old cousin

what do you tell your kid cousin as she grows up?

she's pretty and a girl, which of course disposes her to a different set of growing-up issues that I had. and it's 13 years later, which is also probably very different.

or maybe not. underneath i suspect it's all the same. unfortunately part of that is not giving a shit about the advice given to you as such. and i don't have much to say, i'm not so wise. i don't have much to say (as evidenced by typing that sentence twice in a row without realizing).

you have permission to screw up in anything less important than your long term life and health. you will get bad grades and hangovers and accidentally but selfishly hurt your friends' feelings probably wake up in a place or two that you didn't mean to sleep. the most important thing is to love yourself enough that you stay in school and have a designated driver and be able to love your friends through the hard times and for God's sakes, practice insisting on a condom sober or drunk, self-confident or needy. to see the difference between the minor and major is your challenge and as you accumulate minor screwups and minor victories and major victories it will get easier, never easy, that would reduce life to not being that interesting anymore.

and never cheat on a significant other. i still can't decide whether i'd rather have learned that lesson without actually doing it.

twee

no, of course not. that would be too easy.

525600 minutes

i woke up this morning knowing what i want... will it be the same tomorrow?

covered in blonde hairs

i woke up too early in my strange and huge utah bed (just picture california queen, except with room for 3-5 sister-wives instead of one petite california queen). i couldn't stop thinking about why i didn't create what i wanted with my crush, a pattern that is just now beginning to be clear. I think i'd give myself maybe a B, B-, we had really great times together but now i'm in utah and she's leaving the country and i didn't get to say goodbye or even hear about the trip. the short of it is, i have generally assumed that I should underestimate the progression of romantic encounters. I'm not sure what "should" criterion that fits in, might be the pragmatic one (ie underestimate more likely to yield results than overestimate... i'm not so sure the data back that up), but (as my stepmother just now chose to describe me) more likely i have been timid, there is fear of losing control of the situation when i overestimate or even hit things bang on (i wish i knew how to spell double entendre).

that is why i really like women who send signals that they don't intend... last girlfriend did that, so then i had to convince her her signals were real and that took two months.

the other thing is stamina. ha-ha, have your little laugh. when i do decide to be fearless i can do it and it usually works well... but you can't just be fearless for an afternoon. you have to be. fearless. extended. nee, permanent.

anyway, at the very least i can be. home. for a few days, that's why i'm covered with snowy Zöe hairs.

the database race

the shuttle is on its way home. and that makes me very worried about the war on terrorism.

although the cold war was apparently very scary, it did precipitate some amazing advances in aeronautical technology, through the need to demonstrate that our forces were capable militarily to confront the adversary. and of course there was the "space race" where the only reason to strive for great advances was because it was worth doing and hey, we have to be better than those commies. like all revolutions, the things we knew and the things we knew how to do after 1969 were almost inconceivable when president Kennedy made his speeches in the early 60s.

so regardless of what name one gives to the "enemy" in the war on terror, the "others," in a very real sense it is not obvious how to judge who is an enemy and who is not, particularly when the distinction is "definitely not your friend, but not going to kill your civilians" vs. "going to kill your civilians."

thus the major weapons of the new war, the long war, are fundamentally informatics. and that is very scary. we never really needed to worry about what advances in rocket technology were going to mean for the average person. but whatever the revolutions in information management, extraction, surveillance, and analysis, those technologies, which are going to be an inevitable part of this war, we need to very, very vigilant that those technologies grow as little as necessary to accomplish a more peaceful and just world.

politicians, this means you. just because the Bush administration is dumb enough to rely on illegal acts to "combat" their enemies doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of bad things one can do that are nonetheless legal. we need strong oversight, vision, and the guts to make politically challenging laws to preserve our freedoms, even when we didn't even realize we had the freedoms in the first place.

Re: blistex / link

four years of bioinformatics training, and i'm getting schooled in blogging! ok, even monkeys can be taught:

http://www.blistex.com/Global_lips.htm

“You’re About To Learn Secrets That Most Men Will Never Know About Women...”

No, you're not. But in the infinite and unexplainable wisdom of Gmail, such a link was presented to me right before I sat down to blog my party from tonight. Not my party, but the girls' party, which they threw a little bit because it's their birthdays but i suspect also because none of us have seen each other in forever. (can you tell i just checked up on one of my blogging heros? still working on my own style.)

before i forget, as a followup to kissing blog, check out (but come back):

http://www.blistex.com/Global_lips.htm

i am not drunk or even tipsy. i am tired and a little confused, disappointed, and pleased.

so the big question is not how to hit on women. that is A Big Question, but frankly I'm not necessarily so sure I want to be exceeding good at. I am sorry that I didn't chat up Jessica and Britney (yes, their real names; i don't know where Lindsay and Paris were).

does anyone else hear indian music? i went to India Cook House's web page in another window. Now when i select that window, no music. But blog window is rockin' naan. Maybe it will be magically embedded in the post.

the More Pressing Question (literally) is what to do when someone is working hard to get closer to you than; i can't think of what it is closer than. let's say there is an effort to make the contours of two bodies, the bends and valleys and twists, fit together like puzzle pieces. the dilemmas seem twofold.

1) what can i create in this situation, given the social toolbox that I am competent to employ.
2) what do i want to create in this situation, given that i am not someone who actually wants to seduce pretty women just because they are drunk. i mean, a pretty woman just because she is drunk. singular. haven't had to deal with the plural yet.

re 1) my toolbox is obviously not as limited as i think it is, if

who i accidentally talked to earlier but then had nothing to add (either pertinent or funny) to the smokers' conversation about mostly giving blowjobs from both the straight and gay perspectives comes up and stands way too close. i mean, too close to be an accident.

so here's what i want, i think. i know she (this she and all those in her situation) is probably not looking for a husband or a boyfriend or even a good fuck. so without being any of those things, i can still be a little receptive and playful and, i dont' know, sexy, but sexy in that enlightened way that we all want to get a little approval on who we are to the opposite sex and say (not in words), yes, girl, i approve, and i appreciate your approval. My instinct is that this is hard to convey without sending the "i'm seducing you" vibe, but fuck that former-self attitude, i dont' like where it has taken me.

i do like where this blog has taken me, but a sad thing is in the situation itself, i eventually blew it. at the time i let the awkward overtake me even though i know i could have come up with something to keep her interested and not be rude to the other people in the very strange conversation. she actually turned to me and said "well, this has gone well" before drifting off (although she did say it more happily than i have gotten in the past). poor dear was drunk as a skunk, but that had nothing to do with our interaction. i created all of it, good and bad. next time will be different.

anyway, hopefully my european parting kiss thing was at least a little gratifying. damn, girl, i appreciate your approval and yes, i approve.

wiki

As a transition from trip-blog to blog-blog, I have edited my first wikipedia entry!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroopwafel

I'm sure there's a way for you to see whether my changes were consequential or minor, but for the sake of mystery I'm not telling...

My laptop appears to be resurrected; the entire old hard drive is lost, plus some memory. What I want to know is, what about sitting on my desk --not being used-- on Wednesday afternoon was so traumatic as to cause the RAM chip and the hard drive to die simultaneously?