18 June 2001 
 
According to Stuart, I look like a little girl with my hair puffing out of my braid in 
loops, and two dragonfly bobby-pins to the side helplessly trying to stem the burgeoning 
tresses. 
 
So the braid gets undone, and I recomb my hair (I know I shouldn't sleep with my hair 
oldly braided - moving around in sleep with braided hair gets the hair just as messed up 
as if I didn't braid it at all.  I need a good cotton nightcap.  People - clue: present 
for meep - cotton nightcaps.  I would look at places that make clothes for historical 
recreaters, esp. colonial times.) 
 
 
So my hair is nice and straight now. 
 
In any case, tonight Stu & I should be going to see "Viva Las Vegas" at Bryant Park 
behind the big ole New York Public Library main branch.  You know, I've never been inside 
that library.  I'd probably die of excitement.  But then, you'd think I'd go bankrupt in 
the Strand.  I'm just alot better now about restraining myself.  Really, I am.  However, 
I am dying to get those two math books someone seems to have ordered for me from my 
Amazon wishlist.  I know it's been up there for some weeks now, but one of the books is 
backordered.  Argh.  If I get my Braille books before those ones, then I'll be real 
peeved.  And I don't even know who got them for me, cause no one has fessed up. 
 
Speaking of Braille, that reminds me of something Stu was telling me.  Cindy was tired of 
Stu bitching about me (probably complaining about the mess in the living room, and it's 
true I contribute more to it than he does, but ... well, you don't want to hear 
it.  Let's just say I've always been messy, and I've never seen Stu live somewhere neat, 
and it's no surprise that our apartment is a pigsty), so she asked him to list 5 things 
he loves about me before he could continue bitching.  One of the things he came up with 
was "my quirky projects", which it seems Braille is one. 
 
Now, Stu may think =his= projects -- building book shelves, designing cabinets, stripping 
paint -- are =not= quirky, that they're very useful, and mine are "quirky", or seem to 
come from nowhere (and it didn't come from nowhere, it was inspired by something Brenda 
wrote in her weblog, and I was thinking of learning sign language anyway and having my 
children learn it, and =those= thoughts came from reading Steven Pinker's =The Language 
Instinct=, which is a very good book you should read.  But sign language is an entirely 
new language, with a grammar different from English, and Braille is simply an encoding of 
written English.  So I figured it would be easier to learn.  And it is.  As long as all I 
want to do is read it by sight.  The training to read it with my fingers may be 
tough.  And =that's= why I was putting glue dots on my old "free" World Wildlife Fund 
greeting cards, cut-up for something useful for once.  That still doesn't mean I'm going 
to give WWF (no, the WWF from above) any money.  I hate those "free labels", "free 
stickers" and "free cards" kind of begging.  I find it extortionate.  I didn't ask for 
the damn things.  And I've found out that there's special Braille codes for math, so I'm 
thinking of becoming certified to transcribe Braille math, and I'll transcribe my 
favorite math books and send them to libraries for the blind.)  But I'm furnishing my 
mind with these projects, and oftentimes I'm furnishing our rooms as well (with books, if 
nothing else).  My geometric crochet project, currently in hiatus, is so I can figure out 
how to do crochet Penrose Tiles, so I can make an aperiodic rug.  Isn't that something 
useful to do?  I've already made three wool rugs, but they're rather patterned, and two 
cotton rugs, which I got patterns from my books.  I just want to be able to crochet an 
icosohedron.  Is that so wrong? 
 
Anyway, I'm tired of people saying that I'm =different= or =strange=, often dismissing me 
as the expected exception to their generalizations, or simply as if labelling me thusly 
explains my behavior.  Well, let me tell you something, bucko - everyone is =different= 
(Mr. Rogers told me so) and =strange= (from my own empirical evidence).  Some are just 
more aware of their strangeness and difference, and some have less pressure to conform 
than others.  However, there are =plenty= of generalizations that one can make that apply 
to =every= living person: "People breathe oxygen" - because the ones =not= breathing 
oxygen are dead people.  Sure, there are pathologies of various kinds that except people 
from certain generalizations like "People have 23 pairs of chromosomes" - but there are 
real causes and real effects for exceptions from these generalizations.  If you say "all 
females are =blah-blah-blah=" or "all mathematicians are =blah-blah-blah=" and I don't 
fit your little rule, you can't simply say "Oh, but you're different."  That's not a 
=reason= as to why your little rule doesn't work.   
 
For example, one may say "All young American females shave their legs."  And I say, "but 
I don't."  The retort: "That's because you're married," will get one the answer "I 
stopped shaving my legs well before I got married."  The retort: "That's because you like 
looking masculine," will get you "Then why do I have such long hair that I put into 
braids in a very nonmasculine way?"  The retort: "Well, only attractive women shave their 
legs," will get you a punch in the face. 
 
Now, if people changed their generalizations to "Most fleebles swim in grutipop" and 
"Most blortles are hreft", then one is possibly closer to the truth, and such a 
statement can be tested in a statistical way, for one can get a good idea of proportions 
of how many blortles are hreft and what exactly fleebles swim in, to a good degree of 
confidence.  However, one can never prove that "All fleebles swim in grutipop" or "All 
blortles are hreft" if one can never test every single one of those entities, or discover 
some principle which makes those statements apply (like the "all people breathe 
oxygen" statement - the principle in action is that cells die without oxygen, which 
needs to be refreshed, because it gets used up in metabolism). 
 
Anyway, your quirky project is my mental construction set; just because =you= don't 
particularly care for doing Paint-by-Numbers while watching the Simpsons, and trying to 
read Dickens at the same time, doesn't mean =I'm= weird for doing it.  I think it odd 
that people can simply sit in front of the T.V. and watch it.  I don't see how one can 
turn off one's self like that without taking drugs.   
 
You are =all= oddities!  You hear me back there?  All of you!