(1) I still haven’t had a chance to set-up my laptop how I need to blog properly. My templates are still on my enclosed hard drive. I don’t think I have an FTP client on my laptop or if I do I don’t know where it is. I have pictures I’ve been meaning to post that are neither formatted nor uploaded. I will get to these things soon.

(2) I’m really happy lately like I haven’t been in a long (maybe ever) time. I like where my life is going these days. I’m excited about Rochester. (I’m excited about Rochester?) Sure, cold. Sure, not really a city. But the people are genius and the work will be exciting and the more I find out, the more eager I become.

(3) Caffeine pills are not as unmanageable as I thought they would be. I still prefer BuzzWater.

(4) I’ve been meeting so many bright, energetic people at the institute. It’s funny how you can go a whole life time and make only a handful of really solid friends and then, all of a sudden, double that amount in a month. I guess you just need to find the right place. I’m in the process of editing and redrafting my life and it’s going swimmingly. I feel very lucky these days.

(5) I am drinking a lot of espresso lately. I mean relative to my normal intake. I don’t know if it’s that I’m with academics or Europeans that I find myself at coffeehouses more frequently than usual, but they drink coffee drinks and then I drink coffee drinks too. And the ideas are flooding in and my notebooks are filling up. Coffee is a great power in my life. Balzac was a smart man.

(6) Inbal, Hal, & Lis have been letting me stay over at their house in Noe Valley and it has been so much fun. They are wonderfully nice people and good cooks.

(7) I have two new books I can’t wait to read. I started the first, Blindness by José Saramago, and it is good so far. It’s about an epidemic of blindness. The concept grabbed me. Recommended by Mike Frank. (Thank you, Mike Frank.)

(8) San Francisco may be the most romantic city in the world.

But I’m back in, so hooray for that. I have a new laptop now, but a lot of passwords and things I forgot and had to reset. I still don’t have access to all my e-mail servers, but yes. Working that out bit by bit.

I’m still desperately trying to recover and organize data from my old hard drive. Good news: nothing important lost. More good news: my new laptop is shiny. Strange news: I’ve gone Mac.

I know I’ve complained about Mac in the past. And I don’t intend to cut that out. But I’ll be working on a Mac desktop at Rochester and it’ll be easiest to just have everything in one format, so that’s how I went. Thanks to the Mac people in my life who held my hand while I came to the realization that this was the way to go.

I’ve listened to every version of Radiohead’s “Climbing Up the Walls” that I could find the past couple days. The lyrics are really beautiful.

I am the key to the lock in your house, that keeps your toys in the basement.
And if you get too far inside, you’ll only see my reflection.
It’s always best when the light’s off. I am the pick in the ice.
Do not cry out or hit the alarm, you know we’re friends till we die.

And either way you turn, I’ll be there. Open up your skull,
I’ll be there. Climbing up the walls.

It’s always best when the light’s off; it’s always better on the outside.
Fifteen blows to the back of my head, fifteen blows to your mind.
So tuck the kids in safe tonight, shut the eyes in the cupboard.
So not cry out or hit the alarm, you’ll get the loneliest feeling.

That either way you turn, I’ll be there. Open up your skull,
I’ll be there. Climbing up the walls.

Climbing up the walls. Climb up the walls.

The best things and the worst things in life haunt. I realize that’s the nature of things. But it’s comforting to know all haunting things haunt all people. I’m not unique or alone in that or anything else, no matter how good or bad I hurt. And ultimitely we all die before we understand why that matters. Like Clarence Darrow said, “We know life is futile. And a man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.”

I realize Darrow defended teenage sociopaths. He still had a good point about the ultimite futility of everything.

And so I’ve been letting myself sit down in the sun sometimes at Stanford, even when I’m busy and should keep moving. And I don’t really appreciate the beauty and the warmth of it, but I don’t feel guilty for sitting nonetheless. I’ve come to realize that I take almost everything for granted. Sitting on a giant sphere, flukishly able to move and think and feel, among millions of other flukish accidents of the universe. Free in the world and trapped in the inability to process all of it. Climbing up the walls. But I’m thinking that my inability to appreciate things like the sun and the gift of life is just a part of my humanity. If I walked around with a true appreciation of how everything functioned, I’d never be able to deal. I’d be sitting on the ground, humbled and curled up in a ball, all of the time. And that wouldn’t work.

I’m reading a lot, busy with LSA-related work and ideas, but also back to Ginsberg and Lu Xun and, recently, Thom Yorke.

Speaking of Yorke, here’s what he said about that song:

“This is about the unspeakable. Literally skull-crushing. I used to work in a mental hospital around the time that Care in the Community started, and we all just knew what was going to happen. And it’s one of the scariest things to happen in this country, because a lot of them weren’t just harmless… It was hailing violently when we recorded this. It seemed to add to the mood. Some people can’t sleep with the curtains open in case they see the eyes they imagine in their heads every night burning through the glass. Lots of people have panic buttons fitted in their bedrooms so they can reach over and set the alarm off without disturbing the intruder. This song is about the cupboard monster”.

I wonder if a panic button on the bed is comforting or discomforting. Fear is a funny thing. I feel like I have a lot less of it lately. I feel myself becoming more fearless and wreckless. I’m not sure if I’m moving forwards or backwards in that way, so it must be that I’m moving in circles. Do people ever really change?

Back to the banal: I have pictures from the weekend I meant to post but just didn’t because I’ve been too busy sitting on steps, not appreciating the sun.

I’ll be less emo next post. Promise.

In Los Angeles. And the flyer…

Opening reception Tuesday July 17th 7-11pm. Hosted by Kevin Smith & Chris Mosier. 7020 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039.

An e-mail from Mike:

I overheard this conversation today, and thought of you:

Starbucks Barista: That’s an awesome shirt, man
Stylish Man: Thanks. I got it in Amsterdam.
Starbucks Barista: That’s better than what most people bring back.
Stylish Man: [Perplexed Silence]
Starbucks Barista: The clap.

I miss Mike.

Jonathan. Being silly. In New Orleans. Two weeks ago. Fact: Jonathan and I carpooled to Benjamin Franklin from New Orleans East a million years ago. Fact: Jonathan has 18,000 siblings. Fact: Sometimes my facts aren’t quite right.

We ate Italian Pie that night. It was Italian Pie. Not that good, not that bad. I ate salad. Eric ate beer. Like normal.

Come to think of it, this blog entry is very Eric-like in nature. I’m just sort of rambling based on pictures. If you don’t already, you should read his blog. It’s genius. My favorite. Ever.

Cheers!

It’s late. I’m still reading/studying/writing. I’m listening to my little brother Matt’s music on MusicPlusTV.com. “Trapped in an Endless Waltz” is speaking to me right now. Go listen for yourself.

Pieces of the song sound circus-like. Matthew absolutely hated circuses as a kid. Clowns, actually. But they live at circuses, so by association…

I hope Matthew doesn’t feel trapped an endless circus, is all I’m saying. Because I know he hates those.

Blendtec, a company that promotes its industrial blenders by attempting to blend things, attempts to blend an iPhone. I won’t give anything away, but do go see for yourself.

This is old news in the blogointernetoweb, but a clever publicist had the keen idea of transforming just under a dozen 7-Eleven convenience stores into Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie. One of them is less than five miles away from me in Mountainview, but before I could get over there, Jensen blogged about his trip to the one in Burbank.

Check out Jensen’s blog post here and his photos below for details.

I spent the Tuesday evening boozing with Lars Hinrichs who pointed out to me that a couple New Orleans dialectical constructions also occur in Jamaican English. (Lars’ professional site is here; blog here.)

For example, the use of for in place of at in reference to time:

Celeste:	I have to be at class for 8.
Emma:	For 8 what?
Celeste:	For 8 o’clock.
Emma:	Wait, why are you saying for instead of at? You mean you have to be at class at 8.

Also, the use of by to mean at in the following context:

My Mom:	Honey, can I stay by you or should I get a hotel room?
Celeste:	Stay by me! We have a guest room now.

I’m told by Emma & Mikeh that Californians can stop by a house. If, however, the stay is extended, you stay with a person or at a person’s house—not by a person or by a person’s house. Sound right, native Californians?

I wonder if there are any other overlaps between New Orleans and Jamaican English. Further investigation over further wine is obviously required in the name of scientific inquiry.

The Journal of Food Science—who knew there was such a journal!—has published a study on the caffeine content of popular sodas. The study used liquid chromatography to analyze the caffeine contents of 56 national-brand and 75 private-label store brand carbonated beverages. The most caffeinated beverage tested? Vault Zero™ at 74 mg per 12 ounces.

I know, I know… Vault Zero? You know, Coca-Cola’s Surge™-flavored beverage that “drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink.” (And you remember Surge, don’t you? Coca-Cola’s short-lived response to Pepsi’s Mountain Dew™. R.I.P. Surge: 1997-2002.)

Some more figures from the abstract…

Vault Zero 74 mg/12 oz
Diet Mountain Dew 55.2 mg/12 oz
Mountain Dew 54.8 mg/12 oz
Mountain Lightning (Wal-Mart) 46.5 mg/12 oz
Diet Coke 46.3 mg/12 oz
Diet Dr. Pepper 44.1 mg/12 oz
Dr. Pepper 42.6 mg/12 oz
Pepsi 38.9 mg/12 oz
Diet Pepsi 36.7 mg/12 oz
Coca-Cola 33.9 mg/12 oz
Dr. Thunder (Wal-Mart) 30.6 mg/12 oz
Diet Dr. Thunder (Wal-Mart) 29.9 mg/12 oz
Sam’s Diet Cola 13.3 mg/12 oz
Sam’s Cola 12.7 mg/12 oz
IGA Cola 4.9 mg/12 oz

If I can get a copy of the actual study, I’ll post updates. For the purposes of maximal caffeine consumption, though, stick to espresso and BuzzWater. (Thanks Mikeh!)

My family has been in New Orleans for seven generations. It looks like most of the eighth generation will stay too, mais qui sait? My aunt commissioned this portrait. I got a picture of it from my grandmother.

Feline orphans Kyle and Emma have been adopted yesterday by our very nice neighbors. They have a handful of smart, sweet kids that were delighted to have a couple of kittens join the family.

Kyle and Emma were almost adopted once earlier through Craig’s List, but at their last visit to the vet, we found out they were positive for FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus). Whereas human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the immune systems of humans, FIV attacks the immune systems of felines. We thought them unadoptable until I found out that kittens born to infected mothers often receive positive test results for several months after birth but rarely actually become infected. Who knew?

I’m just happy Kyle and Emma have a good permanent home. They’ll be missed.

The Linguistic Society of America 2007 Summer Institute started yesterday at Stanford. Emma & I drove up Saturday to get settled in for our Sunday classes. So far, awesomeness. A lot more blogging soon.