If You Are Thirsty

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“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear!,” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I should go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

– from “The Silver Chair,” C.S. Lewis

My Antiwar Environment

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Being in attendance at an art college in the Northeast, I am naturally surrounded everyday by strong antiwar sentiment. It’s almost a prerequisite that you must denounce Bush Jr. as an ignorant, warmongering, Bible-belt buffoon, just so you can be considered moderate.

One would think that this staunchly liberal environment would influence my political leanings to the left; but having to bear with weekly Harpers readings in modern media class, and hearing such aphorisms as “Michael Moore is my hero” or “This is such a fascist state“ — these have only had the opposite effect on me, serving to repel me from the extreme liberal predilection for pejorative sloganeering. (Not to say that pejorative sloganeering is an exclusive trait of the left; such a disposition is common to extremists of both sides, as should be revealed by a cursory look over the comments sections of most any warblog.)

And so, I remain an ambivalent moderate. I hate war, I feel for the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, and I detest the media frenzy over even the pettiest details coming out of the battlefield. At the same time, I cannot support an oppressive, abusive regime like Saddam’s, and I refuse to descend to a nominal “No Blood for Oil” ad hominem approach without considering each side’s respective “higher ground” stand. It’s not just about oil-grabbing, Muslim-killing, or America-hating; there are deeper political motives and principles at stake which need to be addressed.

Further input that I have valued of late: The War Behind Closed Doors, a PBS documentary on the hidden background of preemption following Gulf War I; and The Dane’s blog posts on borders, comparisons to Hitler, the validity of preemptive strikes, oil, and shock and awe. What a guy.

Hydrae

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No sooner had I finished one sound project (Quicktime, 4.7MB), then two more popped up to take its place. It’s like fighting the Hydra.

And speaking of Hydra, I tested an OS X application by the same name a few days ago: a freeware Rendezvous-enabled programmer’s editor. It’s pretty neat: simple and usable interface with remarkably intuitive syntax highlighting. Ideally, Hydra should allow collaborative work on single text files through a LAN or over the internet. I say “ideally,” because I tried out the collab features with fellow MeFite Steve, and we could not access each other’s shared documents at all. Also, I have the usual problems with the Finder-based open/save dialogs, and the edit screen itself is not quite as intuitive with tabs and indents as I would like.

All in all, jEdit is still my programmer’s editor of choice. (Though the recent Java 1.4.1 upgrade broke my installation of the jEdit OSX package, so I had to reinstall from the Java binary.)

Davao Wharf Bombing

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Yet another terror bombing in Davao, followed by hatred-driven retaliatory attacks on mosques. Yet more grenades and guns thrown into the increasingly discouraging quest for peace and stability in the Philippines. If there was ever a quest to begin with.

From there, I’ve found that BBC has a pretty decent summary resource page on Philippine conflicts.

(Yes, yes, we have a Muslim insurgent group named the MILF. We also have a religious cult with the acronym ADD — fitting, considering that could mean Attention Deficit Disorder — and a historic revolutionary movement which called itself the KKK — and had nothing to do with white supremacy.)

In Spring

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In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;

In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

– Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”

Ah, Spring! Unfortunately, “thoughts of love,” aflutter though they may set my heart, pose an unnecessary impedance to my work-momentum, so the hearts aflutter are probably best kept at arm’s length till after finals. Yup. Sure. Just keep telling yourself that.

Guest Speakers

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No, I have no witty techie April Fools gimmick today. I was in the incipient stages of writing up a Google-style frontend this morning, but it looks like Metafilter has beat me to it. Maybe I’ll do something next year.

Going to a lecture tonight by 0100101110101101.org. Next week, Alex Galloway talks about hacking multiplayer games for fun and profit, and the following week, Perry Hoberman is giving a talk. Yes, I need to attend all those while juggling six other major art and production projects, all due within the next one to four weeks.

Hay buhay.

Snowy Spring

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Fifteen minutes ago it was bright, brisk, clear, and sunny. Now it’s snowing like a blizzard out there. Crazy, crazy weather.