Steve Jobs's Commencement Address

Not sure if people already saw this, but thought I'd post the link in case not: commencement address.

China

I spent about two weeks in China, learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine. In that time, I managed to take pictures of really interesting signs:

And, this is my favorite:

Dinosaur Comics - check it out!

Blogging in general

I love blogging. I've had blogs under multiple personas (some mine and some anonymous) at multiple servers including Blogspot, Xanga, Diaryland, Livejournal, and Myspace. I haven't been part of a group blog since I was fifteen and part of an ongoing story blog where the writers (myself included) just wrote their pieces to infuriate the other people invovled. Hey, I said I was fifteen. Anyway, for my first post I wanted to say how excited, although hesitant, I am to be part of an online blog again.

Fictitious Felicity

Why is it so hard to be happy? You strive to find happiness; you plan your entire life in pursuit of goals that you believe will make you happy—getting a college degree, traveling the world, making more money, helping others, creating a masterpiece, etc….
But why is it that even after achieving those goals you soon find yourself despondent again?

The answer may be that your state of happiness is completely predetermined by something beyond your control. No, not God or karma, but psychology. Researchers are finding evidence that everyone exists at a baseline of happiness encoded by experience, personality, and genetics. Another determinate of happiness is the evolutionary process that requires adaptation to environmental changes so that people may overcome any situation and return to a habitual state of being. Therefore, regardless of what happens—winning $16 million in the lottery or becoming paralyzed in a freak accident—biological and psychological factors will cause the return of that habitual state, the baseline of happiness.

At this moment, your baseline of happiness might be affecting your reaction to this information.
Do these findings depress you because you realize that your current state of happiness is the happiest you’ll ever be? Or do these findings liberate you because you realize that if your level of happiness is predetermined then it doesn’t matter what you do in life, you’ll still be as happy or as unhappy as you are now?

Weird Turn-ons

I was sitting at work reading Playboy's advice section and a guy wrote in saying that he was an acousticophile- he gets turned when he hears women walking in high heels, he can even have a spontaneous orgasm if a certain pair sounds especially appealing. Imagine that!

So I looked up other odd turn-ons:
pogonophilia: love of beards
klismaphilia: feeling pleasure from enemas
gynotikolobomassophilia: love of biting female earlobes
ecdysiophilia: love of watching people strip
acrotomophilia: love of amputees

And because there is such a fine line between love and hate, here are some phobias:
hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia: fear of the number 666
hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: fear of big words

Pro bono publico

The language of Latin en masse has been dead for centuries, yet its apparition still haunts the English language per idioms. A sentence suddenly becomes incomprehensible when disrupted by a seemingly non sequitur. If such ad hominem idioms are sine qua non, at least avoid the status quo of "per se," "vice versa," "et cetera," etc…said ad nauseam.
Carpe diem and learn some new ones!

Help me out, guys

So I've got this degree in this fancy language, but Hawaii leaves me with scant chance to use it. I've decided to give myself homework assignments: look things up on Wikipedia in said foreign language. Today I looked up "cumulus" and "bing crosby."
Give me some things to look up and help me stave off this despicable linguistic atrophy.

Regarding Marilyn Monroe

Read "A Beautiful Child," Truman Capoté's stunning, unforgettable story about MM, and you'll never see her the same way again. The story appears in his collection Music for Chameleons, a book that anyone who aspires to understand literature—or create it—should read.

Marilyn Monroe

The misconception that Marilyn Monroe was just a "dumb blonde" prevails to this day. However, if one delves into actual accounts of her conversations with various friends and reporters the truth one finds may be quite surprising. Her known "bad behavior" during filming of movies actually came down to a battle of wills between herself and patronizing directors. Being late to shootings was her way of exercising some "control over a situation in which she felt disempowered." The men around her called her a "monster" and fantasized about beating her and her arrogance into submission. She just wanted respect from these men who were difficult, egotistical, condescending, and hard to get along with, let alone please.

When Marilyn made any attempts to further her knowledge or to show the public that she wasn't just a sexual body with no intellectual aspirations she was labeled as being pretentious. No wonder she could not come to terms with her own identity. People were calling for her to abide by her sex kitten image, yet hated her for it; they wanted more substance from her, and when she gave it to them, they rejected her. She was a beautiful, lonely, misunderstood woman that wanted to be loved.

Trite salutations

I met a guy and gave him my number. He text-messaged me everyday, at least three times a day. In the mornings he would text, “Good morning;” in the evenings, “Good night;” and “How is your day?” in between. These messages cost money to receive, five cents a message! So, finally, I text-messaged the following: “You’re sweet, but if you’re going to text me please send me messages with more substance and content instead of these trite salutations. =) Thanks!” He did not respond and I felt guilty that I might have offended him with my snobbery. Later that evening, I saw him and inquired if everything was all right. He said, “It took me two hours to figure out what ‘trite’ means; then another hour for ‘trite salutations.’”

Why didn't he just refer to the dictionary? I have no idea.

trite ('trIt) adj. hackneyed or boring from much use; not fresh or original
salutation ("sal-y&-'tA-sh&n) n. an expression of greeting, goodwill, or courtesy by word, gesture, or ceremony

Philology

Every time I mention that I am an English major, I get the Oh!-how-unfortunate look followed by, “What are you going to do with that after college? Teach?” The response, my fellow English students, is: “I am going to be a philologist!” Say this with enthusiasm and conviction, and shut your inquisitor up, once and for all.

philology (f&-'lä-l&-jE) n. the study of literature and of disciplines relevant to literature or to language as used in literature.