Well, that did it. Somehow, in the past 24 hours, I managed to crank out better than 3,000 words and hand in a whole bunch of papers and projects ON TIME. It feels really good to have something solid down on paper, it really does. Sure, probably half of those words were not in English, but in the gruesome computer language C... though I know that the robots will understand them. There are few pleasures greater in life, I think, than meeting deadlines.

Being able to profundicate on the fly about a topic that you know something about, that your audience knows little about and regarding which there is a plethora of information available, though... that's quite fun too. Today, that profundication was my short paper on the state of nuclear waste management. I haven't slept in a while, and I did absolutely no editing before finalizing it... so I'm pretty sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning, look at it, and recognize it as the pure, stupefyingly dull blather what it is. But I had a strangely good time writing it... and it's for a non-graded class. So it doesn't really matter.
Heh. Looking at it now, I can see some of the... unique liberties I took with
standard English grammar. Ah... cut, Rob. Cut cut cut cut cut.

If this is the first thing you've read here in a while, you might want to check the 'Old' section over there. I've written a little bit lately. Though you might not want to check it... it's kind of weird, and I remembered while thinking about things the other night that shouting one's feelings is never as effective a means of communication as is stretching out on a small, metal-frame bed; shifting ever so slightly as to settle one's arms and legs into the soft recesses of an ordinary-looking tan comforter as one's head rests on the metal bar between two stubby posts at the foot of the bed, and together with steel and jacket and shoes staring up at the ceiling for minutes, or maybe hours, awash with invisible waves of comfort that for a while is all that can possibly exist.

It's just the way we're wired, I guess.

On that note, if you can, you should go
here and listen to Billy Collins be... well... Billy Collins. It is Keillor infested, and I apologize for that to the appropriate parties, but if you're okay with that, it's Billy Collins, for crissake. Our poet laureate and last best hope. I had never heard him read his poetry before, and he has a fantastic monotone that... well, just go listen. Skip ahead to 3:45 or so in his first clip if you just want to fill your secret cow fetish or something.

Your BONUS MOVIE FILE for the day: Lily and Jim, by Don Hertzdeldt. It is the story of a boy and a girl who think they have given up on love. 32 MB on a reliable server linked to Internet2, and well worth the wait.

"Linking inhibitor neuron output to inputs can make the robot aware of rythmic pulses and rock.
"Dimmu borgir, witchery, napalm death do not use the very low power wfm (.5mw - 50mw) ***very dangerous.
--robot friend's notice.