bone in sub

i just replaced the four cfl bulbs in my bathroom (all of them right above the mirror) with four 100-watt incandescents. 400 watts of light is a lot. it kind of hurts my eyes if i get too close

i got the idea earlier this week to record myself sleeping, so i could see firsthand what i do overnight. i’m way more restless than i thought, or maybe it was weird sleeping in a semi-lit room. i had a tiny cfl on in a shaded socket so that my camera would pick up enough light, but it wasn’t like having a middle-of-the-day nap either. a pretty fun little project.

here’s the video.

orchestra is amazing. after three years of band, this is like seeing your best friend again. i guess i’ve been playing band music since grade 6, but i was also in orchestra from grades 8 to 12. everything’s so professional, the music is great, and new people! it’s a little more stressful to play with complete strangers, but that makes it more fun, and motivates me way more. i’ll know everyone soon enough, but when i went to play the huge snare drum part in the first movement of shostakovitch’s fifth, my heart was beating good and fast. i love it when music gives me adrenaline.

there are some really cute girls in the orchestra, too. yes! band pretty much only had one or two decent-looking girls in total. this is awesome.

i have to decide this weekend on taking a full year of film and a half year of upper-year astronomy, or a full year of both film and linguistics. i only need 1.5 credits of a&s courses, but i feel like i would enjoy linguistics more than a third astronomy course. more work or a more boring class?

two improved scales i made up a couple years ago when i walked/took the subway a lot:

rating someone’s socioeconomic ‘league’:
i did this because it’s ridiculous to even try to quantify socioeconomic status using any real terms based on a first impression. imagine an arbitrary number of ‘leagues’ of socioeconomic statuses. for example, take myself, a financially independent undergraduate student, living decently with a good amount of class, no drug habits or alcoholism, dresses pretty well, etc. (intelligence is external to this scale.) there are plenty of people of a higher ‘status’ than me – let’s say one level up, or ‘+1′ is equivalent to myself, but working instead of a full-time student. or maybe equivalent to me except their parents give them more money. that’s one rank up, a little bit higher in socioeconomic status. ~+3 would be someone who is still relatively immature, but financially independent with a solid job and some savings. it keeps going up like that.

even though there are plenty higher than me, there are way more lower than me. -1 would be me a year ago, financially independent, but with considerably less money. -3 would be me two years ago, dependent on my parents, and not really living comfortably. -5 would be me two years ago and with significant less class in some way – maybe going to a worse school, or not in school and working a bad job, or something. past -5 relative to myself, it starts getting into serious lower-class, which my neighborhood happens to be full of. -10 is someone that i can’t tell whether or not they’re homeless. the scale isn’t really linear in either direction past 3 or 4. doing this on the subway or streetcar is fun because when i find someone that’s a ‘zero’, or seemingly equal to me, it makes me have a weird internal moment of identification with them, i guess as close to “warm and fuzzy” as i ever get.

rating the opposite sex’s physical attractiveness:
everyone seems to use the out-of-ten scale, which doesn’t really work. a lot of people are sevens or eights, or “tens” if the judge is generous, and unfortunate folks are always one or two. all the numbers get used, of course, but on a scatter chart, those ones would dominate. here’s how i do it:
+3: amazing – if i walk around downtown in the summer for two hours i’ll see maybe one +3.
+2: great – “girlfriend material”, very good-looking. either really cute or really hot.
+1: pretty good, i would consider them at least ‘attractive’.
there is no zero
-1: mediocre, i guess most people in my age group are a -1
-2: at this level my prejudice against unattractive people comes out and i’m less likely to be friends with people
-3: opposite of +3, basically horrifying

i guess this makes me sound like a really judgmental person, but it’s just my mind on public transit, written out.

reverse chronological

last year in my “orchestral repertoire” class, we were given a huge amount of photocopied percussion parts to big orchestral works. i actually have two copies of a few pieces.

i guess the season combined with the fact that i’m coming and going at night a lot means once or twice a day, a housefly comes inside when i do. when i notice one, i take a big rolled-up copy of hindemith’s symphonic metamorphosis and smoke that sucker when he flies by me. something about this is a little bit poetic and very satisfying.

“hilarious spam” is a years-old cliche that i never even bought into, but these things i found in my main gmail account’s trash are awesome. it’s reverse chronological, newest at the top – it’s really funny to me when i think about how some manager was disappointed with numbers and urged the techs to “MAKE IT MORE RIDICULOUS! I WANT PEOPLE’S EYES POPPING OUT OF THEIR HEADS WHEN THEY SEE THESE HEADLINES!!!”

7 or 8 months ago, one of our other stores in town called us saying a guy might come to try and steal a projector. long story short, he did come and we kicked him out. yesterday, a coworker taps me on the shoulder and says “hey man, i think projector guy is back.” sure enough, he was in the store and drifting towards the projector aisle, looking even sketchier than last time.

now last time he was in, it was REALLY hard to get him to leave. i had to call the cops on my cell phone right in front of him before he left – no amount of ordering him to leave swayed him. coincidentally, i had recently thought about what i would do if someone refused to leave again. i first politely told him to get out; “hey man, you know you can’t be in here. you need to leave, now.” he does the same thing as last time, “what are you talking about? i’ve never been in here, i’m just an artist, you can’t talk to me like that, how dare you, etc.” so i started doing what i had planned: giving him orders like he was a dog that had just pissed on the furniture, snapping my fingers and pointing after every command. “out! get out! go! get out! now!”

this worked instantly and he immediately turned to go. i followed him to the door where he stopped and asked for “the store owner’s phone number, so that my lawyers can call him”. i said that’s not mine to give out, and asked if he would want mine instead, as i’m experienced with legal threats. he said yes, so i gave it to him and he left. i hope he calls!

i love my new place, i’m so happy here!!!

this morning at 7:30am, while i was still fast asleep, the power went out for about 30 seconds. the silence from my computer suddenly turning off was so shocking that it woke me up, heart beating fast and everything. my computer’s not that loud, 4 hard drives and 3 80mm fans, but man i’m really conditioned to having that hum being on while i sleep. i guess i’ve had this computer since i was 15, but wow!

i finally had a dream i remembered last night, it had been four days. it felt like a lot longer, but i opened my dream journal and there was one from september 2 that i had completely forgotten about. i think the change of the move and being so busy probably distracted me from dreams, so i’m glad i’m getting back into it. this one is a good one, about meeting my sister at a park by ocad and there’s a weird vtol plane shooting a movie and then my parents fly one and it lands on some mushrooms and some bouncers knock on the door of the plane telling us to get off the mushrooms. weird

i’m in orchestra this year, finally. no more awful band music and pathetic transcriptions!

the new david byrne/bryan eno album is pretty bad so far.

it’s looked and smelled like it’s about to rain since yesterday evening, but it didn’t start until i was walking home from my last errand today. i love that feeling, when it doesn’t start pouring until i’m walking inside.

in my old place i literally did not have enough room to do situps or pushups. i’ve been doing those every day since moving in, and results so far have been awesome. in five days!