Songs without Words

Aah~~ that was really wonderful.  I was rushing over there, glancing at my watch every other second thinking, “Oh, my God!  I’m going to be late!”  And when I saw you there, dressed elegantly in black, I thought for a moment that I had made you wait (aaahhh, unforgiveable), but fortunately you had just gotten there .. or at least that’s what you said (to make me feel better?) ^_^.

I’m glad we got that little corner to ourselves.  Haha, the waiter interrupted me a few times when I was admiring your beauty =P, but he was a nice fellow (is it strange that kind waiters/waitresses seem to somehow put me in a happy mood automatically?).  My dish was quantity and quality .. I’d become wary of late about these “chef” items – even the airplanes claimed to have “chef-prepared” meals.  But now this salmon .. mmm-mmm-mmm!
Thank you for letting me take you out for an evening – it was the greatest pleasure I could have.  It just felt so right all the way through – I even sang for you without hesitation (that’s a rarity .. I usually get all self-conscious and stuff).  And of course, drawing and doodling away~~ such a pleasure, always, to see your expressive, suggestive, exotic doodles.  Such wonderful shapes, not formed but hinted at, jagged up close but flowing from afar, just so beautiful.

I love you +++

Hrm, it’d be ironic if this post were indexed by Google … .  In any case, I had not known about Google Trends, a search term-tracking site that also tries to pinpoint possible explanations for traffic peaks.  Slashdot had an article about how Yahoo has ironically eclipsed sex in popularity.  Anyway, so I decided to try this out myself, and I queried “MIT.”

The trends looked normal; there were some identifiable peaks.  Then I looked at the highest-volume cities and they were Halle, Giessen, Beyreuth, Kassel, etc. … all cities in Germany.  I was like, “Why would people in Germany like to search for MIT?”  But a list of countries confirmed my suspicions: people weren’t searching for MIT .. they were searching for the hugely common German word “mit.”

More updates pending .. I just looked at potato and there is a bizarre peak at the end of 2005 …

Apparently, some scientists are claiming to have created substances with an effective negative index of refraction.  Same old laws of refraction, but a whole lot more possibilities.  Since there is a secondary medium and a non-heterogeneous substance, I guess it’s debatable whether it’s really “refraction” in the traditional sense, but if a photon comes in and comes out, who cares what happens inside?  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445346a.html

If ozonolysis is the breakage of bonds using ozone,
and electrolysis is the breakage of bonds using electricity,
and chemolysis is the breakage of molecules using chemicals …
then what does that make analysis?

I am here in the library, sitting, existing.  Every fifteen minutes, I slide a foot to the left.  The sun’s swath of blinding warmth traces a fuzzy arc across the wooden panels of the table as I seek the shadows to the side.

* * *

Today, I met a man in the Building 16 elevator whom I had helped a few months ago when his apartment out a ways from Boston proper caught fire.  It was a late-night call with the Red Cross’s Disaster Action Team.  He had mentioned before, while we were just chatting in the Red Cross truck, that he was a construction worker recently laid off, and that he had done the ductwork for a lab at MIT before, but I didn’t expect to actually see him on campus.  He couldn’t remember me, but he had a very distinct face (this time he was wearing a sort of solid-colored bandanna that obscured part of his head, but his powerful face and chummy voice were a dead giveaway).  He talked a little about the weather with me after I greeted him, and then we parted ways.

* * *

I’ve been putting this off for awhile, but I’m going to write a serious entry about the recent disturbing controversy regarding the tenure case of a rather well-known professor, at least within the BE department.  I think that everyone on the BE lists has been getting these e-mails, and there was an article on it in the Tech awhile back.  Because of the proximity of the case to my own lab, conceptually and physically, I must put this entry behind a password.  Same one as before; sorry for the inconvenience.

15~20 mins. Too lazy to draw glasses.

The vast majority of anime theme songs (ops/ends/insert songs) are cheap imitations of one another and only good for a few listens (hence why they have to switch them out so often). But a few of them stand out from the crowd – songs I can listen to over and over again. Here are my personal favorites~

Futakoi Alternative ED: Bokura no Jikan by Eufonius. A quiet, breathy song with a lovely acoustic guitar + strings intro that always touched me at the ends of the episodes. Eufonius has a cute voice, but not in that shrill, helium-infused way (at least, not in this song).

DNAngel Insert: Michishirube by Shunichi Miyamoto. This was the song that played at the denouement with all the snow. It’s a really heartwarming song, and I really love this guy’s voice. His vibrato is very mesmerizing (to me, anyway). There are lots of songs called Michishirube, but this is my favorite one =).

Ghost in the Shell: ALL of the Kimiko Itoh songs. Kimiko Itoh is a crazy amazing jazz singer, and her versions of really old songs is haunting and beautiful. If you’re sick of bubblegum pop anime songs, you need to listen to some of this. It’s so thick, meaningful, heartwrenching.

Saikano ~Another Love Song~ OP: Mayonaka no Niji by Akira Asakura. Saikano manages to fuse apocalypse and cold, futuristic war with gorgeous melodies like this that remind you that even in the shell of bleak landscapes, there’s still a human heart burning inside.

Wind ~A Breath of Heart~ 2 OP: Dream by Megumi Hasegawa. Okay, so I’m biased – the violin line in the interludes won me over for this one =). It’s a cute song with a very good overall construction, and harmonically a lot better than a lot of the competition.

Nana Movie Insert: Endless Story by Yuna Ito. This complete overhaul of a cover (original song: “If I’m not in love with you”) brings J-pop and American pop traditions together. It’s a really gorgeous rendition and powerful.

Fullmetal Alchemist OP #2 (I think?): Ready, Steady, Go by L’Arc~en~ciel. Haha! This one is pretty classic, I think. I liked Melissa by Porno Graffiti, too, .. actually, I liked all the opening songs for FMA. But this song was so catchy .. you have to admit it ..

These past few days (nights? that sounds misleadingly risque’ ..) together have been really wonderful. Even while I look back upon them with a hint of guilt for making both of us tired little meows at work, I can’t say I regret it at all .. sorry =P. It’s been so wonderful, bouncing ideas around, hearing your take on things. In a way it’s tickling a lonely part of me that has always wanted to be in the company of someone else. I feel content in a way, and also longing as well, since I want it to always be like this, just meowing around like it’s our world to poke.

1.

I found this CNN Money article to be absolutely hilarious and dreadfully depressing at the same time.  http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0701/gallery.101dumbest_2007/index.html.  The Fiji water one in particular is like an urban legend – but it’s true (purportedly).  Aww, and the Guy mix-up one was pretty cute.  Anyway, haha!  I can’t believe I missed so many of these stories when they first came out.

2.

Hrm, I’m not sure if my 3D stuff is interesting or not to you guys, but in any case, I’m having fun with it.  I rendered out 8 seconds of the animation and you have the choice of a big fat .swf or a big fat .avi (DivX codec) file.  Pick your poison.  Please right-click and download.

If you dislike the black background because I screwed up the lighting for the title, you can watch it with a white background simply by watching through an html embed.  Just download and throw this guy into the same folder as the .swf file (not the .avi …).

3.

I’m going to post something that’s not particularly private later, but for reasons you probably wouldn’t expect, I am going to mark it as password-protected.  The password will be the name of my imaginary world, spelled in its original way and properly capitalized (not the phoneticized way, which is Katliya); if you don’t remember how to spell it, it’s a category to the right.  Then, add on the first three digits of the irrational number that I associate with my girlfriend.  It’s the one that is most closely tied with a piece of a dead tree you might find in an virgin forest.