424. Poem / Song "Gaia-Medea" with a LOT of Backstory from Origins Conference (Arizona State University, April 2009) (EVOLUTION BY COLLECTIVE ACTION)

I know each poem is deserving of its own blog entry, but I was hunting for "Gaia-Medea" and accidentally stumbled upon two other poems/songs I was formulating in a car that I thought are worth "barfing out now" so that they can be worked upon and elaborated more consciously!

I formulated "Gaia-Medea" poem on the way down to San Diego (gone fishing!) but I was truly inspired by the works of an Earth Scientist (Dr. Peter Ward) at the Origins Conference (ASU University) who holds the perspective of the Medea Hypothesis (disastrologist, pessimist approach) over Gaia when it comes to Life on Earth as a happy-dosy-self-sustaining system. (I think water ultimately serves as a checks-and-balances character). This professor takes a unique stance in exploring the role of microbes in macro-scale ecological catastrophe in geological scales and I bet this dude will jive quite well with my undergrad advisor Armand Kuris (Parasite Prof). I talked to the moderator of the panel--I believe Dr. Manfred Laubichler (internal versus internal-regulation, serenity prayer conversation, I will discuss a later time)-- and I told him that I was concerned that Gaia and Medea are like bipolar-opposities of each other and are merely perceptual frames for research agendas. Essentially, the history of this planet shows evidence for cycles of origins, growth, shifts, decay, catastrophic ends, and cycles of rebirth, so on and so forth. The petri dish of planet Earth largely remains empty, oxygen came around, organisms explode in size and population size, like megacorporate mass production of life kicks in because efficiency of oxygen transport, then the petri dish gets full, shxt happens in a case of fullness vulnerability (combinatotion of various self-induced biotic and non-self-induced abiotic factors, density-dependent or density-independent), then the scenario is wiped blank slate again (like some kind of meteorite, toxic, anoxic event), and the meek scum rock-digesting bacteria shall always inherit the Earth. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I didn't tell Dr. Laubichler all of this, but I told him that why are there two bipolar perspectives when there are cycles of both Gaia-Medea. Wouldn't a more appropriate metaphor of A PHOENIX be more appropriate in terms of understanding coupled organismal-environmental systems? Human-envronmental systems? And he said very instinctively, yes, indeed, that would make a LOT of sense! And then I told him, that I am studying the role of metaphor and scale in conceptualizing human-environmental systems and science and society, as well as allowing the bridge of analogies and parallels with the natural sciences and the social sciences. Do you think this is a worthwhile agenda? And Dr. Laubichler also swiftly stated, that "Yes, this would indeed be a very legitimate research agenda, as long as the metaphors are not shallow-pass-off-analogies, but metaphors that are deeply embedded in the thought processes of the research and advances conceptual understanding of intra-and-interdisciplinary work. And I was very happy that he said this. I wore a gold star on my forehead for a couple of days :-). I felt legitimatized by someone with credentials I never met in my entire life until that moment in space and time. I love it!

The other issue I noticed is how disciplines borrowed terms from other rather remote disciplines. Geologists borrowed the term "incumbency," which is a word usually used in political contexts. What I thought was VERY interesting was use of the word complex--rival, non-rival (competitive-non-competitive for finite-space-time), excludable (elite club access), and non-exludable (access to all, socialist)--these traditionally-economics terms were borrowed TWICE through the entirety of the Origins symposium: once potentially by Dr. Steve Mojzsis (he's SOOO cool, I think he's and Earth Science prof based on Colorado), and once definitely by Dr. Steven Pinker (in linguistics--words as windows to the mind, who was clobbered by the skeptical ASU audience because Dr. Pinker was only measuring intelligence through word use and not spatial-problem solving and artistic outputs). I am SOOO excited simply because I witnessed this concept-word borrowing from disciplines, and it's also media-documented! Woohoo!

The other topic I did not mention to Dr. Laubichler but am now coming to vividly perceive as a REFLEXIVE SCIENTIST (a reflexive scientist [like me] is basically a scientist who has come to the conclusion that science is done by humans, and by default becomes a philosopher of science of sorts) is how the positive / negative mammalian taxis--or how OPTIMISM and PESSIMISM--ultimately shapes and frames scientific agendas.
In the parallels of the history of life on Earth, and origins of humans and their environments...

OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM AS INTRINSIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA ADDICTION / FIXATION / GROWTH / LOSS / WITHDRAWAL: (psychology of loss, whether your family member, friend, pet, a drug addiction, post-pardum depression after quarter finals at school, your job, or 20 years of scientific research overhauled by a young stud) (five steps on death and dying) EVEN PERCEIVED IN THE NOTION OF SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM SHIFTS / SCIENCE AS INCREMENTAL AND/OR RADICAL IN CHANGE OF PERCEPTION AND THOUGHT PROCESS (like for thousands of years we added knowledge to the universe of Sun Cycling Around the Earth, and then one day we came to perceive the Earth was cycling around the sun, it requires a knowledge overhaul and shifting-re-organizing entirety of accumulated incremental knowledge!) A BIRTH AND DEATH AND REBIRTH IN SCIENTIFIC THINKING!

LIFE ON EARTH DUALIST METAPHORS OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM:
MEDEA HYPOTHESIS (pessimism) -- Peter Ward
GAIA HYPOTHESIS (optimism) -- James Lovelock (I don't like the frame of Gaia at all!)

HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL DUALIST METAPHORS/ CONCEPTS OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM:
HISTORICAL OVERFISHING (pessimism, "policy dark side of forest") -- Jeremy Jackson, Boris Worm, etcetera... (not to specifically mention these people, but there was a whole cult of pessimist science research coming out... well, it was by default, pessimistic, without much "what can we do about it" type of perspective
FISHERIES MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS (e.g. catch shares) (optimism, positive search image) -- Steve Gaines, Chris Costello
GLASS HALF-EMPTY / GLASS HALF-FULL--Dr. Jared Diamond dichotomized the positive and negative search image for the growth and collapse of societies (human-environmental systems) in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse" without looking into the relationships of both sides of the coin
GLASS HALF-EMPTY / GLASS HALF-FULL also perceived in the "GLOBAL WARMING" issue Al Gore taking a glass-half empty appraoch with inconsistent backing, the positive and negative aspects of the global-warming argument, as well as the post-global warming positive and negative outcomes (e.g. deserts will be prime real estate and islands will be flooded, millions of humans moved)

SOLUTION-METAPHOR THAT INTEGRATES CYCLES OF OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM-ORIGINS-GROWTH-COLLAPSE:
The Phoenix (a la Lauri Green, with a phoenix and a huge jelly fish tattooed on her back), enduring through the passing her perhaps most dearest family member, talk about TWO DIE-HARD TATTOOES! I think Lauri Green and Milton Love are the two coolest marine biologists each with two really cool tattooes, I need to start a collection here! natural history tattooed on human bodies, what an absurd collection!) through the times, life and death is all about periods of shifting baselines (life is never in a static stable state, always shifting) punctuated by extreme events (whether personal, collective human-environmental, or life on earth); and such is about constructing universal narrative themes.

More specifically, the MEDEA HYPOTHESIS (term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward for the Anti-Gaian hypothesis) is that multicellular life, unstood as a matrix-like "superorganism" is "suicidal." Succeeding at suicide would return Earth to the microbial-dominated state that has been the norm for most of its history.

The above passage was derived from Wikipedia, and it bothers the hxll out of me. I don't consider there being a "superorganism" complex. I feel that all of life has similar properties such that it acts constructively and deconstructively in feedbacks and certain events shows COLLECTIVE MASS ACCUMULATION IMPACTS ON LIFE AS A WHOLE simply because all living organisms have certain properties in common (they're all ALIVE!). Living organisms are "not suicidal" ("suicide" is TELEOLOGICAL and ANTHOPOMORPHIC: organisms as a collective with "super-organismic properties" operate as a PROCESS not with PURPOSE--assigning purpose to phenomena that are process-oriented and not induced by any individual organism or individual mind). Instead of "suicide," I would use the term "SELF-INDUCED VULNERABILITY TO MASS EXTINCTION, EITHER THROUGH THE MASS ACCUMULATION OF UNFAVORABLE BIOTIC FACTORS, COUPLED BIOTIC-ABIOTIC FACTORS, AND/OR UNCONTROLLABLE ABIOTIC EVENTS."

Anyhoo, I am so GLAD I found that the Medea Hypothesis exists because my father spoke with Dr. Martin Kennedy quite a few times about Snowball Earth the the global shutting down of a Photosynthesis Pump associated with certain abiotic factors--and I made a comment to my father on how "early organisms were self-inducing their own mass extinction, much like humans" and be both laughed our xsses off in the UC Riverside geology loading dock at the comment. And much to my glea, my own once-impromptu joke is actually the research agenda of a renowned paleontoloist I unfortunately was not exposed to at the time... yet. Now that my mind has marinated quite a bit, I even appreciate more the work of Dr. Peter Ward. I hope to run into him again and share with him my thoughts on his "controversial wording," at least in my own opinion.

One more tidbit: past "suicide attempts: include (1) methane poisoning (3.5 billion years ago), the oxygen catastrophe (2.7 billion years ago, what in the hxll is this?), Snowball Earth twice (2.3 billion years ago and 790-630 million years ago), at least 5 hydrogen-sulfide-induced mass extinctions (anoxic events?) such as the great dying 251.4 million years ago... and of course... NOT ON WIKIPEDIA, the HUMAN SET-UP to COLLECTIVE MASS EXTINCTION. Yet, as a wise fisherman in San Diego says, "When all collapses and the house of cards caves in, I will become a hero, because I know how to row my boat and catch fish. I will still be able to feed myself and my community." Amen! The world is going to hxll... and I'm not going to let me take it down with me!

Gaia-Medea

Gaia-Medea (repeated 8 times with a specific melody)

(So) Medea perceived the Planet Half Emtpy
and Gaia viewed the World in Half-n-Half Full
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes
Of Death and Rebirth of the Cycles of Both.

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

Some Reconstruction from Collapsed Reduction
Are Carvings of Sculptures Could No Longer Endure
Irr'ducible Existence of Phasing Decay--
No longer a toy Evolution's ensured?

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

Such is the Powers and Motives of Gaming
Of Scientists and Sleuths in Narrative Framing
But how humans see, but do we really see?
In the cloak or the realms of objectivity?

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

I can't believe one short poem has so much BAGGAGE and BACKSTORY!!! Geez! Like SHOOT ME! I still think the poem needs a LOT more work... and a few more ideas placed inside the existing matrix of concepts. At least I am throwing the poem out there as a work in progress!

KEY WORDS: Gaia, Medea, phoenix, poem, song, Dr. Peter Ward, Dr. Manfred Laubichler, metaphor, scale, tattoo, Lauri Green, rival-nonrival, excludable-nonexcludable, reflexive scientist, optimism-pessimism, Dr. Milton Love, disease in the fossil record, suicide, narrative framing, collective suicide, mass accumulation effect, teleology, anthropomorphic, purpose or process, extreme events, shifting baselines, Steve Gaines, Chris Costello, Boris Worm, Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth, Jeremy Jackson, James Lovelock, positivisim-negativism, logical positivism, Steve Pinker, Steve Mojzsis, good enough list for now... geeze!

423. Beginning of a Lengthy Poem/ Song: "The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box" (Vision for a Cyclical Music Video)

Caption for Slide Show: Tragedy of Nature Inside the Box, Absurd Nature
I have decided to start an image collection of the "Absurd Nature" or nature that is unexpected, particularly with the themes of (1) manufacturing nature, as in natural history museums (2) conservation as consumption, selling nature for a human career or profession and (3) flash-freezing and manicuring nature, or humans attempting to control nature or impose a vision of what nature is trying to be, for example, "What kind of Garden of Eden do you want for the Santa Cruz island?" or "What kind of Japanese Garden do you want for the ocean?" or even the National Park System itself. All images will feed toward the pre-meditated music video entired "The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box."

The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box (Absurdity)

The tragedy of nature inside a box. [absurdity]
I need infinite space, an unconstrained plot [other wording for this!]
An escape route was a change of scenery,
But my dreams flew with my cash
And nature's sold back to me.
And a box within a box--
Just--simply ain't free.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE TRAGEDY OF NATURE INSIDE A BOX:
IN ORDER TO CONSERVE OR PRESERVE (AND CONTINUE TO RESEARCH) A CERTAIN SYSTEM (WHETHER "NATURAL" OR "HISTORICAL"), YOU HAVE TO (1) PUT OTHER PEOPLE IN BOXES (LAW) SO THAT THEY DON'T MESS WITH THE SYSTEM (2) MASS PRODUCE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SYSTEM (A) INFORMATIONALLY (B) PHYSICALLY-PLASTIC FIGURINES... JUST TO RAISE AWARENESS AND MAINTAIN A SALARY TO CONSERVE AND PROTECT THE THING ITSELF; IT'S ABSURD! IN THE END, EVERYTHING THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO THINK IS INFINITE IN NATURE IS ULTIMATELY PLACED AND CONFINED IN A BOX (in a large-scale society)

I had a very encompassing, entrenching sequence of images pass through my head during the second day of the COMPASS science communications workshop. Particularly when marine biologist / science communicator Elizabeth Neeley gave us a tour of her very-cool pet pea project on saving deep-sea corals "Too Precious to Wear" (http://www.tooprecioustowear.org/), and how this campaign penetrated into the elitist fashion industry of New York. My brain couldn't stop cranking on working on this song... and this plot line for a music video.... It started coming full circle... and in a full, cross-generational cycle!

MUSIC VIDEO SKETCH FOR "THE TRAGEDY OF NATURE INSIDE A BOX:"
Basically, the film / music video sequence started with a redwood tree or a pristine plot of ocean (and I'll just assume for now it's the redwood tree, because I have thought about the redwood tree frame of reference for quite a while).
**Camera focuses on a pristine redwood tree, zooming out, then a scientist comes into the picture
**the scientist and the artist takes multi-dimensional samples, and creates multi-dimensional artistic representations of the tree [unfinished: classification of environmental scientists map, all types of data is collected on a flipping salt marsh]
**zooming out, the scientist leaves these ropes that protect the tree (she/he has a badge that allows her/him to cross the rope boundary), then the scientists steps to the car and it turns out the tree is not only surrounded by ropes/fences, but it is completely surrounded by encroached parking lot
[[**if I were working with the ocean situation, it would be 3 square miles surrounded by an arbitrary fence (fish in a box, fishermen in a box, scientists can go in and monitor, underwater Yosemite, how come it costs so much money to leave a plot of land alone), and the fishermen were placed in a box, placed in chains, that law places chains, ropes around these supposedly infinite, unbounded regions, same with the Sarengetti, it's tragic]]
[[**and just with the ballona wetlands, the tree is surrounded by lots of NGO noises, hoo-haas, save the redwood tree from logging, save the fishes, save the birds, etcetera, picket signs all around the flipping redwood tree, and just like La Bufadora, a parade of local mom and pop shops making and selling hand made trinkets of redwood trees on a one-mile parade to the dxmn redwood tree]] (localized representation)
**the scientist goes back to the university and (1) publishes a paper (2) surrounded by media sharks and gets interviewed 5000 times (3) gets publicized by several media sources (4) the scientist has sketch drawings / photography which is sent to his/her agent, which is then transformed into (a) coffee table books (b) post cards (c) plastic figurines (d) stuffed animal redwood trees (e) redwood trees on t-shirts and stickers and pins and high-end dresswear
**the designs were shipped to China to be mass produced in a massive factory setting, all representations of this one tree, where they harvest resources from all over the world in order to make these representations of redwood trees (or fish, whatever) (global representation)
**then the redwood tree representations were redistributed back to America and Europe and Australia (which was considered worldwide) all of this one dxmn redwood tree or plot of land or ocean that was being protected (essentially mass-produced plastificated "nature")
**then there was a little boy or girl who went with his or her quasi obese mom or dad in the grocery store surrounded by plastic and food-like substances; they live in a city, and mom and dad earn a good living working for some corporations; and for some reason, though the kid had all these toys and their parents could by all these toys, then for some reason this kid has an arbitrary fixation on this plastic redwood tree in a Walmart store of sorts and that he begged for this tree and held on to it
**finally it was time for the family to go on a "cocoon vacation" because their parents were fed up of work; and they went on a fancy coccooned "land cruise" and were shuttled everywhere they wanted to go; the little kid (now with dulled stimulation from the plastic figurine), still clutched his toy through this cocoon vacation in hope that one day he will see the redwood tree
**the family went all over the American west and this kid was posed "standardized" distant photographs of the same kid in different backdrops, the kid looked rather apathetic while his mom made him pose in front of these places; the family looked distanced, withdrawan, distraught when going through their whirlwind tour; the kid and the family was in a cocoon box vacation and then they created these artificial boxes with photography
**and then finally, the family and the tour headed toward the famous redwood tree, and the kid became excited again, similar to the beginning of the music video, from zoomed out to zooming in, the kid marched through all the clutter surrounding this redwood tree, the locals selling crxp at their stands, the hordes of tourists, the pissed off loggers (fishermen and DFG and coast guard if fish), the NGOs and their picket signs, and the massive parking lot, then down to the rope and the fence
**then the little kid went up and stared up and up and up and up into the great big branches of the redwood tree, clinging to his toy, and the rope, and was just stupified, and then the boy saw that same scientist/artist in the beginning, and the boy was extremely jealous; he climbed over the fence and tugged on the scientist's t-shirt who was collecting data and drawing sketches, the boy showed the scientist his little toy redwood tree and then he streched his neck up way way far up and asked: "Is this that?" "Yes, indeed!" perked the scientist. And the researcher clutched the boy's arm and guided his hand to touch the tree... and it seemed that all the chaos and clutter and media and government and NGOs and facade representations of the redwood tree dropped out of the boy's memory like flies sprayed with windex
**it was the first time in the boy's life his droning apathy was transformed into inspiration
**the boy corresponded with the scientist for years to come and one day that boy became the same scientist and artists, and though he was sad all he wanted to do was to study this beautiful redwood tree, he had to play the game and mass produced the representations of it to the rest of the entirety of this society just to save it and leave it alone... SADLY...
**and that is the catch 22, the paradox, the oxymoron, the irony, the tragedy of nature inside the box

**they irony is you have to mass produce the representation of the real thing just to protect it and leave it alone; the irony is that it costs so much money just to leave a piece of land alone... and that in the end, there is no more infinity, no more Wildwest, no more vast, unspoiled land, but everyone ends up being stuffed in a box, humans, trees, and fishes included....

**a major point about open space is providing open space, infinity... but now... we're all in a box.
**the largest catastrophe of today is the SCALE OF OPERATIONS OF THIS SOCIETY. Because of it's relative size, I am placed in a position to mass produce representations of the things I love just to keep the things I love alive, and I can continue researching them....

422. A BaZillion Dollar Poem / Song Lyrics: "Unfabricated Fixation"

I am proud to say that I invented these lyrics yesterday. What I have come to notice is that I have devised my own philosophies towards "major themes in life" and based on my experiences and encounters with certain people, these themes tend to repeat themselves in my head, and at first they may be ranting journal entries, morphed into civilized blogs, but when my mind is having a golden moment, it transforms and crystalizes my repeating, quirky philosophy into poetry correlated with a distinctive-enough melody (the melody can be tossed... whenever).... Constructing music to everyday words and philosophy is the perhaps the highest dimension of valuing/pricing words--if not monetarily, then at least to the human spirit!

And welcome to the poem/song:
"Unfabricated Fixation"

"Love" is a word for very lazy people.
I need to 'explore n' define the gory details--

For white dresses and diamond rings
Are societal foofy [veneer] bling-blings--

How do I show my mind has fixed on you?
How can I prove that I've commit to you?

Without being another fabricated fool....

I am so ANTI-SOCIETAL MASS PRODUCTION and PRO-SELF-CONSTRUCTION. It certainly shows in my music!

Currently I am playing these lyrics in my head in a quasi mimicking White Stripes "Apple Blossom" melody--but only for the first line, just to get me started.

421. Jenny Minnich: My Beauoootiful Sister (Commercial Print / Basic Photoshoot / Zed Card)

CAPTION IN PICASAWEB:
My sister, Jenny, is a most beauoootiful sister in the whole wide world (she's my only one, but wow, what a lucky person I am!) and so I decided to do my second official zed-card-like photoshoot with her (my first photoshoot was with Patricia, a Santa Barbarbarian local, who was referred to me by Kent, the one-and-only rock crab distributor). This photoshoot at Hansen Dam (near by Sunland, CA) was taken two days before spring quarter started, in which I had a school-related panic attack and decided to do anything that was not for myself but for the benefit of others. Given that this was an impromptu photoshoot (without any preparation, additional equipment other than a camera with two lenses, nor directed theme), I feel quite proud of myself for this tiny body of work--in the field and in the photoshop digital dark room! Jenny was pissed off that I started to take pictures of her in a "professional way" and she HATED posing! I made up this Torture by my doing the Imitation Crazy Doggie Dance Video for her cell phone ring tone. The video was passed along all the way to Greece! Ahhh! Now that I look like a complete fool, I think we are both even.

Other Notes: **it was at one location **three different settings (by the lake, on the open road, and in an eroding gully with red-brown rocks) **late afternoon lighting, approaching golden hour, but not quite **since it was impromptu, my sister was not psychologically prepared, I had to delete several photos because of awkward (unnatural) posing **delt with one change of clothes / make up / hairdo **I could say the purpose of the photoshoot could be (1) establish the zed card / portfolio of my sister (2) sell some natural skin care (3) advertise some high end, casual grunge-geobum-field work clothes (Gap / Old Navyesque) ** Zoom in to Zoom out: facial, 1/4 body, 1/2 body, 3/4 body, full body, full body with context,

420. Pseudo Horror Story at Bill's Farm, Nipomo, California (and Reminiscing of Pismo Beach)

Currently I am in a loud, noisy Starbucks just off the 101 freeway at Pismo Beach. I have overall very positive associations with this town... since it was a vacation spot in my early childhood--11 or 12 years of age. I am stressed out, but can simultaneously feel relaxed... in a certain way.

I have driven through Pismo Beach perhaps a dozen times. The first time I consciously remember was that first vacation, in which my parents reserved a cozy, mom-and-pop hotel right along the bluffs at Pismo Beach. My sister and I had a blast because all we did at the ages 9-11 were jump from the steamy hot jacuzzi to the cool (relatively speaking), heated swimming pool, amidst the air of the frigid summer, dense fog. We also ate out at quite a few restaurants, but the most memorable of experiences was when we walked along the beach (maybe the summer of 1993), my sister and I collected piles and piles and piles... of SAND DOLLARS!!! We were sooo excited, because we never saw sand dollars around the southern California beaches (they are there, just not washed up on the shore). We had so many sand dollars that we had to be picky and choosy about which ones to take home. We also had to wash and scrub them to prevent them from smelling in the car. The second time our family went to Pismo Beach (two or three years later, with a been-there-done-that-anticlimactic attitude, we stayed at a worse hotel), all the sand dollars that were abundant along the beaches... were all gone! Though it was a child's dream to collect riches and treasures from the shore, I look back with an "ecologist's hat" and wonder about such a massive sand-dollar mortality! What caused all these sand dollars to die and wash up to shore? Is this a rhythmic event, or is it a rare event? At what interval? What is the appropriate sampling rate in time? How would one know what the true cycles would be?

Beyond those two family vacations, I passed through Pismo Beach when I was commuting from UC Davis to Riverside, as well as going on a painfully eventful trip to an NCAA tennis tournament at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Fall 2002) (I lost to some Russian girl, don't give a shxt), as well as excursions up to the Morro Bay mudflats and Oso tidepools (am I right?) with Armand Kuris' invertebrate zoology courses. The tidepools were infested with really cool invertebrates, but it was the first time I found the rocks so striking (they were "dyed red," thinly sliced in rhythmic layers, and slanted at a 30 degree angle), I asked the invertebrate expert TAs, "What the heck is going on with these rocks? Why are they like this?" and none of them could answer me. I was baffled that these biology pros knew jack about the broader abiotic (geologic) context of their pet pea organisms.

I think a lot of individuals in the Starbucks here are vacation-goers. I feel a bit more relaxed. So, yesterday... I left Santa Barbara pretty late--right before dark--still some light left in the sky--right after a wonderful conversation with Jules (who was discussing about deep-time and the dresser-drawer effect with sifting and sorting memories), and I was excited because I was heading towards "Bill's Farm" in Nipomo, California--which is pretty well-advertised on hostel sites, as well as the WHOOFER site. I had a conversation with a young student back in February about his experiences at Bill's Farm. He said it was a lot of fun but he said it's a bit messy and dusty. He also recommended I brought my sleeping bag.

I called Bill--or Bill Denneen--who appears to be a local celebrity "ecoterrorist" biologist who banged on his drums loud enough to save some plots of open space from development--and he seemed to be a very exciting, enthusiastic older fellow. After looking at some pictures on the wall (I know I am jumping ahead here), he has this long white beard and appears to look like a mountain goat--let alone a wannabe Darwin-look-alike. I am sorry but the only legitimate Darwin look-alike alive and in my life is my (and THEE) evolutionary biology professor at UC Santa Barbara. Bill was very kind to provide directions for me to get to his farm in the dark. He even left the light on for me in the yard. I approached Nipomo around 10:30 pm (after some outings in Santa Maria, foraging for beef and turkey jerky, as well as stretching out and jogging, as well as discussing my "feminine irregularities" with my sister (psychologist and medical-expert-in-training), and as soon as I left the freeway, I swiftly ventured through the boxy buildings of Corporate America (Vons, Starbucks, Autozone, Mobil Gas, etcetera), and soon after hit the "boonies" of Nipomo. After a painfully slow ride on a couple of open, residential streets (I had to pause to check every single street sign, just like what I was doing as a Domino's Pizza Delivery Girl in my first year at UCSB--boy I wished I had my GIANT flashlight with me!), I finally saw the sign "Bill's Farm" as well as a "Kids for Sale" sign (in which Bill provided a search image for over the phone). Bill was pretty adamant about females acquiring professions other than motherhood--for a multitude of reasons, ranging from biological (chicken analogies) to human population-ecological to cultural-servitude-slavery, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am very in favor of his ideas, and he would most certainly be excited about my efforts of going to graduate school, but I find that he squacks too much about them. And that having a cool job and raising kids are NOT mutually exclusive tasks (take for example, Sarah Simpson, the Earth Science Editor for Scientific America with two adorable, rambunxious boys to take care of as well!). Bill and my father are also perhaps in agreement, "Career first, then family. First you have to establish an identity and maintain your sanity... then you can start building a family." But the issue is my father never made this a big deal. It just was what it was. This perspective suddenly became a "big deal" as soon as I came to college and started seeing these "affirmative action" opportunities for me in higher education simply because I was a female. And slowly, I was learning that American treatment of females today is very different from the rest of the world, even though there are huge residuals of male dominance factors in the construction and infrastructure of this society. I am actually angry that Bill Denneen squacks so loud about this issue--like a male rooster indeed, he even wrote several opinions articles on this topic in the local newspapers!--and that fundamentally this female choice of profession should be a "non-issue." It is indeed a quiet battle inside me, and in all females, and I honestly think that the female choice of profession--whether biological, or societal, or a combination of both--should simply be an internal dialogue within each person and a quiet battle of priorities. Such a very personal issue should not be broadcasted like Sports or Entertainment. I barely even knew Bill and that was one of the first issues he brought up with me over the phone. The female profession issue--and that I should never get old and cynical....

Nevertheless, Bill seemed like an intriguing person and I merely went on my way for the first time... in the dark... to Bill's Farm. I didn't know where to park so I pulled in the driveway. I had a few doubtful moments, whenever I am in a dark place and especially out of context--I can get negative visions--like the whole Blaire Witch Project effect, the whole I Am Legend-rabies-infected-fast-breathing-mutant-human-effect--but I kind of hummed to myself to calm my horror fiction thoughts down and just saw a black blank slate instead. I couldn't make out much of the house, and at first I was very confused as to where the "front door" was... until finally a light shined to where I stepped . I can say, walking forward, from the front door, was the accumulation of the most CLUTTER, and DUST, and COBWEBS and ANCIENT TO RECENT papers posted and mounted EVERYWHERE!!! I mean, EVERYWHERE! I thought hostels were somewhat cluttery with advertisements, but this was clutter to the 11th dimensions! I thought I had maybe some "low hygeine standards" compared to my housemates Kyle and Karl (I have a series of coffee and mouthwash stains on the floor of my room in Goleta, to which I have been better about cleaning up and maintaining), but this was just... atrocious! Bill said he left the hallway and room light on as to where I was to proceed in the household. I went into the hallway, and finally into the room, which contained a bunk bed and two delapidated one-story beds, in which one bed contained two beat-up, delapidated dolls-stuffed animals I couldn't even make out what they were. Everything was coated with dust and cobwebs. Too many daddy long leg spiders to count. Either I was to work the farm for 2.5 hours or pay $15 a night.... More like work this farm 24-7 until bare minimum sanitation! (I remember toward the end of my grandfather Ray's life, he had a difficult time maintaining the household, and my mother and father came and helped him out... maybe this guy is going toward that end of the road as well, because my grandfather's house was 20 times cleaner than this house... even though it was considered "dirty." It sucks, Ray. Totally sucks. You're still alive in my head, very alive. It sucks like we have to go through this stupid I-gotta-die ritual, and it went about the way it did. I'm sure it was totally dumb. Whatever.)

Anyway, what do I say? When I think about the interior of this household of Bill's Farm, I feel like puking.

Well, I was tired, and so I just carefully chose a single-layer bed and wrapped myself cautiously in my sleeping bag. The whole place smelled like... I am not sure... a stuffy library that had just been rediscovered on the bottom level of an Egyptian Pyramid... after thousands of years of rotting and decay.... Shxt. Shxt. Shxt. I thought about how I REALLY wanted to just sleepy nice and comfy and cozy in my car (which even my housemate Kyle thought it was "dirty"--well, it's dusty from wildland fire ashes, it's an hour's worth of cleaning and vacuuming for sure, but I would rather sleep in my car than this room).

The issue is, I woke up three hours DYING OF THIRST. You can't blame me because I had eaten quite a bit of beef and turkey jerky from Target around 10:30pm. I woke up and had no water in the room. I had no fluids in the car except for some residual Diet Mountain Dew and Coffee Bean Coffee. I walked around this stuffy house and opened the refrigerator. Nothing. There was WHOLE milk in there--not fat free--and I soon found out it was spoiled to the nth degree. There was one drawer that had drinks guests had to pay for--and it was only Natural Ice Beer--no sodas. Since I found no bottled water, I returned to the room and decided to try the tap water from the sink. And? Well. I placed some in my mouth... and it tasted like latex. The water drip into the sink left a distinctive outline between the dust and the clean areas. I spit the water out. I then stepped back again into the kitchen. The water at the kitchen sink tasted like latex, except twice as bad. I was becoming more and more desperate for water. Finally, I was so much in pain of thirst, that I popped open a dehydrating Natural Ice Beer, to quench my thirst--which it did for only about three minutes. I laid back in my sleeping bag, sat their for three more minutes. The rooster squacked, the two dogs barked out in the yard. I saw some really old alarm clock underneath the bunk bed catty corner to the bed I was laying on--3:30 am. My mind started directing itself, "I am so desperate that I quenched my thirst with dehydrating beer. This is substandard living. I want to sleep in my car." I quickly rose from the stench, aggragated my belongings, left a check of $16 (15 for three hours of sleep in a wronchy house, 1 for the beer), was swiftly greeted by two, slobbery, friendly black dogs outside, backed out of the driveway, and vanished from the vicinity.

My brain is already trashed up enough. The last thing I need to do is be drowning in a landfill within the interior of a home that is supposedly a hostel and an organic farm. What is this? Compulsive hording? Honestly the owner of the house may consider getting a caretaker!

By that point, I was happy to greet any other forms of civilization at gas stations. First, I bought 1.69 overpriced water bottle. I was hunting for fat free milk, but no one had fat free milk! The second gas station, I finally bought one pint of 1% fat chocolate milk, and the third gas station--an ampm mini market just out of Arroyo Grande--I bought a quart of chocolate milk. NO ONE HAS FAT FREE MILK AROUND HERE!

I proceeded off the freeway near by a Motel 6 and a Denny's off 4th Street--the borderline between Pismo and Grover Beach, saw a 7-11 after a couple of miles off of driving, found a place to park near by (in front of a rather large house), grabbed my sleeping bag, and went to sleep... until the morning hit, and these two hispanic guys started to do noisy yardwork right at the house I parked in front of.

I didn't realize I was so close to Grover Beach. I parked by a little fish restaurant and cleaned up my car a little bit. I walked to the beach, only to admire the vast stretches of sand and dunes, and how the terrain seemed concave in which I could see Point Conception all the way down south and some other Point all the way up north. It was beautiful.

I started to wake up and worry aout filling out my NSF form. Some guy with coffee greeted me and asked me if I jogged. And so I wished I had jogged.

And so here I am.

Life doesn't always go according to what is planned... or expected in the head. Instead of griping, I suppose I document the occassion, and find myself laughing... ten years later.... If I am still alive, that is.

419. Victoria's Ontogeny of Art (While Simultaneously Creating a Portfolio)

8. [Undercover] Stokastika's Brief Ontogeny of MultiMedia Art. I usually tell people a "formula story" in terms of my untrained relationship with art: my parents never encouraged me too much. They were largely "oh, that's nice" type of parents whenever I engaged in an artistic endeavor. Instead, they were encouraging with science and dictatorial with tennis (my mom was the dictator, that is). My early educational system provided few opportunities to express myself in art, but whenever I had a chance, I created beautiful things, from drawings to cartoons to maps to posters to little rugs and mattresses to canvas paintings to origami and low budget sculptures. I remember hanging out with the best artists in class (like Agatka Chrobak and Myrbon Garcia), and we would essentially teach each other artistic styles and tricks that our authoritative teachers didn't have the will or capacity to teach us. I remember spending an entire year trying to draw the best Little Mermaid in class (and Agatka sent me one of her drawings in the mail! I was so touched!). Since I was intrinsically good at art, none of the other kids really picked on me (well, I was also one of the tallest kids in the class, so that helped too). Since the third grade, I knew I was a rebel artist (now I KNOW that I know it). At one point, a guest artist became infuriated because I did not paint the outline of a lemon-tomato-teapot complex the way how the told the class to delineate. I simply responded softly, "But that's not what I see." Then this angry teacher went behind me to my eye level, and said, "Oh!" and then she left me alone. I was a very subservient, quiet student... and this was the first indication of what would eventually become a "rebellious breakout" from the educative norm. I remember in the sixth grade, the class was partnered up and we had to draw side profiles of our partner. I actually created the most accurate drawing in the class of Alexandra Edmond, an aspiring track runner (who's sister was really famous because she was a North High School track star). I had only one art class in my life--and that was in the 8th grade. Mr. Clack really pushed me to have a career in art (and now, I can go back and say I'm doing environmental media!) By the time I reached high school, the pursuit of art was largely stifled and marginally expressed through science project poster design and designing tennis t-shirts. Art slowly emerged through my doodles during classes and guest lectures in undergraduate and graduate school. And then, I recently met Katrien--an astrophysicist who is also an artist--and she said that it's probably a very good thing that I never received a formal education in art. Just be intuitive and do your own thing!

I'm sure more memories of my relationship with art will sneak up on me!

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?

417. Dying an Orange Death (Flash Fiction) Inventing New Rules to Hollywood Formula Storytelling (Poem / Song)

Song: Dying an Orange Death

I am dying an orange death,
Crawling for my one last breath,

Cupped by a splotch of petals--
Held by a web of nettles--

Of novel land's Absurd,
An Alien Absurd.


I am dying an orange death,
Parameter-izing a purple sketch

Within a leaf-like letter
Trekked for a semblanced-shelter--

How-could I be so lured?
Easily tripped, allured?


What's the point?--I'm
Dying an orange death.
Dislocate to
An Alien of lands.

What is the chance
To hold foot again?
What is the chance
Of rebirth again?

Role the dice
And Life's Life
Is slim--
For I'm dying
An orange death.


STORY:
Dying an Orange Death is a flash fiction story about Absurdity. I feel that Hollywood is very limited in it's storyline gimicks and that there are certain protocols not explored. For example, some existentialist koan type of material that I happened to experience in my own life. A few days ago I rescued an eccentric-looking caterpillar from being smooshed by a car while it was rapidly crawling across the parking lot (with no shrub or tree refuge in site of its course of action). Since I had never seen such a caterpillar before, I picked it up (along with a leaf) and took a moment from my self-absorbed life to take a few pictures of it within the shade of my car. Before I even had the chance to return this little fiesty bugger to a nearby bush, that creature started to frantically crawl around my arm and at the right place and right time, it fell within the crevice abyss within my parking break, in between the two front seats. Then I spent about five minutes trying to find the thing within the dark caves of my own metal motile contraption. I abandoned my efforts in helplessness. I was so aggravated by my efforts on trying to save this little creature, and now it's going to shrivel in my own hands, within the jungle of my own car! Soon enough, I had to dart into the Kinkos, work for a couple of hours, and then hit the road to Riverside, to which I came in to my parents' house late that night--too delirious to worry about a caterpillar. The next morning, as I proceeded to clean out the clutter from the vaulted interiors, I happened to elatedly stumble upon this frazzled little caterpillar--now worn out and beaten up, losing some of its hairs and feelers--curled up all shy and potentially tired from marching up to a peak of obviousness: the tip of the white lid of an old Starbucks coffee cup. At first I thought the creature was dead because it was very still. Then I poked it with a finger and it started to move! I then told my father about the trek of this absurd little caterpillar and he suggested that I transplant this thing into his California wildflower garden. I ended up placing this caterpillar in the cup of a barely opening poppy flower (late in bloom this year), and my father came to see the now scraggly, transplanted caterpillar, as he commented how it will be "dying an orange death." I exclaimed, "Gee, how poetic! I will write that down." He noted it was a bit repetitious--dying and death, and I said *whatever.* My father and I returned to the supposedly caterpillar-filled poppy flower a few minutes later (after I wrote down a few words), and then the caterpillar mysteriously vanished. We thought all the possibilities. Maybe it crawled out and started to explore the jungle of flower/weed fields underneath the poppy. Maybe it was grabbed by a hungry bird. Nevertheless, it was gone, and though all of it was quite dramatic, it was very anticlimactic in the end. I walked away from this little absurd adventure, asking "What's the point?" (I just told this story to Jules and he liked it a lot! I told him that Hollywood has a formula. I hate being stuck in a formula, and I wanted to invent new rules to the game. So I did. I created a story full of drama, but you leave feeling unsatisfied--like you work so hard to do something good, and in the end there is no resolution and no satisfaction. There was no point after all. The message is so stoic, so existentialist--I love it!

CAPTION:
"Dying an Orange Death" is a Flash Fiction Story (Memoir) and Poem about How I tried to rescue a caterpillar from its death in a parking lot, and in end, it self-induced its own death under my care... potentially within my car... and within the wildflower garden of my father. The goal of the story is to leave one wondering, "I try so hard to do something so magnificently minutely good... and in the end... what's the point? Nothing comes of it." I think this is the first Koan I ever experienced in my life!

CAPTION:
Dying an Orange Death. Flash Fiction Story (Koan) about saving a mysterious caterpillar from a certain parking lot death, leading to two encounters of uncertain death... and an unresolved future.

416. Haunting Poem "Transitions Under Knowledge Acquisition": So Much for Objectivity of Science! (Intersubjectivity)

Transitions Under Knowledge Acquisition

By Victoria "Stokastika" (c) 2004-2005

The more you know

What's Real from Fake--

The more you know,

Your emotions decay.

The more you know,

In rationale you partake,

And you care so much more

About what's at stake.

The more you know

What's Real from Fake--

The more you know,

Better decisions you make.

The more you know,

The more you create,

And you care so much more

About what's at stake.

Yet

With Plasticky Knowledge

To Improvise,

Adapt to Unexpected

And come out---

Alive.

As my head thinks it is still swaying back and forth on a boat, my mind continues to revisit a poem entitled "Transitions Under Knowledge Acquisition," which documents an angle of intersubjectivity (lack of objectivity) of science: knowledge acquisition of a subject or object is usually coupled with deep emotional attachment, hence biasing what we as scientists know and how we make decisions.

Lack of knowledge --> apathy --> lack of care --> lack of action or innovation or management

Knowledge acquisition --> emotional attachment --> care --> action / innovation / management

I originally wrote the poem above a couple of weeks after watching "The Day After Tomorrow," a climate change Hollywood flick that was a little bit ahead of the times... Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth came out about a year later. I was about to watch the film with Seth and other cool UC Riverside Earth Scientists, but it turned out that they went without me, and I went with a friend--but I don't remember exactly who. I vividly remember driving from Riverside to the Moreno Valley Walmart off Day Street, and this poem came pouring out of my head! My father was forced to watch the film on his Birthday with all the other geologists up in the White-Inyo Mountains either in September of 2008 or 2007. He was disgusted by the science of the film, simply because it was "science fiction too intertwined with science" that it would be too difficult to pick apart for the generic public, but I think he enjoyed the notion that the star of the show was a paleoclimatologist--somewhat like himself--and that sometimes esoteric, abstract knowledge from the university can have political implications and can actually serve in the equation of natural selection and survival of the fittest: the few people who knew how the storm operated survived while all the other ignorant humans croaked like ants sprayed with windex. The film clearly portrayed the role of science in society, from esotericism to pragmatism to political decision-making... all the way to survival of one or a few individual lives. I felt that the underlying mechanisms of science were stripped down to its barebone nakedness.

Soon after writing the poem, I incorporated the piece into my Question Reality manuscript (http://lulu.com/questionreality). But it keeps coming back to haunt... so I better blog it as well.

I suppose I am now preaching to the choir.... At the last AAAS meeting in Chicago, Al Gore provided a mandate that scientists must get involved in politics, meaning that scientists must take responsibility for what they know. Ahem and amen. Not Al Gore Style politics, but something of the like....

415. Ten Poems that Question Reality (Within Biologically Incorrect / Stokastika Summary Documents)

Ten Short Poems That Question Reality. Page 1.

Ten Short Poems That Question Reality. Page 2.

Ten Short Poems That Question Reality. Page 3.

To view the whole document, please view the PDF below: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/tenpoemsthatquestionreality.pdf.

I compiled this collection of poetry during winter quarter of 2009, while I was simultaneously taking my first official poetry class with Dr. Barry Spacks and preparing to go to the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting (this year in Chicago). I constructed this document as a "sample-capture" representative summary statement of who I am and what my blog is all about, but it ended up that I needed to turn in a three-page sampler to Barry's course toward the end of the quarter... and since I did not have any time to work on other poems, I ended up turning in this summary to the class.

Everyone took turns to read other students' poems throughout the class for about three class sessions. It was a lot of fun, though sometimes the readings were tedious to listen to because they were previously workshopped poems, and they had not altered much. Not many students read my poems in the beginning of the session, and then towards the end they started to read my work... as last resort. *Sigh.* Perhaps not necessarily that my poems are "bad" but they are more so "concept" poems--poems with big ideas exploring the interface of "science and art"--that they have not wrapped their heads around (as students are young and are still dealing with their first or second bgfriend relationship crisis and perhaps their decision-making abilities may not span much farther than which class to take next quarter... one from column A and two from column B... these may be students in general... not necessarily these writers in Barry's course). There were three students in the class who were more existentialist-surrealist-philosophically-oriented (and surprisingly all three of them were guys) and they finally tackled my poems. They did a superb job! On the last day, Barry Spacks announced to the class, "We have to catch up with Victoria's poetry!" followed by an an extraordinary reading of "Purpose or a Process;" his re-enactment of my melodramatic mind was doubly haunting than how I perceive my own mental ecosystem, and there was a chilling seriousness to the reading, as if Barry understood what I have gone through. I left feeling disturbed by someone else's reading of my poem. It made me feel emotionally restless and psychologically dissatisfied--I wanted more, but in my own time. The poetry reading felt like a psychological thriller: you have to be in the mood to enjoy it, or be absorbed in it. But if you push all the buttons with the right combinations, like The Matrix movie, then you can easily be in the mood to soak in dense material.

Barry's reading of my Purpose or a Process poem was one of the extraordinary, un-expected highlights of Winter Quarter of 2009. Such a tiny thing--one minute of appreciation of my work by a great poet--can add up to mean everything. It's funny how reality works--the level of warpedness in value and meaning in stretches of time.

I also find it funny how in my poetry I decided to be melodramatic and soap opera-ish about big-picture ideas, not my nails, my split ends in my hair, my neighbor's tattoo, nor my boyfriend's fetish with the girl across the street. I'm over it... or maybe I just never got into it.

414. Inspired by Jill Sattler Atmospheric Photography / Advice on a Website Copyright Statement

A PDF of the above copyright statement can be found here:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/copyrightstatement.pdf.

I have come to a point in space and time in which I feel that the quality of my work has improved to a point of professionalism, and though I am not officially employed anywhere (e.g. a newspaper outlet), I myself have come to realize I cannot build any further if I do not come to grips with my past: what exactly are the nuts and bolts and lego blocks I built upon to reach a state of professional quality and unique style. No one can build anything solid on rubble. I gotta be a phoenix rising from the ashes, eh?

Instead of the past continuing to haunt me as a swirl demons refusing to rest, I decided to come to terms, to grips with it. The demons never go away.... The issue is that this massive pile of rubble consists of tiny, little demons that need to be reflected upon and sorted out. For example, an idea called "Jill Sattler."

A few months ago, I was fortunate to meet a very artistic, knowledgeable, well-established, enthusiastic, spunky woman by the name of Jill Sattler. I happened to sit right next to her at a Starbucks at the corner of State Street and Victoria in downtown Santa Barbara (to which I found out retroactively that she religiously goes to Starbucks on Sunday nights) and we ended up sharing our art portfolios and ideas about art and science for a couple of hours! So much for getting any work done. I had been very inspired by her body of work I would call "Atmospheric Photography," and I am now attempting to understand what this term means in my own photographic work. Sure, of course, there is the atmospheric (cloudy / landscape / broad horizons) component to my work, but it's also about constructing an integrated experience of the photographer and all elements of the photograph. All components of the photograph are in place--for example, if one person takes a picture of a person in a certain type of environment, that person blends in with the backdrop such that the individual becomes an integrated part of the landscape and the photograph as whole. I think Jill Sattler's approach to art very much embody "environmental media," but then again... doesn't everything in the universe embody "environmental media"? It's all how you define "environment." Oya!

Jill Sattler's website is at http://www.jillsattler.com. While we pareused through the virtual-internet representation of her self, we encountered a copyright statement. Professor Sattler provided quite a bit of advice on how to design a copyright statement; she actually received advice from a lawyer. I basically mimicked the copyright statement used by Dr. Sattler even though it sounds so harsh and my work isn't exactly valued economically by society (and I am okay with that)!

It's funny how so many times I had discussions with individuals about copyright statements and protection, and for some reason, after listening to Jill Sattler, everything became clear in what needed to be done. She was the last straw that convinced me to construct a copyright statement.

One little demon laid down. And one tiny idea off my to-do list. A million more ideas to go, eh? Ya....

413. Biologically Incorrect Banner Formation (Back in February of 2009)

FINAL CAPTION ON PICASAWEB:
It was the "sacred week" before the AAAS science conference in February of 2009. The metabolism of my mind was at about 120 miles per hour [It was tripping all over itself in the fourth dimension of biological speed]. It was one of those moments where I felt like I had five days left to live and was wondering how to spend it. Instead of directly working on research, I decided to vamp up the veneer of my blog and first-encounter-human- social-transaction component of conferences. First on the list was reconstructing my once hideous Blogger-devised "Biologically Incorrect Banner--" which was white, arial font overlaid with a cropped pale-yellow sunflower image... to what is now... below [ABOVE]. It took me six hours to make this collaged banner, and I remember staying up very late, crashing at my office at Bren to engage in this project. My reward was to take time to show the banner to Larry Zims, UCSB's Media Arts Technology (MAT) biologist-website design guru at a random Java Jones late-night chat. [He seemed impressed--his first comment was that creating the banner must have taken a LONG time! He would be the one to know... and appreciate!]

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.

412. The John Brockman Theory of Getting a Book Published

The John Brockman Theory of Getting a Book Published:

(1) Establish a multi-media platform (built-in audience either acquired through your own hard work or cheating by being on the Colbert Show or Oprah Winfrey Show).

(2) Be a pain in the xss. Be pushy and persistent. Never go away. Show your face and then they'll eventually feel obligated to give you a chance.

(3) Lastly, and most importantly at the core, "Pretend to be Great." And if you are great, then don't pretend. Just be yourself. Be great. (As Lady Gaga said, live a lie, until it becomes the truth).

And then, you won't be hunting for agents, the agents will be hunting down you. Given the economy right now, writing books doesn't make money. It's not the business to be in. You chose the wrong business to be in (but it's not about money! It's about communicating something down to the roots!) It has to be far beyond writing books. We no longer have the luxury to start people's careers off as a writer anymore; there is no possibility to take in newbies unless they have a worldwide built-in audience already. It's just reality.

I suppose the "above" could be a poem. Of all things, I was able to scratch off an ancient line on the to-do list (back in fall of 2005, over three years old, I suppose). Instead of going all the way to New York, New York came all the way to me--or close to me--Arizona at least. It had always been a dream to meet the great science literary agent, John Brockman, and his son Max (also a literary agent) as a Cherry on Top, but I am elated to say that I met both of them amidst the desert cacti of Scottsdale, conversed with them somewhat briefly, shook their hands, looked at Brockman, Sr. square in the face--he had this skeptical, entrepreneurial look in his eyes, as if he were at the Edge of the unknown, a rustic pioneer--but in this case, in the world of book publishing--New York. In the world of making science... popular... making scientists... household names. And he is one of the ultimate gateways that make such an endeavor feasible. The ability to make the Brockmans far beyond static pixels on a computer screen--real, living, breathing creatures, humans, even kind, gentle humans who didn't shoo me off and look down upon me as if I were a waste of time--which is what I feared tremendously what would happen (maybe being in Arizona--far away from the usual working grounds--helped). Ever since I met--errr, encountered--Dr. Jared Diamond (twice), I made an erroneous assumption that all famous scientists were overall "jerks" (he LITERALLY flicked me off like a booger insect smooshed in the line of sight of Dr. Diamond's window of life; I felt ugly, I felt like a failure) who had no time to speak to Nonames as myself (due to the fact they are always bombarded by so many people). And this entire Origins Symposium proved to me that Dr. Diamond was more so the exception than the rule.

In essence, I caught up with a to-do list item, and felt a leap of progress in my own life. I had come to Brockman's conclusions in my own terms, but it was just great--more than great--phenomenal--to hear my own personally-discovered conclusions come from the horse's mouth. If I met Mr. Brockman back in 2005, I would have not understood what he said to me a week ago. But then again, back in 2005--under the Bush regime--the political and economic and media distribution climate was VERY, VERY different--and Mr. Brockman probably would have not told me what he said to me a week ago.

I don't mean to make this sound like I was touched by an angel, because I was not. But I was inspired, and I was fundamentally, basally, motivated by Brockman's words. Now, whenever my confidence falters, I tell myself, I speak to myself, "Victoria, you are great. Victoria, you are great. You don't need to pretend. You are great, whatever that means." It doesn't matter what it means--it just perks up my confidence. My being a female (with built-in programs), my confidence tends to waffle much more than I like it to.

After meeting the Brockman Duo, somehow I felt certified by something. I met in the flesh the highest of ranks, the highest of all possible endeavors, and through this, I somehow established a clear vision. Go for the best--play the video game of society's shifting, illusory dominance hierarchies--gamble and play the game of luck opportunity meeting a prepared mind--because there is nothing else to do than become what you are supposed to be come, and find the context of people and places that will allow you to become what you are supposed to become.

Amen.

The more and more I am involved in the science journalism and popular science crowd, the more and more I am realizing there are TWO distinctive flavors of popular science. One flavor is called POTPOURRI SCIENCE. More like GEE-WIZZ science, or science that is BASIC, ABSTRACT, that might be educational in terms of distant questions (where we come from, our origins) or challenging our beliefs (science versus religion, brain scans documenting thought processes of the existence of god), and may verge to the fringes of practicality (new, close-to-market-ready technologies as well as science-medicine-health). POTPOURRI SCIENCE is 50% cool, gee-wiz fun facts that help us enhance our storytelling abilities at the next corporate cocktail party, and 50% pragmatic, or ethics-challenging, usually at the interface of science-religion, technology, and human health. I think this is where the Brockman Duo are mostly involved. BUT THEN THERE'S ANOTHER FORM OF SCIENCE JOURNALISM THAT I WOULD CALL IMPLICATIONS FOR ENTIRE SOCIETAL-POLITICAL OVERHAUL--and this is when you combine science, technology, human health, and environmental health. Then, it seems like in this realm of "environment" there are entirely separate magazines and publishing houses that handle these issues. Scientific America even started an Earth 3.0 sustainability magazine, separate from the rest of Gee-Wiz science. The worst part is that Environmentalism comes in all sorts of flavors (spectrum-Hollywood-Environment)--from the science side (who have ethical issues in terms of the role of science and society) (pragmatic scientists involved in data collecting and practical management, ranging to obscure, off-the-wall physicists who burned out from their careers and decided to meditate about environmental problems, but are not in tune with biology whatsoever) to the non-profit organization side, in which science can be misinterpreted, science and religion can mesh together (all that new-age-spiritual-bullshxt), and emotions can run amuck in decision-making (those dxmn enviroettes! rational versus emotional tree huggers). Then there are independent fishermen, who will still be harvesting food and surviving disaster after all the cards of the economy fall).

I honestly don't blame the existence of these two flavors of journalism and popular science. Because one flavor is more "standbackish" and how-does-science-enhance-individual-lives (almost like a Martha Stewart for science), and the other flavor of science implies the direct link of science and activism, or learning something new and changing behavior. Some magazines like SEED and New Scientist and Wired do not separate Potpourri Science from Societal Overhaul Science, but other magazines--like Discover--keep it centralized on Potpourri Science.

I am surprised that I detected this trend... and now, to formalize this knowledge, I will have to collect "official statistics" and get it published in a scientific journal. BLAH!

UPDATE ON DECEMBER 7, 2009. KINKOS, VENTURA, CALIFORNIA. PRE-MOUNTAIN'S LAST FLOWER.

For a while I had psychological turmoil and drama with literary agents and publishers, but now I have come to terms with this whole industry. I have come to a truce. The first truce is the marketplace of storytelling has dramatically changed and publishing companies are riding a wave to which they do not know what to expect to happen. An entire industry is undergoing a scientific experiment... so I feel for them, because my life is that way too. The second truce is I saw the behind-the-scenes operations of a dependent publishing company (which held a partnership with a major New York publishing house) and what I saw was equivalent to the antiglamorous textbook morgue basement barracks of a university bookstore: a massive room full of stockpiles of books. I mean, there was nothing romantic about it at all. Maybe it would have been cooler if the actual "printing press" were there. And the last truce is a universal one. As soon as I place expectations on other people, I start to become very unhappy with myself. My null hypothesis in all aspects of my life is barbarianism: "expect nothing from nobody." But the world over time has continued to prove me wrong! My goal as an experimental social scientist in the world of publishing is to find just one or a few people who actually have made me resort to the alternate hypothesis: "expect something from somebody." Always, always, ALWAYS, expect the worst and hope for the best. And as Randy Olson said, "Don't be the Randy of the group." That optimist, that expecter of great things... Always always always... a well of pessimism with a streak of optimism.