rakkauden ja epätoivon laulu

I hate bonfires and fireworks; human production of heat entropy for entertainment eats at me, for some reason.
Fortunately, fireworks season is over for the time being.

As of yesterday, I'm officially in Honors Linguistics!!!!! :DDDDD
I also had a straight A+ spring session (Phonetics and Second-Language Acquisition)!! :D
Please be excited for me rather than worrying about whether history is going to repeat itself yet again (i.e. I drop out of the program). Thanks. Your optimism is appreciated.

DLS adds: "Congratulations. You found the true path of the linguist. You're officially cool now. You will receive the official papers with stamps and signatures of the coolness crew shortly."


It also turns out that aside from my thesis courses, I'll only need to take one linguistics elective (and fine arts elective: choir) in my final year. Which leaves me plenty of time to work on that thesis thing.


How to make and lose a friend in seven days: spend a 2.5 hour road trip with them on a day when you've forgotten to take your anxiety medication and thus are incredibly emo.

The following is the "Epic Shenanigans!" shuffle-playlist I made for that trip. It's quite intense with a couple of sillier songs. I guess that says something about me.
( Old favorites and the Most.Rockin'.Movie.Soundtrack.Ever (from the film 'Pahat pojat') )


My printer gave up its ghost this morning. It gave me a print head error so I soaked the head in isopropanol, which cleaned it mighty good, but didn't fix the error any. It'd cost more to replace the part than it would be to buy a new printer. I've had this printer since I started university, and I'm surprised that it's lasted this long, anyway. I still have one sealed, new set of inks for it though. Maybe I can sell them on kijiji or something.


I started reading Infinite Jest yesterday. I'm only about 50 pages in but I'm infinitely enjoying it so far. I think this makes me a pretentious bookworm.


Given how many people have recorded piano arrangements of the original Trine theme music, I'm surprised that the Trine 2 theme music, having been released in mid-April, still has no piano covers but my own, made three weeks ago.



"I've never heard 'weather pending' before. It sounds like you ordered some from Amazon and it's on a 7-day delivery." —shellynoir (about the very interesting memo taped to my door)


I ordered the textbook for my English syntax course a couple of days after I ordered Infinite Jest from the same webshop. Obviously the novel made it, but the textbook got held up by the postal workers' strike. The posties have been back to work for a week and I haven't gotten any mail all week. It's as though the postwoman is still on strike or something (not actually; my neighbours are getting their mail, uh, post).


I have throwing knives. They're actually sharp pointy objects, as opposed to most knives, which are sharp but not necessarily pointy. Sadly, I don't have anywhere to safely and discreetly practice with them around here unless I head over to the river valley or something and that's kind of sketch. At the not-so-secret-Finnish-camp, though, I can at least plonk the walls of the wood shed with impunity.

He dyed his hair pink just for the heck of it and drinks so much coffee during lecture that it's kind of funny. It's the last class of my day and I always look forward to it. He was a little curious about an error that I'd noticed in my textbook, so I went to his office to describe it to him.

...

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way -- but linguistics tends to bring out perfectionism and obsessiveness in people, and I want to let you know that there are services here on campus that can help with that. It's just that mental illness is so stigmatized and it really shouldn't be."

"Mmm...yeah... I'm already seeing them."

...

Also, on Tuesday I was in the student newspaper again. This is a Vox Pop kind of column, where they find random people and ask them a question. I said that I was a "confused Arts student in my 7th year here" but there's only so much flexibility on the part of their editors.
Click the thumbnail to embiggens.

I think that I'm starting to piece together some relic-of-a-lost-generation explanation for the old-school/pop-culture-rejection outlook on life I think I first recognized in, hmm... grade 5?

Now that we are well into late modern society, it is "normal" of a sizable proportion of the population to have a poorly formulated sense of themselves as agents in the world and to have a vague sense of their past and their future. This "diffused" or "default" identity appears to be increasingly "normal" because of social and economic conditions that encourage an other-directed, image-oriented personality, bent on immediate gratification through the consumption of goods and services sold by corporate-capitalist enterprises.

Not everyone falls prey to those influences, but an increasing number of people seem to. In fact, it is easily argued that for some time now people have been targeted from childhood on by corporate-capitalist enterprises with encouragement to be passive in their identity formation. Consequently, with each successive cohort, more people have passed through their adolescence and into their adulthood without actively engaging themselves in their own identity development, in spite of opportunities to do so.

—James Côté, Arrested Adulthood: The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity (2000), pp.151-2

I cleaned out a bunch of the cardboard boxes that the former roommates left in the storage room. Took a bag of styrofoam out to the garbage, and a couple of boxfuls of recycling. There's still stuff in the storage room I don't know to whom it belongs, and some shoeboxes that would be handy for my own shoes.

I generally avoid sports or physical recreation, but when I find some labour to physically toil over (whether it's cleaning out stuff like today or repairing old dresser drawers with ill-suited tools like a few days ago), I still hate the sweat, yet I feel good about doing it, because it's a visible effort of struggling against things rather than just against other people (which comes more easily, and causes a great deal of frustration, guilt, shame, and all that sort of crap).

And just for a little while I can forget about loneliness...though I wish sometimes that there was somebody with whom I can share my feelings of accomplishment, no matter how seemingly trivial what those feelings are for. Honestly there isn't anything significant about cleaning a closet. But I feel strongly about it regardless.

Many [gifted adults] immerse themselves fully in whatever they are doing—whether it be their work, their hobbies/avocations, or their relationships with friends, family, or even acquaintances. They tend to be fully present in the moment (sometimes oblivious to time and its constraints) and to imbue each encounter with relevance and meaning. Superficiality is unfamiliar territory for them, and they tend to go in to far further depth in whatever they do or feel than others, thereby seeking and frequently finding great fulfillment even in everyday events—a sunrise, a chance encounter on a bus, a message from a friend, the laughter of children.
[...]
Most gifted adults have repeatedly felt misunderstood by others. Furthermore, they have often found themselves on a lifelong quest to understand themselves, while longing to find kindred spirits with whom they might share life's journey in meaningful ways. Some gifted individuals seem to sail through life on untroubled waters, fully enjoying the opportunities available to them, while others battle inner storms and strong seas that seem to batter them from all sides.

Sheehy (2006) described a significant portion of young adulthood as the "Trying Twenties." She suggested that this is a time when individuals are concentrating on what they feel they are "supposed to do"–i.e., according to societal norms and expectations. However, for gifted adults with high levels of intellectual and imaginational intensity, this may be further complicated in several ways. First, they are aware of all of the possibilities available to them (akin to what Toffler, 1984, called "overchoice"); second, they are concerned about what they should be doing in terms of using their gifts and talents productively for the betterment of society; and third, they desire to find one or more others with whom they can relate. As a result, these individuals wend their way through what seems to be a jungle of options, each with its own potential consequences.

Things are a little different when I'm offline in the apartment. Maybe I'll get something done? Maybe not. I really like the touch of the Mac keyboards in this computer lab, though. Feels good to type on.

So I'll just leave you with a quotation.

Gifted children take in information from the world around them; they react and respond more quickly and intensely than other children. They are stimulated both by what's going on around them and by what moves them from within.

Because they can be so greatly stimulated, and because they perceive and process things differently, gifted children are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their questioning as undermining authority, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional. They stand out from the norm. But then, what is normal?

It is of course unfortunate that something exceptional, something that is outside of the norm, is often looked upon as being abnormal, and that "abnormal" usually means annoying or bad, whereas "normal" means mostly acceptable or good. We forget that these notions come from a statistical convention, the bell curve, which does not tell us what is good and what is bad.

Friend: im sipping gin out of a pharaceutical pill container ... isn't that.. sad
Me: wtf

This part from Chapter 25 reminds me of a comment someone made about DT...

(translation by Robert M. Adams)

—That noise? said Pococurante. It may amuse you for half an hour, but if it goes on any longer, it tires everybody though no one dares to admit it. Music today is only the art of performing difficult pieces, and what is merely difficult cannot please for long. Perhaps I should prefer the opera, if they had not found ways to make it revolting and monstrous. Anyone who likes bad tragedies set to music is welcome to them; in these performances the scenes serve only to introduce, inappropriately, two or three ridiculous songs designed to show off the actress's sound box. Anyone who wants to, or who can, is welcome to swoon with pleasure at the sight of a castrate wriggling through the role of Caesar or Cato, and strutting awkwardly about the stage. For my part, I have long since given up these paltry trifles which are called the glory of modern Italy, and for which monarchs pay such ruinous prices.

Walking past the beergardens today, a band was doing their sound check for the performance later in the evening.

I know this: I'll never be able to attend a band concert again* without breaking down in tears in front of the stage until I can be a part of the stage.

It's not adoration.

It hurts that much.

Heck, it hurts enough to just walk by an outdoor stage.


*I've actually watched a bunch of bands before, it was that DaveFest thing at SWC that grade 12 year. Tradition has it that it's mostly speeches, dancing, and rock band performances, but I went in singing a classical piece. Anyway, I remember being clearly enthralled by the bands.

===

— I must believe.
— If your will is to face your past, you must believe;
If your will is to face your future, you must believe;
If your will is to face your present, you must believe ever more so.
— I must believe...
— ...that you will walk through the ruins of triumph
In a moment that must pass on the way to eternal memory.
— Ruins?
— Yes. But you know that already.

===

The song isn't so new to me anymore, so this version of Solitary Ground should be a lot better than the old one (you can still find the old one on my inventory). I even hit a high D for the sake of hitting it in it (albeit a little squeaky)! (I scared myself at my choir re-audition on Wednesday because I hit B-flat in practice that morning and Bob said I did E-flat at the audition.)

===

Other notable words this week:
My comments regarding the Fishmaster 'misheard lyrics' video (search YouTube for this), supposedly "for one of [my] anti-NW moments":

those moments are almost 24/7, really.
That's why I only listen to my own version of their songs now :P

(er...99% of the time.)

Erm...yes, I've seen the Fishmaster video before.
In fact, I saw it when it was first posted. I don't like that song.
In fact, I don't like any of the songs on that album.

It's just this - the more I think about it, the more their lyrics suck, the more Tarja sucks, the more TH is a poser, and so on and so forth. Gah.

Bob's comment regarding my audition:
"Shortest audition in history."

It's been a while since one of these, eh?


(3:19 AM) Me: is it just me again or is it really cold right now?
(3:20 AM) Nick: It may be just you. Then again, I feel warmer than usual because I didn't shower after I rolled out of bed at 3pm. And at 6pm. And off the couch at 8pm.
(3:21 AM) Me: but i haven't since i woke up at 3pm either
(3:21 AM) Nick: Maybe you'll just have to be resigned to the fact that you're tiny and frail and your specific heat capacity sucks.
(3:21 AM) Nick: And you can quote me on that!
(3:21 AM) Nick: Mostly because I think it's clever.

My sister's Stedman's Medical Dictionary^* has this definition:

carpal tunnel syndrome
the most common nerve entrapment syndrome, characterized by nocturnal hand paresthesia and pain, and sometimes sensory loss and wasting in the median hand distribution; affects women more than men and is often bilateral; caused by chronic entrapment of the median nerve at the wrist, within the carpal tunnel.

paresthesia
An abnormal sensation, such as of burning, pricking, tickling, or tingling.

^* She got this for her birthday some years ago, she's 17 now. Can you tell she's definitely determined to become a doctor?