474. I've Been in a Poetic Mood as of October 30, 2009::: Biologically Incorrect "The Poem" and "Intellectual Luxury"

I don't exactly know how which internal artistic hat switches on or off or back on. I have been wearing my poetry hat the last couple of days (and my cartoon hat as well). On my drive up to Riverside from San Diego, I started thinking about several "holes" in my internal library of poetry. Where have I left off?

(1) A "Creeping Development" poem, dealing with encroachment, more so in urban sprawl. Blog 429 is as far as I have gotten. I have some voice recordings for a song (back in Fall of 2007).

(2) An official "Biologically Incorrect" poem, as to which I have made a few voice recording attempts, but they have been buried and presently inaccessible. Perhaps because I was never satisfied with the lyrics what I created. They ended up being pop-rap songs, for sure. Besides, the "Biologically Incorrect" Principle already embodies the never-ending-blogging-story-of-Victoria's-existentialesque-whatevernesses. So, to encapsulate the Biologically Incorrect into a single poem would be somewhat difficult. Okay, one second, let me try. Biologically Incorrect is pun off of "politically incorrect," and basically after my mind has been "biologically calibrated" to the lifestyles of other organisms and their environments, suddenly the absurdity of human behavior and human society's started to shine through my overly associative, comparative, creative mind... and frighteningly... very clearly. For example, I think I can relate better to squirrels than most other humans (hence the White Stripes song). So, basically the goal is to figure out the meaning of human existence by flipping the notion of "being human" upside-down and inside-out through biological and geological comparatives, which allows us once again to RE-EVALUATE what it means to be human. Or, in other words, re-inspecting human behavior from an alien's eyes, or a squirrel's, or a tree's, or some parasite, doesn't matter. In short, Biologically Incorrect is the internal re-inspection of human behavior relative to the environment through the lens of the natural sciences (or other organisms or non-human systems). So, in essence, if we want to effectively address "environmental problems," I think humans as a collective need a serious inner pep talk to re-figure out what it means to be a human, and a responsible citizen of this planet Earth.

Or, we can go back to the blog summary blurb itself: "Exploring the discrepancy or mismatch between biological reality and the reality created by human society." Oh. Simple as that. I already have my elevator pitch. I forgot. The quarter system unfortunately places my mind in short-term memory mode.

Okay, so the hardest part is STARTING a poem.... So here's four lines, a START: at least it' something. I need to get something out. Get my juices chugging along! Pathetic start, but whatever.

This human society’s

Biologically Incorrect.

Can we re-route our tragedies

Through realms of introspect?

Okay, four lines! I'm doing GREAT! Ya sure. Whenever I talk doom-and-gloom, I don't want to sound PREACHY, so I transform statements into QUESTIONS and let people think whatever they desire.

(3) A third poem that has been lingering for a long time in my brain is called "Intellectual Luxury." I vividly remember designing this poem/song when I was off the 101 freeway near by that "fake island" created by Arco? or some oil company (where the freeway becomes a two-laned road). I was driving toward UC Santa Barbara on a cloudy, overcast day in February in which I was just about to apply to Bren for graduate school. Tough, very lonely times, I tell ya. I also remember creating a VERY CATCHY TUNE and it drives me crazy that I can't find it. I additionally remember calling my father, telling him about the poem, and he thought that the idea that held the poem together was excellent. Now it's a matter of finding it and further elaborating this half-xss poem ditty my mind played with on my ride up to Riverside from San Diego so I could sit in Mike Davis' landscapes and writing course.

Blurb for Picasaweb: To go along with my poem... "Biologically Incorrect" T-Shirt/ Logo / Design ::: Establishing a Level of Consistency. After the evening / night of October 30, 2009 (my first encounter with the Green Hornet Production), I went on a "spree" of graphic design (besides this whole poetry mind-frame I'm in). After creating a series of designs, I have come to realize how I am attracted to certain combinations of "buttons" on Photoshop... which is of course rendering a consistency of design (the consistency is not just in my own hand-writing!). Here is the assemblage of buttons: (1) first I use my hand, sharpie, and paper to write/draw my idea (2) I scan it in using my portable Canon Lide 100 scanner (3) the image is cleaned up specks, ship-shaped for proportions, contrasted, "cleaned up" essentially (4) then I tend to gravitate toward these buttons (a) Liquify, for space-filling adjustments (b) Median Basic (c) Gaussian Blur (d) Gaussian Blur Inversion, has a light snowy look (e) Posterize / Poster Edges (f) Plastic Wrap (g) Paint Daubs (sometimes, if I want to thin down the thickness of lettering) (h) Outlines (under Stylize). One thing I do say, with the creation of "layering" in Photoshop, I think all artist's lives are MUCH, MUCH EASIER. Even the construction of art has become a cakewalk! Sigh.

Jules gave me some preliminary critiques: my "Ls" look like "Fs," but overall people should know how "Ls" look like in cursive.... I was a little intimidated by Jules' critique because I was in the process of MAKING these designs. In short you don't critique someone's artwork when in the process of making it, simply because the artist is in a state of "open heart surgery," especially the artist's emotions. Let the artist do the best possible piece and then have it critiqued... and THEN... back to the drawing board!

The PDF for the preliminary Intellectual Luxury poem/chant can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/intellectualluxuryPOEMCHANT.pdf.

The basic premise of "intellectual luxury" is that there are two forms of wealth: physical wealth and intellectual wealth. For the standards United States, I do not hold much "physical wealth," but for the standards and given the "global dominance hierarchy," I have quite a bit of physical wealth, but a lot of this wealth is by DEFAULT--I was born in the United States and not Africa. Simple as that. Though I do not have physical wealth and ownership of much of anything, I do attempt to attain "mental wealth," or knowledge of how the world works. In a certain way I feel that Earth Scientists are "the most intellectually wealthy" of anyone, simply because they have such an immense comprehension and appreciation of scale. The issue is, in order to gain "mental wealth," one must have several visceral strings of existence stabilized. For example, I have clean air, clean water, good food, a roof over my head, happy roommates, etcetera... basically the bottom rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. So, if I have all these needs met, then I may have 12 hours free every single day to think about anything I whatever the hxll please. And so, having my basic needs met and some free time to think is an "intellectual luxury." So... as I am a concerned citizen of planet Earth, I started to think about the environment, more specifically human relationships to the environment, far beyond my own immediate vicinity in space and time. I found out several other academics think the same things as I do in the buffer zone of academia, and I have found most of their esoteric theories to be non-real-world-esoteric-bullshxt-that-have-close-to-any-real-world-applicability. Pathetic. And then these people want to impose their ideas and technologies on other societies and other people, thinking "their lives need to be changed" because we are the "haves" and they are the "have-nots." First of all, I think there is a certain level of arrogance in this type of imposing, imperialist mentality, especially to play the "have" and "have-not" game. As Shannon realized when she went to Africa, many people are struggling to meet basic needs (water, food, shelter) but they are communal, soulful people, full of hope and positive attitudes. These individuals may not have computers or cell phone, but they are able to derive their livelihoods from their immediate surroundings without any intermediary humans. They still live off the land. So, in America, Shannon states that most people who have all their resources are more negative and depressed in their thinking. Once the physical needs are met, then we venture into the realm of "mental disorder." Welcome to America. The concept of choice and having "career choices" is an American construct and is non-existent in Africa and other countries. The question "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" is absurd. What else? Find food and water and have some kids and tend a farm. What else is there to do? HA! The most disturbing aspect of all of this is that this less-technologically-ridden live-off-the-land lifestyle is considered "third world" or the "have-nots" when we are the "haves." If a disaster happened in America, most people would be incapacitated because they are obligate on other people's goods and services whereas in Africa people are more self-resourceful with their immediate resources. People may live longer in America, but what kind of quality of life is this? What's the quote? "It's not about how many years you live, but it's about how you live your years."

So when an academic gripes about "How are we going to get all these people to CARE about the environment?" I think there is a level of hidden arrogance in the question. Everyone cares about the environment; it just matters at what scale. If people don't have their basic needs met, they are focused on their immediate environment; if people get past this stage, they can start thinking and acting at broader scales. So, don't expect people to "care" about what you care about, especially when they don't have the capacity to even survive at a fundamental level (please see "Six Billion Ways to View a Moderate Cube of Space" poem in the CHESS Book of Poetry).

So, in short, "Intellectual Luxury" is about:

(1). the concept of having "extra time to think about things." Welcome to academia! It's all about intellectual luxury! Intellectual entertainment!

(2). people not having the capacity to care about an academic's "sense of the environment" if their basic needs are not met.

(3). despite the physical struggle of having basic needs met, there is a level of soulfulness and positive community in "third world peoples" living off the land as opposed to depression/anxiety and "mental disorders" found in "first world" countries.

(4) why are their constructs of "haves" and "have-nots"? "Wealthy first worlds" (drowning in too many resources) and "impoverished third worlds" (not enough resources) (noble savages, film "The Gods Must Be Crazy"). Why is there such a construct of a POWER GAME? A GLOBAL DOMINANCE HIERARCHY? When ultimately a "first world" and a "third world" simply have ALTERNATIVE WAYS AND MEANS (SCALE/PACE) OF LIVING/EXISTING? WHY IS ONE WAY CONSIDERED GOOD/RIGHT AND ANOTHER WAY CONSIDERED BAD/WRONG (OR BETTER THAN THE OTHER?) WOULD YOU RATHER BE IMPOVERISHED IN RESOURCES OR IMPOVERISHED IN THE SOUL? AMERICANS ARE IMPOVERISHED IN THE SOUL DROWNING IN THEIR RESOURCES THEY NEVER EVEN MADE OR UNDERSTAND WHERE THEY COME FROM. OTHER COUNTRIES MAY STRUGGLE WITH RESOURCES BUT ARE RICH IN THEIR SOULS AND THEIR EXPERIENCES AND THEIR STORIES. HARDSHIPS BRING PROFOUND INTERNAL WEALTH.

(5). why "first world" countries feel so compelled to impose their world views on "third world countries" like, for example, the ARROGANT concept of a "one-laptop-per-child" program (which has its own side effects)? (Look what technology has done to America! Alienation! People interact so much with technology now that hardly anyone does face-to-face connectivity anymore! It's destroying the beauty of direct interaction with others!).

For more information on "Intellectual Luxury," please visit Blogs 418 (an essay on the Devaluation of Reality) and 359 (the Intellectual Luxury of the Environmental Defense Center Party).

Afterthought: I am currently in Goleta and I actually modified "Intellectual Luxury" two or three times when I was on the road. I added a few lines to create more continuity of thinking and experience. I have come to learn that prose and poetry feed off of each other. I was realizing missing elements in the poetic logic through writing prose about the motive for the poem. Anyhow, I should just lay this concept to rest and work on it a little bit later.

418. Essay "The Devaluation of Reality" (Economic Discounting) Inspired by Conversation with My Housemate Kyle (First Fan Letter to Malcolm Gladwell!)

Slideshow of Supplemental Imagery Affiliated with the essay "Devaluation of Reality."

From Supplemental Imagery with Essay "Devaluation of Reality: Thoughts on Discounting in Economics..."

PDF of the Fan Letter can be accessed below:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/fanlettertomalcolmgladwell.pdf

From Supplemental Imagery with Essay "Devaluation of Reality: Thoughts on Discounting in Economics..."

PDF of the FULL Devaluation of Reality can be accessed below:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/devaluationofrealitydiscounting.pdf
I am so braindead from working on this essay that I have nothing else to say, except that I am re-immersing in the context of the Santa Barbara Kinkos, with two very annoying kids right behind me pressing computer buttons and making beeping noises that are a little more annoying than a swarm of juvenile sqwacking (misp.) seagulls.

Notes, Conversation with Bub: The value of the dollar also this SYMBOLIC value of a currency arbitrary and in flux. Relative value of the resource may be the same, but not necessarily the currency. People do not value the future. Inflation means devaluation of the dollar. Galloping inflation (money is less important, demand for a raise, unions, strike). Inflationary spiral. Love, sex, death. Work, groceries, sex, watching movies. Economy of scale--mass production decreases price. Local--experiential doesn't necessarily mean valuable. Value--arbitrary fixation--on rocks or diamond rings. Tipping Point = Beer. I need to have everything now, even though I already have everything I need. People want certainty even though the world is uncertain--room for religion. Couple of word errors. Oops!

IMAGE CAPTIONS:
**Supplemental Imagery with Essay "Devaluation of Reality: Thoughts on Discounting in Economics..." Individual Spatial-Temporal Thinking. Drawn with my right hand (I am left-handed!) in Photoshop!
**Definition of Proximal and Ultimate Spacetime.
**Devaluation of systems with increased spacetime from frame of reference. Linear? Exponential?
**Thresholds of resource/information accessibility and resource/information hypersaturation--with a window of optimality (sanity and degree of manageability) in the middle.
**Eusocial Ecological Niche Space. Why do professors only have 5 grad students, not 500?

359. Environmental Defense Center (EDC) Thank Goodness It's Friday (TGIF)! Fall Feast, October 10, 2008, Part 2

Photography has the capacity to capture subjects and objects in such a manner that is un-apparent to the human eye at the moment of creation--but only perceived through retroactive scrutiny and photoshop modification.

The above image was possibly the best and most peculiar image I took at the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) Thank Goodness It's Friday (TGIF) Fall Feast Event. I had jotted these notes down at the time: "Best lighting, optimal distribution of pigeonholes, capturing a mesmerizing stare of an unknown human being of optimal aesthetics. Some kind of mise-en-scene effect." So, here's some follow-up.

I am intrigued by my mind's ability to construct a "deep order" of an image that is still surrounded and immersed in chaos: the intense, seemingly meaningful stare of some random male... embedded within a matrix of white noise perturbations. I find this picture fascinating in terms of the evolutionary implications of a female mind's construction of reality in the presence of males. As if intense backdrop falls out like bunch of fumigated flies.

I don't know who the guy is--and it is beside the point--nor do I desire to know, but he is most certainly qualitifed to do high-end model shoots in Los Angeles (lucky him his genes played out to render a biological sculpture of optimal proportions). And it seemed like the ladies of the table were kind of responding: "Oh ya. Sure! Point the camera in THAT direction." It's an evolutionary instinctive tendency, isn't it?But as a photographer, I have a sense of empowerment to have the ability to pristinely capture such a moment--the ephemeral, dynamic positioning of elements crystallized and sorted to centrality by a yearning stare--captured forever?! Bingo!

The other elements surrounding this man are in great part distracting, but the peculiar sincerity and directness of the stare--topped off with a seemingly "knowing smile"?! Perhaps not in a male mind, but in a female mind, these factors allow the hierarchization and fading-away of these distractions. Very kind smile. An attempt at sincerity, if not sincere in real life. That picture made my night. Capturing ephemerality... forever!

Gawdzeeks, talk about my, random-walk, non-academic criticisms and reflections! Flippin' A! Such is the essence of EcoCritique? Eegots!

I suppose it's one of those images you wished that everyone you encountered in your daily life... you wish you could stare at each other in the face in a meaningful, penetrating manner--as if you were taking a whirlwind adventure into their minds--rather than with the gloss of an eye, as if two moving objects were blindly passing each other without any sense of motive, purpose, or conscious existence. Such is the case most of the time.

All this wine and dine, I kind of felt "caring for the environment" was in part an elitist intellectual luxury, which made me feel in part very guilty for thinking about what I do. I wouldn't be thinking about this kind of stuff on the condition that I was a starving, mal-nutritioned child in Africa. I would be thinking about my mom and my next meal. That's it. But no. In Santa Barbara, on the condition of being well-fed and having all basic resources accessible in an instantly gratifying way... there is a group of individuals who have come to care about "the environment" much farther beyond the immediate proximity of their own lives. Talk about Maslow's Ladder! It's not that it's good. Not that it's bad. It just is. I have 12 free hours of the day to think about something after my basic needs are met. I could be rotting at a dead-end job, getting addicted to tweaking whenever I had a chance. Or it's not like it's "better" to go out half-naked in the forest and beat on some drums! Or I could think and do something that is beneficial to myself, to others, to the community, and to the overall environment. So, such is an Intellectual Luxury of meditating on "the environment." At least 80% of my clothes come from Goodwill. I am surrounded by people with similar values. That is all that matters. So? Whatever--

Scrap Notes, Part 2.

In continuation of the poetic theme: "The world is going to hxll. Might as well mess with people's minds about it. The world is going to hxll. Not going to let it take me down with it."

I have encountered an intriguing, charismatic group of people who are all interested in "the environment." Yes, this amorphous thing called "the environment," whether they want to or need to "save it," or "conserve it," or "manage it," or no--err "optimally manage it," or "play and roll in it," or "lightly tread on it," or "mitigate it"--you mean "bulldoze-a-marsh-and-save-a-pond-it," or "consume it," or "produce it," or "extract it," or "distribute it," or "dump-your-less-toxic-waste-in-it," or "restore it," or "reconstruct it"--you mean "Designer-Ecosystem-It" --physically and mentally, within moderation, to whatever baseline they desire it to be--whether it is a baseline of necessity of human survival shifting along a spectrum to a mere baseline of visuacoustic emotional, "spiritual" aesthetic, to the exclusion or fusion of humanly-manufactured values and baselines in between. Everything, of course, is in moderation, even Moderation itself.

But for sure, it's a community of people who don't want to be "detached" from this thing called "the environment." These individuals are trying to find meaning, to connect with this "environment," whatever an amorphous internal TV-box-video-game construct each individual mind creates "the environment" to be.

As so we all come together to commune: "To the Environment!" As if we are all speaking the same language. As if we have some form of common perception. Which still remains a mystery to me as to whether this has been achieved, or remains a Cloak of Vagueness, Masked through the baseline of our own Verbage--err Verbosities. That, in result, can go emotionally and valuistically only so deep.

Well then. I guess I see the emergence of a few Ph.D. questions here....

Pardon my "snappy criticism" in this passage. Honestly, my attendance at EDC-TGIF did NOT inspire such a critical thought pattern, but I do say, perhaps the last dozen or so "for-the-environment" parties and shin-digs felt much like what I described above. When people communicate about environmental issues, are they really "communicating"? Or is there a barebone struggle in communication due to the fundamental vagueness of words used--nature, culture, environment, diversity, etcetera. It's a chronic problem I see ALL the time.

Three More Random Thoughts.

1. The mind is an internal landscape of interacting software and hardware programs. The challenge is to learn how to pick apart all the operations, and figure out which operations are working when and where, in resposne to what particular elements of environmental stimulation are present in your mind's construction of its surrounding environment. Why your mind tunes in, processes, and interacts with certain forms of environmental elements, and why other elements are tuned out. When and where and how your mind reaches environmental saturation in multi-tasking.

2. One time, I briefly stayed in an art lecture through the College of Creative Studies, and the instructor Graham Wakefield posed the question: is our perception of reality come in Discrete Packages of information, or is it more in a Continuum? Physics has described reality in a dualist manner--the dual-wave particle theory. One more deterministic and one more probablistic. You would think that this duality would scale out to our entire perception and interaction with reality. In part order, in part chaos, in part deterministic, in part probablistic. But not exclusively one or the other. The mind can process information in multiple different ways. Shallow processing. Deep processing. All depends on where you are at. What you will have the capacity to perceive. What you cannot perceive. My mind can process long, big chunks in the morning, but that becomes a futile endeavor later on in the day.

3. It's best to write everything out. Otherwise the ideas will come back to haunt you. ROUTINELY.

124. Blue Horizons Continued: A Zen of Student Housing, and Housing in General

I am a bit sleep-deprived so, I will try my best to remain coherent... a far cry from eloquent. So, basically, there is this saying that revolved around the idea of "divorcing school and work from home," when I argue that this divorce is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. They both feed off each other tremendously--issues from home can impact how one functions at work or school, and events in a professional/public place can tremendously impact transactions at home (View 1, above).

The way how I think about these issues can be summarized as the "Conditional Ecological Mind." Or more the standard psychological paradigm of "Maslow's Ladder." There are quite a few stipulations of the Conditional Ecological Mind (CEM, new acronym, as usual...): (1) all life factors are greatly intertwined and impossible to divorce (as I have learned through my trials of disorder in high school) (2) if basic required needs are not met (from a momentary to daily basis) (usually "home" activities, takes about 12 hours a day to perform all necessary tasks e.g. breathe, drink, eat, sleep, exercise, groom, maintain social stability within kin), then you will have limited, diminished, or no ability at all to focus on optional "higher-functioning tasks" (e.g. schoolwork, job performance) (which ultimately bring home the dough that allow you to maintain your basic, required needs for survival). So, on a good schoolwork day for me, I am able to devote 12 hours of my time towards "intellectual entertainment / academic jigsaw-puzzling" given that the other 12 hours I have slept well, eaten well, exercised, maintained basic health, remained in good terms with family members, housemates, friends, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...."

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Art Sylvester emphasized that thinking about the environment is a "luxury" on its own. Most people are struggling day-to-day, just trying to get enough to survive and stay afloat. They don't have time to think longer term and bigger picture. They're just good surviving organisms. I agreed with Dr. Sylvester. I was at that point to, living the moment, but without any context or understanding that moment's relative past, and that moment's relative projection into the future. I told him I could get my basic life tasks done in 12 hours. And I have 12 hours free every single day to do something useful for myself and for this system. Even with these 12 hours I have lots of options--ranging from watching television, mindlessly surfing the internet, or even rotting my neurons through drug and alcohol consumption. But I chose a certain road... I suppose a road less taken... environmental multi-media and environmental problem-solving. Thinking about the environment is indeed a luxury... not a physical luxury, but an intellectual-mental luxury. So? I might as well not feel guilty and take advantage of this free space and time, allocated to optimized my own survival and sanity, as well as others' and this planet's. Hence again, this is the CONDITIONAL ECOLOGICAL MIND and how this concept can be useful to understand the discoordination of environmental problem-solving and change.

So, given the conditional ecological mind, I do several things in my life. If I show up to school, required to do a certain task under a personally stressful condition (lack of sleep, had family problems), I announce to the group I am working with my "physiological/pscyhological disclaimer." I first state that I am in a certain condition that might make me less functional or useful, and then I proceed to perform the task. Actually, stating my physiological disclaimer actually helps me focus better at school!

And again, why homeless people oftentimes cannot perform higher functioning tasks. A "home" is like a self-carved territory or microcosmal region that optimizes your acquisition of resources and optimizes foraging, safety, and self-maintenance. The modern home: a few minute drive from the grocery store, a few feet from the refrigerator, the bed, the shower, and the toilet. Pretty good, spatially optimized set-up. But when you are a homeless/nomad, you have no location to acquire such resources so you spend much more time trekking known/unknown space just to acquire resources and satisfy basic needs. Such are my days car camping in the Subaru. Takes a while to find a restroom, a place to clean up, a place to buy decent food... traveling is inherently inefficient.

The Zen of Student Housing: Bills. My freshman year at UC Davis, I made a simple epiphany. Now that I am "free from my parents," who are a few hundred miles away, I am still not "free." I still have "strings attached" to the surrounding region. For example, I still had to pay "bills" at my house/apartment. Bills on water, trash, energy, technological communications... from these companies that were either close or far away. So, I drew these "ecological strings" attaching my own mind to these "bills" which are then sent to "companies" that provide basic resources. My freshman year at UC Davis were full of simple epiphanies, such as these. The other two that pop out of my mind were (1) Vic's theory of Technological Laziness and (2) Humans are as interesting as their environments, and the environment is as interesting as the humans that live there. As for UC Davis, the environment is boring and flat... and the humans there were largely zombified white toast. Haven't been there since my freshman year. One day.... As for Santa Barbara, the people here are as healthy and as diverse and dynamic and energetic as the landscape around us. It's not a "pristine nature" but there's lots of open space....

Typical Ecological Strings Attached "Bills" for Student Housing: (1) water and trash (2) electric (3) gas (4) phone (5) cable / internet (6) parking (maybe)... and others? Basic (7) rent just to even occupy a territory of optimized resource acquisition.

So, given the Zen of Student Housing, what was so unstable that happened this summer? (1) I was living alone, which made me socially unstable and hypercreative (the positive aspect is that it made me bond with people in the rock crab film more so than if I had housemates). (2) I had unstable housing, such that I had to move within the last ten crucial days of the Blue Horizons program. I had all this "mental energy" (as Denise Bellanger calls it) wrapped around issues of basic maintenance rather than optimizing productivity toward finishing the rock crab film. Things ultimately worked out....

I do admit that some people optimize productivity at school or work as a form of denial or psychological displacement / distraction of energy from one dysfunction in their life or surroundings to another. For example, I know a few scientists who have family problems, but instead of dealing with them (maybe they didn't have the capacity to deal with them), they channeled all their energy to their work as a form of distraction. Another situation is I know that some sadistic French guy was extremely productive as a scientist, hiding out in a basement all during World War II figuring out the metamorphic life cycle of insects. What does this say? Honestly, I don't think I can do that. My mind is too integrated to be able to deny the existence of a problem of one life element. It would impact everything else in my life too much. But men, since they are more linear in reasoning (more neurons but less interconnected) and have the capacity to go through long bouts of tunnel vision, they have the capacity to do this "displacement/denial" behavior much more than females. This is just a casual observation based on my experience and systematic observation of male and female behavior on a daily basis.

To resume the Zen of Student Housing, I think it would be an interesting, amusing exercise to do a comparative history of Victoria's student housing situations, from the nerve-wracking UC Davis dorms (living with a slug of a roommate) to the heavenly Santa Ynez Apartments at UC Santa Barbara to my current housing situation with Julie, Kyle, Karl out in the boonies of Goleta (everything's great... except for the commute....) to the excessively communal living in Costa Rica (rooming with the most hyper character of the group) to the undergrad slums of Isla Vista: my sister Jenny's 6691 Sabado Tarde Party Central experience (live television of drunk college kids through the livingroom window, especially Friday and Saturday night), and the nightmare living situation residing in the living room with a Christian freak and her fiance, combined with sharing a room with a moody econ girl, David (a bitter mathematician), and Sean (a molecular biology stoner who used my big shiny red apples as bongs) (both David and Sean and I were graduates of the ARC Summer Research Program in 2001) (at one point, dishes were piled up in the sink for 8 weeks!). Two quarters of misery during my junior year... David had a crush on my good friend Maysha, which made things worse.... Then there's the whole drama of living with my parents, Jean and Chuck, a quarter out in the cowsmelling town of Norco (dairy farms converted to track housing) and sleeping in the living room at UCLA in a one-bedroom apartment with three girls right along fraternity row.... Well yes, I think this would be a very interesting, philosophically comical essay on comparative housing situations and why I was able to do very well in school during some housing situations and why I struggled to barely get by during other unstable situations.... It's kind of where I get my motto:

"Santa Barbara is a place where you can forget the rest of the world exists.
Riverside is a place where you chronically PRAY that the the rest of the world exists.
Davis is a place where you need to chronically, PHYSICALLY VERIFY that the rest of the world exists.
Los Angeles is the "world," but if the world is going to hxll, Los Angeles is going there first.
Reprhased: Los Angeles is a nice place to visit but a great place to leave!"

Such is a good summary of the regional influence of my California housing hopping experiences.

In short, the CONDITIONAL ECOLOGICAL MIND (A REHASH OF MASLOW'S LADDER): IN ORDER TO OPTIMIZE SELF-SYSTEM PRODUCTIVITY, ONE MUST HAVE ACCESS TO AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO MAINTAIN BASIC STABILITY. 12 HOURS OF THE DAY TO SATISFY BASIC NEEDS. 12 HOURS OF THE DAY TO MAXIMIZE FOCUS. A HISTORY OF EXPERIENCES THAT ARE RESOLVED. AND A FUTURE BUFFER ZONE. THEN YOU CAN OPTIMIZE PRODUCTIVITY AND CREATIVITY. SPHERES STRINGS OF BASIC MAINTENANCE (repetition element) AND SPHERES-STRINGS OF INNOVATION (breaking routine, inventing new things).

Vic needs to refer to this blog for a philosophical short film.