Kelkaj Okazaĵoj

There are lots of reasons for which people envy fictional characters. Some do so for beauty, some for wealth, some for character. We want things in others that we ourselves lack. I've had a childhood fulfilled with respect to love, friendship, and material wealth. The one thing I haven't had is adventure, real bracing adventure. I'd want to be Lyra Belacqua, heroine of the His Dark Materials series.

Man, what a life she leads! First of all, every person in her universe gets a daemon, an embodiment of the soul in animal form. This would bare everyone's souls' true characters for all to see, which might be good or bad, but certainly interesting. Second, she travels to the Arctic to battle evil! With bears! And she gets a machine that doesn't lie to her! And that's just the beginning. Lyra elicits varied emotions from us during her adventures, including pity, anger, and joy. But her great story is one that any child with a dull past would want to live.

Yeah, instead of that, I'm going to do some limericks, based on Rubber Soul. I'm using the UK release's track order, because that's what I've got.

• "Drive My Car":
  I brought a girl back to my hizzy
  Just one look in her eyes makes me dizzy!
  She proclaims, "I want fame!"
  My reply: "I the same,
  But while we both wait, let's get busy."


• "Norwegian Wood":
  At a lady's apartment I struck
  Several matches, and cursed last night's luck.
  Then I did what I could
  For my petrified wood
  So I thanked Miss Unwilling-to-Fuck.

I might post more later.

[one] have you ever been asked out?
Yes, but I'm pretty sure/hoping it was a joke.

[two] where is your default [Facebook] picture taken?
The HUB a year ago at Dickinson.

[three] what's your middle name?
Kyucheol

[four] your current relationship status?
Single

[five] does your crush like you back?
I don't know if I have any.

[six]what is your current mood?
Tired but happy.

[seven] what color of underwear are you wearing?
Black and white.

[eight] what color shirt are you wearing?
Blue.

the number [nine]: Is mighty fine!

[ten] if you could go back in time and change something, what would you?
I would go to more of RAMatt's activities. I don't like to regret things.

[eleven] if you must be an animal for one day, what?
A bird, any flying bird.

[twelve] ever had a near death experience?
No, not as far as I know.

[thirteen] something you do a lot?
I'm going to leave raepixy3's answer here - Talk. Sing. Clean my ears.

[fourteen] the song stuck in your head?
None, for now. I like to have Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" in there, though.

[fifteen] who did you copy and paste this from?
Rachel!

[sixteen] name someone with the same birthday as YOU?
My good old friend Alex from the Bronx.

[seventeen] when was the last time you cried?
A couple of months ago when I was describing CTY dances from my bed.

[eighteen] have you ever sung in front of a large audience?
Yes, most recently at a talent show.

[nineteen] if you could have one super power what would it be?
Flight.

[twenty] what's the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Face, probably followed by breasts. What can I say?

[twenty-one] what do you usually order from starbucks?
I don't order things from Starbucks.

[twenty-two] what's your biggest secret?
Hell, I don't even know if I have a great big secret.

[twenty-three] favorite color?
That steel-blue color. We were once discussing favorite colors in my chemistry class (that was a ridiculous, awesome class), and I said, in the customary fashion of the class, "What about steel blue? Give it up for steel blue!" and one guy said, "Yeah! I love that color!" Good times.

[twenty-four] do you still watch kiddie shows or tv shows?
No, I don't watch much television.

[twenty-six] what are you ???
A student, a friend, a liberal, a Korean-American.

[twenty-seven] do you speak any other language?
Passable French and Spanish, the former better, bad Esperanto, Latin, bad Korean.

[twenty-eight] what's your favorite smell?
Oh god...probably girls' hair. That's pretty creepy.

[twenty-nine] Describe your life in one word what it be?
Uncertain.

[thirty-one] have you ever kissed in the rain?
No, but probably in a car in the rain.

[thirty-two] what are you thinking about right now?
The hour, the fact that someone is staying up with me.

[thirty-three] what should you be doing?
Sleeping.

[thirty-four] who was the last person that made you upset/angry?
Probably my mother.

[thirty-five] how often do you talk to God?
Very rarely, when I forget myself.

[thirty-six] do you like working in the yard?
I don't like it, but it's not horrible.

[thirty-seven] if you could have any last name in the world, what would you want?
Probably "Manlius," the old ancient Roman family name.

[thirty-eight] do you act differently around the person you like?
I'm probably a little nicer, but not really.

[thirty-nine] what is your natural hair color?
Korean.

[forty] who was the last person to make you cry?
Myself, when describing the dances to Samantha.

Also posted on Facebook.

I returned from CTY about a week ago. Since then I have not been hit with the finality of it, for I will not return. Maybe it won't happen like I'm expecting; maybe I've already accepted it slowly, throughout the session. This seems likely. I toasted to finality at the last Passionfruit, using parts from something I had written originally before the first:

To cactus juice and the goddess (here I gestured down to my right, at Freddie the Poetry Goddess); to our struggle against the two-headed beast of time and death which we fought every day, which was and will be fought for decades before and after; to my Cult and my true friends, who know who they are; and to the immortality of CTY in each of us, due to the poverty of the converse, for everyone's fame one day fades. I love CTY and I love the Passionfruit.

I was feeling lonely for a couple of days during the second week, doubting the love of some of my friends; now, with us dispersed, I think I know what's going on, and I feel more at peace about such things. I thank you, my comrades. I would be a different person without you.

No, there will be no more Passionfruits, dances, meet markets singing around the table, there will be none of that for me. But there are other wonderful friends hiding somewhere across the world, whom I will have the pleasure to meet one day. Goodbye, Carlisle, for what I gather will be forever, and goodbye, CTY. I owe you so much.

First of all, in a spirit of self-invention, I have changed my page layout, title, subtitle, and subtly even my friends page title. I have a Plus Account now, because I started to covet those page layouts which require one. Even now I wish I had a Paid one to get what I think are the best of the lot.

Less than a week after my last exam of school, I have started lessons with a tutor to skip Latin 3 at my school and go straight to the poetry, and therefore get in AP Latin before I graduate. This teacher and I speak on GChat about various things, and she once called me a little chauvinist for corroborating her saying that her place is in the kitchen. She knows her stuff, and assigns me, with Caesar having been finished, Cicero (which she made me read out loud in public) and poems of Martial, which vary in dirtiness. Since this started about three weeks ago, I have also finished some good books.

CTY, which begins on July 20, now two days away, fills me with memories of joy. This will be my last three weeks of this, so I must make the most of it. Nothing will stop me from living each day to the fullest. This means I will concentrate doubly during class, except when it is too hot to do so. I will drink my time here, and I may never have my fill, but I will imbibe, even chug high summer's liquor without breath until the jug is pulled away from me. Nothing can stop me. I will write back home, but perhaps my lack of a girlfriend, for Samantha and I broke up by mutual consent soon after the end of finals, will affect how I enjoy these three weeks. Maybe I will get to know my friends. I cannot imagine that I have learned enough about the attendees to know how much there is to them.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 82.
3. Find the Seventh sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

Closest was the Glass Bead Game, which I recently finished. "The kind of person we want to develop, the kind of person we aim to become, would at any time be able to exchange his discipline or art for any other."

Second nearest book has a star chart; a bit further away (yes, ignoring the "not the coolest" rule) "It attributes all the meaning to the object (the word), rather than to the link between that object and the real world," from Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, referring to the relationship between something and its representation.

(Also posted as a note on my Facebook account.)

Here passes the 232nd American Independence Day and another day for me, spent translating Caesar and reading. My family of immigrants has never been the most patriotic; my brother is at camp, my mother worked, and my father is in Korea and probably forgot entirely about the holiday. Still, as a second-generation Korean-American who, though warned by Father that his views will change, considers himself above all a Westerner, 4 July does mean something to me.

The United States was built from the beginning on freedom for many, and I ought be grateful to live under the power of such a state. The laws of the United States are built to protect a man or woman's freedom in various forms, even if they don't do it as well as those of other countries. I do believe that American laws give too much power to corporations as bodies, for instance, but Locke, to whom we owe the basic design of our society, did list a right to property, and corporations are a natural outflow of a free-market society. They must therefore be protected, and the degree is a matter of taste or practicality.

As an opponent of religion, I am lucky to have my speech so protected, to a degree that it is not in other nations. Not only speech critical of the government but also offensive to the majority of the people is protected. Many other countries have no such protections, for example Canada. Here, George H. W. Bush can say that I don't deserve citizenship because I'm an atheist, and that's okay! Because I can say that his and all religion prevents him from being a real American (I don't actually think this). I think that this his beliefs make a pretty good reason not to support him as president, but I wouldn't lock him up or fine him. And neither would our legal system.

The United States was founded on the principles that from the will of the people comes the authority to rule. In 1776 the first, biggest test of self-determination in government ever at that point started. It based its its existence on Locke's Enlightenment principle of natural rights. Despite the reactions of the past several centuries to the Enlightenment, our nation has survived and expanded groups that it says deserves freedom.

Worldwide, the United States has often been the foremost guardian of liberty. The Czechoslovak constitution after World War I was based on the American one. In World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States cooperated to defeat fascist and Nazi totalitarianism. Afterward, the United States, though hated in much of the world, was loved for its pop culture in the Eastern Bloc, where against Soviet collectivist repression the American-style individualism of the era. Foreign policy decisions that contradict America's ideals lead to her decline on the world stage.

Today, though, our country, not helped at all by complacent non-activists like me, is becoming less free. A good deal of this is the doing of the current presidential administration and its disregard for the law. Much also has been outside the control of Bush and company, or came before him, that has contributed to this trend. There are as many explanations as manifestations of this decline. Less than half our voting-age citizens vote, our soldiers are copying Mao's and Stalin's interrogation techniques, and security measures cut down on our right to such things as free travel, speech, and press. We are backsliding into darkness, and our children will not be proud.

Reversing course will take strength and numbers. I don't know what a citizen like me, unable to vote, can do. There are so many fronts on which we fight this battle for America, and that is why I want suggestions from you who read this. I do love this country! Granted, I have not seen much of it. Traveling through the rural areas of Pennsylvania, I find that I probably have more in common with the average than with an Amish. But the Amish and I share a fate, and so do all Americans. How can I do my part?

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1 Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2 Italicize those you intend to read.
3 Underline the books you LOVE, and strikeout the books you read but didn't like.
4 I'm also putting stars next to the ones I read part of, but didn't finish...



Twenty out of one-hundred read.  Not too bad!

Those that have been guessed correctly will be crossed out - I need both title and artist.

1. Tonight! my unconventional conventionalists (spoken; laughter afterwards) - first line of song is "_ is hanging over my head" Stricken, even though no artist. I don't care.


2. We're in a _/ can't drive out the way we drove in


3. There's dancing behind movie scenes


4. Broken lives, broken strings, broken threads, broken strings


5. _ above your eyes your hair hangs


6. _/ Please believe me


7. Every step of the way we walk the line


8. Stake my future on a hell of a past


9. I've seen love go by my door


10. Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to _


11. Oh, dear, what can I do?


12. Whenever I want you around...


13. Ladies and gentlemen...I'm only going to talk to you for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you...I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world. And that is that... (not a song, obviously; just need the topic and speech-giver here)


14. Just let me hear some of that _


15. Shalalalalala x3; It's not the way you smile that touched my heart


16. See me coming to town with my soul


17. Since she's been gone I want no one to talk to me


18. _/ She might be in Tangier


19. L-O-V-E love, it's coming back, it's coming back


20. Desmond has a barrel in the marketplace


21. I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there


22. _ for my love, _ for my love love's going to leave me


23. It's been a _ and I've been working like a dog


24. When I come home baby and I've been working all night long


25. Well, I'm not much of a natural dancer

Jouissez.

From Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North

I want to avoid the situation described in the title text, that is, "i used to play this game in high school all the time. it has a good combination of 'rate how much you like your friends' with 'haha maybe i won't call up this person and they'll be like 'oh snap ryan never called me on the last day on earth' and i'll be all, 'HOW DO THOSE APPLES AGREE WITH YOU??'. high school, ladies and gentlemen".

So I won't be saying with whom I will be spending this day. But I would be out of the house for most of the time. But any scenario of spending time with people that I can think of would end up offending someone else. Not that it would matter.

I would give up hope of learning to play the guitar, of learning to write magnificently, of doing anything that requires concentrated, steady effort.

I would tell my family and friends how much I love them all.

Well! Five years ago I was ten years old, and I was in not in tenth grade but fifth. I had no friends in fifth grade, not until I met Karen and Ben. I therefore probably spent them playing video games and doing my homework.

Nothing! There's nothing good about being sick. There are some reasons, which are at least for a man in my situation irreproachable.

1. If it's on a weekend, you would be doing cool stuff, but no, you had to get sick. This has happened to me.


2. If it's on a weekday, I can't go to school, I can't see my friends, and I have to make up all the work.


3. Feeling sick sucks! And you might infect other people.


4. You can't play video games because your head will hurt.


5. You can't go on the Internet, because your head will hurt.


6. You leak bodily fluids everywhere.


7. People don't want to ask you to do anything with them, because they think you might infect them or you might become more sick because of the exertion.


8. I hate being sick

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.

Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.

Step 3: Check off the songs when someone guesses both artist (or show) and track correctly.

Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is cheating.

Step 5: If you like the game, post your own

I'm skipping the songs that are in other languages that I don't have lyrics for.

( Results )

( Who comments the most on this journal? )

( Who comments the most on this journal? )

1. Tell you why I friended you.


2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
   
3. Tell you something I like about you.


4. Tell you a memory I have of you.


5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.


6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.


7. In return, you must post this in your LJ--but only if you want to.

And another!

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In October I broke qwantz's X-Box (-12 points). Last Sunday I pulled over and changed emo_spongebob's flat tire (15 points). Last Friday I put money in hub_potato's expired parking meter (14 points). In July I pushed allie_the_neko in the mud (-17 points). In November I helped flamingmono see the light (8 points). Overall, I've been nice (8 points). For Christmas I deserve a Pony Slaystation 3! Sincerely, paulkimpaul

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

Man! This one time, I was completely lost on the Seoul subway system. I actually had to go above ground, look for a PC room, find the subway route, pay the fee, and go back underground.

I eventually arrived at my intended destination, though. It was Seodaemun Prison, which I discuss in http://paulkimpaul.livejournal.com/17341.html.

Today, having read several days ago that mp3s encoded by iTunes are of inferior quality and that the ones encoded by LAME (a different algorithm for encoding sound files) are of superior quality, I decided to perform a test. I downloaded a certain LAME-using program to rip the songs from Abbey Road, therefore, into an 128-mbps mp3, to hear the difference for myself. I listened to these songs in both the iTunes-ripped and LAME-ripped versions, and I thought I could hear a difference, but I did not know how much of this was attributable to the placebo effect.

I therefore devised an experiment to test whether the difference was a. actual and b. noticeable. Having been put into a single iTunes playlist (it could be that when these supposedly superior files are imported into iTunes, they are transformed once again; I doubt it, though), I put my cursor over the "shuffle" button, turned off the monitor, pressed the mouse button, and hit the spacebar to start the songs. I guessed which encoding method was used for each song, and wrote it down the results on a piece of paper.

Let's say that I was able to see a difference between the two algorithms. If I were right more than fifty percent of the time, regularly, then one could conclude that I can tell the difference. Even then would a convincing argument for my using the LAME encoder not necessarily exist. First of all, it would be a huge Hasselhoff to get all the CDs that I ripped and re-rip them. Second, I don't even know which I would prefer.

As it turns out, less than fifty percent of my guesses were right. This could show a couple of things:

1. My headphones suck.


2. My ears suck.


3. I can't tell the difference.


4. There is no difference.

I'm a bit hesitant about that last one, as there probably is a difference, but I failed at detecting it. But I did succeed at one thing: identifying a problem, hypothesizing an answer to the question, testing the hypothesis in a fair experiment, and finding the rectitude or incorrectness of my hypothesis. Science!