A peek inside my head, according to the brain profiler test. I should mention that I reviewed the questions, and the highlighted answers didn't always correspond with my answers, so the results may be a bit skewed. I also took the test a second time and was even more left-brained while the visual numbers were above the auditory, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt. (link via kungfukitten)

Auditory : 52%
Visual : 47%
Left : 68%
Right : 31%


ribs, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your "centrist" tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.

Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.

Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.

The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimen- sionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you "intake it all" and store it for processing later.

Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.

Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty. You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you. You might need certain ideas explained to you in order to fit them into your scheme of things, but you're at least open to that!

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In my referrer logs, there are two search queries that strike me as amusing, but only because they're right next to each other:
- things to say to a girl
- i want to stab myself

I'd like to submit that "I want to stab myself" is not a good thing to say to a girl. Something simple -- like, "hello" -- would probably work way better.

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I just finished Life of Pi last night. It was SO GOOD. I don't want to tell you anything about it, but I think Richard Parker might be one of my new favorite fictional characters.

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For a long time, I forgot about explodingdog. But then, today, I was reading particleman, and there was a link to it and I clicked it and it made me happy. They're so good. Like the one inspired by the phrase, "and what if I do".

Another thing that makes me happy is that I saw Pretty In Pink last night at the Laurelhurst. It had probably been eight, maybe ten years since I'd last seen it. I was surprised at how much of it I remembered (and have quoted, or thought of over the years) without actually remembering it was part of that movie. Like the scene where Duckie is throwing cards into the hat while listening to "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" by The Smiths. I remembered the scene, but not who the actor was or what the movie was.

I found that I was still disappointed that Andie ended up with Blaine and not Duckie -- I remember being very confused the first time I saw Pretty In Pink because Duckie is so much cooler than Blaine and I couldn't figure out why they didn't end up together. Maybe if Duckie knew a few more computer tricks, he'd have gotten the girl.

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So, I'm working on a compilation CD, and I need some input. What's your favorite old school rap song? Mine is You Be Illin' by Run DMC. Aw yeah.

Ooh, also? Parents Just Don't Understand by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince.

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Blogger has some tips on how not to get fired because of your blog. One good way would probably be to refrain from carrying out scientific experiments at work and then posting the results to your web site.

In other news, IT'S SNOWING!!! Big, huge monster flakes of snow! SO COOL!!

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Worst Album Covers Ever 1
Worst Album Covers Ever 2

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Gary sent me a link to an interesting article on racial prejucide. I know that part of the reason I feel tension when I cross paths with people who aren't like me isn't necessarily because I'm afraid of them, but because there's so much else going on with the interaction. For example, if I walk past a black person in my neighborhood (happens fairly regularly), I usually smile (I pretty much smile at everyone). But there's always at least a moment of tension where all sorts of wondering goes on: Does this person think I hate them because of the color of their skin? Do they hate me because of the color of my skin? Do I think that they think that I hate them? Can I show them in the time it takes us to walk past one another that I don't hate them? Should I have to? And so it goes.

Incidentally, the same thing happens when I meet gay people for the first time. Because there's always that initial moment when nobody knows who's cool with what. I always find myself wanting to tell them that I'm totally cool with gay people and that I care far more whether they're fun to hang out with than who they sleep with. But let's face it, the phrase "I'm totally cool with gay people" sounds a little weird. I mean, who says that? (My gay friends are thinking I'm a huge idiot right about now.)

But then, you always have to feel people out a little when you first meet them. There's just a more to scope out when you meet people who don't share your same culture or lifestyle.

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Last night, I went and saw a panel discussion on racism in Portland. My friend, Jessie, was going for a class, and I went along because it sounded interesting. It was. The discussion centered around a book entitled Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America, which was written by Portland resident Elinor Langer. The title gives you a pretty good idea of what the book is about.

The discussion was interesting to me, as racism is certainly something I think about, but not anything I tend to talk about. It was a little strange, though, in that four of the five panelists, including the book's author, were older, white academics. Then there was one black woman who has hands-on experience with racism and was not (as far as I recall) connected with Reed College like the rest of them. It's not that the white academics didn't have any good points; it's that they seemed to lack practical experience. Or maybe it's that they are more comfortable with high-level theories and detailed facts than they are with actually confronting the idea that some of their own feelings and ideas might legitimately be labeled racist -- that some of society's prejudice might have seeped in. Or maybe that's just one girl's interpretation -- maybe I expected to see that, and that's what I saw. So hard to tell.

At any rate, racism in itself is an incredibly huge topic -- there are so many facets to it. It's a hard one to talk about, though, because as Kathleen Sadat (I think that's how you spell her last name) pointed out, everyone's afraid of making a verbal misstep that will get them labeled a racist. It's true. We are. Nobody wants that label. But, she pointed out, if everybody's afraid to talk about it, nothing's going to get done. I guess that's why I'm bringing it up now.

I think one of the reasons I don't tend to talk about racism is that it seems ludicrous to me that anybody would have to be told that it's not okay to hate someone just because they're not like you. Who needs to be told that people who are black, asian, short, tall, homosexual, practice a different religion or speak differently than you don't deserve your hatred because of it?

I mean, to truly hate someone, you really have to get to know them first, don't you? One aspect of a person's being, whether it's religion, orientation, race, gender, age, whatever, isn't going to actually tell you whether or not you have anything in common. But, again, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Who actually needs to be told that?

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This web site is only 18% evil. Until I post this, at which point that number will likely change.

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The thing about the Self-Cleaning House is that it's not really self-cleaning. I mean, it doesn't work anymore. There are PVC pipes running up to the ceiling, and there are little spigots from which presumably water once spouted, but they don't work. Something to do with the flooding and the earthquakes, according to the house's 90-year-old inventor and occupant, Frances Gabe.

The other thing about the Self-Cleaning House is that it's not clean. Of course, the idea of the SCH is that everything basically gets hosed down, so one might have deduced that this wouldn't lend itself to incredibly clean conditions, but I didn't reach that conclusion before I saw the house. Chuck Palahniuk certainly didn't mention that part in his guide book (Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon). And again, it doesn't actually work.

The thing about the tour was that it was one of our birthday outings. Eight of us assembled in the living room of the SCH to talk to Frances Gabe about her invention. She talked at length, but barely even mentioned her invention. She told us about the college students who gather around to listen to her speak, she told us about her terrible childhood, her mean husband, and a teacher who committed suicide. There was talk of angels and of a man named Joe who was supposed to show up -- we would later debate whether or not he was real. She drew us into a world that seemed to shoot between self-doubt, delusions of grandeur, and feelings of persecution. Happy birthday, Chris and Rainer.

But I really don't want this to sound so harsh. I should mention that the kitchen was pretty cool. She has a tiny little dishwasher/cupboard, and mesh shelves that let the water run right through when it's turned on. Her artwork was also very interesting -- everything from pottery to paintings to sculpture. Of course, she also showed us her old pacemaker when she discovered that Rainer works for the company who made it. That grossed a few people out.

And so I find that I cannot capture for you, in words, what it was like to visit the Self-Cleaning House. It was one of the weirdest experiences ever. I don't regret going, but I certainly can't recommend it as an experience for anybody else. And I sincerely hope, for Frances' sake, that Joe shows up soon.

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In my dream last night, one of my vertebrae had turned upside down. To flip it back, I had to dance like John Travolta in Staying Alive, or so I was instructed by two gay Asian men. It made me feel very foolish, but my back hurt and I thought it was worth a try.

I woke up giggling, and with a sore back.

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Lobster Sticks to Magnet lives! The site it used to be on is now a porn site, but apparently savethegoldfish.co.uk picked it up. Yay!

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Okay, okay, one last thing about the novel. I wasn't going to post it on the web, but Canadian Rebecca Campbell said she wants to read it, so this is mostly for her. Because last year, she made me feel incredibly proud by printing out my novel so her husband could read it in the bathroom.

Bathroom literature! How cool is that? Also, her name totally rules.

So. Yeah. Progress and a link to the Word document are now on the right-hand sidebar.

On an entirely unrelated note, this made me giggle. (Link via Cherz)

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The soda experiment is over, I'm sad to say. It was a lot of fun. With that done, we're sort of at a loss. We need a new experiment -- something to occupy us for around five minutes a day. Any suggestions?

We thought about testing how one's tolerance to alcohol increases over the course of a month. This would require the guy in our office who doesn't drink to get drunk every day for a month. Surprisingly, he was willing, but we decided there are too many outside factors and probably too much work to be done for us to do an accurate test. Also, I didn't want to have to drive his drunk ass home every day.

Another idea was to test whether raising your arms actually opens up your wind pipe so that you don't cough as much, but this would require someone to choke on something every day, and we thought it might be hard to find ourselves a test subject (oddly, nobody in the office was really willing to volunteer).

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Crikey, it's November 3 already.

So, I'm totally behind with the novel. I'm on a fairly good track for not finishing this year. I've decided it might actually be my goal to not finish -- we'll see how well I do. So far, I've got somewhere around 900 words (if I were on schedule, it would be 5001 by the end of today).

But you don't want to hear about that all through November, so I'll stop writing about it now. In fact, I'm having a hard time writing anything because a) my hands are cold and it's hard to type, b) I feel like all writing should be in the direction of ye olde novel, and c) the last couple of weeks have been fairly eventful and I can't quite figure out what to say about any of it.

Remind me to tell you about the Self-Cleaning House sometime. It's been alluded to in the comments, and I tried writing about it at one point, but it was seriously the weirdest experience I've had in a long, long time. Maybe ever.

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