Surreptitious Opinionation

I’m good with languages, if I do say so myself. I pick up grammar, declensions, conjugations, etc with ease. My accent is generally well above average too. There’s just one little (okay, forking huge) problem.

My vocabulary sucks goat testicles. Thorny ones at that.

So, I’m going to set up a flat text file and a perl script to run through it and spit out some words, then, when prompted, supply me with the translation. I may eventually turn this into an exercise in database programming, but for now, I’ll just do this the wrong way. Don’t have to keep track of flash cards.

I guess this makes me a geek.

Multiple Sclerosis is the most prevelant neurological disorder in the world, affecting millions of people worldwide. It is unpredictable, causing problems including pain and nausea, speech disorders, hearing and vision loss, seizures, and paralysis. There is no known cure.

Progress has been made. MS was first identified in 1870s. As our understanding of the human body and the nervous system have improved, so has our understanding and our ability to treat this condition. We now know that it is an genetically influenced auto-immune disorder, which breaks down neurons’ myelin sheaths. We now have some working therapies, and more under investigation.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society is working on research with many top notch institutions, such as UCSF, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the Mayo Clinic, New York University, the National Institute for Neurological Disorder and Stroke. They are researching the causes, the treatments, and looking for a cure.

Your support makes a difference. Please join me in helping them. Any donation you can offer would be helpful.

Thank you.

Why I’m quitting my job:
I am fairly ambivalent about the job.
It doesn’t pay me much
I’ve been feeling mismanaged
I have no commitment to my current job or career path
Recent stupid management trick was the straw
In short, not worth putting up with

Why I’m going to san francisco:
Far better dating possibilities
Lots of friends, new and old, fewer of whom will be graduating & moving any time soon
Better public transportation (excellent in sf itself, crappy in da burbs, of course)
Like the coast, the parks, etc
Like the neighborhoods.
Tuition discount (~$11k) should I get into my first choice university
I’d probably have to move anyway, given lack of long-term reliable roomie.
(in short, I like the area, and expect to have fun there, even on a tight budget
& I’m not making another long term locational commitment to a place I expect to not like)

Concerns & responses:
Health Insurance?
COBRA for the few months it should take me to find a job
Can I afford it?
I have two paychecks coming. Then there’s my $1kish tax return and $400 housing
deposit. With all this, I can afford a few frugal months, including COBRA, food,
shelter, cell phone contract (can’t terminate without huge fees), student loan, debt
consolidation loan, transportation, and a very modest entertainment budget (library will
be my friend)
Friends?
I will miss those in the burgh, and enjoy those in sf. I will continue to visit
occasionally, when I have $$
Job?
Register with a temp agency after the first week of very active job hunting, continue
job hunting after that, and network socially and through volunteering
A life without stuff?
I rarely spend much time at home these days, so basically, I get by with what I carry
around, and I’ve been carrying around less these days. I will miss the ready access to
my books, and a reliably net-connected computer that is definitively mine (and
dvorak-ized), but books, videos, etc, I can get from the library (net access too), and
I’ll probably take my laptop with (yay, pcmcia modem).

Please to be shooting holes in my plan, so I can patch them. Resignation (effective July 26th) already tendered.

Am I completely fucking insane?

Judge for yourself

I’m tired, and I’ll be brief. I may just keep this a skeletal outline, and I may come back and flesh it in later, only time will tell.

Short form: I’m home same & sound, had a kick ass good time, and want to go back to toronto again some time. If Bush is re-elected, I’ll emigrate =)

Friday: Spotting people on the way there, laptop sadness, not spotting chris, calling CA, seeing the bed & breakfast, the aids memorial, gay scrabble night, and tea at timothy’s.

Saturday: Unexpected soy milk, Public transportation karma, kensington market where have you been all my life (oh wait, at kensington market), china town, Toronto Vegetarian Association, and my subcultural affiliations, shopping at out on the street, films festival shorts (Canadian program 4), annapurna and long metaphysical discussion, finding an internet cafe, and the horrors of being locked in qwerty (sweet, sweet dvorak), nap, film shorts festival (Slap & tickle), lost transit pass, walk home, sleep.

Sunday: Breakfast, ferry to toronto islands, Rectory cafe, gay nude beach, back to immaculate reception, greek cabby self-taught in english, cluelessness in customs, laptop and security, wild baby with untamed mother loose on plane, chinese dinner with sister over buffy, sweet sweet dvorak.

Synthesis: thoughts on toronto (possibly applicable to the rest of canada), denser, yet less centralized, cleaner, yet rougher cut. Cultural affiliations, straight edge punk???, gay, vegan/veggie, intellectual, geek. The meaning of symbols.

Among other things, today, Chris and I went to a program that is part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival. There were 9 shorts shown. My four favorite were The Levis HVC a commercial-length, comic illustration of why flying cars are a terrible idea, happy for cheryl about a woman kicking ass and taking names (it was pretty funny and quite cute), Interviews with my next girlfriend a humorous piece where we see a lesbian’s potential mates (embodiments of stereotypes) lined up and disected, and my favorite The Salivation Army detailing the growth of a queer punk group/zine/cult, and the ideology behind it. What I liked most about it was the ideology behind it, and I felt a similarity between some of what he said in his piece regarding the deliberate rejection, unwitting adoption, and eventual purging of symbolic definition for the group through intiations and dress codes and my recent post on religion (cafe closing, more later)

Will be brief, in a net cafe that closes in less than 45 minutes, and I’m stuck in qwerty, dammit. More detail later.

Having a good time. Enjoying the company, but want to document a particularly insightful quote from Chris (spupeh, my tour guide ;). After dinner, I had been talking about Seth, and, as I often do, said “I feel so old”. It is a lame, cliched, and not quite-accurate line. Chris offered forth that what I meant might be that it is important to be appropriately contextualized. Truly, he is an artist with words. That is what I felt, out of place, in the wrong context.

Next, my thoughts on the film shorts festival, hope I have time…

Sometime not so very long ago, in a city not so very far away, I was being driven home by a friend. (A friend who reads this livejournal) And he managed to make a comment that surprised and intrigued me, I can’t remember it word for word, but it was something to the effect of “I wouldn’t ever want to be as intelligent as you.” This caught my attention for two reasons, the first being that he thought I was smarter than him (I’d never really thought about it, just assigned him to the intellectual peer category without much examination), and the second being why on Earth anyone wouldn’t want to be smarter than they are.

His reasoning? Boredom.

long ramblings about boredom, what could be more entertaining?