I invented the song after indulging "Nature's Metropolis" by Dr. William Cronon (a new academic idol I have, may I add), post being exposed to "G" music video idol, and while driving down to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Conference down in San Diego. It's a very very simple song with a profound metaphor: wearing landscapes as you are wearing various forms of clothing. This metaphor can be extended... I mean most people's clothing wardrobes are quite extensive, but here I focused on an old coat (suit and tie and collar), a thin-worn t-shirt, and nakedness. The "old coat" embodies the notion of being in this formalized-anonymous-suit-and-tie city environment, worn out and disconnected from the landscape and oneself. The "t-shirt" was directly inspired by Cronon's accounts for connections and increasing disconnect between Chicago and its surrounding "hinterlands" that made the Chicago become what it became. There was a level of expansion and domination of Chicago, and then there were negative repercussions of this expansive, resource-draining behavior, and then some behavior modifications became apparent in order to better "manage" or "manicure" Chicago and its surrounding countryside... so, that's why though the t-shirt is highly used and abused, there is still some need to keep it in once piece due to its excessive utility. And of course, the last stanza is about the desire to escape all forms of humanity into more "naked lands" like the ocean (San Diego), and the desert (Bahia de Los Angeles).
The odd part about this song is I hear the music and I see the music video, and it's just wildly exciting to me. The music is voice, chorus, hand-clapping, best-case scenario drum kit, piano, pipe dream would be electric guitar (a la Chris Lods). But since I am limited in resources, I will have to rely on my own body as an instrument as much as possible. The voice is most certaintly some arpeggiating and very jazzy sounding. It's a piece of music that is up-beat and can most definitely be jogged to... it's so important for me to be able to jog (and dance to) the music I create. No point in making music otherwise.... I'm emotionally utilitarian, you see.
As for the music video, if I had special effects, I would use overlay of imagery on a white coat and white t-shirt, but I don't have that, so I will have to do cheap-o things, like simple box metaphorical overlays with landscapes, clothes, and the mind. The image sequences are not completely flushed out, but I plan on capitalizing the imagery to our trip to Baja California over spring break. Some random thoughts: Jules and I walking opposite directions brick wall, Jules walking across the camera in three or four different environments, in the same kind of similar clothes or myself, first part city scenes, old coat, suit and tie, excessive collar, the collar becomes a dog collar with spikes, choking around the neck, the office cubicle, the countryside would be in Baja California, some crops, Jules interacting with people, there could be imagery (could be shadowed) of swaying like a chimpanzee-gorilla, simultaneously clapping hands, stomping feet to the beats of the music, could also be Jules garden, there can be some time lapse in the city, time lapse a day in the garden... and then the bare naked land, Jules laying out in the desert, by the cactus, and Jules out on the boat in the middle of the ocean, doing his fishing, Jules crossing his fingers antagonizing Point Loma at a distance, scuffing it away. The ending is us driving and walking, in these different landscapes, walking stripping, taking off our clothes and being barren as with the barren land. Some slapstick, clapping, little kids playing So, just some sketch ideas... for now.... More ideas here to come. The most important thing is to identify the visual layers: (1) sterile environment, us trying on and taking off the different types of clothes, close ups and at a distance (2) the sterile, controlled environment, swaying around like apes, clapping and stomping (3) the different types of environments (a) cityscapes, urban, people from corporate buildings (b) suburban, the garden, the boat-dock, crops ag-land (c) naked land, out in the ocean, out in the desert in the middle of nowhere (4) any form of gaps can be simple lines, cartoon linear overlay.
Back in Fall of 2006, or the beginning of my "Medieval Dark Ages" year at the "deathly age of 25--dearest me, the Quarter Life Crisis!" I fell off my own log and decided I wanted to record a song at a music studio... as I ultimately wanted to learn how to compose, record, and mix-n-master my own songs. I fell into the hands of LAP Records, a studio that was about five miles away from home. Though I had to leave the studio due to some awkward transactions that I found to be violating my own personal space, I did learn a few things, and at one point I was inspired to write a melodic poem entitled "Legacy," which was also partly influenced by the studio owner's creation of jazz music.
After reading the poem again... nearly three years later... I found most of the stanzas to be preachy, cliche, and overall unpoetic. Only two stanzas remain standing and worth revealing:
Legacy
To be alive
and to know
that you're alive
is the greatest thing
you could ever
realize.
To carve a new trail
beyond your own home,
beyond your own life,
beyond your own space,
beyond your own time.
Referring to quotes from the metaphor essay and CHESS Book of Poetry. Shifting Baseline Syndrome. Once again. "One of the greatest dilemmas of modern environmental problems is the individual human's failed ability to assign and imagine a role--a sense of self and place--in systems of greater scales beyond one's own immediate needs, surroundings, and lifespan."
I guess the "good news" is that I walked away from LAP Records learning how to record, mix-master my music with the most basic system: Yamaha touch sensitive keyboard from Costco, Samsun microphone, a really crxppy computer soundcard in this Hewlett Packard PC, and a really crxppy software program called "Sonar Home Studio" which has more than enough quirks in it.... Music creation is a whole other can of worms. I'll open this can of worms... or barrel of snakes (the music industry is the King of Corruption after all!) another time.
I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable [[complex emotion]] and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, [[animal --> human metaphor]] and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: [[animal --> human metaphor]] shapes like full-blown roses [[animal --> plant metaphor]] stained and lost through age. He was speckled and barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, [[animal --> plant metaphor]] and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen --the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly-- I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, [[animal --> animal metaphor]] the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. [[animal --> plant metaphor]] I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil [[animal --> human technology metaphor]] seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. [[animal --> human technology metaphor]] They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. --It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip --if you could call it a lip grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, [[animal-human relationships, gas chamber 5x]] or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons [[human technology --> human ornament metaphor]] frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom [[animal --> human emotion metaphor]] trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels--until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. [[complex emotion]][[simultaneous triumph of capture and letting go, you go girl!]] (And besides, no one wants to keep a fish full of parasites.)
This poem is NOT A STANDARD FISH STORY. Fish story being (1) corporate dude in suit and tie goes out fishing on a pond on a lazy weekend day (2) fishermen catching a great white shark or any other MobyDickish big fish or whale story. This story demonstrates more complexity of emotion, compassion and triumph all at the same, time, a moment of capture, but then finally letting the fish go. Many metaphors are animal --> human domain. Some metaphors are comparing animal --> animal (or plant).
I suppose I like this poem because I am having very similar experiences, and I feel I have an chest-beating ego that can do a better job than this poem, I am working on a fisherman-fish dialogue story as we speak, exploring metaphor, translation, and complex-simultaneously conflicting emotions as I was inspired by Samuel Beckett's minimalism. Though this poem is metaphorically layered, metaphorically rich, I feel that if there are so many metaphors, the metaphors should construct a patterned layer. The poet reaches out for random metaphors, some from fish to plant, some from fish to other animals, like birds, and even comparing fish parts to human pieces of technology, though they are colorful, they are random, and the lump sum of random metaphors may build emotion but not necessary leap into an alternative universe. I prefer more consistency in metaphorical construction. And? I think Jules would like the poem as well.
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 PHENOMENAADDICTION / 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!
It's funny how a bunch of little ideas just lay around unfinished, undone, all over the place. I just have one long trail of unfinished ideas, to which I am slowly accumulating, organizing, and cleaning up. Such was the case when I attempted to transport a 'mirror box' and 'prism' to the car upon return to Santa Barbara in December 31, 2008. I picked up the mirror box, remembering how I made it during the time I was visiting Tariel, and then I realized I performed a photoshoot with the mirror box, but never finished it! I never placed it on line! And so it goes.
The mirror box and prism are fundamental metaphors in perception of a common system--for example stakeholder perceptions of a common set of resources, or a common landscape, a common environment. The mirror box represents multiple different perceptions of the same system, but the prism not only reflects, but has transluscence. Transparency. The goal is to find common grounds--extract the common stuff that represents all of our core needs for existence.
This is what it says on my Stokastika Portfolio: "I came back to Santa Barbara the day before New Years, only to realize I needed to move the mirror box and the prism to the car. I made the mirror box and purchased the prism in downtown Santa Barbara (back in May of 2008). I was inspired that my friend Tariel had a prism, so I was determined to have my own!"
These are just scrap notes that I will have to further develop later.
The metaphors of POWER, CONTROL, and SUPERIORITY need to be replaced by the metaphors of ORGANIZATION, MANAGEMENT, and INTERDEPENDENCE.
Commentary by UCLA graduate student: Why are we in graduate school? Because graduate school distinguishes the intelligent people from the ditch diggers. After this fatso vertebrate paleo xsshole grad student of five years said that, I lost ALL respect for him. I am only in graduate school, biologizing (ecopistemologizing) 24-7 because all the other people, e.g. "ditch diggers," are doing their work to help me focus on my work. They are doing the best they can in their work, and I will be the best darndest biologist I can be. They do services for me, and I do services for them. If people were not digging ditches, I would be spending a good portion of the day digging ditches myself. Elaborate later.
I whole month of fragmented memories lay scattered in a pile of trash all over a bed of a motel 6. And how can I have the nerve to rapidly reflect and organize my shatterd past and throw them all away within less than an hour? So, I suppose the goal is to remove the bulkiest of materials and go from there.
Melted styrofoam box. Shared nachos with Julian. The last week and a half or so had been a "food spree" from Thai to horrid Chinese food to Mexican to god knows what. I had eaten out WAY too much, and this is my moment of reflection and self-imposition of constraint. It was a nice evening with Julian. Butt cold. I just started working on the fisheries stakeholder notes, and it had been a gruesome process in my part. It was the first time I was ever an "objective" note-taker for a stakeholder meeting. What a noble title, I think! We discussed Jeffrey Miller, etcetera. Evolutionary psychology stuff.
Fat free Milk from Trader Joes. I am a Trader Joes addict. Trader Joes natural spring water from Hector and Katia. I had a couple of writing sessions with Hector the last couple of weeks. Hector and Katia gave me a pair of pants to borrow (on a chilly night) and a bottle of water to head downtown to the movies--potentially the same movie Theater where T and I watched Wall-e, but instead this time we watched MILK, a documentary-narrative on the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly-elected gay official in the country--stationed in San Francisco. I fell in love with Harvey Milk and was 110% inspired by his charisma, opportunism, and the ability to make politics personal--the small world effect--applied for passing laws that provided rights for gays, lesbians, transgender, etcetera. If all gays came out of the closet and told their loved one, then suddenly nearly everyone is impacted--down to the family level--and then a lot of things go in their favor. Sean Penn (a Hollywood inheriter--parents involved in film) was a superb--I don't know how to describe him. All I know is that my level of respect for Sean Penn when from close to nothing to sky-rocket high. That was an academy award role, and Sean Penn deserves it. Harvey was so open. It was total bottom-up politics. You start with a neighborhood of Castro, and it expands all across the country. It's a beautiful thing. Completely beautiful thing. Harvey was such an open, organizational person. He excelled at everything he did. I looked at the old pics and I found out that he was left-handed. GO FIGURE! What a brilliant networker, the ability to move people like that. Moving on. I am throwing away the water bottle.
I liked a couple of scenes from the film because it involved reflection. There was one scene shot from the reflection of a whistle on the ground. Another scene shot through the reflection of a mirror. Those were beautiful, very creative simplicity. Love it.
It was interesting. I felt like I was going out to watch a film with my parents :-). Hector and Katia have been so kind to me, I am about to get them a Christmas present.
I bought a power bug for an ipod shuffle because my other charger was left at home by accident. I kept the box for a long time, thinking I was going to return it--it's too late. One month policy at Best Buy. I will throw it away. Though it was 20 bucks it was worth it. I can charge my ipod from a wall-socket, not my computer, which keeps getting reset all the time!
I bought a 12-pack of diet mountain dew at an unexpected time, at an unexpected place, at an unexpected price. Maybe the Vons out in Ventura off Seaward Ave. Kept me company in my drives a couple of times. No context of memories otherwise. It's funny how some things make you remember and some things don't.
I am now staring at another Trader Joes half-gallon milk and two half-gallons of TJs 2.99 (used to be 2.59) vanilla soy milk. As well as Vons organic Soymilk plain. I am a Soy Milk moderate addict. Once every two or three days. Or once a week in Goleta I would go over to TJs. Last time was there made purchases when writing an essay on Fishermen and Scientists. Define ORGANIC, please! It's government definitions, not literary definitions. I am so sure. I enjoy getting sample cups of coffee with creamer and stevia on cold days. It's a nice break from work at the Kinkos. I only get Vons soymilk when it is post 9pm and I am very desperate. Purchased with dinner with Kamal. Indian food. Too much eating out!!! Geeze!
I am venturing into throwing away the composition of my usual vices: coffee cups, lx, gum, werther candy, the now blue-ice-mint tic-tacs made of xylitol and dentist-recommended. Day in. Day out. The epitome of graduate student life. Coffee cups. My consumption of LX only signifies my denial of leaving American Megacorporate Dogfood remaining stagnant and stuck in my stomach for lengthy periods of time. I shoot for healthy alternatives, but every once in a while, I eat the Pollen's quote "food-like substance" and all I rationally and physiological desire is to expel it from my system as quickly as possible.
Another Vanilla soy milk! I just can't get enough! Opened GUM toothbrush with a microtip. I get those simply because. I am thinking of staying another hotel night... but I am not sure.... I should start moving stuff. few more items to throw. Like a second Trader Joes water bottle. And an overprices CVS antiseptic mouth wash. I paid 3.99 for 1.0 liters when I could have gotten a 3.29 1.5 Liter bottle at Walmart. But Walmart is depressing to enter into the store. So, I am paying extra money for less so I won't have to drive so far (Oxnard Walmart is the closest Walmart to Santa Barbara) and I won't have to get depressed.
I consume quite a few xylitol tic-tacs nowadays. I should do a photographic collage of my new-found vice! I am now currently throwing away 5 large Starbucks coffee cups, that were either filled with coffee or chai tea bags. Two of them were before the Christmas season and were still white or red. They symbolize my coffee addiction as well as my endless hours in the Starbucks or neighboring businesses--e.g. Borders--studying outside the house can be a good thing. "The Way I See It" coffee cups bug the hxll out of me because they only quote the "famous people" and the likelihood of having a "commoner's" voice on the cup is about two large Starbucks coffee cups (out of a couple hundred) per year. So much for "equality" of voice.
Hector got me a pumpkin spice latte--3.80 for a MICRO CUP! Right after MILK while Katia was checking out books at Borders. I really think I am going to stay here till tomorrow morning.
I am going to recap two more memory-filled pieces of trash before I throw them away. First piece of trash is a white styrofoam cup that is supposedly recyclable (has the label on the bottom of the cup), symbolizing a wonderful recent adventure with a (now) good friend in Camarillo. Element Coffee. Great thai food. And hitting a bar for some soda water and cranberry juice in the end. Hadn't encountered such intelligence and self-resourcefulness in SUCH a long time! My goodness. My friend had been in the Iraq war and is an avid-snowboarder-multi-media-izer-intellectual-wanderer of the universe. I have to stay vague because we pinky-swore that I would journal our experiences, not blog them. But I am nevertheless amorphously positive, and hereby proclaim my innocence! It was a tough ride home though afterwards. I had the same old music on my ipod, combined with driving home on a full stomach. To make things worse, my ipod lost all juice, so I had no music to keep me awake. I fell asleep multiple times (had to get off the side of the road) and it was the most uncomfortable rest because my car was full of crxp and I had no possible way to lean down my car seat. Secondly, it was chilly, but thankfully the thai food kept me rather warm. I would wake up shivering cold after a few sets of 20-minute power naps. I hung more alert on the road upon murmering "I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die!" It was a delerious ride home. I showed up around 2am in the morning. I made myself a cup of warm milk, 1% milk fat--not the nonfat milk that my parents raised me on. Sheesh! And then grabbed about 10 blankets, layered them on top of three-spread out couch pillows my mom snatched from a yard sale, and crashed until around 920 in the morning. Though I woke up in between to greet my father--like 6am in the morning.
I just threw away my white cup. It still has some reddish water--cranberry mixed with previous ice. Melted post two days. Vamouso.
My cuisine collection: coffee, Starbucks airport food, smoothies, mexican food, thai food, chinese food, indian food. Wonder how Kamal is doing. Anything else for food? I think I hit all the food that is not "bland American white toast" food. Like Denny's and IHOP. I refuse to eat at those kinds of places--everything is pre-made and all food sits in you like a rock for two days after.
The last thing to throw away is a Blenders in the Grass cup that contained a smoothie. I took Oscar out. Kamal took me out. My Camarrillo friend took me out. Becca and I split. I took Julian out. It all evens out in the end. Just WAY too much eating out!
Back to my Blenders in the Grass smoothie. I was about to get a Strawberry-based smoothie but I converted to Mango-based right toward the end. Thankfully they were the same price. I got my Uncle Dwight a giant smoothie too! That was a couple of weeks after my grandfather's passing. My dad had some too. Oscar had edited a film for Santa Barbara Surfrider. I was picked up by Scott Bull unexpectedly on a Thursday night (First Thursday Artwalk of Santa Barbara). I got 15-minutes of what I thought was "hideous footage" and my friend Oscar praised my work--surprisingly! He said that if it were a "narrative film" that it was not-so-great footage, but given that it is guerrilla-style impromptu work, then it worked PERFECTLY and was rather aesthetic! I was scared to call Oscar for TWO WEEKS after that impromptu experience. I was supposed to be filming Scott Chatenever's work! Not Scott Bull's! Whatever! I snapped that day. Too much happened all in one day. Consuming the minds of Stephanie LeMenager (English Department professor), Scott Chatenever (well-known ceramicist of Santa Barbara), and Scott Bull (president of Santa Barbara Surfrider and a major founder/leader of the Shoreline Preservation Fund / now Coastal Fund)--I SNAPPED THAT NIGHT. I couldn't deal with anything anymore. Talk about being spread too thin. Things collapsed pretty quickly after that, especially with the falling of my grandfather's health.
Anyhow, I finally met up with Oscar and I took him out for a smoothie. I owe him some money for his work. He apparently worked with Hannah for an oil project a couple weeks previously. Hannah was at the last EMI meeting promoting this 1969 oil spill memorium. We drove around and caught up. It was the first time I entered his apartment even though I had been by Oscar's complex several times. I was able to meet his chiuaua by the name of "Coochie." She has ultimately rendered as a non-stop barking machine. Coochie, light-brown-short-haired creature, who looks like a giant rat--predictable of Chiuauas--has been with Oscar for about three years--as of what I remember. Oscar and I ended up watching "The Dark Knight"--a video he ordered through Netflix. He had watched it several times and he prompted me to write down a quote. There were about five very quoteable quotes in that film.
I think that movie was made for Batman addicts. If you are not addicted to Batman, then it is indeed not a well-conceived film, not a well-conceived, coherent plot. Christian Bale played Batman. I had established no attachment to him throughout the film. I enjoyed him in his earlier war-ish films. I don't even consider him to be a hero. Heath Ledger played the Joker, which was the MOST convincing character out of all the actors. Tragically he died of overdose or a horrible mixing of drugs-concoctions while renting a house/apt of Mary-Kate or Ashley Olson--I don't even know. The worst part is "the damsel" that was supposed to be an immense driver of male human behavior within the film was Maggie Gyllenhaal, sister of Jake Gyllenhaal, another economic dynasty of Hollywood. Both Oscar and I were unappealled to her. She doesn't have desirable aesthetics: droopy eyes, these "baggy" cheaks like chipmunks, her voice is in part annoying--very girlish--nothing deep and sensual, like Catherine Zeta Jones. When you place lighting on Maggie's face, she looks a LOT older than what she really is. My own biological perceptions of aesthetics and personality instantly turned me off. There was no motivation. I am sure it was a general turn-off for the audience as well. As for Gotham, there is a chronic addiction between the battle of Batman and the Joker. Batman attempts to establish order in Gotham and the Joker breaks people down to a point of vulnerability and converts them into creating chaos of Gotham. It is a chronic battle--endless may I add--between order and chaos. Batman can supposedly not "kill" people though he throws humans around left and right. Both Batman and the Joker had plenty of times and opportunities to kill each other, but they never ended up doing it. So, there is absolutely nothing convincing. What I recommend is that both Batman and the Joker go to AA, not Alcoholics Anonymous, but Alternative Addictions, and they need to train their minds to finding habits other than wreaking havoc in Gotham--and in the end--get to the source of their problems--then never kill each other. It's stupid to me. But of course, Hollywood wants to keep making more Batman films, so you can never resolve a never ending cinematic soap opera. Each film is bigger and better in terms of special effects, but minimal leaps in character development, and reverting to childlike storytelling with plots. Convoluted to say in the least. So much for my film critiquing.
Now I can throw away my Blenders in the Grass. That was a LOT of work.
Now that I have gone from quarter system to post-quarter post-pardum depression, I have reverted to typical American consumption: movies and going out to eat. I feel like an ungrateful sinner. I should be learning how to hunt rabbits.
You can tell I am getting restless... very fast.
As I had started to observe over time, I started to realize how all media sources started to "coordinate" themselves. For example, a movie with Keanu Reeves is about to come out. Before the film, he is the front cover of some major magazines. Then he is invited to the Jay Leno Tonight show... then Oprah. And then the National Enquirer magazine-types start to follow him around a little more than usual. He also gets a little more news coverage. Then it's the opening night. Things are hot for a few weeks, then everyone else waits for the DVD to come out. And then Keanu hides for another year or half-year until his next Mega-American-Consumptive product comes out. Not to pick on Keanu. It may very well be Brittney Spears. It's all coordinated in the end. As if there is a vicious cycle of news reporting to keep up with the hottest and latest. Chain reaction effect. Newspaper citing and copy-catting other newspapers. The competition to get the scoop. It's so circular, it's depressing. Perhaps I am having hesistantcy in "plugging into journalism" since from observation, most of the scene is rather ... depressing. The American Media in general all need to go to AA as well, especially when it comes to the issues of science and society.
As Corlei emphasized with me, graduate school is not just about doing a science experiment, it is also a social experiment... a series of acceptances and rejections. Science is not Truth. It is the pursuit of Common Agreement. It's about finding your ally Yes Men who agree with your perceptions. *Sigh.* Truth is only in the eye of the beholder. Progress Report / Resume for Fall Quarter 2008. Page 1. See PDF file below.
Progress Report / Resume for Fall Quarter 2008. Page 2. PDF file right here:
Figure 1. Scale-based reasoning in evolution, earth sciences, scaling laws in biology, historical ecology, and now... the human-environmental condition!
Figure 1.Part 1. Scale-based reasoning in evolution and geology.
Figure 1. Part 2. Scale-based reasoning in the human-environmental condition, from the individual human in proximate environments to the global-scale human-environmental condition.
Figure 1. Part 2. Photoshop Layering, Connecting the Dots. Individual humans and proximate landscapes. Organizations-institutions-technology-infrastructure, and existing non-human landscapes. Honestly, I think there is such a thing as Photoshop Logic. It's most certainly non-linear. Using photoshop, sonar home studio, and final cut pro have definitely improved my reasoning ability.
Figure 2. What is the definition of science when humans are a part of the experiment? Organism-environmental interactions are a two-way street. Organisms "adapt" to the environment, but organisms also "manipulate" "create" "maintain" environments--for themselves and for other organisms. A most peculiar organism engaged in macro-scale manipulation of environments is this critter called a "human being." Talk about ecosystem engineering!
Figure 3. Initial "Toolkit" and "Metaphors" for describing the human-environmental condition. Note our designated human specimens: Terra and Buz. Terra is agitated she has to be in the "box." Buz is near by, fully supportive of her posing.
Figure 4. Potential Spheres for the Bren Ph.D. (1) Ecology / Evolution / Earth Science (historical ecology) (2) Organizations / Institutions / Sociology (3) Philosophy of Science / History of Science. Really cool. Makes a lot of sense. Glad to figure something out very solid by the end of first quarter.
Ecology of Scale. 14-page essay scale-based reasoning and a search for metaphors on the human-environmental condition. Check out the full essay with this PDF file here:
My quarter was looking really grim. Then I snapped the day before Thanksgiving. This blog represents a three week spurt rebound. I had a wonderful conversation with my advisor, Oran, as well as Maria. Need to follow up with Wesley.
It is strange to write in my blog! I haven't blogged for the last month or so! I have somewhat "stepped off the planet into my world of theoreticisms," and I just noticed that there is snow on the highest peaks of the Santa Ynez mountains. Where have I been? My goodness! PDF file of the above poem can be found here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/matrixofmetaphors.pdf. I "sang" this poem in the car on the way to UC Santa Barbara. I had a choice of attending an evolution course or saving my soul. So, I decided to save my soul and I patiently waited in the History Department commons room, which was a bit dark, but scattered with very interesting things to read. I ended up listening to my voice recorder and jotting down this poem. Then Dr. Osborne came by and we chatted for quite a while. I told him about my Elephant and Oak Tree story (which I had informed about 25 other people about, now I have ridiculouspersonalobligation to write this because then again I will be "all talk and no product" which sounds like a familiar friend of mine, I don't want to end up to be another one of those...). I eventually incorporated the poem into a 14-page essay to my advisor, Dr. Young. I shared the poem with my writing buddy, Hector.
I also wrote this poem before writing the longer essay for Oran. I had a dream of emailing Shifting Baselines to Drs. Jeremy Jackson, Paul Dayton, and Daniel Pauly--my scientist heroes (at least on the marine side, my dad is always my terrestrial hero!)--but right now I feel chickened out. Maybe I'll have enough guts to send it to them another day. I also shared this poem to my writing buddy, Hector, and he liked it! He thought it was a total mind trip, as my writing tends to be....
I had invented this poem quite a while ago--perhaps a month and a half ago--but I finally crystallized it before writing my longer essay to my advisor. It's kind of funny how one of my College of Creative Studies advisors, Dr. Bruce Tiffney, told me that "a Ph.D. is when a student defines a problem and figures out a way or multiple ways how to solve it. And then it's critically evaluated by a committee of people who already have their union cards." This quote is paraphrased. But then the question is--when you take a step back--as I was influenced by meeting Dr. Freudenberg's grad student who studies "perceived risk"--"What is a problem?" "What is a problem versus what isn't a problem?" "How does one define or perceive a system to be a problem at all?" So, part of my Ph.D. is to ask the question as to the "origins of problems." Why we humans have problems in the first place. This biological question is as stupid as my "why do I need to eat?" anorexia question back at age 17. But nevertheless stupid questions can sometimes lead to very interesting findings....
Right now, Vic is at Java Jones, Isla Vista. She decided to try working here (without much success). She needed a break from being in her new room. Above is the byproduct of Vic's first editing assignemtn. The flick called "Ocean Kayak Collage" is about two minutes long, and is some of the best foortage from 20 minutes of raw mini DV tape video shot by Michael Hanrahan. I belive these individuals are professional surf kayakers. It had to be a music video (with some captions), so I appropriately chose the song "Blue" by Eiffel 65. I edited according to the dominant beats of the music, and I received a mental high from doing so. I think I am genetically ingrained to construct music videos and the like, especially since I received a pleasure center rush the very first time I was given a video-editing assignment.
"Blue" was extracted from my first mixing attempt: a collection of some of my favorite MODERN songs (excluding more classical and non-contemporary stuff). My collection of songs is called "space/time/form/mind/stream/line/flow..." It's trance-ish music that inspires rational thought, correlated with strong emotion and long-term very rhythmic beat for long-term mental endurance. I hope the song in part represents Blue Horizons. In fall of 2003 (in panic of being in graduate school), I applied for this nationwide, prestigious scuba-diving scholarship tour around the world and was rejected, though I was offered an internship by the same group. Since then, I had this dream that I would one day create a film about the ocean and "Blue" would be the background music. That was 2003. Now it is 2007. Finally, after a four-year lag-time, I have accomplished what I dreamed. Somehow, I never seem to let go of my ideas.
Michael Hanrahan was in the film a little bit, as the videographer "spitting" on the lens. Spitting on the lens (or putting toothpaste, learned from an older fellow police officer at the Santa Margarita LA Fitness who was going to the Carribean for a major anniversary) prevents the lens from fogging up. Based on my limited experience, toothpaste is a more effective defogger. But we are internally equipped with spit and saliva, and it can be a hassle caring toothpaste with you. So, the music goes, "Yo listen up, here's a story about a little guy that lives in a blue world and all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue like him inside and outside, blue his house with a blue little window and a blue car wreck and everything is blue for him and hisself and everybody around cuz he ain't got nobody to listen to." The lyrics aren't exact, but close. For my own personal attachment to this song, and to describe my degree of mental rebelliousness, I would change "guy" and "he" and "him" (etc) to "girl" and "she" and "her." But somehow, since Michael is a rebel, guerilla journalist and has worked hard to seek "alternative means of distribution of media" than traditional, incumbent Discovery Channel types, through creating the Ocean Channel and now Blue Horizons... I hope somehow he may have connected to this song (even Constance Penley is brave and daring with all the things has done). He's brave for doing that he does. Surviving in the vicious economic world outside the university, and bringing opportunities that no professor in his ivory towers could bring to us. Something called "practical knowledge." Hmph. What a concept. I think university professors can sometimes be overanalytical spectators of the outside world, and they think they know the system well, but the truth is they don't because they are detached observers rather than players and manipulators. I think I stated in a previous meeting with a potential funder that Michael Hanrahan and Constance Penley were barely a step ahead of me. They created a door for me to open, and just through myself right through, staggering across the floor, as if I were deprived of water and air for MONTHS, and somehow I was still alive. They saved me from drowning in my own abyss. They convinced me to go back to school from my leave of absence. They basically took all my random experiences outside of school and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. "Thank you" will never ever be good enough for those people who provide me with mental sanity.
I was so eager to get my hands dirty with Final Cut Pro that I ran to the lab one hour after the assignment was given to us. I stayed in the lab with Annie (lab tech) and "Pickles" (chicano studies student) until like 2am in the morning... Annie was working on an essay that was due the next day, and Pickles was working on a very interesting project demonstrating the corruption of the Mexican government in their implementation of "conservation policy" with fishing in certain regions in Mexico. The battle is should conservation management revolve around conservation of species or conservation of indigenous pratices? What is more valued? And there are outsider companies and groups twisting the arms and legs of these indigenous people just to buy permits to fish whatever existing depleted resources. Gxd. Again, another example of conflicting value systems. People in Mexico don't value endangered species. They value survival. So a Mexican eating an endangered sea turtle from the Sea of Cortez is perfectly common sense. Why? Because he is hungry, and he and his family need to EAT today. But the girl filming a National Geographic special has "moral and ethical" issues of this survival behavioral practice, of course, because she on a daily basis in America consumes hormone-infested, mass-produced livestock instead of endangered sea turtles. Her stomach is well-fed with other things, so instead she wails and moans all over Mexicans consuming endangered sea turtles. It's all a matter of ecological relativity. Ecological frame of reference. Perception. Dude, if I were in the circumstance in which I needed to resort to cannibalism for survival (like in the movie Alive), YES, I would become a cannibal. Sorry, so much for conservation of the human species. Too many of those anyway. Values, ethics, morals, language, perception. It all drives our science. It all taints our science to non-objectivity. Science is done by humans, who are biological organisms like the rest of them. So I think it's about time we make a long-list of disclaimers about the properties of humans before we resume to pursue our so-called "science."
Annie Wilkes and Oscar Flores (and Manny) were my primary helpers with Final Cut Pro. They are the lab techs. They are both my heroes. They trained me a lot. They were there for me. I was a nervous wreck on the day of my first edit, and then late in the evening I found out that Annie was from Riverside, my home town. Not only that, she is from my same high school. North High School. Dude, that's frickin' cool. To be in a world of unknowns, and then to land upon an island of familiarity, Annie and I hit it off right away. At first she and other people were acting like "ooo... Victoria's a Ph.D. student." So fxckin' what? I'm a Ph.D. student? Ha. You can be one too if you wanted to. I know jack shxt. I bet you know more than I do. Not only that, this ain't no hierarchy. You know a piece of the puzzle, and I know a piece of the puzzle. If we put all the pieces of the puzzle together, we might solve a problem. Or a suite of them. We might make a film. We might create a better world. Because all the older people above us certainly gave up and decided to stay in the comforts of their known boxes (or most of them at least). Academic Caste System is bunko and whacko. I'm sure it only exists to masseuse the ego complexes of this still-male-dominated academia atmosphere. Ph.D. means nothing. Nothing more significant than getting a college degree. Anyone can get a Ph.D. if they can learn new things and are pro-active about solving problems. Get over it. Come on. I'm just a human like you guys.
All these thoughts had been swirling silently in my mind... for at least a couple of weeks. After a week-and-a-half, I'm estimating, I think the "Ph.D" definition of me wore away, and everyone in the class realized I'm just another human being like them. And I started to realize the same. Our stigmatized pre-conceptions and stereotypes just melted away as we started to gel and form a fabric of humanity amongst our former alienated, isolated, disconnected relations of random pinball human bodies thrown into an arbitrary room on an arbitrary building on an arbitrary university on an arbitrary continent on an arbitrary planet. No, this is the first guinea pig crew of Blue Horizons at UCSB. Words and people and faces and interactions started to assign meaning to my mind, to our minds. Unknown became familiarity, and the assignment of value led to my pleasure center in my brain becoming more and more and more stimulated by everyone's presence.
Back to Annie. That late night, we all ate pizza from Dominos. I had two slices. I hadn't eaten anything for a few days. I also had the privilege to meet Saul the janitor. It's always VERY important to get chummy with the janitors. (1) Because they are intelligent for getting the job that they have (2) You should be thankful for their work, otherwise you the grad student would be picking up the trash (3) Janitors are great to hang around with the evening, they are super social life and (4) Janitors have KEYS. That get you places in very unexpected times. Janitors are powerful people, you know. Saul is a very nice, intelligent person. He is a high-energy personality who I think was a professional soccer player in a South American country. He was in a car accident though and had serious surgery on his head/face? I am not entirely sure what happened, but he is alive and functional. I am not religious, but it's good. I'm glad to see him alive. Planet Earth could use a few more Saul's.
Annie and Oscar had been there for me this summer. They stayed late for me--so late that I was very eager to give them rides home, which I did a few times. I gave Annie and Oscar top acknowledgments for the production and editing of my intro to the crab film.
Anita David runs the labs with the Macs and Final Cut Pro software, but honestly, I hardly saw her this entire summer. Just a few times.
In the "delicate balance" of finding my place in the university, though I am a scientist, I am much more amused to socialize with artists and geologists. Their personalities tend to be unsterilized, rich and full of character. I think due to environmental circumstance, scientists tend to acquire personalities of great systematism and dulled emotions. Or maybe they come in with a pre-existing dulled personality. Hence, they match very well with a mass-production molecular biology lab. Bummer. I'd die out of insanity. It's like flipping MacDonald's hamburgers. And instead of flipping burgers, all you're doing is flipping genes and proteins, day-in and day-out. Sucks.
Wow. What a rambling blog. Back to the video itself. "Ocean Kayak Collage." I worked with music, captions, cropping visual tape (it's like splicing up DNA into meaningful chunks of information, ha ha ha). Working with film is like working with photography. It's all about staring at images for hours on end, finding the best sequences, and putting them together in a film (or in the past, I created photo-essays). I am flashing back to my two weeks up in the science library at UC Irvine (summer of 2006, after a year of mental hxll in the UCR Earth Sciences Department), endlessly choosing images and photoshopping them to create my first-ever professional portfolio.... *sigh* those were the days.... With ocean kayaking, I was detecting COMPARATIVE MOTIONS, and then started grouping random sequences of phenomenon with similarities in motions and trajectories. It worked very well in the end.
Working with film is like analyzing and reconstructing sedimentary layers. you mentally strip the layers of the existing outcrop, and start to mentally rebuild it, all over again, in a tightly intertwined synchrony of events. Yes, making films is like make a multi-factorial, multi-layered sedimentary outcrop for the human mind. Beautiful, isn't it? I guess I'm feeling metaphorical and simile-ish. It's a chronic condition, I suppose.
Since it was my first film, I was very inefficient. What? 8-10 hours just for a two-minute film? Insanely inefficient! I had to play with a lot of files. Whether it should be VOB or quicktime or mpeg. I had to figure out where the basic buttons were... Lots of trial-and-error. Lots of mental knee-skinning. But it's a property of a scientist being a part of the system. Poke. Poke. Poke. Tweak. Tweak. Tweak. If it doesn't work, scrap it. If it works, keep it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I just had a nice talk with Annie's former roommate--blanking out on her name--it's late--we talked about how my name is anything but "Victoria." First it must be Vanessa, Veronica, Virginia, and then Vicki (horrors!) and then maybe "Victoria" or "Vic." If it were the movie Superbad, I'm sure those characters would have called me "Vxgina." Just like how they called Fogel "Fag-el."And that would have been the end of it. Probably the first time in my life I would punch a guy if he called me that.
Please help with Question Reality / Biologically Incorrect environmental media projects!
All proceeds go toward graduate school funding!
UCSB's Blue Horizons Film and Environmental Media Blog
Please check out my journal entries/blog from July to September 2007 and March 2008 that documents my participation in the new Blue Horizons program at UC Santa Barbara!
Hello, my name is Victoria, and I am a power-scaling moleculo-cellulo-neuro-physio-behavioral-geoevoecological artisticophilosophiscientist. Basically, that means I'm a Common Senseologist (at the local pubs and coffee shops) and Ecopistemologist (around university campuses) in pursuit of a Ph.D. (or more appropriately an Fud) in Survival: for the short and long term, for her Self and this human-built system derived from existing non-human life-earth elements surrounding her, that as of this moment, resumes to remain her life support. Though, if this ecological system (the author was born and incorporated into without choice of agreeing to its contradictory, consequently irrational terms of membership) crashes and burns (always best to expect the worst and hope for the best!), there is indeed plan B for Self-Survival: the initiation of a hunter-gatherer club in the boonies of Santa Barbara. All well-rounded, like-minded folks are invited to join! We do not hold Old Boyz-Frat-Girl Club policies. Okay, please laugh now, if you haven't yet :-)
Great Problems Can Also Equate to Great Opportunities...
Blogging Biologically Incorrect: An Urgent Response to Larry Page's Request
In February of 2007 at the annual AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Meeting, I witnessed Larry Page, one of the co-creators of Google, frankly state what had been subliminally aching inside me: "Scientists have some serious marketing problems." Since this time, Dr. Page (he's got more than a Stanford Ph.D to me!) has inspired me to manifest my suppressed, subliminal concerns into a solution: the creation of this blog and use of wizywig, button-pushing internet services to start constructing a multi-media reality of my mind's perception of Reality: which is a mix-bag of philosophy and several elements of the hard sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Since then, I have returned to graduate school from leave of absence in pursuit of film and applied/theoretical multi-media research in communication and application of science to the matrix of human ecology (far beyond the university). All for seeking a common grounds value system-perception-understanding-language-and future vision to deal with the gestalt of modern-human environmental crises. Thanks to Dr. Page for validating my internal turmoil and idealistic pursuits! :-)
"Hyper-creativity comes with fairly severe consequences." (Self-Admitted)
"I like it how you are able to hold conversations with yourself." (Sister Jenny to Victoria, a compliment or an insult!)
"You seem like the type of person who would rather be homeless than get a job that you don't like." (Sister Jenny to Victoria, a compliment or an insult!)
"I'd rather work with a graduate student who has too many ideas than too few."--Victoria's Current Ph.D. Advisor at Bren, UCSB
"Your films are so much more convincing and enjoyable than Michael Moore's. You're not attacking specific people. You're not attacking specific organizations. You're attacking, challenging ideas, principles, and values, and with direct humor and a coherent thesis that sets up a bullseye for feasible solutions. "--Film Editor Guru in Santa Barbara
"I started reading your blog, and then I started to think about my thinking."--Anonymous UCSB Graduate Student
"Sometimes certain individuals project their traditional knowledge into new academic territories --like a physicist into the realm of biology--and then some of these individuals, seeing with a new pair of shades, can entirely revolutionize a field."--Anonymous UCSB Professor (paraphrased)
"Victoria, you are truly an original writer. No one writes like you. Your work takes many bold and unexpected leaps. You should give yourself a pat on the back sometime."--My Favorite Poetry Professor (paraphrased)
"Victoria, you are too smart to be a scientist. As a creative writer and artist, you should consider yourself someone who exploits the materials of science for your craft and business of multi-media storytelling. You're lucky: as a scientist, you by default have a much richer, deeper inventory of metaphors than the average writer, which leads to contributions of the novel and the unexpected. "--My Favorite Poetry Professor (paraphrased)
"Every time I meet with you, you are a very different person--your mind is in a very different state. Sometimes inwardly, poetic and artistic, other times outwardly and systematic, and analytical. You can operate so diversely, so laterally... as if you have a bunch of switches in your mind that go on and off!"--Anonymous UCSB Graduate Student (paraphrased)
"Reading your blog is like eating a dense piece of European bread." --Local SantaBarbarian Craigslister (Thanks! I'll take that as a compliment and an insult!!!)
Biologically Incorrect Ideas for Syndicated Multi-Media Columns (Eventually!)
Biologically Incorrect Cartoon Series (currently underway with a portfolio!)
The CoffeeShop Hobo (column on meeting random interesting people at the local coffeeshop, based on a North High School student's senior thesis: "I've learned more in one month just talking to random people at a coffeeshop than I have learned in all four years of my high school education!")
Unburying the Undiscovered (column on discovering someone in history with profound ideas who never saw the light of the public's attention though he or she was very deserving of a collective discourse)
The Biologically Incorrect Guide to Unethical Human-Environmental Experiments... that are actually REAL!
