Mon

• Studio.
• Went to Google for a tech talk (I'll link when it's up).
  

Finally: Snow!

As I write this, big fluffy snow flakes are falling all over the place. It's going like gangbusters!

Sat 'er Day

• The blog is back at hipolsoc.blogspot.com.
• If you get this blog via feed, be sure that you're subscribed to the feed linked to on the right: it will always point to this blog, no matter the URL.
• Comp stuff.
• Gym.
  
• Rehearsal.
• Clockwork Orange.

"Well my life has no meaning, but I'm totally sure yours does."

Thrusday the 25th

• Skipped calc.
• Loved Masked'.
• Finished Dracula.
• Whacked It.
• Pumped iron.
• Ate babies.

Just makin' sure you're still here.

Two's Day

• Food.
• Calc a.k.a. sleep.
• Food.
• Theater Studies a.k.a. sortainteresting.
• Food.
• State of The Union a.k.a. blewmyfuckingsocksoff.

Not really.

Quest Ion

Are all fashions in art and philosophy inevitable? How do we define or conceive of "all fashions?" I suppose there is no theoretical limit on the number of new kinds of art or philosophy to be imagined, but I believe the average human mind is limited in what it will accept as "art" and "philosophy." There are a near infinite number of nonsensical/arbitrary philosophies to which no sane person would earnestly subscribe. Perhaps there is a given tolerance for deviation from a central theme of Art/Philosophy which a statistical majority of our linear, discrete, biological consciousnesses are willing to accept. Perhaps one day we will fully explore that space. We will have every artistic and philosophical revolution to be had. We will then fail to recognize subsequent revolutions as being to the point of Art of Philosophy. Or maybe our minds will evolve. Are all fashions in art and philosophy inevitable?

Two Days Later

• I got to bed at 10pm last night.
• I woke up today feeling grrrreat!
• Then I sat in a chair for fouuuuuur and a half houuuuuuurs.
• I was sleeeeeepyyyyy.
• BUT THEN I had lunch.
• Pizza!
• And then I did crazy movement things. Crazy, I say!
• And and and, other stuff too um...
• There were Cheerios...
• and gym...
• and Rita Brown (a.k.a. Diarrhea Rita)...
• and I guess that's it um yeah.

!!$2 REWARD!!
Fast - Faster - Fastest
WANTED - Better - Best

The Wankers!

The Gym closes at 8 in the afternoon! on Saturdays. The Wankers!

Friday

• Our Friday studio schedule is really pretty sveet. For once!
• Read and Napped.
  
• Attended a talk by Cory Doctorow. He's always fun(ny).
  
• More food.
• Sorta got walked in on while looking at porn.

Love is the lie we tell ourselves to keep from dying.

Jan 18 (a Thursday)

• Cal Q. Luss.
• The first day of Masked Drama portends good times ahead.
• I was told today that something was, quote, "fierce." That event was, in and of itself, fierce. Recursive fierceness.
  
• I lunched (slowly) with two lovelies.
• Nappy nap nap.
  
• January means a bunch of New Year's Resolvers bunching up the weight room. Reinhardt assures me this tapers off by February.
• I saw four friends at the gym. This is odd. (Mem., am I being stalked? Should grow mustache)
• Am in high spirits.

This is my forth consecutive day of napping. What is becoming of me? Slow-eating, whole-milk-drinking, napper! Pretty soon I'll just come to a total stop.

First Day of Studio

• My fast was working, then I broke it.
• Studio once ageen. It was a bit queer. There are so few of us this semester. It was good to see some people who were away last semester (Travis, Claire, etc.).
  
• Ate at Naturally Tasty. I had eggplant.
  
• Began discussing our rehearsal-project-esk thing. Went OK. Emphasis on the OK.
• Read.
• Napped.
• Newsed.
  
• Gymed.
• Supped.
• Call my momed.
  
• Daily Showed.
• Read.
• Fixed the fast.

The speed with which I eat has precipitously declined over the last year or so. I am now a dreaded Slow-Eater. Coupled with my whole milk fixation, I expect to find horns sprouting beneath my hair any day now.

First Day of Classes

• Breakfasted.
• Calc, you old coot. My Calc teacher knows my cousin. They are both neuroscience post-grads.
• Dined.
• Read.
• Napped.
  
• History of Women Directors is going to be a lot of work.
• Supped.
• Went to the planetarium (it was closed).
  
• Watched the News.
• Fixed my computer.
• Read.
• Napped.
  

VERY Special

• Had breakfast with Nick, Lex, Antonietta and her girlfriend, Alex.
• Bade the abroad bound goodbye.
• Read.
• Napped
  
• After three weeks, I make my triumphant return to the gym. It was intense. Hooray!
• I saw no less then six people I know at the gym: KyDude, Lauren A., E. Korth, Reinhardt, Dan, and Dave my RA.
• Saw a movie with Jordi and Ross.
• There is a special ring of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.

Classes start at 8:55a tomorrow - excuse me, today. How fucking excited am I!

Back Again

Every time I return to the city I feel a little more like I'm coming home. My school is not a place in the way other colleges are. We half-jokingly call Washington Square Park our "campus," but it's really just a small park with lots of kids. This contributes to the homeliness of going back to school. I'm living some place that I could conceivably call home for my adult life: New York City.

The flight was fine. I've started reading Dracula (Laura gave it to me for Christmas along with The Origins of Species - she knows just what I like). I met my new roommate: Joe. He's a transfer from BU. I was delighted to learn that Lex and Nick were still in the city (they leave for Italy tomorrow). I was equally delighted to learn that Ross's girlfriend, Jordi, is living in Lafayette this semester. Ross, Jordi and I went out to dinner and then to meet Lex and Nick at a Belgium beer place. Then we came back to the room for quesadillas, muffins, movies, and bad wine. We started watching Fargo but popular opinion ultimately sided with Old School. I'm feeling well.

Live, Damnit!

My youth is fast evaporating and I say that so much even I'm getting tired of it but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Maybe I'd better do something about it. Like live.

You can tell school's about to start again 'cause I'm getting all depressed and abstract. I don't think I'm particularly good at living. I'm good at being alive. Really good. But not at living. SEE WHAT I MEAN! Depressed and abstract.

Just watched The Illusionist and 12 Monkeys. Saw Lizzy for the first and only time this winter. Had breakfast at Brit's where I also shimmied. This is not the correct order of events, by the way.

I'm ready to get back to school. I think my subconscious arranges my emotions such that I'm always ready to leave just when it's time to go. I wish I had interesting things to say, but this will have to do for now. The observation I was hoping to make can no longer be made. Ack! That post is from 2005. I'M SO OLD!!!

Word to the Wise

Bacardi Raspberry Rum and Mott's Apple Juice do not - I repeat, DO NOT mix. Tell everyone you know.

Recently

• I finished my aforementioned Phi book.
• I have an iRection.
• I have an erection.
• I've been playing the charming Russian puzzle game Full Pipe.
• I watched all of Black Books, a Britcom Sam turned me on to.
• I watched the following films:
• I [heart] Huckabees (own it)
• Blade Runner (own it)
• The Good Shepard
• Children of Men (saw twice)
• Lock, Stock & Two Smokin' Barrels
  
• Midnight Cowboy
• A History of Violence
  
• K-PAX (own it)
• Starship Troopers (own it)

Who knows what adventures await me...
Just around the river bend!

Come into my parlor...

Must watch:

The Unsuccessful Older Brother

Two coconuts ARE NOT ENOUGH!
I'm a hungry monkey and I don't have a mommy or the agricultural expertise to cultivate domesticated dairy cows, and I need milk like right monkey now!
Ooh Ooh Ahh Ahh Eek Van Winkle Almighty God Hail Consumerism I Love You WHAT KIND of stupid noise do I need to make to get more coconuts?!
I'll dance.
I'll eat shit.
I'll go to space.
The family is falling apart and so much for "Great."
Of the kibbles - red and green - which is better for the teeth?

Footnote

For now, at least, this blog can be found at
www.lunchtimemama.com

I'm sleepless in bed, so I wrote this instead

There's nighttime, there's bedtime, and then there's sleep time. There's dream time, there's wake time, there's day and lunch and light and dark and long and short time. There's plenty of and especially there isn't any time. There's tea and game and the right and not a good and half and over and quiet and supper and winter and summer time. There's do you have the and I've lost track of time. There's a time to live and a time to die. There's a time for love and a time for other stuff too. There's night time, there's bed time, and then there's sleep time.

The No. 1 Rule of Lying

Never ever ever ever ever lie to yourself.

Parsing Base64 Encoded Smart Playlists from iTunes Music Library.xml

Dear Google,
I commit this post to your index in the hopes that it may one day satisfy the query of a woebegone programmer desiring, for some unholy reason, to interpret the Base64 encoded binary representation of the logical criteria of smart playlists in the iTunes Music Library.xml file, for the fate they should otherwise suffer is a hell I know all too well. They are to rejoice, for the code is neigh. And Behold! for it is C#. Alas, it is not the prettiest of code; I am young and strange to the ways of computer science; but it does work. It is to be found in SmartPlaylistParser.cs and in Enums.cs, and the project to which this code is a part is to be found here, and a demonstrable screencast of the project is here. And, dear Google, should you lead the curious coder hither, and should this post prove to be "just what [they] needed," how I hope they will send me an email to let me know (lunchtimemama at gmail) for it would positively make my day! I trust this gives you all the keywords you need to unite them and me in happy fortune. Good indexing!

-SP

Do you have stairs in your house?

It is Tuesday, January Second, Two Thousand and Seven. I'm just back from "Miss Zula" Montana where I spent four days with Sam & Co. [insert more description here]

I've posted before about the deleterious effect tabbed browsing has on my attention span, but it promotes another behavioral pattern: "branching attention." My tendency toward branching attention is most obvious when I browse Wikipedia. As I read, I will detour into other topics of interest. Ten links later, I've got a scrolling row of tabs and more info than I'll ever need about the ampersand. As I finish the distal articles, I move precipitously toward the original topic, branching every now and again. At long last, I complete the prime page as well as a journey through the wisdom of man. I'm always surprised to find where I end up. One of these days I ought to map such a WikiWalk and post it.

Branching attention online is salient because it's easy to branch (open link in new tab) and it's easy to get back (close tab), but I was surprised to notice this habit persisting offline. As you may recall, I recently had some time to kill in the La Guardia Airport. The only book I recognized from terminal shop's pitiful selection was The Da Vinci Code. I read a hundred or so pages before encountering the number Phi. As chance would have it, I then happened upon a book devoted entirely to the topic of the golden ratio and I made Steve buy it for me. Da Vinci is now on hold while I read my Phi book, which I am enjoying very much. There have been numerous references to other tomes on math, art, philosophy and more, but I think I'm going to check my offline branching: books are a lot more expensive than tabs.