Writing in the moonlight, hopped up on nyquil.

As I write this the clock is ticking away into the later parts of the three in the morning, and the cold medicine I had to take the day before is still visibly making me drowsy. My eyes are about to shut down and I can feel some sort of weird medicine induced chill entering my system, which is all the more fantastic coupled with the not-so-pleasant after effect of mon-sal, which is a general Korean term for illness induced from exhaustion. In a few hours I would have to be off to work/school anyway, so I don't think I should really be going to sleep. I am observing myself with both concern and fascination as my body tries to resist against both the medicine and the virus or whatever that's having that ill effect on my system. How marvelous it would be to be able to analyze my whole body as a system that's being overridden by numerous effects from the environment. The general condition of my body is also taking its toll on the accuracy of my fingers and perhaps even my brain (despite the fact that I feel clear as day except for the deathly weariness that penetrates to the bones), so typos abound which I go back nad try to fix every now and then, which really puts a dampener on the whole concept of the practice of freewriting, which is to be able to write without any limitation or revision so that whatever the literary 'melody' of words and phrases that the author has within him or her can come out without the normal resistive feedback (and yes, the previous ridiculously long computer language/lovecraft post was also a single-go kind of thing without any kind of revision or spell checking, which is rather impressive to me since I could not find any kind of spelling mistake when I read through it again yesterday). Why am I feeling like this at this moment? That is, why am I awake at three in the morning on a workday writing away on another one of those freewriting spree while under the influence of a terrible cold-fever-pain relief medicine (the pharma tend to mass all the multi-symptoms within a single capsule these days so I have difficult time telling which medicine does what anymore)? It probably have to do with the fact that I was so engrossed in work yesterday that I did not have time to eat all day, only to go to sleep with whatever medicine for my aching body and burnt out nerves on an empty stomach. Which leads to waking up in the early morning/late night (depends on who you are and where you live I guess) to get a bite to eat, and now I'm stuck in this rather awkward situation where I desperately want to go to sleep but the time restraint and the full stomach is preventing me from doing so, while the clock is ticking away into the 'real morning' when I would have to take a shower and go out to work along with all the dreary faced crowd on the subway. It's not really as bad as it sounds, though that may be simply because I've gotten used to that over the years. I mean, some of those Germans got used to shoving dead naked people down boilers right? And what I'm doing isn't as remotely as humanity defying as that. Which might as well be one of the reasons why the world is so screwed up. The world is set up in such a way that everything you do is never as bad as it was before, whenever that before may be.

(Was that the sound of a clock that I just heard? No, that's the sound of my proper blog post about evolution and artificial life being torpedoed to another day)

Nothing you do is as bad as something that happened in some other time in some other place. The laws and regulations are set up in such a way that you really can't do any worse unless you're somehow capable of the seemingly superhuman feat of going against both the mean and well-meaning portion of the populace (one of them you might be able to handle, but if both of them get on your back even gods might be erased from the face of the Earth). Which is both good and bad at the same time. I mean, you won't be gassed anytime soon for whatever the religion or sexual views you have, so that's good. It wasn't always like that. On the other hand, you have public education system in the richest nation in the known world with teachers telling their students to be thankful for having it better than the people who were killed in the Holocaust, or better than some poorest-African-or-something nation of the moment they pull out from their hat (frequently pronounced wrong). The same teachers/politicians/insert anyone here then goes out to have two hour lunch while the national average falls off like a rock (what are you talking about? The average is way up compared to... When we used to have slaves! They'd say).

"Hello. Welcome to McDonalds. We taste like crap and charge you ten times the cost it takes us to make this crap. At least we won't shoot you in the face and take all your money, so you should be thankful for that."

The whole damned society feels that way when I think about it. I think people are beginning to take this 'being thankful for what we have' thing way too seriously for their own good. I'm all for being positive, but being forced into positive thinking feel more like castration to me. So, how many kids are we turning into eunuchs per annum?

Of course, that not really being true. That's being way too pessimistic, which is just as bad as being way too optimistic for no reason. Most children have parents, and some of them are rich and sane enough to suspect that castrating developing young minds is wrong on some level. So we have alternative educations and a whole bunch of alternative prep schools with buildings that were built after the Beatles broke up. All modern and cool. They usually cost a bit more than most universities, by the way.

The money might send a lot of people packing, but the difference between those schools and schools that are 'better than what kids have in Iraq' become very clear very quickly. I'm not talking about the fact that the expensive schools have walls that don't have holes in them. I'm talking about cellphones.

In the expensive school, having a cellphone and being able to communicate is a right, that's usually restrained under special circumstances, like in a class when your adviser ("we don't teach, we advise") is talking in one of his or her ideological days going pro-choice/smash-the-state and all that jazz. In schools that are 'better than what child soldiers in Burma go through' however, cellphone is illegal. You'd better be ready to call your parents in, kid. The parents who usually don't speak English and pull 12 hour shifts until they drag themselves back home and fall asleep, rinse and repeat 7 days a week. Or six days a week if your parents are feeling particularly pious, in which case they'll spend nine to six helping out in the church/temple/ufo/whatever. They'll be called into school on some random business day during business hours, and the stern-faced somebody in that school will look down on them, pissed that those parents are wasting his time because they didn't teach their child not to have cellphone in school. All in all, the whole thing stinks, but you'd better grin and bear it, at least you have it better than (insert people meeting horrible ends here).

The whole thing is ridiculous already, but it gets worse. Those kids will have to grow up and make real decisions someday. For godsakes some of them might even become politicians. One of them will fight for pro-choice and think women and men have equal rights. The other will be devout whatever and think equal rights are for pansies who can't control their women. Can you guess the answer?

Alright, enough rant about the education system and the society. I can go on and on but it feels so wrong because it's so obviously screwed up and easy to criticize. You'd literally have to be smarter than a Chimpanzee to be able to think that something's not quite hunky dory here, and I'm afraid that writing down thought like that might make my brain dull out. Which is a bad thing when you're writing to bite through the medicine-drowsiness.

I'm still doing that android thing. There's only so much that I can do without the actual developer phone, but the emulator had been holding up nicely. The visual interface design for android applications can actually be done using XML and CSS, like designing frontend for webpages, so it's relatively easy to get thing looking pretty and professional. You can hard-code those things if you want, but that would be crazy unless you never plan on updating your app. Score one for the android team. I was thinking of doing iPhone app, but with all the crap Apple is pulling in their app distribution network, I think I made a prudent choice here. I'm already a bit past the 'design notepad app for android' stage, and will be doing simple physics simulation soon. There's something about sitting down and obsessively coding through stuff that's really attractive to me, like solving puzzle with a creative edge. I don't want to make a job of the thing, but as a hobby, I think it's a keeper.

I've also decided to participate in a little writing project with people I met on twitter. Sort of punkish e-zine, they call it assassin mesh-up. Once I'm awake enough to find a link to the first issue (they are all in pdf) I'll try to post it. They are accepting all sorts of stuff from music to drawing, not just writing, and anyone can participate. This issue's theme seem to be augmented whale/dolphins. Hmm. I wonder what i can do with that. 


The plan to busy myself with all sorts of productive things is going along nicely, though today's (or was it yesterday's) events pulled a little stop on me due to all the drinking and late-night things. I expect I should be able to get my life on the right track by the middle of this week. (Oh my  god the stupid cold medicine is starting to wear off. I knew writing like a madman would be able to do the trick). Now that I think about it I have to get ready for next week's nyc diybio meeting at the AMNH, will be going through crazy amount of reading/writing in preparation for that. Might even have to slow down my android stuff for this week.


Here's the excerpt from the assassin-mash-up project email.

Okay, hello everyone. First of all, let me tell you this was a bitch to write; I hardly know where to begin. I hope I get it correct.

First and foremost, if you got this, you got it because you requested it. Second, THANKS! Please inform other folks you think might be interested. Third, if you got this and you aren't interested (either now or ever), no problem, because we don't keep permanent mailing lists. Only those who join the project will be mailed for the particular project they join.

This is a mixed media project. Originally it was a fiction project, and for the time being, fiction will probably take up the bulk of the project, but that should not discourage folks. Any kind of media is acceptable. Music will be impossible to put into PDF format (or am I misinformed?), but it will be properly represented.

For those of you who read the ASSASSINS MASHUP PROJECT, you have an idea of what the project is about. If you haven't, that's okay too. In short, this is is an open genre, open media mashup project; from Christian to zombie horror, from haiku poems to novellas, and everything else not already thought of. Please note that that means you may have to 'endure' some genre work that you are not particularly fond of.

Each quarter (3 months) a new theme will be chosen (anyone is free to submit one, even if they have not contributed to any previous mashup projects). Project participants will then interpret that theme in any way they wish and submit a media work within the project timeframe. Do not let the "apparent" genre of the current mashup theme fool you into thinking you are limited to that genre. "The tombs of Mars" could be a family named Tombs in Mars, France; gravesites on the planet Mars; aliens in a spaceship called Mars; a family called Mars; Mars the Roman god of war; etc. Be creative, do not limit yourself.

All the work will be published for free. Sorry, this is a non-paying gig.

All levels of writers/composers/illustrators, from amateurs to professionals, are accepted.

Currently there is no "leader" of this group. Those whose current theme is to be published will be in charge of keeping everyone on task, gathering all the work, and bringing that particular project to fruition. So don't throw out a theme if you are not prepared to grab the bull by the horns.

ALL THAT SAID, I'M SURE THE PUBLICATION WILL CHANGE AS IT GROWS.

By joining our merry band of writers, you are obligated to:

1. Contribute a story to the theme you have promised. No writer is committed to all the magazine publications, just ones you have made commitments to must be fulfilled. However, we are aware that life sneaks in nasty little surprises, take them into account and continue to write. Finish the job. If life should sneak in something abysmal, please let us know as soon as possible, and no one will no hold it against you. Deadlines are deadlines though and we will not push them back.

2. You must contribute to editing the project. It's not that tough, and it has the added benefit of understanding how others write and see your writing. The more eyes on projects, the more mistakes we catch, the more we all improve.

3. Promotion. You must help us get the word out about the project. This does not mean you have to take out ads on the electronic billboards in Times Square, but if you are up for that, go for it. Hit writing groups, newsgroups, post it in your blog, write about it on Twitter, give to friends, tell them to pass it around. But be careful not to spam. We want readers, not haters.

Okay, I'm sure I haven't covered half of what I need to, so feel free to ask questions, and please do, REPLY ALL so that everyone gets the message.

THIS QUARTER'S THEME: "Augmented whales/dolphins" which is actually an abbreviated form of "In the doomed future augmented whales and dolphins are re-located to Venus. Here they are free to swim, nay fly through it's thick atmosphere. Building a whole new civilisation for themselves. Again." You are free to choose not only which one you create for, but how you interpret it.

THIS QUARTER'S DEADLINE: May 1st (2.5 months)

LENGTH-RESTRICTIONS OF PROJECT: 4000 words?, 5 mins of music? thoughts?

Please inform mp.hills@gmail.com if you are going to participate in this quarter's project. If you are not, but might be in future projects, please add or at least follow the RSS of http://www.twitter.com/

Okay, I know this was lengthy and a bit fragmented, but I hope it wasn't too hard to understand.

Made in DNA/Brent

 

I'd love to write more, but the butterfingers aren't really allowing me much freedom on that issue.