Too Early

Sunday, February 17, 2008. 0514 EST. Apartment in Virginia. Dark, cold.

I can either go to sleep and automatically wake up in a couple of hours or stay up. Haven't decided yet, but boy do I hate my circadian rhythms.

***

An ice storm travailed through Virginia, coating everything in a cold-shiny rind. This happened to also shut down the Mixing Bowl for seven hours (the intersection between Interstates 95, 395 and 495). It made my personal travels hell. At a slight dip in the road, two cars had spun out at least 180 degrees, as both were facing me. Another car spun out towards the median and ended up backwards. A fourth car tripped right into the grassy median, speckled with snow and ice. I slowed down to about five miles per hour and made it through straight. The sports utility vehicle behind me also spun out onto the median. Behind that, the sedan dropped to five miles an hour. Since I was just half a mile from my apartment, I went five miles per hour for the rest of the trip. Not a single car attempted to pass me.

***

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Heaven only knows. Dick's famous story served as the basis for Blade Runner, a movie I have yet to see. It's not bad, but not great, this story. His prose is fairly utilitarian, doesn't detract, but doesn't really add to the story either. The dialogue is clunky at times, with a lot of repetition being more annoying than emphatic. His ideas are unique, especially for the time, and the theme of artifice versus realism really strikes at you from several angles, especially with the empathy boxes and dialing up emotions that, though the humans feel, are nothing more than a fake. Meanwhile, the androids that cannot use these empathy boxes actually show some emotion (and some sociopathic behavior). Raises a lot of questions about what really is human. There were a couple of plot points that, at first, seemed to raise the question about whether Deckard, the android bounty hunter, was himself an android. Upon second thought, they were just absurd plot points, and even within the context of the story, unbelievable. Would probably not read again.

***

If this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw4Bhmm22xo is correct… Go watch it. It's plausible and compelling, though the sample size is admittedly tiny. We're inundated with the current state of matters, but if we had more samples from ten years ago, and all were of similar quality as that displayed in the video, well.

***

One of the side effects of being in Law School was that it shot my professional self-confidence all to hell. I stopped caring, and my work suffered. I probably could've cared, and it wouldn't have made a difference, I don't think. It was never the right fit.

I got a couple of compliments on my work at work, and didn't know how to take it. It's been a long time since I felt competent in a work setting. I did feel that way occasionally at L.M., but how hard is it to take notes, something I've been doing for ever and ever?

***

I have to read this article http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html once every few weeks to keep myself grounded and remind myself that some misery is good.