I've moved. On the bright side, this means I've moved. On the dark side, this means that, temporarily, my only Internet access is through the ancient fossilised piece of palaeolithic UNIX dung in my office in Padelford, which laughs at me in a cruel, high-pitched sort of way whenever I make even the simplest request of it. This would be the time to smoke any crack you happen to have to hand.

Tomorrow I'm moving. I am so pumped. I have been alternately manic and panicked all day long. I can't wait to get this over with. I am tense as a violin string. That's all I've got to say. Except that Stephen Wolfram gave me some interesting ideas when I heard him talk on Thursday. He's not nearly as crackpotty as I'd been led to expect. Some of what he had to say, about complexity emerging in biology, reminded me of a transcript of a Douglas Adams speech I read in The Salmon of Doubt. Also, his thoughts about matter and energy emerging as certain configurations of the nodes in space echoed some vague and half-formed notions I'd had myself. Everything should be a side-effect of space. It seems aesthetically pleasing, in light of General Relativity.

Today's wordbuggery: 20,749

Today's draft: 20021123

Ever since I saw The Lord of the Rings in the cinema and found myself blasted into tiny glittering fragments of awe by the sheer brilliance with which Christopher Lee plays an Evil Genius, long my favourite breed of villain, when confronted with a decision I have asked myself, 'What would Saruman do?'

I had one such moment this evening, when a young man and a lady approached me on the street, not, as I'd hoped, so the gentleman could hit on me, because he was a bit cute, but so they could talk about Jesus. He was studying to be a pastor. Of course, I didn't find this out right off the bat, oh no. First they made small talk, and left me with the hope I was about to be hit on. Only then did they drop the Jesus bomb.

'What would Saruman do?' I asked myself.

I demolished his very flimsy and basic teleological argument with a few well-placed bullets of logic. I mean, he couldn't even come up with a rejoinder to 'What causes the First Cause?' It was too easy. If we're going to posit that there exists (at least) one cause that causes itself, to serve as the First Cause of everything else, then we've abandoned the idea that all things need external causes to begin with, so whence teleology?

Then I chanted until an avalanche of snow buried them.

***

A pick-up line, to be used in a gay bar, courtesy of Rusty Schrader: 'Can I push in your stool?'

***

And here's some prose, too. The Assistant Librarian went very well, very smoothly. But I do so like to sleep. At least I've left myself at an inspiring point this time, with a thread I can pick up again easily enough later on. Stopping at the end of a scenario kills one's momentum, I find. And this weekend I start moving...There's so much to do! And I have so little energy after doing a day's mathing! Perhaps I should take up hardcore drug abuse?

Today's wordchuck: 19,488

Today's draft: 20021122

So I was pootling around this evening, and went to edit my blog, only to find that it no longer existed. This puzzled me. I didn't remember ordering my site to self-destruct. Oddly enough, all the CGI scripts had vanished from my server, and the HTML files generated for the blog itself were missing. I uploaded new copies, pressed the Rebuild button, and lo. Here we are. The database was just peachy; only the scripts were gone. I do not understand this. Perhaps I should not meddle in the affairs of computers, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Do they lobotomise themselves often?

Poking around to see what was what with my web hosting, I stumbled upon this Statistics thingy...Apparently, on 11 November, I had 41 visits to my site. The draft of 10 November had 9 hits. Six people have read my Catullus translations this month. I've had two visits from domains in Denmark.

Who the hell are you people?

No draft for you tonight; I am far too sleepy. I am a weak fleshling.

Ha! And ha again, I say. I thought I was losing my touch. Skipping Sunday, then skipping Tuesday as well, on the flimsy pretext that I had midterms to grade, and afterwards had to do Real Analysis until Space Commander Travis turned up and lured me out of my room by being friendly, which killed my productivity right there. Damn those friends! I did, though, on my way back from the midterm-grading, discover the most wonderful thing on campus, the Reading Room of Suzzallo Library. And when I say I discovered it, I mean that it was shown to me. Smashing place, very Gothic, but not to the point of self-parody. Dignified. I must get a photo of it. Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I seemed well on my way to a repeat of Tuesday's complete lack of performance today, too, staring off into space or IMing or what-have-you and accomplishing absolutely nothing at all. Then I started telling maths jokes, and looking for sources on Czech, and Czech history, and threw in a bit of imagery involving a burning corpse I'd had in my head for absolutely years now, and lots more dialogue, and revelations of ancient mysteries...Before I knew it, I'd hit 3,000 words. It's all about momentum...

Oh, and it's official: this is now the longest thing I've ever written. This calls for a celebration!

Today's wordspooj: 17,069

Today's draft: 20021120

I rock your ass like it has seldom been rocked before, baby. My day off yesterday has paid dividends. While it is true I have not yet succeeded in pushing my pathetic excuse for a plot any further along, I have inserted a lengthy passage which I may at some point use to tie together certain themes or images I have in my mind, and gave me an excuse to describe pretty things for a while. I like pretty things. It was inspired by something I attempted to write over a year ago, which never went anywhere in particular; I've decided to cannibalise every single useless idea I've ever had in the service of pushing my word count along. It's amazing how far I can go without having to actually have any goal whatsoever in mind. Now that I've met my 2,000 word goal for the day, I can go convince myself that if p is a prime, and G is an abelian group, G/pG is a vector space over Z mod p...

UPDATE: Yes, it is.

Today's wordosity: 14,033

Today's draft: 20021118

I'm not even going to try today. It's late, I've just come from a birthday party. I've got a lot of cake and a game of Cranium under my belt. And I worked myself into such a nervous frenzy meeting my target last night I could barely sleep. I'm officially taking the day off. Go look at Leonard Nimoy's nude photography. I'll pick up again tomorrow.

Peace out, yo.

I love Seattle. Where else can one find four grown men staring directly into the setting sun because it happens to be a bit pretty over that way?

Well, I don't know, either. Why don't you find out?

Speaking of which, here is a photo of Mount Rainier I took two weeks ago from Discovery Park. It too is a bit pretty.

I did many things today other than write. I stared directly into the setting sun. I investigated when an abelian group can be turned into a Z[i]-module, found a wonderful page full of Latin tongue-twisters and a lovely catalogue of classical rhetorical figures with gorgeous names like Zeugma...Okay, now I'll buckle down and get to work, honest.

Time passes. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I raged, I fumed, I stumbled, I beat my brow 'gainst my mighty block, and boy did I bruise. A party started, I made a tea run, I spent three hours pencilling out conversations and throwing them away. I got back, facing the awful truth that I'd never make today's goal of 12,000 words. I was face-fucked by bitter defeat. Then we finally made it to FÜRB, and in a frantic last-minute verbal dash that has left my armpits moist and my heart thumping I managed to throw in enough wood and rhetorical questions to push myself just over...

12,009, baby. Who's your daddy.

Today's word-to-your-mother: 12,009

Today's draft: 20021116

I went sailing off on all sorts of tangents this evening...When trying to describe Titus's Memory Library I wound up thinking of Ignacio Matte Blanco for the first time in ages, and was suddenly filled with the urge to explore The Unconscious as Infinite Sets again now that I know considerably more about maths. I wondered if perhaps one couldn't map the unconscious onto category theory, think up categories of objects with morphisms, and functors passing from one to the other. The trouble with this was of course that I had no idea what the categories, objects, morphisms, or functors would be. Then I wondered if one couldn't devise a way to make a space of functions operating on the infinite sets of the unconscious into a vector space, and how one could get various groups to act on it then, and realised that a module over the Gaussian integers is only an abelian group equipped with a linear action for the imaginary i, and found I was really not accomplishing any actual writing at all. So I whipped myself ruthlessly back onto track, listened to some live accordion music, and filled some space. I'm hoping things will pick up once Our Heroes get to the furniture store...Everyone loves furniture stores!

Today's wordsworths: 10101

Today's draft: 20021115

It's official: I suck again. I had a really long day. I had to cook up some practice problems to give my students, so they could prepare for Tuesday's midterm; I was observed in my section by my professor, which went awfully well but which still puts the pressure on a chap. I took another hour after tea to go over higher-order derivatives with one of my students, then stuck around 'til after 8 doing real and complex analysis. I got home thinking to myself, gee, I'll probably still be doing this in 40 years. And the thought was oddly comforting. I like being a TA; I feel very useful. And some of my students are hot. And I mean h-izz-ot. Anyhow. I gave it my all today, I really did. But I have let my novel down. Right now all I can do is sleep.

Today's wordspew: 8665

Today's draft: 20021114

I was thinking as I worked tonight of Michael Chabon, whom I had the pleasure of hearing some weeks ago when he did a reading from Summerland at the University Book Store. He looks exactly like I'd imagined he would, somewhat scruffy, sort of long-haired-ish, with a pleasantly pot-smoking face. His voice I thought was a bit like Kevin McDonald crossed with the Master. Amongst the many interesting things he said, including that he was working on a draft screenplay for the next Spider-Man movie, that he had never had a real job, that green slime would start to form on every surface including human skin during the winters when he lived on Vashon Island, and that he included so many powerful gay characters in his novels because he'd known so many lovely and interesting and compelling gay people in his life, was that he did all of his writerly work late at night. I seem to be getting into that habit myself. Also, and this is really odd, the last few nights I've been composing everything on my computer as I typed it. The first day, I wrote it out longhand in my notebook first. Usually I work that way, writing it out in pencil, only typing it up to revise afterwards. Yet when I tried that tonight, it just didn't work. I'm such a technology whore. And I'm 1/7 of the way done. And I still don't have a plot, but that isn't stopping me. I'm an animal. Ook.


Today's wordgasm: 7629

Today's draft: 20021113

Well, twist my titties and call me Susan. I have passed the 10% mark. And in just three days, too. At this rate I still won't make it, but what matters that? I am victorious! Out of the lead mines, more characters, and even some conversation. And assault with a waffle. I've been saving that for ages...I thought months ago, gee, I should have a character assault someone with a waffle. I didn't know how, or why, exactly, it just seemed like the sort of thing I would do. At last, it is an idea whose time has come. And it was all so easy, too. No tea, no coffee-houses, no preparation. A long and arduous day, even. Three solid hours of teaching, on top of homework down in my office 'til nearly 7. And I still managed to pull a conversation out of my ass while sitting here at my computer. Fucking A! That's what I'm talking about. Dude.

Today's wordery: 5062

Today's draft: 20021112

Why did I ever think I could do this? There's just no hope. I'm a completely valueless human being. I couldn't write my way out of a paper bag unless it took under 800 words. I'm so far behind. And I'm moving this weekend, too. Is this how Douglas Adams felt, I ask myself? No, no it bloody well wasn't, because he was talented and fabulously wealthy and a seminal figure of the late Twentieth Century, and he was also six foot five, so the odds of you feeling anything like Douglas Adams are vanishingly small indeed. Oh well, at least I got Titus out of the sodding lead mine. Though on reflection I like the way his oral fixation played out in yesterday's passage...

Kill me.

Today's wordiferousness: 3183

Today's draft: 20021111

Well, this is it. The time is now. I have grabbed life by the testicles with both my tiny hands, and I'm squeezing for all I'm worth. The time has come for me to write a novel. A short novel, and not a very good one by any standards I'm sure, but that's beside the point. The point is, I haven't really produced anything creative in many, many, many months. Possibly a year. I do not like this. I haven't liked this for quite some time. I was sitting here, not liking it, some weeks ago when I came across a reference at Cat and Girl to something called National Novel Writing Month. Gosh, I thought. How entrancingly Quixotic! A quest against impossible odds, to churn out 50,000 words of unpolished prose in the course of a single month. It sent my blood pumping to all the places blood is supposed to pump to, I don't mind saying. Then, of course, I took a brief reality check. I'm a graduate student. I scarcely have time to eat, let alone write a novel. I'd just be setting myself up for a fall, I told myself, and passed it on by. Then I talked Chris Lake into sacrificing his life to the novelistic gods instead. And while it was oddly satisfying to cheat a man out of an entire month of his life, it also didn't seem sporting, somehow. I could hardly ask him to do anything I wasn't willing to do myself. So I pulled up my socks and popped down to the Victrola on Sunday the tenth and I wrote out 2,400 words and change, until I realised I had no idea what I was doing and would have to sleep on it. And thus did battle commence. I swear I shall, I shall I shall! See this out to the bitter end.

Today's wordage: 2436

Today's draft: 20021110