The San Diego Zoo is sooooo cool. I really want to curl up with a panda bear. And oh my goodness are giraffes elegant and beautiful. We wandered around the zoo all day, staring at animals and then people like they were yet another species of animals to observe… only they were wearing American flag t-shirts and other preppy Southern California wears. It was quite a trip. Plus, we did sun salutations on the beach every night. Ahh… so good. Of course, San Diego was *weird*

My best friend came to town this weekend and conveniently reminded me how wonderful life is and should be treated. And then she gave me the quintessential opportunity for absurdity! Her grad school situation has been up in the air and she realized that she should go to San Diego to find out whether or not that would be the school for her. In the process, we realized that we could change her flight to a later date, hop in the rental car (since Pierre is still in face lift mode) and rush down to San Diego to see UCSD, the beach and the zoo. Not a bad life we lead, eh?

For some reason, situations are continuously drawing me to False Profit. What is that about? And why is it so tangled with other aspects of my life?

One of my friends (and colleagues) just had a paper accepted for a CHI short and he forwarded me one of the best comments i’ve read in a long time:

“Mister Boyd might prefer that you used caps in citing his thesis.”

Not only did they assume that he made one mistake on his citations, but they also assumed maleness. Ah, how i love CHI reviewers.

Oh my gosh… Driving a 17foot Uhaul + towing my car was not nearly as easy as i thought it should be. Oh my goodness goodness goodness. On Day 2, we watched a double tractor trailer wrap himself around a bridge as we were going under it. It was icy and terrifying. Gusts of winds would make us rock and my car fishtailing was a horrifying site. We only jackknifed once which convinced us never to back up at all. I couldn’t even bear the idea of driving – i was too terrified. Thankfully Aaron was an angel with strong arms and the ability to overcome his nerves as we were both wondering when the next accident on the road would be us (there were soooo many in the ice and snow). As luck would have it, things eased up once we arrived in Colorado. We hit a break in the snow in Wyoming and got through the Rockies with only some gusts of wind. Our breaks managed better than the smoking tractor trailers stopped on the roads and we even got through the Sisters without much of a wince. The Sierra Nevadas were done on a very warm day and voila, we arrived in San Francisco. My couches were a bit of a bitch to get up into my new apartment, but with the help of everyone, it was done. And now, settling…

I’m quite humored by this week’s Village Voice horoscope:

SAGITARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Happy Holy Daze, Sagittarius! I’ve been meditating on the perfect holiday gifts for you. What might inspire you to make best use of the astrological opportunities in the coming months? Here’s one idea: the entire costume collection of a defunct theater company. With your closet full of exotic and dramatic new choices, you could dress up in a variety of roles without becoming attached to any of them. And that, in my opinion, would be just what the soul doctor ordered for you to achieve prime psychological health during the Great Experiment that will unfold in 2003.

Ok.. that was odd. Last night, i went to see S.U.N. Project at the DNA and found myself needing to brace against one of the poles so as to not be a part of the first psytrance mosh pit i’ve ever witnessed. All the same, my bouncing took on a whole new form and i was quite amazed that my knees lasted until 5:30 (at which point they screamed murder and i limped home). Very weird i must say…

I think i’m going to apply to grad school. Berkeley. SIMS. Peter Lyman. For next year. Application due on Sunday. OMG.

I had lunch today with a rather interesting fellow… He runs an organization called “Students for Genital Integrity” at SFSU. Since i already knew a lot about Intersex Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Mutilation, we spent a lot of the time talking about the other area that they cover that i know very little about: the problems with circumsizing men (and the controversies around this topic). It was fascinating – he gave me an interesting history of the issue, it’s place in medical, social and religious texts and otherwise engaged me to think about something i hadn’t ever considered. SFIndyMedia.org has a nice little article on the topic.

I love how good places let me think… Today i’ve been trying to grapple with the overarching tendency to see the digital realm as a Panopticon. This troubles me because while the end results are awefully comparable, Bentham architected the Panopticon for a particular purpose. Conversely, the digital realm was not constructed with this purpose in mind; it has evolved. In its evolution, people are not cognizant of the observation and thus are not following the same type of obedience to authority noted by Bentham. Instead, people are developing their own prison under the false impression that they are building a castle (referring to the terrible movie “The Last Castle”). They think that they are providing information to help their lot, but instead they are building boxes that not only keep them in but compare them computationally to a societal norm and then treat them according to their distance from such. Anyhow, fresh thoughts… yummy thinking.. Yay for San Francisco!