Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I am, very slowly, getting thinner.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Listen up!

For Christmas [or whatever other excuse you'd like to use to give me a nice present], I'd like a big, laminated, political world map. An upside-down one would be especially lovely.

I'd also like money. I want to buy a Blend-Tec blender. One of the ones that can puree ipods and marbles.

I'd also like Ariel by Sylvia Plath.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Many of the poems that are chosen to appear in Poetry magazine, arguably the most eminent poetry periodical published in North America, frighten me. Really, it's not the poems themselves that frighten me. Most of them are not good enough to frighten or delight anyone. The merit they are assigned frightens me. These poems are praised for their rejection of the Significant, for their portrayals of late - night waitresses, and for their ambiguity.

They often accomplish nothing but a description of disappointing marital sex, or a description of a drunk outside of a pawnshop. But they aren't even good descriptions. A lack of philosophical content is thoroughly alright if the description itself is beautifully stated and stunningly accurate. But they are overblown, tired, in a style that mistakes its content to be profound; they use slang awkwardly, like parents trying to be cool. When a person finishes reading one, a person shudders. Is that false climax of a brilliant conclusion all that human thought is capable of at this stage? This is what my wife looks like when she climbs out of the shower. Oh eureka.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Nice Things

The food situation in my parents' house is dismal, as a rule. They've started living mainly off of frozen dinners, which I am not around to partake of, which include meat, and which do not taste good enough to warrant the ingestion of hundreds and hundreds of calories. I've resigned myself to spending my tip money on food. Today I bought Liberty yogurt and a big honey apple. The apple I ate with Superstore peanut butter when I got home, which was a delicious way to go about it. I like Liberty yogurt a lot. It tastes much much better than any other yogurt to be found at the grocery store and doesn't cost any more than the mediocre brands. If I owned a food company, I would want to produce something similarly good.

I saw Casino Royale last week. I have never seen such an excellent shooting film. I am willing to admit its superiority to The Dark Knight.

And yesterday I bought a Bodum tea glass. They're selling them at Starbucks. I was surprised to see them on the shelf - most of the Christmas mugs are cheap and tacky. These are anything but. They are double-walled. They do not say Starbucks Coffee anywhere on them. It's a rare thrill of relief when a person recognizes something worth more than the money they will spend on it.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Tom-Tom #3 comes out on Monday.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Materials Technology is Awesome

20 minutes before I have to drag my feet toward Starbucks. You all need to know about gecko tape and similar materials.

I'm sure you know that geckos can climb windows and even hang on to them with one toe. This is because their feet are covered in tiny hairs called setae, which are branched at the tops into tinier hairs called spatulae. These act something like super-velcro on a molecular level. The ends of the spatulae get rather entangled in the molecules of the material the gecko is attached to, increasing the area of contact between the two types of molecules, and therefore the strength of the Van der Waals force [in short, the group of forces acting between molecules, mostly attractive]. If a gecko applies a perpendicular force [lifts a foot straight up off the glass or other surface], the foot becomes unstuck, but force applied parallel to the surface cannot lessen the grip.

They've developed several different artificial dry adhesives modelled on gecko feet. Lots of them have a hold several times stronger than their natural counterparts. In place of setae, carbon nanotubes have been used. [Carbon nanotubes are the strongest materials known to exist. ]

I hope they make shoes soon.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Plasma gets left out. It's a state of matter too. It accounts for most of the matter in the universe, in fact.
I'd like to get thinner.

Saturday, November 8, 2008


On Guy Fawkes day, Tim and I had a ceremonial book burning of a box of horrible evangelical and "educational" [home schooly] books culled from one of his mum's shelves. Great fun. Burning, in general, is great fun.

Fire rivals trees for prettiness. Turquoise and diamond white flames flash in the corners. The ash from book pages remains in sheets and can be read from, if you don't breathe on them, because the ink is a pigment made from metal oxides. Before they are consumed, the pages glow purple and pink. The books collapse progressively into a series of kaleidoscope flowers. The sparks crawl over the edges like tiny worms. Pretty, unbelievably so.

And the temperature and the fact that this temperature is the product of pounds and pounds of material is oddly exciting. I liked the temperature, because it was icy cold out, and the air was positively wet.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The [true] idea that everything has a reasonable explanation is a wonderful one, and the best imaginable relief from hopelessness and confusion. It makes me want to die a lot less.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Tomorrow is Guy Fawke's Day!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

New goals for November:

- print Tom-Tom #3 and make it not suck

- get a bank account at Superstore, where the interest rates are highest

- finish the rough draft of a certain story which I have promised to publish

- solve the bothersome trig problem from Vectors

- buy a dress