A Robot Dream

Last night I dreamed of robots; big, huge, slightly abstract impressionist robots made out of lattices of material; huge, primary-colored lattices of stuff. They were fighting. Laser blasts. Projectiles — more of this primary colored lattice-stuff. They were shouting at one another in weird, digitizal-static voices that sounded like a parody of the voices of human beings. I took cover, but while I was safe from the laser blasts and projectiles, those voices were inescapable. I listened, trying to figure out what they were saying, but it was no use. It soon became apparent that they were exchanging way more …

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Fever, What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Trip to the Local Immigration Office, and a Final Positive Turn

I’ve been quite ill this week — not quite just food poisoning, but something a little more vindictive and involved, though not in a sentient sense. The same intestinal upset as last time, but with an added element: a burning fever on Thursday night, and fever (slightly less severe, but much sweatier) again on Friday evening. It was the kind of fever where you say things you don’t recall saying the next day, and dream of Japanese Solutionatronic devices shaped like giant wok lids except that they aren’t physical objects but rather abstract mathematical structures which, given any question, can …

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Losing Wonmisan

Okay, okay, I’m being dramatic. But, then, it was dramatic. Mark and I were hiking up Wonmisan as usual, except we found a couple of new features on our dirt trail. Now, if you don’t know Wonmisan, you should be informed that, unlike some mountains in Korea, it has both stairs and a diirt trail to the top. If you ask me, stairs are for shopping malls and apartment buildings: I don’t go out into nature just to climb stairs. Especially crappily-built, unevenly-sized stairs like you see on a lot of mountains. So Mark and I, we usually take the …

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Back!

One of the great tragedies of the film version of The Lord of the Rings, in my opinion, is the fact that the ending was left out. You know, the part where the story seems over, the world is saved, the journey finished, and then the characters get home and have a big mess to sort out there? That always seemed to subvert expectations in a way I respected, and seemed also to reflect the messiness of real life in a way that makes more sense than the kind of “one great act saves the day everywhere” kind of stuff …

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Health Update: Neti & Workouts

After a couple of weeks off, due to a foot injury, a cold, and a root canal, I am finally back into exercising daily. I’ll be honest: I’m not going as hard as I was going before, but then, that doesn’t mean I’m not pushing myself: by the middle of April, I was going for at least three hours a day, and often four. (Usually it was two hours of hiking, about an hour on a stationary bike, and an hour pumping weights.) Now, I’m back down to a couple of hours a day at most — though I’m getting …

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