Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in Human's LiveJournal:

Monday, December 8th, 2003
4:13 pm	weird sudden entry I haven't posted in a zillion months, but suddenly here I am, doing it. I'm about to go see a Special Advanced Press Screening of LOTR! Mwah mwah mwah. I'm so excited that I can't do any work. To distract myself, I'm trying to write a pitch letter to some editor at some magazine who will probably ignore me. I'm also reading Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow," which is the fifth alien contact novel I've read in as many weeks. My friend Scott, who is not on LJ and wouldn't write under the name Scott anyway, told me the other night that he'd been reading obscure British police procedural novels from the 1960s "by real policemen." I think the problem with science fiction is that you can never play the authenticity card -- "This novel is by a person who has had REAL contact with aliens." Nevertheless, all my favorite SF novels are about aliens. When I was in high school, I learned about sex from reading Rudy Rucker's "The Sex Sphere" (alien invasion by creatures made out of sexual organs -- you gotta read it). In fact, I interviewed Rudy once and explained the pedagogical role his fiction had played in my life, which I believe he found funny and sort of scary. Another big alien sex-ed book? John Varley's Gaia series, especially "Wizard." He invents a species that is pretty much designed to have group sex, which is always nice. Speaking of SF and sex, I'll be in Boston for Arisia from roughly Jan. 15-Jan. 20. Can't wait to visit the land of snow, good Italian food and orgasmic ice cream. Current Mood: bouncy Current Music: Gary Numan (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 27th, 2002
10:53 pm	fucking great movie I just saw The Gangs of New York and it ROCKED! I had read about the anti-conscription riots during the Civil War in New York, but there's nothing like seeing history played in full, blood-and-fire-drenched Martin Scorcese style to make it come alive. Also, this flick shows how the police force in NY grew out of gangs -- quite literally, certain gangs became various police groups. A similar thing happened in San Francisco, where roving militias called "vigilance committees" became the, erm, peacekeepers of the city by doing nice things like killing Chinese people and prostitutes. Urban history really ought be related by directors like the ultra-violent Scorcese. But I yearn for a movie about 19th century San Francisco now . . . just think how cinematic the great gunpowder race down Market St. would be! Current Mood: impressed Current Music: soundtrack to Candy Von Dewd (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 31st, 2002
9:43 pm	true geek bliss I met a real, live cyborg tonight. He's going to help me build a sex machine. Life is so great sometimes. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 29th, 2002
5:37 pm	suspects This is my love letter to a whole community of freaks and geeks I've met here in Boston. You know who you are . . . http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14407 7 Current Mood: hyper Current Music: Shellac -- Terraform (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 21st, 2002
9:47 pm	the proverbial gorgeous day "the beauty of autumn in New England," they say but by this do they mean just the leaves? the smell in the air? no one mentions the most important parts: how light (in and out behind clouds) intermittently braids itself into the dark curls of his hair an d how as he walks the canvas edges of his jacket flap backward around his moving thighs even his body is lost in thought Current Mood: floopy Current Music: Rushmore soundtrack (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 16th, 2002
4:35 pm	I keep blowing up buildings Last night I dreamed I kept blowing up the library on some random college campus. I just couldn't stop myself. It was so fun to watch the building blow up from a distance, even though I felt terrible that people were dying inside. "I've become some kind of serial killer," I mumbled to myself. "Nobody will be surprised." Meanwhile, in real life, my mom is still in critical condition in the Intensive Cardiac Care unit at UCSF. She's sedated all the time because the docs have her sternum broken open for quick access. If she's dreaming about blowing up libraries, she can do it a thousand times over and never wake up to discover that she's not a serial killer, just a retired English teacher. Her heart isn't beating. Instead, a machine is pumping her blood for her. Fat tubes full of dark red fluid stick out from under the covers on her bed and connect to this large newspaper-rack-sized box that substitutes the sound of a piston for a heartbeat. Her endocrine system is regulated by a half-dozen digitally-controlled drips; her lungs are controlled by a ventilator. Her body is nested in tubes, wires, IV hookups. The cardiac specialists say her heart may "bounce back" after a rest. Otherwise she'll need a heart transplant. "If only we could look at what her DNA was doing, we'd be able to predict the outcome," one of the transplant geeks told me. "We'd throw her DNA onto an array, check the transcriptions, and see if she was repairing herself." I keep feeling like I'm researching some biotech story instead of listening to people talk about my mom. When I can pull myself back from the facts, look at her instead of my mental image of her DNA or her fibrotic right ventricle, I remember what's going on. And then I think the same thoughts humans have for millenia. Current Mood: drained Current Music: crappy worldbeat stuff in this wireless cafe (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 8th, 2002
2:15 pm	kinda sick Today's gripping information: I'm still feeling a little sick. Tragically, I felt so crappy last night that I had to postpone a bookstore date with this insanely cute boy I met recently. You know you're feeling gross when cute boys in bookstores can't even lure you out. My cat is actually standing on her tail right now, which I must admit is ridiculously cuddly of her. But I know the evil that lurks inside that furry head: what she really wants to do is curl up inside my pile of clean laundry. As you can see, I'm truly exercising my prodigious mental powers today, tracking my cat's thoughts. I promise to be more entertaining tomorrow. Really, I do.† (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 6th, 2002
1:59 pm	lost weekend Even though I'm on this fellowship where I'm not supposed to be working -- just relaxing and learning -- I still feel lots of work stress. I'm trying to write two book proposals (almost done with one), two articles, and my weekly column. Plus, I want to keep up with the classes I'm taking at MIT, as well as going to see as many interesting lectures as possible. Maybe I'm just lazy and not career-hungry anymore, because all I really want to do is take a long walk through the woods. I mean, here I am in New England, and I haven't even seen real woods yet. I keep saying I'll take a weekend and drive up the coast or go to Vermont or something. But nooooooo. I have to work. Even though I'm not working. Alright, enough complaining. I've had a good weekend -- went to see The Tuxedo yesterday (Jackie Chan gets funky!) and then went with Cthulia and Charliegrrrl to Drag Karaoke at Hollywood in Boston. And Jesse was able to get Firefly off of eDonkey in record time, so I'll get my Joss Whedon fix tonight. Yay. OK, back to work . . . must write about why cameras are sexual machines. Current Mood: lazy Current Music: Ghost World soundtrack (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 5th, 2002
11:24 am	I need coffee and an english muffin The problem is that we ran out of english muffins. So here I am, with coffee and peanut butter, with no items on which to spread said peanut butter and no items on which to munch with said coffee. Current Mood: uncaffienated Current Music: Thomas Dolby -- Screen Kiss (Comment on this)
Friday, October 4th, 2002
3:12 pm	sexy brains I've been reading a lot about experiments people have done on the pleasure centers of the brain. In the 50s, a doctor named Heath located the "septal area," a pleasure center located in the hypothalamus. He also managed to isolate a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that gets absorbed in the septal region, with pleasurable results. He and his buddies thought it would be a great idea to cut some chick's head open and funnel some acetylcholine to her pleasure center. She experienced a half-hour orgasm, with intense brain activity to match. No word on what happened to her afterwards. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 3rd, 2002
11:35 pm	paper airplanes and opera Just got back from the IgNobel awards, where the weirdest science research of the year is recognized and many awards and silly speeches ensue. Among the IgNobel winners: a guy who studied the ways ostriches attempt to mate with humans, and a couple of people who discovered that inappropriately highlighted books interfere with reading comprehension. Best speech -- A neuroscientist who summed up her field by saying, "The human mind cannot understand itself yet." Best thing -- Watching audience members launch paper airplanes onto the stage for an hour and a half. Most anticipated post-awards thing -- Watching Tuesday's episode of Buffy on tape with my sweetie, Charliegrrrl. Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: The Cars -- Good Times Roll (Comment on this)
2:19 pm	science fiction pr0n!!!! The cool cover story I wrote about science fiction porn was posted on AVNonline. It probably looks better in the print mag, so go buy one! Check it out at: http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200210/features/feat_1002_01.shtml Current Mood: zippy Current Music: Adam and the Ants (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:34 pm	oooh nifty live journal wingdings OK, in my quest for the Total LJ Experience, I'm experimenting with having a mood and some music. Very exciting.. Current Mood: dorky Current Music: Marilyn Manson -- Mechanical Animals (Comment on this)
11:33 am	I need a brain implant I just got interviewed about so-called hacker culture by a reporter from the Providence Journal (Charliegrrrl called it "ProJo") . . . realized afterwards that I'd gotten one little factoid wrong about the kid who hacked Yahoo a couple of years ago. Being a pundit is so stressful. I always hate it when I read somebody saying something wrong in print! Of course, I'm not sure I'm really a pundit if I get quoted in ProJo. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:34 am	this is only a test I've been hearing about this LJ thing from everyone, and have decided to assimilate. Weather report: crappy, muggy Cambridge late-summer, requiring lots of water and ice cream. Today's neurotic thought: I think I was smarter two months ago. Moment 'o affirmation: In the dorms at MIT, turbo-geniuses whose minds will shape our future are scoring low on the purity test. Questions that need answering: 1. What exactly is the definition of "energy"? 2. Why aren't there more puns in computer languages? 3. Are work stations sexier than laptops? 4. Why do I have three empty coffee cups on my desk, and who left them there? 5. What does "transkaryotic" mean? XOX Annalee (4 Comments |Comment on this)