rollerskate jam
I think I may be getting crazier.
For one thing, I am talking to myself a lot more. (Of course, one could argue that this very web page is the ultimate expression of “talking to myself,” in which case I have been extra super hypercrazy since late 1999.)
LT was out at his Chinese class last night and I decided to go to bed early. Only once I got there, I realized I was not terribly sleepy, and I decided to—well, let's not be coy, I decided to spend a little quality time with myself. (Yes, even though it makes the baby Jesus cry. What can I say, The Girl Can't Help It.) When I was finished, for some inexplicable reason I said, out loud, to no one, “Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen! Good night!”
Also, my more-or-less-constant low-level obsessive-compulsive disorder has flared up recently. Not to any critical level where I have trouble leaving the house due to my numerologically based rituals. However, this morning I alphabetized all the possible breakfast choices, and then somehow my usual routine for choosing between options (I won't go into it here, but it is based on the date) was not working for me, so I used a random number generator to help me make the decision to have an english muffin. People. Seriously. I need to be kicked in the head. A fucking RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR was the only way I could quit doddering and dithering between insignificant choices and pick a breakfast food. Although on some level I think this is rather resourceful of me. I came up with a definitive, authoritative, web-based way to settle my stuck-brain OCD problem rather than just succumbing to panic, as I might have ten years ago. (Yeah sure. I will just keep telling myself that.)
The third crazy thing is that I spent most of my morning commute trying to force a parallel between the Persian physician and philosopher Avicenna and the bizarre and ultimately useless 1980s band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. This parallel is crummy and extremely forced, and was more a diversion to keep myself awake this morning than any real, serious thought, except that Avicenna did have this thing about how the vegetative soul (mind) is like a muscle and acquires knowledge through a form of relaxation (Don't do it! When you want to go to it!), and some say that he died through excessive indulgence in wine and sex. I doubt it was leather-queen sex, but who knows. I think I need to abandon this forced correlation, since it does not work nearly as well as my caffeine-inspired A+ college paper on the similarities between Keats' “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. There was a time in my life when no one wanted to do drugs with me because inevitably I would start babbling about Catholicism and negative capability and urine. Not anymore, I promise.
Avicenna is kind of cool in his own right, actually. His stuff illustrates how the Arabic language carried medical knowledge of the time, like the theory of humors, between the ancient and the medieval worlds (since Arabic medical authorities knew Greek). There were Latin translations of Greek medical texts available in medieval times too, of course, but the Arabic ones were often considered more authoritative for some reason. Here is a fun bit:
The first signs of melancholy are bad judgment, fear without cause, quick anger, delight in solitude, shaking, vertigo, inner clamor, and tingling, especially in the abdomen…Certain sufferers fear that the sky will fall on them, while others fear that the earth may devour them. Others fear robbers. Others still fear lest a wolf approach them. The following five things especially they fancy: they imagine themselves made kings or wolves or demons or birds or artificial instruments.
I LOVE THE LETTER B
Spent some time today googling the word “backfat.”
Inexplicable picture. Why is it the only thing on that page?
Missed the world pork expo again, damn it.
Backfat equations.
We are looking for pork backfat.
Take a meat test.
All is not back fat in my world! Blake also starts with B. You can see lots more illuminated manuscripts in the archive, but warning: it takes like a million clicks to get there.
Help! A bunyip!
B is also for Blair, and BLUFF and BILK and BOGUS: poetry from Jayson Blair's website.
—mimi smartypants is about to beam down to the surface.