I have started and stopped writing several times so far tonight. I am all jumbly and can't think straight. Hate these kind of nights! GRRR. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Will not delete this one. G'night all. XOXO

Glad my friends and neighbors were able to enjoy the Philly 10K today. But I'm a little triste because I've given up running.

A quick two-mile run used to be my fave way to grab a little cardio before work. But this year I started getting "flat tires." My tendon (?) would just go boom, and I'd be hobbling for a couple days.

That happened twice in two months. Not especially painful, but a sign you're doing Something Wrong, yes?

So I stopped banging my bones against pavement, and it hasn't happened since. Bicycles, no problem. Dancing, no problem. But I need a new quick and dirty workout.Still, I haven't entirely abandoned contact with pavement. I remain kind of epic when it comes to walking.

When I first moved to Seattle I circumnavigated Lake Union on foot on my first full day in town, summiting both Queen Anne Hill and Capitol Hill. My first latté may have been a contributing factor.

So when my sister arrived in Seattle, and wondered how to get from point A to point B... I just said, "ya got FEET!"

So having trained under the red sun of Krypton– um, I mean on the hillsides of the Pacific Northwest– walking into flat Center City from flat South Philly is really no thang.

I just have to learn to treat my shock absorbers with respect.

The problem with readers (and I should know, I am one) is that it's almost impossible to recommend a book to one! Any real reader is in the middle of something, and also has a backlog reading list a meter high.

But I have a solution! I will be recommending a series of short writings, mostly fiction but some non-fiction too, probably. Rules are, must be readable in an hour and freely available (pub domain, CC, etc.).

I hope some of you will take a look, and maybe play along.

First installment - "They're Made Out of Meat", a Nebula Award-nominated short story by Terry Bisson.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

I've been following #Gamergate and the Zoey Quinn thing when browsing reddit and other media.  Conspiracy from some group on 4chan to fuck with ZQ, maybe.  Conspiracy from ZQ to fuck with members of the games media to get coverage, maybe.  Out of control social media overreaction?  Sure.  

None of it is worth the attention it's gotten, but in my opinion some of the mess has a basis in reality.  Some games media sites do little more than accept money from publishers to write paid reviews, and that's fine as long as they disclose it or other conflicts of interest.  People who send credible threats to people over the internet should get prosecuted, but not in social media, rather in an actual court with lawyers and stuff.  

The rest of it's just overheated internet drama.  Fun to read about though!

And now for more Boots & Sol cuddling.  I hope they will never grow out of this.  

The Triplets of Belleville can be read as a commentary on hyperreality.

OK, yes, I'm full of myself today because I learned that word this week. Bear with me.

The cyclist is at the center of a moral drama, in which his mother seeks to protect him and others seek to abuse him; both sides profit from his labor. But he is oblivious to all of it, because the landscape unspooling before him constitutes his reality, whether it is actual or a projected film. He is not aware of the difference. He does not know how close he comes to disaster.

This is the core notion of hyperreality— the state in which consciousness cannot distinguish the real from the virtual. In a technological society, there is a risk that we will all be enabled to inhabit our fantasies to such an extent that we ignore what is transpiring in the real.

There are those who would say this has already happened.

Ok. Generally speaking, I don't even bring up my birthday and I've honestly had years where I would have forgotten it (quite literally) if I hadn't been reminded of it.

Add to that the fact that I now live a life where calling me a minimalist is an understatement, and I find myself leary of bringing it up at all.

So, says I, how can I offer folks who want to do something nice for me on my birthday - remotely and without cluttering up my life with 'stuff' and free?

That's when it hit me. I spend a lot of my time in my Contacts list these days. Whether on my phone or in GMail, I stare at a lot of faux silhouettes instead of my friends' faces.

So - if you feel inclined to do something nice for me for my birthday, don't worry about buying me something. Just send me a selfie that I can use in my contact info for you.

Silly, sexy, fun, goofy, or artistic. Whatever you want to represent you.

I do have one request though: I'd prefer it be of you.

A lot of folks make their FB profile pic a photo of their kids or their dogs or their company logo, and that's fine - but this is for me, and I'd like to see you when I look you up.

The best way to send it is probably to my email address (first initial . last name @ gmail .com). Please do not send it to me via MMS - I do not have data on my phone while I'm working in Canada. Anything beyond that, let me know and I'm sure we could figure it out.

Thanks folks. You rock.

Random Side Note: This is my first public post on One Post Wonder. If you would like to read what else I've posted here, and we're friends - ask me and I'll send you an invite. It's the new hangout where the cool kids are playing.

OPW editor is not very. Especially as LF is handled.

Language Salesman    

Have you thought much about language, Mr. Banks?

Joe

No, I never really have.

Language Salesman

It's the central preoccupation of my life.  You travel the world, you're away from home, perhaps away from your family, all you have to depend on is yourself and your language.

Joe

I guess that's true.

Language Salesman

I believe I have just the thing.

Joe

Wow.

Language Salesman

This is our premier dialect.  All handmade, only the finest metaphors.  It's even hyperbole-tight, tight as a drum. If I had the need and the wherewithal, Mr. Banks, this would be my method of expression.

Joe

I'll take four of them.

Language Salesman

May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.

(Thanks, John Patrick Shanley)

A classic from the vault:

2 cups almond milk

1/4 cup brown sugar, maybe a little more

1/4 cup peanut butter (the real stuff, not the hydrogenated oil crap)

1 tsp vanilla

Mix well. Fire up the ice cream maker. Pour it in. Wait. Yum.

Makes 1 pint. (I halved the recipe tonight, because I knew I was gonna eat it all. Mmmf.)

Peanut butter stands in for dairy fat much better than most things do. Everybody's afraid of peanuts now which is a shame because most of us aren't allergic and they are yummy.

This recipe stands well on its own. You don't have to smother it in chocolate or extra sugar. You do have to like peanuts.

It's Orientation here this week.  This mostly means that there are zillions of identically-t-shirted young people chanting out slogans and being forced to learn synchronized dance routines.

I hate it.

When I was a freshman, 23 years ago, MIT's orientation week was combined with the period when you picked your housing.  You were assigned a temporary dorm (mine was MacGregor, which is entirely made up of singles), and then there was a four-day frenzy of fraternity rush, sorority rush, "independent living group" [aka ex-frats that had gone co-ed, largely] rush, alongside a more low-key period to check out the dorms and rank them, if you decided not to join a frat/sorority/ILG.  And there was also Orientation. 

It was confusing.  By the time we got to the Orientation part of the week, most of us were exhausted.  I'd decided ultimately to live in the dorms (I think 30% of people, most of them men, joined FSILGs, which meant that the gender ratio in the dorms might even have been more women than men?), in part because I had met someone who was one class ahead of me who eventually became one of my closest friends.  (We're not as close nowadays, but really, who of us is as close nowadays to the people we met in our first week of college?)  Sharon had run an event at Random Hall (yes, that's its name) where we made gnocchi, and it seemed far more authentically fun than most of the BS that was happening at all of the other dorms/FSILGs.  (Unfortunately, I still can't make gnocchi that don't fall apart.  Perhaps I should email her and get her recipe.)

After all of that, Orientation was just exhausting.  We'd not slept for days.  Many of us (including me) had been told "no" by an FSILG.  (This is a really terrible thing to happen during your first week of college, I should note.)  And then they wanted us to get into groups of strangers and do trust falls and learn about cultural diversity and do physical activities and Make Friends.  They called it MOYA, for Move Off Your Assumptions (God, I want those brain cells back.)

I fled. 

See, there's nothing stopping you from just...walking away.  And while lots of Orientation was "mandatory", it's not as though it's, you know, mandatory.  So I left.  I wandered Boston.  I went shopping.  I read along the Esplanade on the Charles River. 

I did bits and pieces here and there of Orientation, and I remember my MOYA group leader being really frustrated with me.  But I thought then, and still think now, that Orientation is fundamentally misguided, because it presumes that by taking a group of culturally diverse (and neurodiverse!) people and pretending that they're all extroverts with lots of common ground, everyone will have fun and make friends.

What is actually true is that for some people, including me, it's basically the psychological equivalent to having people shout at them for four days.  And I didn't sign up for Boot Camp, I went to nerd college.

At times, I have tried to improve Orientation here, but the other big problem with it is that Orientation reproduces itself.  The people who lead Orientation are the people who love Orientation, and who see nothing wrong with acting as though our class of Math and CS students, which is roughly 60% non-Canadian-born, is actually made up of a bunch of culturally unified extroverts.  Year after year, this structure reproduces itself.

I hate Orientation.