8 Dec 2000 
 
So I believe today is the 10th anniversary of my dad's death.  Either today, 
or tomorrow, not that it really matters, because it was in the middle of the 
night.  Interestly, it was also a friday night... 
 
In any case, it seems that it's also another death anniversary today - that of 
John Lennon.  In commemoration of both events, I have bought a book of 
"Authentic Recorded Edition" Beatles sheet music.  Maybe tonight I'll play 
"Yesterday", but of course sing it as "Calculus", in order to commemorate 
both men.   
 
But that is not why I have called you here today (well, okay, I didn't call 
you here.  You just showed up.  So, really, I'm trying to say why =I'm= here 
today (which of course, is extremely inaccurate in that my words are here (but 
I don't really own these words.  It's a free country.  You can even repeat 
what I have typed here.  Go on.  Say "It's a free country."  It won't even 
violate copyright, because I wasn't the one who said it first.  (I wonder who 
=was= the first to say "It's a free country"?  Or "swimming is the best 
exercise"?  Or "You only use 10% of your brain" (which 10% do you use?  I'm 
fond of the reading part (and the pairing up parentheses part))?  I would love 
to hurt those people.  Those are not like the Shakespearean cliches that 
actually had powerful, novel image which compelled people to use the new words 
and phrases time and again until people thought the sayings from some 
tribalistic English past.  But I digress.)  Heck, you could pick any 
particular sentence to repeat, or you could copy my entire journal, and I 
probably wouldn't notice it.  In fact, you could dust off some of the posts 
from 4 years ago, re-present them to me, and I would wonder who wrote it.  I 
mean, my style is a =little= distinctive, but Dickens or Hemingway I'm 
not.)  Even to think that a bit of me is here because of some kind of 
linguistic residue is fallacious, as I believe language cloaks reality just as 
it tries to communicate it.  I think it does this by =limiting= our ideas and 
categories, preventing certain connections to be made.)  Ah, I see where I 
missed the stack -- so back to you.  You are very welcome here indeed.) 
 
Christmas cookie to any person who can point out where I made any 
parenthetical mistakes.  By my reckoning, I'm missing one right 
parenthesis (not anymore, I just fixed it).  Perhaps I miscounted (no I 
didn't, I just was thinking about me so much I forgot about you (you cute 
little reader, you)).  
 
I will not make any lame, topical jokes on that last sentence of mine (the 
one before I made the parenthetical clauses). 
 
So back to the matter at hand, which is actually related to one of the most 
versatile molecules around (that we interact with every day) - H2O. 
 
In short, as Mr. Micawber would say, it's snowing. 
 
Ah, knowingly nods the admiring throng (or admires the nodding knower in a 
thong), so we have found Meep's trigger - just like the mention of baseball 
can send George Will into swilling prose (sorry, sir, I think you've missed a 
dreg), puffy particles of permafrost push her into a prolix prose panoply. 
 
And you would be wrong.  Anything can start off my logorrhea, as many can 
attest, and I usually do it for my own amusement.  People who have been 
wearied by my essays on "cry dismay" vs. "cry out in dismay" and the 
non-transitivity of "effect" and the fallacious underpinnings of popular myths 
about ... well, anything... find that my clauses can run on forever and that I 
will actually remember where I'm going with it.  This can lead to a meep 
monologue that can last over the span of days. 
 
This prodded friends of mine to create the game of meep-baiting -- 
intentionally distract meep in order to make her lose her place in her tirade, 
and thus ending it.  Kind of like the piano pieces that just flow, but if one 
hits a place where one note is forgotten or flubbed, one must start over 
completely. 
 
Ah, but you do not know where I store my referents. 
 
Good thing, too.  I would get bored without my free-association. 
 
So, while I'm talking (or typing) about free association (I wonder if there 
are people who can type faster than they can talk?  It's easy to boost typing 
speed if you're copying someone else's text (fastest of all, I think, as long 
as the things being typed are actually words) or a memorized piece), I want to 
recommend a book by Steven Pinker _How the Mind Works_, fabulous, easy read, 
very informative, concrete examples, and plenty of good references (and too 
many pop music references for my taste, but to each his own - what if I 
started referring to 80s commercials that came on during cartoons? (Fruit Bars 
- so good and ugly - Fruit Bars - so good! and UGLY!)).  Anyway, big thumbs up 
for it, it's been my subway reading this week, and if you like it, he wrote 
two other books that have to do with his particular field -- cognitive 
linguistics (or whatever label he puts on it).  Basically he looks at how 
people can produce language (like me spewing these characters across the 
scrolling screen (if you can fit all this on your screen (and it's readable), 
I've got to say you've got a huge fucking screen)) and how people process 
language (like how you deal with all these parenthetical statements (it's easy 
for me, for my development doesn't have to be linear - I can go back and 
change things.  Funny thing is, I don't. ("Do" is the best verb in the English 
language!  Ask me why later.))). 
 
Anyway, he's much easier to read than my stuff, but he's not the level of 
smart-ass I like to see in a science writer. 
 
In any case, it's snowing (still! yeah!) and I know none will really stay, 
because there are few undisturbed surfaces in this city.  But it adds to the 
Christmas-y feeling, and to me, New York at Christmas is the quintessential 
New York - New York turns into cozy town -- even the subway is comfy on the 
ride home.  Part of this is due to the fact that every interior is 
over-heated.  Part of this simply cannot be helped - it's difficult to control 
steam heat.  I've never turned on my radiators, but the apt. stays at a 
tropical 80 degrees.  Nice most of the time when I'm doing my own version of 
nudist colony at home, but not so nice when you've stepped in from the 
20-degree weather with a fur hat, two scarves, an ineffective leather jacket 
and three layers of clothing (but should under-underwear be considered a 
layer?  It tends to be what I wear around the apt.)  There's a steam pipe in 
the kitchen and a steam pipe in the bathroom.  When my butt checks have been 
more or less frozen and I strip off the extra layers, it's nice to bask in the 
warm aura near the pipe in the bathroom, though I almost burned myself by 
getting too close.  Dangerous surroundings make for cautious children, I 
think.  I'm going to think about how child-proofed I want my house once 
children start coming.  A few bruises might make them pay attention to what 
they walk into. 
 
So I've started to realize that carrying around a notebook with me everywhere 
doesn't really take the place of a much-needed mental transcriber.  Some of 
the thoughts are so transient, by the time pencil is in hand, the original 
thoughts are waving bye-bye from the station and the new ones are running 
past, wanting to get to Union Square or some other unlikely place.  If I try 
to write down the original thoughts, the subsequent ones will be lost for a 
new line will have been picked up at 42nd Street - so instead of Union Square, 
I'm headed towards Chelsea.  That just won't do. 
 
So I'm left to here, in which I usually do not have a point or plan (my 
thought coming in was "it's snowing".  You see I've hit the point about 3 
times, so that means it should stick (the thought, not the snow)) and I let 
the running start there.  If I started to type about something I had been 
thinking about earlier, I would get pissed after finding I couldn't remember 
the path, erase the entry, and then write a silly soy milk song in 
livejournal.  That serves another amusement purpose entirely. 
 
I finished my cheesecake this morning.  Cheesecake makes a very yummy 
breakfast.  I told Stuart I was gonna have oatmeal, but I lied.  But what kind 
of lying was it?  Intentional, in that I knew I was going to have cheesecake?   
Mistaken, in that I thought I was truly going to have oatmeal but fate 
preordained me to eat the cheesecake and I was making an inaccurate prediction 
about said fate?  Or Unintentional, in that I was fully intending to get the 
soy milk out for the oatmeal when I spied the box of cheesecake and 
absent-mindedly pulled that out instead? 
 
We may never know. 
 
What did that have to do with anything, you may very well ask. 
 
We may never know.