Tomorrow's Child
(11-20 February 2002)
20 February 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-I'm really old.
-I swear, I'm going to post
the Brandeis '02 invite if this keeps up! Now tourneys are posting a full month in advance.
A month! It's crazy. I think it'd be funny to post 8 months in advance, since
this time next year, it might not be a joke to do so...
-Blogging (still don't really like
that term, but ah well) is becoming awfully trendy on the APDA circuit all of a sudden. Just
head to Kate's page to see exactly what I mean. Lord have mercy. I'm not sure I'll
link any of these myself, but I do wonder what Lauren's
referring to when she talks about pacifism & it being misunderstood. Maybe she's in
the same precept as Dom & Em. But she isn't in that class, is she?
-Also, Lisha
confronts interesting stuff about people's obligations in public forums. I think one has an
obligation to be honest. If that means defamation, then if that's one's honest opinion,
& one is willing to say the same things to one's face, I don't see the problem. Clearly
it's not the NICEst thing to do, but sometimes people take actions which don't call for nice.
It's the unfortunate truth. Withholding the truth is what's always bothered me, far
more than the truth being angry. But I don't think I was the one being called out for public
defaming anyway. I really try to avoid that these days, though I am judgmental.
-I'll
concede to Lisha in our debate, on one key front: newsgroups & listservs are quite
different from webpages. A webpage is a personal voice to say what it will, while listservs
exist to recognize some sort of community & discourse. I'll freely grant that those are not
the best forums for such material as complaining about breakups. Agreed.
-Argh!
The webserver's been down, but now it just let me into FTP, so maybe it'll be okay.
We'll see if anyone can actually read this soon...
19 February 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-No need for Kate (or anyone) to worry. I'm
fine. Just having some weirdnesses here & there, but mostly doing fine.
-Also,
check out a slight modification to the referring page. Just something
I'm playing around with...
-After yesterday, I guess any day of updates is going to seem somewhat
minimalist. I'm in more control of my mentality I guess, something that's aided by the fact that my
migraine is actually GONE! So that's Sunday night till Tuesday morning, but of course it was last
Sunday night, so I guess that makes it about 8.5 days. Yipee. Good thing that doesn't
happen too often. Now I'm just going to try to relax for a while, since that's what Spring Break
is theoretically about. Also, I've GOT to make Em work on her thesis. A lot.
-So I
broke down & took the latest of these silly online quizzes... this one was about New Year's Resolutions.
I won't put the graphic on here, because I don't like mucking up this page with graphics, but I will tell
you that not only was my NYR supposed to be "Incite a revolution through [my] art", but the
graphic depiction is a stick-figure standing on a hillside yelling at people. The stick-figure yells "Stop
being stupid!" & the faceless crowd yells back "Okay!". Now THAT's creepy...
these people have my perspective on the world nailed. See what you
get...
18 February 2002
[from Princeton, New
Jersey]
-Shortly after arriving here after a relatively
good (though somewhat stormy) drive down, Em, Lauren, & I went to "In the Bedroom".
I don't know if I should integrate this film with my top five for the year (it was
technically a 2001 movie) or not, but I did like its ability to demonstrate how small memories
& indicators plague the mental framework. More than that I will not say
here.
-Sometimes, one finds out information that one cannot comprehend, often about people
or places or things they felt they knew a great deal (everything?) about. Life, despite
its all to frequent predictability, can provide the most bizarre surprises. & then
one's whole perspective on everything can shift 'neath the weight of broken
assumptions.
-Well, I have now witnessed a Peter Singer lecture. You'll forgive me
for being somewhat unimpressed. Maybe it's just that 8.5+ years of debate have jaded me to
introductions to moral & political philosophy. So it goes. At least he
has a funky accent & is willing to consider alternatives to the rights framework as a
moral system.
-Sometimes the ball of truth we're examining from one small angle is
actually a crazy irregular trapezoid with no hope of a spherical nature, but the one
perspective we have is of the slightly rounded edge. It's kinda like a B.C. cartoon
I once saw about a half-blind umpire examining a gum-coated baseball, but the one side
he saw was plain as day. "Looks okay to me..." I think he said & the
joke was on his inability to call the game. To what degree can one individual ever
call the game? How do we get a perspectiveless truth when confronted with so little
frame of reference, so much blocking of vision? Maybe I'm just going crazy. I
spend no insignificant portion of my time contemplating my own madness & am comforted
only by my general disbelief in mental illness. It's just unpopular mental frameworks
that comprise our category of "insane". That's my conviction. So,
though I may proceed to run from English to Economics & lecture Gareth's class on the
value of the key, which we all possess & fail to see, I rely on my ability to convey
ideas, however unpopular or crazy. I just need time to think, to recenter. &
time to think too much, that I've had for time immemorial. So here I go.
-Feeling
helpless to help the one you would die to help has got to be one of the hardest things to
face. Ever.
17 February 2002
-My migraine may
actually be going away, which is nice, since I got it LAST Sunday.
-Off to Princeton for the
week of my first Spring Break... updates from there, to be sure...
16 February 2002
-Also, few people visit
on Saturday. Ah well. We'll see if much of note gets posted here today. Perhaps
tomorrow, we'll find out that the migraine falls short of lasting for a week. But circa
now, it's a solid 5+ days...
15 February 2002
-Boo BU. Get it?
Actually, that's not entirely fair... we had a couple good rounds. We did get to opp
federal tax on junk food! But there's something missing this weekend & I just don't
like it. Seems like Alan's having fun, though, & that's good.
-No one ever visits
my page on Fridays. Silly debaters.
14 February 2002
-I would wish everyone
a happy Valentine's Day, but I fear that there'd be massive reprisal. The sentiment among
most folks 'round here seems to be negative towards the current holiday, no matter how relevant
it may seem to me personally. So I guess I'll keep it to myself, but if you want the
sentiment wished your way, consider it herein
rendered.
-NYU may be up on
the website now, but I'm still having trouble believing the results...
-Finally done with
classes & such for the week, & now just to concentrate on the fun, being both V-Day &
BU! Woo hoo...
13 February 2002
-Despite all the difficulties, true perfection
emerges.
-The Justice writes today of 18-25-year-olds being the most
prone to "depression". They claim that the turmoil innate to this age prompts such depression. I
claim that those 7 years of human life are most prone to idealism, to ethical & hopeful thought. When such
thoughts mix with the sad reality of modern Earth, there is the naturally resulting unhappiness. This is the
process by which generation after generation is beaten into the submission of accepting the world's problems. Then
we write off awareness as a clinical problem & consent to depressing tomorrow's would-be idealists...
-Was going to
update directly, but there was a class in the main Library computer lab & the Macs downstairs don't have an FTP program.
This is quite frustrating. Nevertheless, I persevere.
-The migraine refuses to be shaken, despite vast
improvements in other aspects of life.
-Why must so many insist on remaining so hypocritical? & blatantly so?
I can't understand how the logic that many people use can sustain itself.
-My frustrations overwhelm my capacity
& leave me crying on the doorstep of futility.
12 February 2002
-Sigh. I feel
awful in almost all the ways there are to feel awful.
-Having a headache makes every aspect
of one's day worse...
11 February 2002
-The days when I can
be completely defined by being an organism with a migraine are less than stellar. I'd like
to think of having more extensive identity, but today that's gotta be called into
question.
-Serves me right for wearing a white sweatshirt today. Now I have the
"brown badge of caffeine", which is certainly more desirable than any other badge, but
still not ideal for aesthetic purposes.
Introspection, My Worst
Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
The Blue Pyramid (Source)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old
Frontiers",
by SWClayton.