March 3, 2003

Three times wise
or, Things to do on Three day

Three square meals of three items each. Breakfast: Fromage Au Trois (Three egg omelette with three cheeses, and three slices of toast). Lunch: Three Stories High (triple decker sandwich). Dinner: Triple Jumping Bean salad (three bean salad).

Take a three-legged dog on a three mile walk, triangulating three towns or villages. Take part in a three-legged race and Triple Jump competition. Hum 'Three Blind Mice' along the way. Find a three leaf clover and make three wishes on it. Take three found stones, feathers and leaves and arrange in triangles. Juggle with three balls.

Read Salley Vicker's Instances of the Number Three. Read the third page of three newspapers. read Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing for thirty minutes.

Write three three word novels('God lay dying.' or 'The wardrobe coughed.' or 'Thirsty, they sang.') Think up three plots for three day novel contest. Pick three words from a dictionary at random and use in three line haiku; repeat twice.

Listen to the opera A Love for Three Oranges. Listen for bird calls with three notes. Listen to Radio Three for three minutes.

Watch the third installment of three movie trilogies (Back To the Future, Three Colors, Star Wars, etc.). Or watch movies with three items in the title (Gas Food Lodging, Planes Trains and Automobiles, sex, lies and videotape, etc.) Or watch The Three Stooges, The Third Man, and Three Coins In the Fountain.

Take some porridge to the three bears. Be extra nice to the three witches. Direct the three billy goats gruff to the ferry.

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Wiccanpiper says: Yes! We Wiccans would say pay homage to the three forms of the Goddess: maid, mother, and crone.

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malcster says: Play track three on the third CD you bought three times. Register 3 email addresses on 3 different websites (using 3 different PCs if possible). Post in the catbox three times, Political Asylum three times, and a room of your choice three times.

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Halspal says: Mary and I celebrate our 7th anniversary on 3.3.3.

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Siobhan says: sneeze three times in a row and make a/3 secret wish/es.
greet three times three random strangers on the street with a friendly smile and a happy 'good day to you, sir/madam'.
turn three times on your heel and dream/travel to new foreign lands...
blink at the sun three times :)

Siobhan says: i forgot: The Threepenny Opera! By Brecht and Weill!

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Those of the Christian persuasion have linked their belief in a Trinity to Three day and are arranging a prayer for peace (also called 'God's Day') at 3 in the afternoon for thirty minutes, or three minutes, or all day, with fasting as an option. The pedantics will strive for 3 in the morning.(thanks wrinkly)

Davidian's Engagement Log: Entry One

I've finally decided when it's going to happen. I've been mulling it around in my head for weeks now. However, the time is nigh upon me, and I can't escape what needs to be done. Not that I want to.

I've been dating my girlfriend ever since May 5, 2001. It was a Saturday night, and I was more interested in the girl I almost hooked up with the night before than her. In fact I barely knew her. I had talked to her sometimes before as she was in the same class as my best friend/roommate's girlfriend. We'd all walk in the same direction together after class got out. I used her to work on my talking to girls, and that's about it. I used the time to practice holding a conversation. Nothing more. I wasn't wowed by her looks, like I am now.

On that Cinco De Maio, some of her friends and her came up to my fraternity's section. My roommate was trying to get her trashed off the fabled Delt Punch, a punch my frat makes annually. He even tried paying her small dollar amounts to flash her breasts at me. Apparently she liked me, even though I didn't know it. My roommate was just trying to get me laid.

We went out to this "Shock Yo Momma" party held by the Omegas, another frat on campus. Within five minutes, my best friend was handcuffed to two girls, who, if they wanted to use their bodies more than their minds, would have made excellent pornstars. But I digress. I was left with three ladies and a keg of cheap beer. We all partied and made merry. Ain't nuthin like dancing with different women, and switching between every song.

I have no idea what time it was when we left. I just know my roommate had managed to free himself from the handcuffs. We went back to our room; me, him, and the ladies. Once back there, we popped open more beers and I had a great idea, "Everyone onto the beds!" I had yelled. Maybe not, it's a while ago and drugs have killed my memory. We had a loft setup going all the way across the room, which had our beds on it, separated, of course. My girl curled into my bed alongside me and I took turns kissing her, and the girl I was interested in the night before. By this time, my focus had shifted from her, to my girlfriend, as she seemed to be more interested in me. At this point in my life, I had not been laid in 2 years, so I was going to take what I could and not complain. Long story short, we went back to her place and made merry.

She later told me I was supposed to be her piece of meat, another one night stand as she tried, and failed, to get over her asshole high school boyfriend. She was a freshman and myself a sophomore. She said she decided to keep me because I cuddled after sex.

Now our relationship has reached a certain point. Never had I felt such feelings for a girl before. Never had she had such feelings for a guy. We talked about it and knew that we were perfect for each other. I think that she is one of only two people I could live with and not end up killing. The other being my roommate that year.

Now to the point of all this rambling. My then roommate, his girlfriend, and my girlfriend are all going on spring break together, at my parent's cape house in Chatham, Massachusetts. I plan on setting up my room real nice, with candles and flower petals, mostly red roses, on the bed. I plan on making sweet love for most of the evening. In the morning I plan on sliding the first universal symbol of our love onto her finger while she sleeps. By the morning of March 15, 2003, I will be engaged to the most wonderful woman on the face of the planet.

For those of you who haven't done this yet, this is by far the most anxious I've ever been in my life. All my friends are surprised and amazed. They tell me I'm too young, they tell me I'm throwing things away. However, they do tell me that they're happy it's to her, and that outweighs anything else they have to say. I'm going to call her father a week from this friday, to ask him if it's ok for me to marry his daughter. This has me more nervous than I have ever been in my life. Even though I know he will not say no.

She's been with me through so much. She's seen my at my most crazed, my most evil, and my most vulnerable. I have shed tears in her arms. She stuck with me while I successfully failed out of college, while I had to move back in with my parents. She keeps me in line. She doesn't dominate, she genuinely cares. She's the only woman I want having my children.

I actually decided that I wanted to "propose" a while ago, about a week. I haven't written about it until now because my parents have finally accepted the fact that this is going to happen soon. When I told my parents they both said "No, you're too young." I'm going to be 24 when we get married. My parents were 23. However, I am glad that they came around. I'm going to go diamond shopping with my father on my birthday. I already have what type of ring it's going to be picked out. Actually, she picked it out, and I'm going to get her what she wants. Anything for my girl.

I don't know what else to say. I know I have no reason to try and convince thousands of people I don't know why this woman is special, or what she means to me. I just wanted to tell thousands of people that she's mine, so keep your grubby hands away from her! :^)

Next Entry

You early riser, your drive and ambition make me still. You charge towards the horizon of your little tomorrow, brandishing your hopes with all your heart's mind's eye and stuff. I could never be like you. My eyes are on my feet as I stumble through one day at a time, happy to be here now. You always look at the distance of tomorrow like it's the only thing that gets you through today. I follow you, but only because the trail you've cut is clear. I can see it with my head bent down.

You know what you want from life, and that frightens me, I'll admit. I don't even know what I want for dinner, and you've made plans for both of us that involve many trips and names. I just want to find a quiet spot to grow old and fade and wear out. I don't mind the rust that forms on my slow joints when I stroll. When I truly hesitate and take a different path, you always rush back to beg me back to yours, and I always come. I haven't found a better one, and don't expect to, but we're not walking this path together. When I try to keep pace, you always take sharp turns to throw me off, so you can come back to get me again. I might as well just take it at my own pace.

When I try to run with you in the tall weeds and thorns I stress and hurt myself. But when I get too far behind and you lose me against the background noise, I fall apart and have to put my working legs together again to find you. Why can't we just walk the path together? It's a beautiful road, this little life I've passed. I feel like you've missed a lot of it. Up and down over these silly hills we've come, and even though you run, we keep ending up in the same spots at all the important times.

Why do you run?

About two weeks ago my mobile phone alerted me to an incoming SMS with its usual triple vibration. I flipped it open, hit Yes, and found a message from a schoolfriend I hadn't seen, spoken to, heard from for almost ten years.

He was wondering if I would be free on March 1 to play the Eton Field Game for his scratch side against the School eleven.

Just then, a stranger approached, and told me he was going to cut off the bottom of one of my trouser legs and put it in the library.

That's a turn up for the books I thought.

I told him (old friend, I mean, not the stranger I invented for the purposes of a lame joke) that of course I'd love to play. And then realised I hadn't played for ten years, that I am hideously unfit, and that it was surely going to be a really, quite strange experience.

Which it sure was.

Turns out the place hasn't changed much, but then when you're 563 years old, what's a decade? Everything was much as I had left it, including my old friends (bit misleading, actually, that, since they were in the same house but three years below me. We didn't hang out much. The relationship was built more around them pissing about, and me setting them suitable punishments), all instantly recognisable as older versions of their schoolboy selves, and all still called Charlie, or variations thereof. Guess I wasn't so different either - I even turned up late in my traditional manner. Gawd bless the trains!

They've changed the old game though. Gone is the gloriously dangerous ram, gone are endless set bullies (read Eton Field Game if you want to know what I'm talking about), and in their place are free-kicks left, right and centre. Apparently the game needed speeding up. As a wheezing smoker in his late twenties trying to keep up with the young whipper-snappers in the school side, I'm inclined to disagree on this point.

Inevitably, we lost, and the school side remained unbeaten - but hey, we were unbeaten when I was in the side, and i like to think there was a touch of class about our play back in the day, too (Without wishing to sound smug or arrogant, my play was described as 'sublime' in the end of season review...). I'm not surprised to have lost, really - playing three times a week, knowing the rules, staying fit; all these add up to more of a plateau than an edge for a school side that for all our age, guile, and aggression we couldn't quite match.

Afterwards we sat in the pub, talked over the game, and caught up as much of ten years as is possible in one afternoon. I'd forgotten what a great bunch of guys they all were, and wished I'd stayed more in touch with this past life.

I'd forgotten about or not thought about a lot of stuff. None of which I can really go into, I'm afraid. It's just too close, some of it, for a threepenny daylog, and the rest, well, bad things have happened to so many good people, and I only wish they hadn't.

But I've made a vow (but only to myself, just in case I don't follow it through...) to contact people I used to know. If you knew theboy once upon a time, watch out - he's coming to an inbox with your name on it...

Right now, though, I'm going to have to focus most of my attention on walking with a thousand aching limbs, and not coping with the emotional aftermath of trying to watch the last ten minutes of the Worthington Cup final and the last few overs of the England v Australia World Cup encouter.

At least one worked out alright in the end.

I'm thinking of quitting my job and trying something entirely different. I saw a friend in town the other day. He was just standing in the high street, and the back of his anorak was leaping up and down. People were throwing him money, which I thought was odd, so I asked him if he earned his living doing this.

Yes, he said, this is my livelihood.

Am I suffering from depression? I seem to be tired again today after a solid 9.5 hours of sleep last night. I wouldn't really consider myself depressed, but just bored. I'm looking for something to entertain me in life, but I guess it's not that active of a search. Maybe I'm too busy waiting for something to happen instead of making something happen. What a big fucking cliche that is.

I guess I'm just another stereotype of 20th century youth without a cause to define myself. Oh woe is me.

Sleep

Her name is Cassandra. At first I was going to write this cheesy D&D adventure rendition of the whole excursion and re-name her Charisma for the sake of anonymity but *fuck a grape Christ* this is just too ironic. Besides sentiment sucks, and I'm sure the whole fucking world's done the D&D theme before.(cliche: +2d4 when attacking Shane).

She calls me up for the first time in four years. She wanted to go to a "nice dive-bar", and conversationalize. What struck me was the middle of the night, how she told me that her name meant servant to men. But I was lost in that perfect field, with Orange Hostess cupcakes and fried chicken and didn't remember at first how she had said she preferred people to call her Cass, now. It was beautiful. Cue the blood!!!

All went against Murphy's Law, until I dropped her off. I bought her breakfast (dinner? drunkfast? whatever...), we got to her house and then, help me out here... she spaces out and leaves. She says some weird shit about getting drunk and walks away forever.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that
sleep doesn't fix everything. It does.
I've never, in twenty-one years,
lost the rent, got beat up,
or had my heart broken while asleep.
In slumber, no one can touch you.
Except, maybe, Freddy Krueger, but
I've never met Mr. Krueger, and he
doesn't bother me, so, as it stands,
sleep fixes everything.

)...-And the reason why curiosity sucks???-...(

Ladies and Gents!

We've taken our time, read carefully, judged fairly and we're proud to present to you the scores from the Everything Noder Pageant 2003 Regional Finals.

We're sure you'll agree that the gorgeous ladies have done their countries proud, so issue forth with your good loving!

How they scored:
 ____________________________________________________________________________________

| Contestant        | Node                 |  A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  aggregate  |
 ____________________________________________________________________________________

| Miss Spain        | Spain                | 7.5 | 7.3 | 4.2 | 7.0 | 9.5 |    35.5     |

| Miss D.R.Congo    | Dem. Rep. of Congo   | 8.0 | 8.5 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 9.7 |    41.7     |

| Miss Suriname     | Suriname             | 5.0 | 6.8 | 7.5 | 4.5 | 7.9 |    31.7     |

| Miss Micronesia   | Fed.St. Micronesia   | 8.0 | 9.2 | 9.3 | 9.0 | 9.2 |    44.7     |

| Miss Serbia       | Serbia               | 6.5 | 7.5 | 7.9 | 7.0 | 8.5 |    37.4     |

| Miss Ethiopia     | Ethiopia             | 7.0 | 7.2 | 6.7 | 6.0 | 8.3 |    35.2     |

| Miss Portugal     | Portugal             | 7.9 | 7.5 | 8.4 | 8.7 | 7.2 |    39.7     |

| Miss Norway       | Norway               | 8.5 | 7.0 | 7.2 | 8.1 | 7.9 |    38.7     |

| Miss Canada       | Canada               | 9.7 | 9.0 | 9.2 | 9.0 | 8.9 |    45.8     |

| Miss Turkmenistan | Turkmenistan         | 6.2 | 6.5 | 8.1 | 9.2 | 7.1 |    37.1     |

| Miss Australia    | Australia            | 8.7 | 8.7 | 9.1 | 9.5 | 8.5 |    44.5     |

| Miss Thailand     | Thailand             | 3.8 | 4.5 | 8.8 | 7.0 | 7.0 |    31.1     |

| Miss Iraq         | Iraq                 | 4.2 | 4.9 | 4.5 | 5.7 | 5.0 |    24.3     |
 ____________________________________________________________________________________

I had some time built into my work schedule to sit and node a couple of things that have happened and also some things I wanted to write about. However, the reality of work stepped in and squashed my plans.

First one of the servers was using up all its CPU and no matter how many times I tried to limit processes or kill them outright it was still locked in a loop. Time to restart the server. Thus forcing two departments to be without the application they use. So of course the phone starts to ring over and over; even though I sent out an email explaining when the reboot would occur and how long it would be down.

Then there are other issues that have drained the energy to node away, just giving me enough to drop a couple of thoughts down. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.

Playwright in Tech

D -4 Day

The blessed Monday off from tech week.

Yesterday was the second day of cue-to-cue. And frustratingly enough, also the Los Angeles Marathon, which ran right by the corner of San Vincente Boulevard that our tiny theatre happens to live on. Traffic was murder; I've been sick and forcing fluids: obviously a potentially expulsive combination. Even with the street closings, I thought I could get close enough to the theatre to park and walk and use the bathroom, but time crept faster than the traffic, and seeing no other option, I pulled over in a residential neighborhood and used my 1.5 liter empty water bottle as a makeshift latrine. I was surprisingly more adept at the operation than I expected. I filled the thing nearly 2/3's full, meaning I was shipping an extra liter of fluid. (It's the unexpected factoids in life that are always the most intriguing.)

I finally made it to the theatre four hours later than everyone else-- stretching my playwright's prerogative a bit. I was glad to hear though that they'd finished up the cue-to-cue and after a break would start a run-through. I'd finally be able see what the actors were doing with the script.

It was a rough go, but no rougher than a normal first fully teched stumble-through. The cast is small, two men, two women. The guy playing the central character, an ex-school teacher who moves to New York to temp and drink himself into oblivion, has a pretty good take on things, though he's got to shake his film-acting habit of mumbling. The other male lead, who plays an uptight accountant from New Jersey, is playing it all a bit to broad and arrogant right now. The character, who's of Italian descent, is coming off like a Soprano right now, instead of an image-conscious corporate drone. Now I don't want to entirely lose the ethnic feel, but I want the actor to play with burying it a bit, for a much more layered approach.

One of the two actresses is nearly perfect except for the normal small adjustments, the other seems less sure as an actor, and seems to lack the natural stage ability to make herself seen and heard. She's constantly upstaging herself (i.e. facing away so that the audience loses her face and often her lines), and she seems uncomfortable in her skin. I'm hoping it's mostly just nerves that'll iron out in the end.

At intermission and again at the end of the run, I gave my director a ream of notes, though no more than usual for this point in the process. He seemed a bit discouraged, wondering aloud how he was going to approach the cast with some of the bigger adjustments I'd like to see happen. He's afraid that trying to implement such changes at this late point might throw the cast, but I know from experience that this is horseshit. Good actors, by and large, love to dig in and make changes up to and beyond the last minute. It keeps it fresh and real and dangerous for them, which is a good place to be just as you open. I reminded him that I used to ask the same thing of him when he was acting in earlier plays of mine. I think he's having trouble finding his voice of authority as a director. But find it he must, and quickly; or somehow I'm going to have to find it for him.

At this point, the show still has the potential to blow people away, but it could also lay there like a dead confusing fish. We don't have much time to make it right. But we have to.

On Saturday I went to Planned Parenthood in order to obtain oral contraceptive refills. I have no health insurance, and I was on my last pack of pills that had been prescribed by my college's health center before I graduated last June.

I had heard about Planned Parenthood on the radio and I figured I'd give them a call. They were great on the phone and were able to make an appointment for me the very next day! This is totally unheard of in my dealings with the medical profession; when I had an HMO, I generally had to make appointments months in advance, and I didn't have much of a choice as to what time of day the appointment was.

My boyfriend's mom gave me a ride; I had originally intended to ride my bike (I have no car), but Matt's mom wouldn't hear of that, seeing as the ride was long and the streets were busy. She is truly an awesome lady. So we left at 10:30 for my 11 AM appointment.

We found the place easily, thanks to the directions I got from the internet. As we drew closer to the building, I noticed that there seemed to be quite a bit of activity on the sidewalk. Oh, no, I thought to myself. Apparently a bunch of militant pro-lifers had chosen that Saturday to protest in front of the clinic, and verbally harass everyone who entered the building. They had those giant posters featuring full-color shots of aborted babies. We parked the car, and I apprehensively got out.

A group of protestors looked straight at Matt's mom and I, and began yelling. "NO, PLEASE, DON'T KILL YOUR BABY!" and, "MOTHER, PLEASE DON'T TAKE YOUR DAUGHTER IN THERE!"

I couldn't help it. I was so enraged that I yelled back at them.

"I AM NOT FUCKING PREGNANT!"

And even if I was, it was none of anyone's business but mine. I should have just ignored them, in the spirit of do not feed the troll, but I was so taken aback and upset that something just popped out.

Planned Parenthood always has some of their employees in the parking lot, to escort people from their cars to the clinic doors. This made me feel a bit better. But I was still upset, so much so that when the doctor took my blood pressure it was so elevated that he would only give me one additional pack \ of contraceptives. (using hormones is not advised when one has high blood pressure) So now I have to go back in later this week at at time when I'm more relaxed, and get another blood pressure check. Then they can write me a refill prescription.

I was quite surprised (and pleased) to find out that Planned Parenthood offers services besides those pertaining to women's health. They offer primary care appointments for everything from injury to psychiatry, as well as immunizations for children. They are really offering a great service to the community, especially for those unable to obtain health insurance.

Matt's mom's comment about the protestors was, "I wonder how many children they've adopted so far?" I am extremely glad she was there with me, and that she had such a wonderful attitude about the whole thing. I felt a little weird at first talking to her; after all, what does a mother think of a girl that is almost certainly sleeping with her son? This particular mother had a very healthy and realistic perspective, and made me feel very comfortable and comforted. Totally cool.

I am still miffed at those protestors. Nobody wants to see the graphic results of a medical procedure while driving down the street. Abortion is gross, but so is kidney surgery. Autopsies aren't too pleasant to look at, either. It is just poor taste to display such things, and to make people's already difficult lives more difficult. And free speech is one thing, but harassment is quite another. I want to be able to walk out of the car and into my doctor's office without being yelled at, especially when the stuff people are yelling doesn't even apply to me.

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Note: This incident occurred in San Jose, California. I am not sure what the laws are regulating protests, but I would be interested to find out. If anyone has information about such laws, feel free to /msg me; I'd be interested to know how different states deal with this sort of situation. Thanks to enth for suggesting I indicate where this occurred.

Today's Headlines

US News

Malvo Pretrial Motions Begin
A hearing is set for today to address thirteen motions filed by the lawyers of Lee Boyd Malvo, the suspected sniper from the recent Washington DC-area shootings. The motions include a proposed ban on crime scene photos, an appeal for the county to hand over any potentially damaging evidence, and a request for five additional investigators to find more evidence in the case. Prosecutors were dismissive of the claims, stating that most were stalling tactics or diatribes against the Supreme Court of Virginia.

98th Victim In Rhode Island Fire
A second hospitalized victim from the nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island died yesterday, bringing the death toll to 98. Today, the city of West Warwick will begin releasing documents such as building and fire inspections on the nightclub, which the city had previously refused to release. The city had invoked a statute which allowed them to only release records within ten days of a written request, the window of opportunity for which closes today.

Documents Released in New Hampshire Church Abuse Scandal
Catholic bishop John McCormack apologized this morning to victims of sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests. At the same time, though, the church said it did not "necessarily agree" with everything in a state report detailing how the Manchester Diocese mishandled abuse cases. The report, released by the state of New Hampshire, severely criticized the church's mechanisms for handling situations of pastoral abuse.

International News

November 17 Terror Trial Opens in Greece
The trial of 19 people suspected of belonging to the November 17 terror group began Monday with arguments over the bulletproof security glass that protected the defendants. Defense lawyers claimed that the glass was humiliating and argued to have it removed. The trial covers several assassinations by the group in recent years, including British, Turkish, and American diplomats and senior Greek judges.

Turkish Stock Market Crashes
The Turkish stock market plunged by more than 10% in early trading this morning after the nation's parliament voted down a deal that would have given Turkey billions of dollars in exchange for allowing America to use military bases in Turkey from which to attack Iraq. The markets were counting on the money to alleviate woes in the Turkish economy.

Mohammed in Custody of United States
Suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was placed in the custody of the United States early this morning. He was expected to be questioned on details of planned al Qaeda attacks after his weekend capture.

Business

Palm Misses Earnings Estimates
This morning, Palm warned Wall Street of lower-than-expected sales during the company's third fiscal quarter. The handheld maker said revenue for its quarter, which ended last month, will come in at approximately $208 million, compared with its previous expectation of $240 million. Palm blamed the revenue warning on lower-than-anticipated sales in the United States of its high-end Tungsten handhelds.

Former ImClone CEO Faces Charges of Tax Evasion
Former ImClone Chief Executive Samuel Waksal, awaiting sentencing for insider trading, on Monday faced new charges related to taxes on art purchases, sources familiar with the situation said. The charges appear to be unrelated to ImClone, but insiders say that the situation is perhaps indicative of Waksal's character. ImClone came to recent notoriety in the Martha Stewart insider trading case, which is ongoing.

US Stocks Continue Rise
Both technology stocks and the broader market continued their upward trend in early trading this morning. After two days of increases in stock prices, followed by the weekend capture of Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, stock prices continued to move upward on Monday morning.

Science & Technology

China's Lunar Program Unveiled
China has revealed further details of its plans to explore the Moon early this morning. The first unmanned probe could be launched by 2005, say officials. They also hinted that the motivation for the missions is to mine the Moon's resources.

Sony Debuts Blue Laser DVD Technology
This morning, Sony unveiled its first Blu-Ray optical disc format recorder. The format is similar to DVD, but incorporates blue laser light to increase storage space to 27 GB. According to Sony, the reason for this needed increase in storage space is that DVDs cannot hold enough data to be suitable for true high-definition video. Players go on sale next month in Japan and will reach the United States soon after.

Antivirus Firm Takes On Spam
Trend Micro, a company known more for its antivirus technologies, announced new software that will help IT managers protect their networks from unwanted spam. The program, called Spam Prevention Service, is a piece of network-level software that uses algorithms and mechanisms similar to that of antivirus software.

Health

Sugar May Cause Obesity
The World Health Organization is calling for a drastic decrease in sugar consumption worldwide, citing recent studies linking sugar to obesity. The new recommended diet consists primarily of carbohydrates making up 55 to 75 per cent of daily energy intake. Protein should make up a further 10 to 15 percent of a person's diet. Sugars, added and natural, should make up less than 10 percent, and salt should be restricted to less than five grams a day.

Gene Found For Cancer Spread
An American research team has discovered a gene responsible for the spread of cancer through the body. The work, done by a team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, indicates that a new treatment strategy, involving knocking out this gene, may be appropriate for treating the rapid spread of cancer throughout the body in diseased individuals.

Sports

Tiger Wins Again in Different Format
Tiger Woods won the Accenture Match Play tournament over David Toms 2 and 1 on Sunday, winning his second tournament in three weeks. Featuring a one-on-one style of play different than the usual style of golf, the match play tournament figured to be a difficult challenge for Woods, coming off of December knee surgery, but Tiger easily conquered the format as he prepares for the upcoming Grand Slam tournaments.

Roy Jones Jr. Faces Challenges As Heavyweight
After defeating WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz on Saturday, Roy Jones Jr. (a former middleweight champion) must now decide whether or not to accept the heavyweight title or continue to retain his light heavyweight belt. At 199 pounds, most competitors outweigh Jones, but he is the undisputed king of the lighter weights and has nothing to prove. Jones must choose in the next seven days, and if he decides to keep the title, he must face #1 contender Vitali Klitschko (6'9", 270 lbs.) in 180 days. If he manages to win there, it may set up a reunification bout with Lennox Lewis in perhaps one of the biggest boxing matches of all time.

Entertainment

Chicago Dominates Director's Guild Awards
Chicago claimed the top slot in the Directors Guild of America awards, lending creedence to the film's position as the favorite for the upcoming Academy Awards. The film's director, Rob Marshall, was also noted as the top director.

Anthony Hopkins Weds
Anthony Hopkins, known for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs and its sequels, wed antiques dealer Stella Arroyave in a private ceremony over the weekend in Malibu. This is the third marriage for Hopkins.

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And Now, Some Typical Daylog Fare

So, why were there no headlines posted for the past four days?

I was on a whirlwind promotional tour to promote one of my organization's products. The tour took me to Santa Fe, Denver, San Francisco, and Chicago in as many days, with a lot of late night flying and (since I cannot fall asleep on airplanes) No-Doz-fueled presentations.

Fortunately, things went well. My presentations went off well and we seemed to generate some serious enthusiasm in what we're doing.

Unfortunately, due to a mix of exhaustion and a touch of vertigo or dizziness or something, I had some really odd visions on the last flight leg. I kept imagining there was a very large person walking down the aisle toward me. The person had long hair and a goatee and had some blood on his face. But even though he seemed to be walking fast, the person never made it back to me. I don't know why, but I was deathly afraid of this individual.

No matter, I'm back on terra firma, at least for a while.

a moment ago I thought, for just a moment.. just teetering on the edge of existence, as if not knowing itself whether to be, or not.. the pitter patter, or slight, abrupt gust of wind that was not the freeway behind my house, but something else. for a moment I could hear it, imagine it cleanly, new, in my mind, the leaves of the overgrown tree outside the window trying to hold onto the sound of drops of rain upon their slick surfaces. I was wrong. it is not raining, my mind playing tricks.

fitting it would be, though, if it were. If today were a day that the gray in the sky was not melancholy but freshness, like good baked bread, the crisp smell of a midday drizzle. what else could I call it, here, where rain never falls but lightly. it would be a great day, I would say, but the greatness has not been there on the other days when rain did greet me, as if forgotten, pushed aside, I could hardly notice. not then. today, though, I could use something different, a sound that is not the same mp3s playing again, and again.. something that was not so snugly fitting into the life that I have called mine.

of all the lives I've had, incapable of fitting together whether it be what has gone, what is now, or what comes tomorrow, next week, another lifetime to be. simply being that they are incapable of coming together has left me unsettled here. it's okay, I say. it's okay, I agree. but nonetheless, I miss the days that made me wonder if it would be more sardines in the morning, the days that despite it all, at least I had the rain.

I saw my doctor today and it's now official: I need surgery. I'm being referred to a surgeon in Tampa, FL for this. Consultations and scheduling yet to come. I found out that I have two majorly gnarled and closed-off portions of intestine. One is 16cm in size and the other is 10cm. No wonder I'm having such problems. At least now that I've dropped a class I can get a little more rest and a little less stress.

Today is also my 22^nd birthday. Great gifts yet to come as the things I'm getting haven't been shipped by Amazon.com yet. I hear I'm in line for some Futurama DVDs. Scribe sent me a neat Blinky the 3-eyed fish for by my computer desk and a decorative joystick sticker for the fridge. My coworkers, in lieu of an office party with cake I couldn't eat, just gave me the party fund cash instead and told me to go celebrate on my own with something. I think a visit to Best Buy is in my future.

Tonight I attended the most boring class in the history of the planet Earth. For the last several weeks in Information Architecture, we have had to find journal articles on a particular topic and then make a brief summary to the class. It seems like a fairly no nonsense, cakewalk assignment, especially considering that this is allegedly graduate school. Some people manage to fuck it up in strange ways, like the guy who used an article from CNN.com. (I've never seen the citation "Bay, Willow" before - it looks rather bizarre.) Yet it has gone off fairly smoothly so far.

Until tonight.

In tonight's class, the ordeal stretched out to OVER TWO HOURS. That's right, two hours of people droning on practically reading their articles. Never mind that part of the assignment is to post a citation on the class online discussion board so we can read (or at least skim) everyone's article. Yet people droned on and on and on and on. They insisted on using the Proxima for visual aids and one woman even read an outline she had prepared and stood in front of the class going over it point by point. Even towards the end of hour two, when Dr. T kept trying to cut people off and encourage them to wrap it up, they grasped and clawed for more time, droning on and writing more comments on the marker board.

As Tara said, "These people have forgotten that I can read!" We got pretty punchy as the hours dragged on, writing notes back and forth to one another with comments like

"Please kill me."

"I must have bored someone to death in another life to deserve this."

And "Do you have something sharp I can stick into my eye?", at which point Tara offered me the use of her Hello Kitty pen.

Tara even used the internet to discover which circle of Hell we had been trapped in - the fourth, condemned to an eternity of useless labor. The highlight must have been the guy who used the projector to display a graphic of a circle containing words like "design" and "develop" with a big arrow pointing to another circle containing THE SAME FUCKING WORDS. There are few things in this life I hate more than useless graphs, charts, and Venn diagrams that idiots use to make their articles seem more impressive and scientific, and this may be the most egregious example of that trend. So on my legal pad I drew a parody graph, a circle with the words "stupidity" and "class presentation" and a big arrow pointing to the word "boredom".

At the end of the class, even Dr. T, an easygoing, jovial fellow, was forced to comment on this disturbing trend and instituted a three minute time limit for future classes. I would have skipped damn near the rest of the semester had he not done so.

Returning to school has overall been an incredibly positive experience, yet it's times like these that make me rethink this program. If these are the kinds of people that I'll be working with, I might want to rethink my choice of profession. At least I can take consolation in the fact that most of these people will be working in public libraries or school media centers.

As a college student at a rather prominent American university, I am often offered the opportunity to see famous people of all breeds - scientists, politicians, actors, writers, and more - come speak to an open audience about their life experience. Just last Saturday, Sean Astin came to campus to release his new independent film and field questions about his previous movies (with a distressing number of questions being asked about The Goonies).

I usually skip out on these opportunities. I'd rather spend my time at my baby, the campus radio station. Tonight was no exception.

I pulled my car up to the front of the student center with my roommate Mike, parked, grabbed my bag of CDs I lug around practically everywhere, and headed for the front doors. Looming in front of us were two people somewhat clumsily operating the handicapped doors, and with them a person in a motorized wheelchair, and Mike and I rather easily caught up to them. They reached the inner foyer, but the chair was going terribly slow. Unbearably so, I finally decided, and I adroitly passed them with an apologetic smile to one of the assistants.

Poor kid, I thought to myself rather absentmindedly. Mike being a bit behind me was forced to hold the door open for the party. I went straight down the stairs to the radio station, never once looking back.

As I started in to do my daily business, Mike came in the station and headed straight for the office. "Dude, did you see who that was?."

"Stephen Hawking?" I joked.

Mike was like, "Yeah! Wow, I can't believe it."

I looked at him like he was stupid. "That wasn't Stephen Hawking."

"Umm .. yeah, it was."

"No way."

"Stephen fucking Hawking, dude. That was awesome, I held the door for him! I told him I loved his books, too."

I was floored. I have a respect for physics (but not the capacity for it) and I had read his books before - he was my favorite besides Feynman for making the hard stuff sound simple. And I had just walked right past him without saying a word!

Mike later decided the most productive thing he had ever done in his life was hold the door for a man as productive as Dr. Hawking. I kicked myself for missing an opportunity to thank a man who has given mankind new insight into our universe as we (vaguely) know it. And both of us agreed that next time we bump into the prestigious astrophysicist, we would compliment him on his madd MC skillz.