Today’s Thunk Posts

Story Problem

Do not ask me to do math.
It is temptation to revoke my license as an Asian American.
I am incapable of measuring volume related to fridge space for my leftovers
Or calculating tip and dividing dinner by the company minus one for the honored guest.

And story problems, in this day and age, terrify me.

This is math. Not a liberal leftist kind of criticism. Just math.
Nothing more than the type of problem that you thought you stopped dealing with in the 10th grade after the SATs.

While en route home today, I asked myself to consider the following story problem.

If one were to buy in to the whole blood for oil mantra common to Berkeley, would one be able to calculate the amount of blood spilled per gallon of gasoline. I know, Nothing is that cut & dry and simple. I was just just curious. Purely speculative. Really.

The average adult has 5 quarts of blood.
929 Coalition deaths since March 2003
Countless civilians. We’ll scrub those out of this equation.

Thats 4645 Quarts to date. And 4 Quarts per gallon.
Or 1161 gallons to date.

But that’s not the number we’re looking for.

Calculate in the average # of deaths/month.
929/15 months = ~62 dead /month

Times 12 for the year = 756 anticipated dead in 2004.
Let’s, for the sake of simplicity and my poor head, assume that the average remains flat and doesn’t rise.

That’s 3780 Quarts of blood
Or 945 gallons of blood for 2004.

Crude oil prices $39.88 per barrel.
1 Barrel of oil = 42 gallons –> ~ 20 gallons of gasoline.
An H2 has a 32 gallon tank. And ~ 9-14 Miles per gallon.

AAA says that the average cost in $$ per mile driven = $0.56/mile so far.

And the US consumes 180 Million barrels of oil per year.
7,560,000,000 gallons of oil per year.
3,600,000,000 gallons of gasoline per year.

So, 945 gallons of blood to 3,600,000,000 gallons of gasoline per year.

Thats 0.0000002625 gallons of blood per gallon of gasoline.
1 US gallon = 128 US fluid ounce

That’s 0.0000336 ounces of blood per gallon of gas.

That’s 0.000993671 Milliliters of blood per gallon of gas.

I’m sure there was an easier way to figure that out. But again, I’m bad at math.

For liquid measures:-
20 drops = 1 millilitre ( ml )

Or…
0.019 drops of blood per gallon.

I have a 11 gallon tank of gas. A cost efficent vehicle that gets about 30 miles per gallon.

That’s 0.39 drops of blood per tank of gas.

Or … 0.002 drops of blood per mile.

See… I knew I made a mistake.

That’s… 0.209 drops of blood per tank of gas.

…

I think I want to stop now.

My math may be off… I don’t doubt that.
It’s perfectly likely that I’ve failed to carry a zero somewhere … but I carry the guilt.

I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.

- Dorothy Parker

“Vegetarian Day”

You’d think it means the conscientious choice to avoid meat products. Cruelty, hormones, political touchy feely hippy crunchy vibes. Etc.

What it really means?
Being too busy or too lazy to get a real lunch and noshing on kettle chips all day.

Choose your Poison

a) Van Helsing after this review?

b) The Twins Effect and this review.

At least I got to see two other good flicks this weekend. (Hey! With cool lady heroines who kick ass!)

Tripletts of Belleville

And

So Close

Damn.

I feel both exhausted and frustrated with toeing the chasm of madness again.
I want to use a very thin needle to pierce my skull to let the demons squeal out. I wonder if Van Gogh felt this way. Just a little bit? Someone must have slipped me a dose of confusionbacktrackingbadmojowackainsecurelamefeelinghood in my coffee. No worries, my ears are too cute and good at being nibbled at to be in any sort of harms way.

Maybe I shouldn’t have had that scotch last night.

Scotch is *never* a bad idea.

I am mature.
I tell myself this on a regular basis.
As I breathe.
As I shake my fist at the skys and self mockingly shout out “Serenity now!”

Things that are outside of my control, don’t need to be in my control.
I tell myself this. Most days I might even believe it.

I.Am.Ok.
I am capable of seeing the big picture.
I don’t need to give someone the ability to steal my sunshine, ruin my day, or hurt me. I don’t owe you or anyone else — anything.

Oh, but then there are those moments.

Those moments where the guard drops
before you notice it
and someone
someone ever so small
someone ever so taut and poisonous
has been cautiously … waiting.

Waiting for an opportunity to pierce you at the heel.
Waiting for you to nap, so that they could cut off your lovely locks.
Waiting for you to drink too much so that they can slit your sweet throat.

Today has felt like one of those days.

My friend H. is a bruise pusher. She’s not the reason behind this post. Far far far far from it. She, I love. She’s great. But she likes to push bruises. It’s a friendly kind of schaedenfreude teasing pal like kind of thing.

But bruise pushing. Now, that’s an interesting concept. The notion of someone seeing your visible wound and choosing to taunt you for your weakness. Leveraging that kind of frailty for some sort of twisted delight. Baiting you for a response that causes you to recoil and devolve from a position of progress where you thought you were at.

Today, I’ve felt much bruise pushing.

Officially 30 and still a pouty brat.

This is going to be a very good year. 2004 has been good to me so far.

Happy Birthday me.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Poets die young — younger than novelists, playwrights and other writers, a U.S. researcher said Wednesday.

“The fact that a Sylvia Plath … may die young does not necessarily mean an Introduction to Poetry class should carry a warning that poems may be hazardous to one’s health,” he said.

I read lots of blogs.
And by lots, I mean way more than I should.

And I’ve been reading them for years, some sites up to 6 years now, when they were carefully or haphazardly coded by hand or with something clumsy like geocities and homestead. From this I have gotten a better sense of the folks that I’ve read, who they are, their history, and their occasional mood swings.

Reading things like this is.. not unlike building a friendship over years. The day to day is seamless and transparent. Slowly and cheerfully glowy. Reading through new blogs and digesting thier archives over 3 days + or so is somehow…not nearly as satisfying.

Recently I stopped by the site of someone I used to know and haven’t spoken to in nearly a year or so. The design of her blog is the same. Same Url. Same taglines.

Her blog is quite different now. Sanitized. All those entries that were brilliant and fucked up, earnest and wacky, deplorable and dejected, they are all gone. It’s sanitized to the briefest of technical/professional posts. It’s become a compartmentalization of her life.

I don’t fault her, certainly, we all have our reasons for putting what we do online, personal and professional. I concede that I’m far more censored with what I divulge online than I used to 4 years past when I first started. But it’s still a little weird. I akin my psychological reaction to this type of editing with getting a tattoo removed.

Now it’s a little different when folks pull down and relaunch a blog. That sort of reinvention doesn’t phase me nearly as much. It’s this…autobiographical and self archeological type of editing that I’m … oddly uneasy by.

I still can’t put my finger on it.

My Orkut Fortune.

Today’s fortune:
You have an important new business development shaping up …in bed.

This bodes well.

Of course, that term taken literally is really a particular preference of certain Germans, from what I’m told.

If I hear one more gawddamn wedding/engagement announcement this week I’m going to puke.

a) This blogger chick I know (V. Cool, eh)
b) This guy I almost could have dated. (Oh, I once wrote a bad poem about him)
c) This other guy I almost could have dated from college. (We actually had lengthy discussions about porn and he’d call me up to ask if I’d cook him a steak)
d) This other guy I almost would have/shoudl have dated.

Mother.Fucker.

Considering that I have recently re-embraced singlehood (because I’m a coward and selfish and know too well my capacity for insensitive cruelty and ergo broke up with my most recent shmoo) I’m … feeling… oh wait.

I did this rant last year, didn’t I?

And the year before?

And the year before that?

And oh yeah…that one time before that.

Never mind. I’m fine. It’s like I’m sampling my own life for this year’s p-diddy remix.

Oy.

This morning I got cut off on the freeway by a short bus.

A SHORT BUS.

*sigh*

Just one of those days.

I am sorry that I’m not strong enough to be the person worthy of your goodness. And that with clumsy little fingers, I cannot help but mishandle your kindness. I am weak and brittle, and oft times full of shame. I’m sorry I’m like this. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be more to you.

Indulgences on occasion are quite good for you.
They are opportunities to remind oneself that one is absolutely worthy of marvelous experiences.

Good pleasures, good friends, good times.

Wine, Outstanding eats, Games, Laughter, Excellent Company, Red Dresses, Scotch, Manicures, Pedicures, Sleeping in, Music, Performances, Shopping, Fried Chicken & Waffles, etc.

My darling friend R. was in town. We shared secrets and giggled, laughed and delighted in all that is good in our friendship and our lives. She was my hot V-day date.

I could tell you all about the luscious details, but then you might be jealous.

For whatever reason, King Missile is now in my latest 80s retro obsessions.

Wendy (rawr) and I were catching up tonight and we were reminiscing about this. Sadly, no google search as yet has been able to produce the lyrics for Gay/Not Gay.

TRAGEDY!

In other news. The boy I shmoo has challenges remembering his dreams.
What the dealy with that? At least he’s trying now, and when we talked earlier today, he shared a reasonable facsimile of a dream in the tale telling. V. sweet.
Tremendously so.

So, back to King Missile: How To Remember Your Dreams

In order to remember your dreams,
You must think of them as if they were little kittens
When you wake up in the morning
Before you get out of bed
Sit up and say
“Here, kitty kitty, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty
Here, kitty kitty, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty
Here, kitty kitty, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty
Here, kitty kitty, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty
Here, kitty kitty, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty ”

When the kitty gets the cream, the dream is remembered

Now that, kittens, is fucking genius.