~~ a journal of observations and thoughts ~~
Cardinal
Originally uploaded by Metamere.
I'm testing out posting to this blog from Flickr. The web 2.0 really is about user created content sites, I feel. It's fun to get a compliment on a photo from someone halfway across the world, and then be able to compliment them on one of their photos. This world really is drawing everyone into a huge community, slowly but surely.
I completed the upload of my older photo galleries, and also created a Flickr gallery. Feels good.
I was doing some photography at dusk yesterday with a long exposure on an ultrapod mount, when my dog decided to walk over. It created a ghostly effect. I love how the gold of her fur blends with the gold light on the pavement, and the gold is balanced by the blue of the snow and sky. 
What is it that drives someone to take on a task that will be too big for them to handle? Is it pride, ego, or hubris? In some cases, yes. It could also be self-destructive tendencies, ignorance, incompetence, or overexcitement. In Maya's case, it's probably a combination of hard-wiring, and overall knuckleheadedness. Good thing knuckles are hard.
What do I see in the eyes of my dear one? What does she see in my eyes? It's not as simple of a matter as just reading emotions through expressions. There is an interreflection that goes on between any two people that try to see eye to eye. This process is informed by the physics of the photons traveling from the sun and bouncing off of the surfaces around us. Some of the photons that bounce off of her eyes towards mine are then bounced off of my corneas right back towards hers. How many levels of recursion are there? I realized this process after doing raytracing with POV-Ray, and learning of the physics model behind it. These processes leads to more questions that take us deeper into the nuclei of our relationships. What do I see of myself in her eyes? What does she see of herself in my eyes? What do I see in her eyes of how she sees herself in mine? What does she see in my eyes of how I see myself in her eyes? With each subsequent level, perception is diminished as the images are blurred. Our eyes are not perfect reflectors, but in our minds, there is a conceptual possibility to see infinity in every gaze, and to feel an infinity in every touch.
My nose dripped blood to my hand, and my hand dropped blood to the sink. The splatters created patterns, and its juxtaposition to the drain inspired me. It is an homage to the works of Robert Gober.
I could post here every day if I wanted to, but I guess I'm just not an inveterate blogger. I didn't get any comments on my propaganda posts, but that's okay. It was funny at first, but then it just got a bit unsettling. So, what does persistence mean to me? it means envisioning a future state of success, and then working to connect with it. Persistence leads to perseverence.
Over the last several months, I had wanted to upgrade my computer with a larger hard drive, since I was out of space. I also wanted to swap out my current drive, since it was getting old. I bought a new SATA drive, and then spent many hours over the next couple days working on achieving my goal of having an efficient data storage system. I figured out a lot of things that don't work, but thankfully, enough about what does to get it to work. I now have over two and a half times more space free than I had in total before. My system is quieter, and I also have most of my data backed up. Some, in more than one place. I have persevered in getting out of my stuck state, where I was limited by my lack of resources. Along the way, I gained knowledge that will allow me to make similar changes much more easily, and I also saw a lot of new possibilities.
Early in the process, I was muy stressed out, and nothing seemed to work. Once I realized the pointlessness of such a mindset, I loosened up both physically and mentally, and things started to fall into place. They say that good things come to those who wait. I say that good things come to those who envision having good things. Sometimes waiting and letting those things come to you is the best way to go about gaining them, which seems very counter-intuitive to a lot of people. In that case, it is a persistent positive state of mind that manifests things in one's life. Of course, there are many times when it takes a lot of legwork and some good old-fashioned elbow grease to achieve what one envisions; but one still needs to have that positive attitude for it to work.
I will continue to be persistent in every project I dedicate myself to. Right now, I'm focusing on the projects of finding a job, making money, staying healthy and strong, and maintaining and building positive relationships. They will require some serious persistence if I am to persevere; luckily the motivation is definitely there. I will employ my time well, for that's the stuff that my life is made of.
Well, since I missed yesterday, here are a couple entries.
Shop:
Bourgeois parliament is merely a talking shop.
That one didn't have much, but it's pretty funny. I've noticed a few major themes in this dictionary, with many examples having to do with military or agricultural situations, or else concerned with ideology, government, work-ethic, and revolutions. Not all of this is propaganda, but it definitely shows a fixation on certain topics.
Should:
The group leader announced that we should begin to work soon;
We should learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants;
We worked hard so that we should fulfil our task ahead of time.
Oh, and here's are some examples for show:
The deceptions of modern revisionism have been shown up by its own deeds;
Show concern for one's comrades;
We must not show mercy to the enemy.
Wow. I'm not sure exactly what this revisionism that they were talking about is, but it probably refers to any attempt to point out flaws in the logic or beliefs of the "Party" and Communist doctrine in general. These examples are such thinly veiled propaganda that it really astounds me. The people who wrote this dictionary either did so in a state of fear or of denial. Pretty sad.
So, as promised, here are some of the examples from "A New Chinese-English Dictionary".
Carry:
be eager to carry heavy loads;
Carry the revolutionary tradition forward;
Carry on the three great revolutionary movements;
Carry out the proletarian revolution in education;
Carry out the policies of the Party;
Carry the revolution through to the end;
foul carry-overs from capitalism;
Notice any patterns there?
A few years ago I found an old, used copy of an English-Chinese dictionary. I don't remember where I got it exactly; maybe from a teacher or a used book store, but I also remember looking through books being gotten rid of by the East-Asian library at the U of M, so maybe I got it there. It was published in 1979, three years after the death of Mao and the end of the Cultural Revolution. From my browsing of the book, I can see that the government propaganda presses were still going strong. It is simply rife with pro-party pro-communist phrases, disguised as examples to help people understand just how these English words are used. Seemingly innocuous words such as bind, well, fight, active, above, and characteristic join the fray in helping to win the ideological war. I personally find this corruption of the language to serve their cause very telling of the intellectual climate there. Well, I'm sure you're curious as to just how these words were subverted, so here you have it.
above: In class society there is no human nature above classes.
active: an active ideological society
bind: Common struggles have bound the Chinese and world peoples in a profound militant friendship.
characteristic: the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class
fight: fight for the cause of communism; fight with the world's people against imperialism; all comrades fought to undertake the hardest job; fight revisionism
well: remember well the hard time we had in the old society; when the Red Guards saw Chairman Mao, their eyes welled up with tears.
Seriously people, I am not making this crap up. I think I'll just go ahead and start a "Propaganda of the Day" theme here. I have a feeling it will take me a while to exhaust the supply in this obsolete yet amusing "dictionary". Feel free to make guesses as to what words might contain more propaganda gems, and I'll post them if they do. Tomorrow, we'll look at the many useful examples associated with the word "carry". I'm sure you just can't wait.
On Boing Boing last week, I found something that really resonated with me. An anagram map. I love playing with photoshop, and I love doing anagrams. I will sometimes just see a word and know that there's a good anagram in there somewhere, and then I'll find it. I will often make anagrams of words I see while I'm driving somewhere. I turned Oldsmobile into "blood slime", Range Rover into "vegan error", and Pontiac Grand Am into "grandma caption". This kind of multi-tasking is maybe not the safest thing to do while driving, but it's much better than talking on a cell phone. The thing that I found on Boing Boing was a link to a subway map that someone had hacked by replacing all of the place names on it with anagram versions of them. I thought that the Twin Cities could use a good anagram map too. We don't have a subway system, but the new Metro Transit Hiawatha Line(route 55) map was ripe for the picking. I had a lot of fun making my own anagram map, and I present it here.
Just before posting this, I found out that someone had already created an anagrammized version of this same map. They took a different approach, which I think is still amusing, but much less useful overall. I chose to not include the word "station" in most of my anagrams, because if I'm driving and I see a sign for Franklin Avenue, I'll think "Vienna Faulkner", and if I'm walking around in Nicollet Mall, I'll think "Lancelot Mill". You don't see the word "station" with these places all the time. The other anagrammist chose to erase the things on the map which he didn't want to deal with, but I stuck it out and found a few more interesting ones. The University of Minnesota becomes the "vain, somniferous entity". Granted, I didn't feel that way about it very often, but there were some times when I certainly did. I hope you enjoy this map, get a good laugh, and also try some anagrams of your own. There are a lot of anagram resources on the web, such as the Internet Anagram Server, which I used for many of the anagrams on my map. If your input is long enough, it will usually produce an immense list of words which you will then have to sort through. Of course, there's a limit to the number of characters you can input; for longer anagrams, you'll need to do it the old-fashioned way. Happy anagramming!