13 XI 2002 - 23:16 - quotidianus25

Second-species counterpoint is hurting my head and I really should be in bed despite that it's about an hour earlier than I've been getting to bed all week and I still can't speak Chinese properly because I can't distinguish a couple of sounds. I have however very little difficulty being understood despite my inability to transcribe things in Pinyin and to recall tones from thin air (second and third give me the most trouble).

I am talking suddenly to a flood of people and I hope they enjoy talking to me as much as I enjoy talking to them. I am not used to this society thing and I am afraid of missteps although such are inevitable as far as any social interaction is concerned. I have not been updating because I am working on an Alchera project that involves playing Scrabble with myself and incorporating the resulting words into a freeform piece. My words:

van, emit, jodhpurs, goo, yaw, tax, lark, die, roiled, nones, rim, bed, slit, wanton, pie, beg, vied, neap, lug, joy, rut, ox, weld, queer, harem, fin, trains, figs, easel, ire, die, ice, noon, roc, it.

I suspect this may take a while, although the possibilities for porn are laughably many. Even more if I decide that bestiality is no longer taboo.

Don't worry; my respect for a modicum of propriety is enough to restrain me. That and the knowledge that if I spend my time something suitably wicked I will be punished for it with a history class that is even more boring than usual. God doesn't always work that way, but life sure seems to.

The closer I get to a number of entries ending in '-00,' the slower new entries come, although that could also be said of entry numbers ending in '-50.' I'm just not cut out to update multiple places (three, now), which makes one sort of wonder why I have them if I can't keep track of them. I'm not entirely sure myself. Still...

I think what I enjoy right now is going and putting on a Brahms symphony. I do this with the phonograph in my head and the sound is tinny but it is divine as I walk through the halls. Occasionally it turns into a CD player and skips in such a way that something plays on endless loop, which can be somewhat annoying. Today it was the 5/4 waltz from Tchaik 6 -- nice enough, but I don't actually know the full melody, so I was stuck with the cello opening. Aargh. Most of the time, however, the arrangement works quite well, and I have the sort of company that I usually lack as I walk down the halls. It's sort of self-perpetuating: I don't have people to talk to as I walk, so I start talking to myself or humming a full melody. If it's orchestral, I will pick out bits and pieces. People see me humming or talking to myself at a reasonable volume and think, "Hmm. Maybe I should stay away." Also, they've got better things to do. So, fewer people to talk to, and more humming. This has worked out quite well for me so far.

There was a break in the water pipe from the city reservoir over the weekend and a hundred-foot geyser was created. They fixed it, but the gate that shuts off the water got stuck so water flow was reduced by half over the weekend. They just got the gate back up so rationing isn't going to be a problem, it looks like, but really, this does not inspire confidence in the ability of the system to survive a major earthquake.

So many improvements that need to be made... BART. War Veterans Memorial Building. Hetch Hetchy water system. Unreinforced masonry buildings downtown. Schools. Freeways. Why can't we get anything done?

I'm off to bed right now. Maybe I'll wake up and be more stable.

note: I remember when my Latin titles actually were relevant. Now I sort of pick and choose according to mood, which is why I seem to have been reduced to: verba words, poems or Alchera submissions; quotidianus daily; trivialis unimportant; brevis short. The last three have almost no distinctions and... well, does that need to change? is I suppose what I'm asking.