nothing quite emulates a yo-yo like a heart. which is why they are not to be trusted…but can they be ignored? i suppose the day was productive, and if Productive->Good, then it was a good day as well. all i did was work on greek, interspersed with various, random activities. one of the more interesting activities was practicing a long climbing route in the room. you see, most climbing ropes aren’t longer than, say, 150 feet or so. this means that if you want to attempt a climb which is longer than that, you have to use the leap-frog technique–climber x belays climber y, to an anchor near the point where the rope will no longer reach. he secures the anchor, then belays climber y as he comes up to climber x (this is done by use of a few simple knots and an extra carabiner). once climber y reaches the anchor, climber x continues to belay as climber y reaches the next bombproof anchoring point. then climber y locks off, and sets up a belay from his position. repeat until both parties reach the top. you might wonder how dan and i practiced this in our room. it was with his bed. ...

yesterday was an all-around good day. a rather important day for dan–he and i went out to palo alto, and he bought his first pipe. now, you have to understand: for avid c.s. lewis and j.r.r. tolkien fans, (lewis and tolkien were both pipe smokers) there is a special aura about the idea of pipe smoking that transcends the pleasant aroma itself. my pipe is actually from oxford itself, from a little shop on a street where no doubt tolkien and lewis strolled, speaking about the things we now consider them great for, leaving behind wistful trails of blue and grey. ...

i cannot write while listening to the flight of the noldor. so captivating and sorrowful. good night. disc on spin: J.R.R. Tolkien, read by Christopher Tolkien

mostly i just wish emily was here. it’s not right that i should be able to have a fun night of dining and dancing without her. or, what i mean is, that irrespective of our desires, the possibility of her being my date was blocked. this is no fun, because dances and such are that much more fun with someone you can be ‘romantic’ with. also, when people go to dances, i think they degrade themselves about 5 or 6 steps. i rarely see the naturalist’s assumption that humans are merely animals proven more handily than by going to a social dance and watching the whole floor get ‘freaky’. i just can’t believe that we even keep up the facade of a dance…it’s obviously not the dancing itself that most people enjoy, because if you turned on the lights, people would leave and flow to wherever it’s dark and start making out. your average dancegoer is so focused on their own carnality that the dance is merely an excuse to get some modicum of sexual gratification. how pitiful. ...

5 hours of solid, no-break work later, and i’ve finished part I and turned it in–i was right–i didn’t even have time to look at part II, so it went down the drain. down the drain to spain. i’ll take you down to chinatown. i need food.

i can’t put it off any longer…i have 4 hours to finish my problem set. it will probably take me at least that long to do part I. i guess part II is just going to go down the drain. oh well, hopefully it won’t affect things too much. my habit with school work is to be a few hours ahead in my mind, when i have whatever i’m working on done. so i tend to daydream about how nice it is that i have an end in sight, and that whether i finish the assignment or not, it will be over and done with. this tends to make me a little more lax about actually trying and getting really good grades, because i’m just so excited about not having to think about it anymore. ...

if xA* = xAT || xAF, show that x |= xA* and that’s only the first part of the problem–logic is, if i may say so–hard as crap. and i worked on it for the last three hours, bringing the clock to 12:30. now i have a choice: do greek or not do greek. i have to be up at 8:30, and my greek would probably take me a good 1.5-2 hrs to do completely. i suppose i’ll just go to bed. ...

i now know everything there is to know about iDVD, the mac application used to burn dvds of your own videos. i spent the last few hours writing an instruction guide on getting a movie from your camera to a DVD, and it’s not that hard. the dvds themselves tend to suck, but hey, it’s a dvd. hardly anyone really burns their own. in any case, i didn’t miss class this morning. in fact, i woke up an hour and a half early to do my reading for it. aren’t i a conscientious student? class itself wasn’t bad–we did an overview of the epistemological theories we’ve surveyed so far, and as a class generated a lot of focused thesis topics. the only real grade for the course is the final paper, so we’re gearing up and starting to think of what we really care about writing 4,000 words on. i’m thinking of maybe doing something on the circularity in coherence theories, or maybe theories of justification. who knows. ...

dan and i just watched ’the way of the gun’. it had benecio del toro and some old guy who plays the exact same character in lots of other movies. films do some weird things to me. first of all they consume my mind and my thoughts for at least a few hours after watching. especially if the film is one where there is thinking involved, or some epic conclusion. like, dumb and dumber leaves no impact, whereas movies like gladiator make me want to sit, ponder, and cry for a few hours. ...

one pleasant schedule-altering anomaly: i played tennis this afternoon. and, when i say pleasant, i don’t really mean pleasant so much as not that pleasant. sure it was fun, but i sucked. even by my standards (which as most can tell you are pretty low). and, as most can also tell you, i am one of the sorest losers you’ll ever meet. mostly with card games, but it has extended gradually to cover most forms of competition. it’s never bad if i know from the outset i’m going to get whooped (rather, know from the outset that i deserve to get whooped due to the skill level of my opponent). but if i feel like i could be doing better, then i get pretty pissed. in cards it’s even worse because in most games there’s an element of chance and without fail i will be dealt the worse cards possible. you might think i am exaggerating, but that is because your coherence theory of knowledge in this instance has been unable to cope with my anomaly. ...