'm getting there.

Finding keywords for blogs is FORCING ME TO REFLECT and SPELLCHECK all this crxp I wrote!

KEY WORDS: random thought, chaos, order, size sorting of thoughts, Dr. Janet Walker, Dr. Melina Szalocky, perfect storm, context of class, zooming in, focus, Dr. Steven Pinker, creative with the left brain, campus ambiance summer versus school, value of streamline journals, alarm clock, psychology of arbitrary deadlines in graduate school, buffer zone environment for optimal studying, oiled and lubed bureaucracy, bent bureaucracy, rational versus bureaucratic, individual psychology in mass-produced bureaucracy, denial of fall-quarter, university matrix, mindmirrorspacetime, matrix of human ecology, context of class, isolation, Geoholics Anonymous, intellectual sex, Question Reality, question langauge, left brain, right brain, brothel house, Karl, Kyle, Julia, housemates, adaptive management, moderation, open-minded, deflection in perception

KEY WORDS: random thought, focus, size sorting, Dr. Janet Walker, Dr. Melina Szalocky, context of class Dr. Steven Pinker, streamline journals, psychology of arbitrary deadlines, buffer zone for optimal studying, individual psychology in mass-produced bureaucracy, university matrix, isolation, intellectual sex, deflection in perception, mental metabolism