Shit. I hate it when I'm on the cusp of figuring out something really cool, but it's so unbelievably abstract in my brain that I have a ton of trouble putting it into words, or that I don't even know what the discovery is yet.

Hate

My fellow college students are making me hate the word "interesting" and the phrase "I agree." These are said way too often, and usually they either aren't elaborated on or they aren't defined. Arg.

If I were a gay French man in the 1970s, I would totally have sex with Foucault

"The two main studies of [Foucault's] later work analysed the social discourses on social discipline and punishment, and sexuality. Foucault broke these discourses down into the multiplicity of component discourses that were produced through a whole array of practices in various institutional contexts. One of the essential arguments here was that proper analytical research should focus precisely on the illumination of the smaller, often less conspicuous practices, techniques, and mechanisms, which he called ‘the disciplines’; these somehow determined how large institutional systems actually worked. So, for instance, in Discipline and Punish he sought to show how the legal system that was devised in the spirit of the philosophy of the Enlightenment ‘guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle [but] was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micropower that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical.’ Foucault criticized political theory for paying too much attention to institutions and too little to these smaller practices or ‘disciplines’" (The Politics of Environmental Discourse. pp. 47)

Sexiest thing I've read all day.

Life's a-changin'

It hasn't really hit me yet just how life-changing this past summer was. I guess that's because everything's just worked out so naturally, there never was a time where I felt the need to second-guess anything.

But who would've imagined that my Hong Kong girlfriend would be coming to visit this winter break? Or that I'd be off to visit her for spring break in March?

Ugh. I really hate how university has taught me to be so damn critical of absolutely everything I read. How is it supposed to help me analyze the way an argument is framed in some scientific article if I keep stupidly taking issue with everything the author writes?

There's too much of a focus on being critical in school, and on trying to pick apart underlying assumptions of what the author's saying. There's not nearly enough focus on using what's written as a positive, generative force that one can expand on. It's like we're taught not to trust anything anyone's written. (I'm being a bit extreme, but still).

Formal logic & mathematics

I miss numbers.

Romberg's Right

My fieldwork & ethnography professor pointed out some things that've been bugging me throughout my whole life: I'm much too general with my thoughts and outlook, and it really shows in my work; and when it comes to acts of creating, such as writing or drawing or music-making, I'm too keen on playing it safe, and not very comfortable with taking risks. This hasn't always been the case, and there's a huge case that states the opposite (i.e. my relationship with Candy), but in general, I try to play my cards right. (I guess I should qualify what I'm saying. I love to think outside of the box, but I hardly ever do anything outside of the box). I'm really going to start doing something about this, and this fieldwork & ethnography class is where I can academically try to do something different, something more creative. Maybe that's what's been bugging me so much lately. I just haven't felt creative, and I've felt no reason to try be creative. I'm going to really push myself starting now.