Shit: noun, verb, exclamation, denegration;

<p>the &#8216;final act&#8217; of a great meal.</p>

<p>An act of giving with no expectation of return.</p>

<p>A purging of the purpled prose of life.</p>

 Shit&#8212;it falls with scarce a thought and much relief.

<p>The ultimate act of solitary solidarity with the self.</p>

<p>A woman, giving birth, is not alone,</p>

<p>but here there is no divison of the sexes,</p>

<p>in the ingored, ignoble action </p>

<p>of the cycle of life.</p>

<p>Is poetry that different?</p> 

yesterday, jason and i were invited to give a talk to this year’s Microprocessor Systems Lab class about our experiences building XinT last year.

<p>it went pretty well. we talked a bit about XinT itself, how we designed it and how the development process went. mostly we were there to give the students a feel for what they&#8217;re in for and give them advice on how to deliver a good project. </p>

<p>i&#8217;m not much of a public speaker but i think it went pretty smoothly. especially considering that everything started late and i had to talk really fast if i had any hopes of making it to my crypto class on time which was scheduled for right after our talk.</p> 

had one of those odd and strangely vivid dreams last night. it started with seeing some people in matching clothes walking out. a famous performance group/gang (A). then entering a club through a dark, brick hallway. the room was dark with red lighting and i had a friend but i don’t remember who it was. trying to piece it together, i remember parts at the same club talking with members of another performance group (B). club had the feel of scenes from fellini’s satyricon, familiar but alienating and obscure. one part took place on the street with members of

<p>performance group B who were four or five people.  they were all wearing white things that looked like scrubs with white gauze/elastic wrapped around their heads and under their chins.  perfomance group A (15 people or so) comes down the street and one member from each group starts talking.  something about a prize that group B wasn&#8217;t aware of. then a scenario where a member of group B duct tapes a random boy to the side of a red VW-looking van.  then back to the club (which was always preceded by the hallway).  and i woke up.</p> 

made bishop on perlmonks today. yay for me. 700 more XPs and i reach “pontiff”. 700 more than that and i reach “saint”.

i was walking home from work last night and was appalled to see a truck coming up Broadway with giant screens on the side and blaring loudspeakers advertising some kind of health club membership. i guess advertisers have decided that the 70 foot tall calvin klein ads on the sides of buildings, ads on the tops of cabs and sides of buses, 20 minutes of ads before movies in the theatre, 15 minutes of ads at the beginning of DVDs that you can’t skip, product placements, super imposed animated ads in televised sports, banner and flash ads on the web, popups and popunders, ads in magazines and endless commercials on tv aren’t enough anymore. time to try something even more annoying.

<p>i remember hearing that after sept. 11th no one was buying ads anymore and all the advertisers were going out of business. i thought &#8220;wow, maybe some good will come out of all this after all.&#8221; apparently the ones that are still around have just gotten even more desperate to grab our eyeballs and control our minds. </p>

<p>there&#8217;s no escape anymore. i think we&#8217;re reaching the point where nothing is too sleazy for advertisers. i remember seeing King&#8217;s &#8220;I have a dream&#8221; speech turned into a commercial and getting mildly nauseous. how long before footage of sept. 11th makes it into an ad? maybe greyhound or amtrak advertising a &#8220;safer&#8221; way to travel? how much do you think McDonald&#8217;s would have paid to have their logo on the side of the <span class="caps">WTC</span>, clearly visible to every eyeball in the world as we sat, hypnotized, watching over and over again for months? the TV networks are already cashing in on it with endless exploitative &#8220;news&#8221; shows that they know are guaranteed to bring in the ratings and it&#8217;s been a wonderful propaganda vehicle for promoting &#8220;patriotism&#8221;, censorship, and racism. U2 incorporated the names of the victims in their superbowl half-time show.</p>

<p>i&#8217;m going to go throw up now. then i&#8217;m going to have a Pepsi Cola <small>TM</small>.</p> 

so i finally saw the movie “kingpin” yesterday. it wasn’t as funny as kim said it would be though. i have to say that it revealed my sacred calling. “kingpin” the prophet! lani, your quest in life: combining technology and beauty for the good of mankind and professional bowling! engineer custom bowling balls.

<p>i could follow in the footsteps of my ex-officemate (elastic polymer engineer now dedicated to making better golf balls).  polyester balls with 3-D cores must have a market if <a href="http://www.ebonite.com">they&#8217;re manufacturing them</a>,right?</p> 

alex and sarah came down from providence to visit julintip. last night we all went out for dinner and then to some bar on houston called “Puck Fair” and had drinks (they have hefeweize). over the course of the evening about 15 bates alumni showed up. many that i’ve never met before. nevertheless, i’m always amazed at how many batesies are around just waiting to climb out of the woodwork. kind of creepy actually.

Ok. This is weird, but I just thought of doing it. It is an imagepoem. Not that concrete abstract stuff, but something infinitely more sexi. Ivy Blossom and I were AIMtalking and the topic of sexi came up… so it is on my brain. Click on the picture and you’ll go off magically to RunwayLove. Sorry, it is about 300k. But art hurts. Heeeeeee. I’m thrilled about this.

Dear Diary…

<p>I&#8217;ve been in a funk. A blue funk, not a mirror ball and retro70s bighair funk. And I&#8217;ve been pulling at bits and pieces of my mind trying to write my way out of it. I failed. Which worked. Nothing like failure to show you that you look like a dork. Nothing like loooking like a dork to make you realize people laugh at you. Nothing like laughter to get you caught up in it. THen you&#8217;re laughing at yourself, and you wonder how you got there, but you&#8217;re tired  from laughing. So you make tea. Of course the cup of tea would perhaps have done the same thing in the beginning, but it is all about process. And the result of the process is five poems, started them last night, just finished them up now. Not that good, but satisfying to write. And since no one but Anders knows how to delete them, ehre they are&#8230; I&#8217;m now off to ponder what Lani&#8217;s upto&#8230; squeekily.</p>

<p><i>L</i><i>ife Writing</i></p>

<p>Writing for your very life </p>

<p>in a world beyond the cold.</p>

<p>A truly terrible aesthetic </p>

<p>of forced and unforseen choice.</p>

<p>Written in unfamiliar dreams and </p>

<p>yet remembered nightmares;</p>

<p>Poetic desires carved into forms </p>

<p>of administration and fear.</p>

<p><hr></p>

<p><i>L</i><i>ilac Shadow</i><i>s</i></p>

<p>Lilac shadows opening my petal of dripping </p>

<p>warmth and comfort that calls us both</p>

<p>to harvest moist uncertainty.</p>

<p>Suicide&#8217;s curving throne of our bodies</p>

<p>entwined and writhing without borders.</p>

<p>Could we kill ourselves to ensure </p>

<p>these lilac shadows never end.</p>

<p><hr></p>

<p><i>Audio Miasma </i></p>

<p>Audio Miasma throbs at my gut with an unseen viral beat </p>

<p>of broken tonal drones. I fall into the haze </p>

<p>of an infected inductive rhythm, lost in  </p>

<p>machinations of someone else&#8217;s mind.</p>

<p>The night fractures into an </p>

<p>endless moan that sings </p>

<p>our bodies through the </p>

<p>cafe mystique, out </p>

<p>into the tango </p>

<p>night, soon </p>

<p>ending on </p>

<p>a taxi </p>

<p>good</p>

<p>nig</p>

<p>ht</p>

<p>.</p>

<p><hr></p>

<p><i>F</i><i>enland Dwelle</i><i>r</i></p>

<p>Shunned and on the edge </p>

<p>in the marshes of the Carmague</p>

<p>lost live in the sewers of the Rhone.</p>

<p>Tavellers hide from our stories </p>

<p>told to keep them full of fear.</p>

<p>They fear for their lives and souls, </p>

<p>and leave us well alone.</p>

<p>Fear and loathing in the swamp, </p>

<p>death and damned decay.</p>

<p>With black sarah, kali&#8217;s gypsie goddess,</p>

<p>we are rich beyond belief, lost and hidden</p>

<p>in the fear of our fenland tidal home.</p>

<p><hr></p>

<p><i>B</i><i>icuspid</i></p>

<p>Teeth rip, blood gnashing</p>

<p>hell, into the maelstrom</p>

<p>of flesh that is</p>

<p>your heart.</p>

<p>Screams infect your mind, your</p>

<p>blood coagulating with </p>

<p>my viral love.</p> 

yahoo had a valentine’s day reminder with “show her you love her” and a dozen red roses. ok, now did you ever hear the one about victorian flower meanings? i have too, but someone one told me that its validity is under debate. i like pretending anyway, that secret messages were sent from lovers (madame bovary style…ok someone someone, please make a literati sutra or something.) or suitors. that the victorians promoted hidden meanings and were prone to overanalysis. and that maybe they would have accepted me…ack, the world is cruel!…jk, they probably would have been like “what is this crazy little asian girl doing here?”. Anyway, 9 out of ten sources have stated that the meaning of red roses is “passionate love”. So this is the question i pose to you…would sending your lover a dozen roses be like a booty call?