19 June 2000 
 
I know I've been remiss in not entering any um... entries lately, but I've 
been stuck on livejournal (not that I'd have much to say anyway here, 
esp. if you look at the livejournals).   
 
Let's see, Stu's friend Cindy has been staying with me for the past week or 
so, and she's gotten a job at a new restaurant in the World Trade Center 
(near Border's and close to Friday's, which she says is owned by the same 
company, but anyway) though it's still partially under construction and not 
supposed to open for 3 weeks or so.  She's looking into getting a second job 
through a temp agency.  And, of course, she's trying to network the props 
scene in NYC. 
 
In other news, I've been trying to clean up, and I realized I really should 
get rid of all the little artwork from middle school and high school - cute 
if you should happen to have children in middle school or high school, but 
not especially cute if it happens to be your own stuff.  So I'm sending it 
back to where it belongs - ma's house.  I've actually started keeping more 
cross-stitch for myself.  I'm happy with that.  I've got a kimono and a 
peacock - very colorful stuff. 
 
Let's see, I noticed this morning that it's not too difficult to write 
standing up on the train if you have the appropriate medium, though people 
don't like standing very near you.  I must remember to always have a pen and 
pad handy for any inspiration.  There's an interesting math problem I've 
been working on lately, and I think I've just been stupid - it involves 
designing a pair of dice to have the same sum distribution as regular dice, 
but not simply regular dice with the numbers shifted in opposite 
directions.  So far, I've thought of making a couple of the die values to 
be equal, but I keep getting too many 7's.   
 
Something I was talking over with Cindy the other day, I really think that 
MTV is not to blame for the short-attention spans that kids supposedly have 
nowadays.  I think it's commercial TV.  In 96 (or was it 97) I proposed 
something akin to this theory on my review of Rank&Baskin's Rudolph the 
Red-Nosed Reindeer, the most disjointed piece of shit of children's TV I 
have seen.  I think kids can have remarkable attention spans.  Considering 
how long it takes to play a game like Spyro on Playstation, I've seen kids 
play that and other games for hours on end, even trying the same tasks over 
and over until they get what they need (like entry into the secret 
clubhouse... man, I lost so many lives trying to do that).  People complain 
of the short attention spans, but in cases where one thinks - how often have 
you given them something =interesting= to do that requires a long period of 
focus?   
 
But one thing that I think is an interesting result of MTV is our turning 
into a society of images, instead of words, though the internet is pulling 
back towards words and sounds (because images and video take up so much 
bandwidth... in any case, I'm a person of words, if you haven't noticed.  I 
do get a =little= into image in my crafts, but still I'm thinking in 
more-or-less linear terms.  What's also interesting to me, especially in my 
hobbies, is that I'm more given to being a discrete kind of person (and yes, 
I =do= intend that spelling).  Cross-stitch, crochet, reading, knitting, 
crosswords all involve discrete units, boxes if you will, though I've been 
trying to break out of that in my crochet of late. 
 
Free-form crochet is a very scary-looking thing. 
 
I've also really been enjoying Pokemon (the TV cartoon).  It kicks Digimon's 
ass (lame-o aper (as well as that sorry new WB Card Captors, though Sakura 
has a cool staff... like the wings (women =love= things with wings!))). 
 
Also, another thought after talking with Amy on the phone -- adulthood is so 
much more fun than childhood in so many ways.  Or, at least, it has the 
potential.  One of the results of adulthood is =really= being able to not 
take things and people seriously.  One of the main problems of adolescence 
is a strange kind of myopia in which every individual event and person 
become magnified to the size of titans.  And then the games you get to play 
as a grown-up... well, it's just really cool.  Mainly because I understand 
alot more that's going on around me.  And I like having more common sense 
now.   
 
Also, I can now tell my sisters about all the candy I stole from them at 
Halloween and Easter (though that one time, it was Grandma who stole it 
all.)  Why did you think I kept an inventory of each individual Skittle 
(well, other than the silly pretense that I would ration them...) 
 
 
And I've been working on writing books. 
 
 
Enough for now.