411. Reflections in Palm Springs Desert Before the Shxt Hits the Fan: A Morning of Graphic Design of Geologic Failure

BELOW IS THE PRINTFECTION TSHIRT LINK FOR "Ignorance is of momentary bliss, but can construct a nearly continuous living hxll of a mental prison."
http://www.printfection.com/questionreality/Ignorance-is-of-Momentary-Bliss/_s_271405

BELOW IS THE PRINTFECTION TSHIRT LINK FOR "Mental Entropy Revisited: A Conscious Escape of the Box"
http://www.printfection.com/questionreality/Mental-Entropy-Revisited--Conscious-Escape-of-Box/_s_271423

Caption on Picasaweb:
In the morning of April 13, 2009, I woke up amongst the truckers at the Desert Center, 30 miles away from Indio / Palm Springs. I witnessed a hazy-pink sunrise upon the San Jacinto Mountains. My mind was clear but experienced restlessness upon facing the California Arena of Failure where I had shxt so much I could no longer consume. Before digging further into my pile of unsorted mental experiences of the last 4 years--more like 4 billion years--I came to a Starbucks and had a morning of linear reflections and engaged in artwork I had been meaning to engage upon for ages. (1) Ignorance can be of momentary bliss, but can construct a nearly continuous living hxll of a mental prison (2) Mental Entropy Revisited: A Conscious Escape of the Box. Since I was bathed in the grandeur of geologic features of Palm Springs, I could not help upon reminiscing my failed experiences in Earth Sciences at UC Riverside, and desired to capture and summarize how I felt--in a photograph and a few images.

Photographic Captions:
My sister Jenny's favorite quote: "Ignorance can be of momentary bliss, but can construct a nearly continuous living hxll of a mental prison." I wrote this quote during the year of 2005-2006 when I was mentally and bureaucratically stuck at UC Riverside, and suffered traumatically for my circumstance. I used the "liquify" button in Photoshop to add eery diversity to my self-constructed font repertoire.

Mental Entropy Revisited: A Conscious Escape Outside the Box. I wrote this quote during the year of 2005-2006 when I was mentally and bureaucratically stuck at UC Riverside, and suffered traumatically for my circumstance. [adding median function in photoshop]

Trapped Outdoors, Stuck in the Head. Anza Borrego National Park with Martin Kennedy's Sedimentology Course. This is not the most "aesthetic" of images but the most symbolic of my year long panic attack mode when enrolled at UC Riverside. (How can one be trapped outdoors when one is outside, not inside, stuck in a lab?)

My sister Jenny's favorite quote that I of all people actually said: "Ignorance is of momentary bliss, but can construct a nearly continuous living hxll of a mental prison."
The College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara is a very dangerous place.
Once your mind delves into and seeks order (essentially self-regulation) in a world of no borders or boundaries... there is no going back. You will fight for the rest of your life for intellectual freedom. You can never fit in a box ever again. Trying to co-exist with the rest of society is close to impossible.

How does it feel when you are stuck--and you don't know that you are stuck?
You are okay. You may be calm. You wouldn't know any better. You are out of context.
How does it feel when you are stuck--and you KNOW what you are stuck?
That you are ultimately stuck in your head?
This is where existing become very, very painful and very psychologically tumultous.
I would be the one to know.
To be stuck and to KNOW to be stuck.
There is something inside you--a well of demons of sorts--and you are not exactly sure how to get them out, sort them out, express them, place them... from the world inside... to the world out there... channeling energy... to the right people... the right places. A tumor is trapped inside you and is eating you alive.
I would be the one to know.

How does it feel to be stuck, and to know that you are stuck... and to be surrounded by people who love and care about you (and knew you since you were five years old), but do not understand at all what you are going through?
They didn't know the chaos that was sifting frantically through your head?
Frightening, I'd say. Very much so.

How does it feel to be outside--in the vast outdoors--and yet be stuck in your head? Feel trapped in the endlessness of the Anza Borrego desert? You weren't even a lab rat, stuck running gels for 5 years to get your Ph.D.
Why was I stuck? Because, I can't just look at rocks. Rocks are just a part of the puzzle. A big part, but not the whole puzzle. Because I couldn't move on to the next step--the synergism of science and art.

The energy is bottled, contained, and ready to explode.
How could someone exist in such a frightening mental condition for two years in a row, from fall 2005 to fall 2007?
And only get two gray hairs?
I would be the one two know.

311. An Evolution of Student Identification Cards

Vic's new UCSB Student ID card. Best one yet. The smiling represents that I have constructed an "extroverted" people-interface character even though I am intrinsically introverted and am shy of cameras. I like to be the one who takes the pictures! Also did the "stretched-turtle-neck effect" and the "Disney angle" face--how Disney draws all their female characters with a slight angle to the side, not directly forward. I guess it's living it up to Environmental Media!
Vic's ID card from UC Riverside. Just finished writing Question Reality. Tired. Puffed up cheeks. Puffy undereyes. The night before I just had only three hours of sleep. Had a gnarly argumetn with my mother in concern of the arrangement of my room (silly thing now). In bad shape at that time. In horrid shape for the entire year. Looked directly into the camera rather than a side view.
Vic's UCLA Student ID card in 2003. I had a nice, relaxing summer by that point, so my skin didn't break out with anything. But I looked into the camera directly, but almost as if I had a gloss in my eyes and wasn't fully centralized internally. I also look back: what in the hxll was a 23-year old doing in grad school? I was the youngest of the class. Compared to 2008, I stared directly into the camera, almost as if I had "knowing eyes" and have a much better sense of self and what in the hxll I am doing with my life (or perhaps, this could be an illusion of a false sense of confidence, something that all university academics supposely need to formulate: a false sense of confidence and certainty)! Ahhh! No, I have a theme for my Ph.D. and I am elated with its all-encompassing properties. Nothing to complain about.

I suppose transferring schools several times is an inefficient process, and can be viewed quite negatively, especially by the administration who was not able to provide the right academic environment for me to function and thrive. But now that I am back at UCSB, I have close to nothing to complain about. And ironically, there are two forefront benefits of transferring schools: (1) you have come to learn directly about bureaucracy and rule systems for managing education and students and resources (which is one of my advisor's research, the investigation of institutions, rights and rule systems). Essentially, I was a guinea pig of an experiment of university institutions. Maybe, that is why my advisor took me in. Transferring schools several times is perceived negatively by most people (even academics), but there were quite a few "knowing professors" at UCSB who came to understand, and potentially see these experiences as advantages. and (2) I have come to rack up quite a few student ID cards, which all still reside in my self-designed army-like purse-wallet thing (actually, it's a passport wallet converted into a purse-wallet I can hang around my neck). Student ID cards are great for getting discounts--most particularly movies.

I think these three student ID cards represent drastic transformations of myself and my perception of reality over the years. You can even see these transformations through the images themselves. The way how I look. My facial expressions. Even how I pose myself. From a timid, shy, goodie-two-shoes follow the rules clueless, underaged grad student at UCLA to a more mature, picture-posing outside-the-box environmenal media student at UCSB. I even managed to smile! I have finally reached a threshold of satisfaction with myself in terms of my brain (not that I am satisfied with myself, I have so much more to do and accomplish!)--and how the university defines me and places me--as an environmental media student. The smile and the posing and the turtle neck stretch represents my self training in photography. Which has finally paid off into a nice student ID card. Don't get me wrong in terms of self-scrutiny, I have such high self standards in aesthetics that if I don't look like Natalie Portman, I am not aesthetically optimal (from a photographic point of view). I have come to learn about and accept my own form--like my body is this strange vessel I live in but don't truly know it (yet attempting to know it)--and have come to learn my form's angles of optimized aesthetics, which is not a high region, but there are ways how to make me look tolerable to look at :-). At some angles, I look like a little girl and at other angles I look like a cartoon character. I don't know. Natalie Portman has optimized aesthetics such that if you took a picture of her at any angle, at any distance--she would still look "beautiful" from a mathematical golden-rule point of view.

Such is the pickiness of a self-critical artist as myself!

257. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Sample Freedom-of-Speech-Disclaimer-Page

Pdf of above. http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/3.disclaimerpage2.pdf

Revised version of Disclaimer included in the pdf above.
Older version of disclaimer I made during the school year 2005-2006.
Older version of disclaimer I made during the school year 2005-2006. Inverted colors. I showed this image to Ann Aasen, a social worker / psychology counselor at the UC Riverside Student Health Center. Ann helped me make it through the year. I joked, telling many friends and family members that Ms. Aasen was like my Ph.D. advisor for the year. We talked about the problems of universities being overspecialized nowadays and not providing interdisciplinary avenues for students whose brains don't fit nicely in one departmental box (at least for UC Riverside). Back in the day, Ann had a more generalist education within the university. In the end, Ann recommended that as a graduate student, I shouldn't harm my own health and psychological health by fighting bureaucracy of the university. Maybe in the end, I should just transfer back to UC Santa Barbara, which I did.

Ann Aasen was a single light of hope, but takes my mind back to very dark places of my past that need a bit of reflection. Just a little. I won't elaborate too much. In fall of 2005, my first quarter at UC Riverside, I recorded on my Olympus digital voice recorder a panic attack in the car. My primal brain was going out of whack and I was rationally aware of it. By winter quarter of 2006, I started seeing Ann routinely, for necessary psychological reasons. My advisor at the time was juggling 500 balls in a circus act of being department chair, and I was one in 500 balls just kind of thrown in the corner and picked up every once in a while. It's not my advisor's fault at all. It's the position of being chairman. I saw my dad go through it. Even Dr. Pete Sadler, a very inspirational professor. But I was neglected psychologically and became pushed more and more and more into a corner at multiple fronts until my mind froze and I could not physically move. At one front, going to grad school in your home town is not a brilliant idea. It's like trying to continue to biologically grow on an overgrown, sick, bleaching coral reef. Too many strings attached in one place. Secondly, exploring the scope of the field of geology freed me to some degree, but I also felt chained up once I knew "the geological box." I was outdoors but in a prison. "I don't want to stare at JUST rocks all my life! I need to account for ALL environmental data! And the human perception of it! From a holistic point of view!"

A low point of my university experience was in June of 2006. I was bawling my eyes out to one of the Associate Deans of the Graduate Division and she flatly told me, "I don't change the rules. I am not in the position of change the rules. Maybe you should just transfer back to UC Santa Barbara." So much for being Dean of Anything. I thought Deans are supposed to spearhead rule changes. Contrastingly, Dr. Oran Young (my new advisor) supports the concept of greasing and bending rules, especially since pre-existing rules are not working in terms of environmental management. One of the Assistant Deans of the Graduate Division and frankly told me in fall of 2006, "I am sorry but UC Riverside is a more compartmentalized university. Everyone fits in a departmental box. It just is." I was stunned, just as one of my CCS advisors was stunned when I told him this about UC Riverside. It seemed like no one was willing to change or budge. I was in a psychological wreck. I felt trapped in my mind and trapped in my environment. Ann Aasen helped me get through some of these dire moments of entrapment, but in other occassions, educating myself in multi-media art was the only way out to being trapped in my mind.

I am not ashamed to return to UC Santa Barbara, the birthing grounds of my own intellectual freedom and independence, which spurred the writing of Question Reality in the first place. UCSB provided me the holistic environment and intellectual community that spurred and built me to who I was today, so it seemed like coming back, UCSB was taking responsibility for their anomalous undergrad creation who ended up becoming obsessed with creative science writing and multi-media art.

In my mind, I envision myself psychologically and physically abused and beat up by the world for four years. I came knocking on the door to UC Santa Barbara on my hands and knees, completely humbl-ified by the constraints and compartmentalization of society, and I needed a return to marrying intellectual freedom and the CCS environment. I have experimented and failed enough, four years straight, and now I am ready to succeed. I was ready to finally do something right. I came crawling back to my CCS advisors and undergrad mentors, my eyes so torn and in pain by what I have seen and experienced, it ws almost as if I visited hxll and came back. It was good that I outsourced, because now I have something to contribute to UC Santa Barbara, just as UCSB had shaped me up as an undergrad!

I am sad the thoughts of Ann Aasen had taken me to gloomy memories of my near-recent past, but at least she was a light of hope amidst the chaos.

I found this on the internet. My eyes sparkled with glee. This was a MiltonLoveism. I need one of these, and I need to stamp it on my forehead.

The reason why I state the above disclaimer is a MiltonLoveism is because when Milton gives his rigs-to-reefs presentations, he presents these hilarious slides reminding people of the First Amendment of the Constitution, and that he has the freedom to state whatever he wants, even if the Truth hurts. Hence, the creation of my own freedom-of-speech disclaimers. The crux of some of Milton Love's jokes is the mixing of fish biology, science, and politics all at once. It works beautifully and parsimoniously. Milton is one of those rare scientists who acknowledge that science and politics inevitably MIX and you can't separate the two... unfortunately. Then you can't even divorce politics with psychology, like the whole cognitive dissonance effect. Oh, dude, Milton Love and I talked a lot about that. I even discussed this phenomenon with Dr. Young.

No, Milton Love is definitely not one of those denial scientists: "I am an ecologist but I am a scientist, so I don't want to get involved in politics." He's an active player, as much as he can be. The best part is that he makes dxm good jokes out of the situation.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the greatest theorists on human behavior I have ever encountered ended up being my biology professors--who end up making social commentaries as their "aside comments" in their lectures.

"Every professors' joke has become my research." Milton Love, blurts out "uh-oh" as he admits he is smelling some trouble. "Good trouble," my new advisor calls it.

I have been shunned as interdisciplinary at UC Riverside. UC Santa Barbara embraces it and welcomes it to some degree. In short, UCSB is like temporary placement in "heaven on earth" after the last few years of "hxll" I've been through.

Wow! I didn't know my Disclaimers had so much emotional and memory baggage behind them!

113. Biologically Incorrect: The Body Count Attendee of University Guest Lectures

A Cartoon and Five Points.

#1. Above is an old cartoon / art piece I created during my time at UC Riverside, spring 2006.

#2. The Origins of Victoria's Cartooning. The free temporal niche space during a busy life of learning ecology / evolutionary biology / geology / environmental sciences was only during (a) a few boring undergraduate courses (e.g. a required "diversity" course during my senior year, which as a class on ecology and religion), and (b) a series of guest lectures for the UC Riverside Earth Sciences Department that had a mandatory attendance due to the small size of the department (and hence I was more of a "body count" rather than an intigued and engaged audience member) (though ironically, if the "body count" factor would have not been an issue, I probably would have gone to several of these lectures out of my own free will... *sigh*).

#3. In this particular geophysics lecture that featured some prospective candidate for professorship, this lady was by far superbly boring, outrageously technical and jargonesque, and to add the final stain of rust and force vector to make the whole ragged bike fall apart (this was no cherry added to the whipcream of a cake), ths lady had a chronic twitch on her shoulder, which placed me in this extreme mood of high anxiety for most of the talk. Not that I blame people for their internal biological issues--I have my own problems as well. It's just this case, this factor was the "tipping point" to my aggravation.

#4. What do you do when you reach a tipping point? Well, you need to dissipate the energy build-up either through (a) yelling or (b) doing something quasi-constructive, even though you are trapped in a certain location for... let's see... another 40 minutes. I chose (b) and in the back of the class, I slumped in my chair, observing her powerpoint slides, stripping the art components from the words of each slide, drawing the art components to form an impressionistic collage of random artistic geogphysics jargon. And Voila! Another piece of biological incorrectedness. My dad was at that lecture to, and one time I had to wake him up because he was snoring in the back of the classroom! (To remind you, my dad is a professor... snoring in the back of a guest lecture... and I thought I was bad). I showed him my artwork, and he busted up laughing, completely understanding my pain for sitting through that lecture when I could have been doing something productive with my own work.

#5. I think this would be a superb art series called "Biologically Incorrect: The Body Count Attendee of University Guest Lectures." All I would do is create an art series that involved conglomerations of random technical visual jargon of different fields. Great. I think this would fly. I have an idea in my pocket for a future to-do list.

Oh no, I have a couple of additional points. Oh well. This here represents run-off flow of ideas.

#6. There were a couple of "biological" components in the image: the back of Chris Rhinehart's head, top left), and the bottom of the bubble collage has two hands curved concavely toward each other, symbolizing how people were giving this lecturer an artificially enthusiastic round of applause... please... man... is this a joke?

#7. And back to the man theme of all this, the ultimate Ph.D. question for Biologically Incorrect is "What's the point?" and this applies very well here.