(no subject)

Happy Chocolate Bunny Day just past, yes? Hopefully you were all able to indulge in whatever tickled your fancy. Watched The Incredibles again - someone keeps telling me that I should be reading (watching?) Watchmen if I want to see The Incredibles done but better. Anyone want to point me in the right direction? I might have a paycheck's largesse coming up soon, and so...

Ay. So much to do tomorrow - calling back on a couple job leads, making some photocopies and such, putting on the thesis's footnotes. Yes, I didn't do any work this weekend. I didn't expect to, really. It's okay, really. I can claim an honest mistake, not enough supplies, or too much dark.

Children crossing police lines. That's just not cool. Not only has there been a mountain made of a molehill for political purposes, now there are kids getting involved. Actually, kids being involved is not a problem - but it looks more like these are kids that haven't been taught how to think all that much, or are being drawn into it by their parents. Not cool.

To add insult to injury, once again our "marriage definition" amendment is having interesting side effects - doctors will soon be able to refuse to treat homosexuals. Admittedly, in emergency cases and such, there's no option to refuse, but what happens when someone needs an important non-emergency procedure and their only doctor for a ways is anti-gay? This is your fault, Proposal Two - you demonstrated that there are enough people who will pass a discriminatory act into law, so long as you discriminate against the right people. Don't blame me when you reap the rewards of your sowing.

Changing tacks entirely, One-hundred-thirty-seven: perhaps a more mysterious number than forty-two? Then again, someone thinking about robot reproduction might be a bit strange themselves.

But none of that compares to A store-front dancing machine. Now that's cool.

So I'm going to bed, because I really should. Maybe I'll have more to talk about tomorrow.

And that is that.

Sort of. I think I put in the last word of content in my thesis. Now I need to go back through it and read for continuity and to make sure that I put everything in its proper order. Sixty pages, minus index of works. That's sixty pages double-spaced and in 12-point font, by the way, so it looks bigger than it is. Either way, it's basically finished. Still kind of surprising that I managed to avoid panicking and going (too) insane enough to do this. Now I can turn my attention towards my other papers that will need to be done soon. There's also the bit about keeping my work and study working together well enough to get out and graduated. And the part about finding a summer job. But the major major stressor of this year is complete. Congratluations should be held until I actually do graduate.

Check out the penny towers. No glue, no adhesive, merely well-stacked pennies. As of this writing, most of the pictures are removed because of bandwidth issues, but Your Mileage May Vary. Or you could try it yourself.

Will the real Loki Kindly Stand Up? Eris has something she wants to tell you about. Something about the Mother of All Pranks...

I'll pick your brains about the contents of this article about kindness. I think the article-writer's right - we're insulating ourselves from each other (says the guy at his keyboard with a chat window open and his livejournal client on his desktop - I'm aware that I cut quite the hypocritical figure on this). But I don't think it's because we're taught to see each other as obstacles. I think we're taught to see each other as threats. We're told to assume that everyone is putting on a face when they interact with us, that their real self is something different and most likely dangerous to you. Of course, that's for your peers and people considered above your rank. For those below, we're taught not to notice them - the hired help is, after all, supposed to be invisible.

If I want to, I can make this a possible reason why children go shooting up their schools - their classmates are seen as threats or opressors, rarely ever as friends or comrades or fellows. Those same classmates might see the aggressor as someone beneath their rank, not worthy of acknowledgement, much less communication. The aggressor becomes a target. Is it any wonder that the aggressor starts seeing them the same way?

Or if I feel like it, I can tie it into something like the Schavo case - each side sees the other as a threat (excepting the pols, who see opportunity). Thus, the bitter squabble. The vicious infighting over American politics and court decisions. The litigation-happy society. All of this can be linked to the simple idea that all of us are taught as children to see everyone else as a threat. My revolutionary socialist friend would call it a necessary idea for the continuation of capitalism, and I'm inclined to agree. The cutthroat competition we have these days is a matter of getting them before they get you. It's not even necessarily about making a better product, but making the only product.

At the same time, I know that there are some people that are threats to my well-being, and that I should be guarding against them. But this paranoia about everyone else is lunacy. We might find that there aren't so many threats if we started trusting each other a bit more, being a bit more kind to each other. Then we might find out where the real threats are. And I'm sure there are quite a few vested interests that don't want that.