The Little Mermaid

Was my favorite Disney movie when I was a kid.

The Little Mermaid You scored 60% Isolation, 77% Proactiveness, and 51% Reliance on Humans.

Congratulations. You're one of the few fairy tale heroines (in fact, the only one that I can think of) who doesn't get the guy. And if you think I'm wrong, throw aside your Disney misconceptions and read Hans Christian Andersen's original tale. Your life is not easy, and to be honest, you've caused a lot of your own trouble, but you have the consolation of knowing you are a virtuous person. While you may have the constant companionship of a prince, you know you don't have his whole heart. If that's not your exact situation, then at least I can say that while you're not fully alone, you don't feel fully included by anyone, either. The Little Mermaid's sisters did everything they could to bail her out of a tight spot, and you can rest assured that there is someone out there who would do the same for you. That might be your sisters, it might even be yourself, but it is certain that your friends & helpers are those close to your own heart. Probably your strongest feature is your proactiveness. When you want something, you (unlike many fairy tale heroines) will do your best to obtain it. You will struggle and strive, and you won't give up. Your reward may not be on this earth, but you will receive one.

Conversations with the Devil

If you read it carefully, it's a proof by contradiction regarding the possibility of "fortune telling" - ascertaining an exact outcome to anything. Even better, it doesn't play on any moral arguments or fire-and-brimstone rhetoric.


----------------
"God" he prayed, "I am too confused to see things through the window of my own heart. I am too weak in my impatience, but full of faith. I need you to tell me right away where my life is going."

"Young one, I am here. You need only ask your questions, and I shall answer you. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light."

Sasha reached out his hand, and allowed himself to be led along the path by the tall, shadowy, figure. Trusting in this anonymous, confident person, he began his inquisition.

"Will my grades turn out okay?"

"Yes."

"Will my friend Betty find the love that she needs?"

"Yes."

"Will I ever be united with one of my own to love?"

"Yes."

"Soon?"

"No."

His heart sinking, but emboldened by the direct answers, the impetuous one pressed on.

"Is it really okay to ask God direct questions about the future?"

"No."

"But You'll give me the right answers if I keep asking anyway?"

"Yes."

The path grew narrow and difficult to travel. The boy - was he a man, or a boy? - realized that he was holding onto this - thing - supposedly God, for dear life. It seemed that the more he asked, the more he needed to know, and the more confused he became.

"Will I have to spend time with that other person?"

"Yes."

"Will it matter in the long run?"

"No."

"So now that I know, can't I choose not to?"

"No."

"You're saying that life is entirely predestined?"

"Yes."

"I thought I had choice."

"Yes."

"So, why do I have to do it?"

"No."

Sasha realized that he couldn't breathe. He wasn't sure who he was really walking with, but the temperature around them was quickly rising. Upset and fearful of the future, he tried to struggle free from the mysterious being. Saying nothing, the being kept a firm grip on his hand and kept on leading him - downhill. Intoxicated by the knowledge, and desperate to obtain the reassurance he craved, Sasha kept on.

"Am I talking to God?"

"Yes."

"Am I really talking to God?"

"No."

"Am I really talking to God?"

"Yes."

"Does me knowing what's going to happen give me the ability to change it?"

"No."

"Why don't I have real choice, then?!"

"Yes."

They came to the end of a path. In front of them was a river with a small canoe floating in it. Sasha climbed in uncertainly after the creature beckoned to him, and soon they were floating comfortably away. Sasha turned to contine his lines of questions, but suddenly found himself quite alone. The canoe started moving faster and faster, and Sasha had no choice but to hold on and wait. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he began to realize the implications of his conversation. Before he could reflect for too long, however, his canoe crashed into shore.

Unsure of what to do, Sasha climbed out of the canoe and began walking along the shore. Presently he came to a hut and wandered close to it. An old woman was inside, and called for him to step in and join her.

"Young man, your heart is heavy. Tell me your troubles..."

Out poured the entire story - the girl, the mistrust, the illness - his studies, his job, his questions. His beginning on the path towards right, and his quest for knowledge and understanding, from the first stubling innocent mistakes to his most recent encounter with the discouraging, contradictory, shadowy figure.

"Ah," sighed the woman "once again, the innocent mortal wanders outside the sphere of hope into a realm where he has no influence. I can do nothing to fix your current reality - I can change nothing about your past or future - I can do nothing to change the choices that you will choose any more than you can choose to disown your very soul. There are two things I could do for you. First, I can make you forget - forget that you ever knew what you know now. Second, I can show you how to break free of your perspectives on life, and show you how to interact with that One on a more personal level. One will leave you as you were before, one will completely transform your being. One will allow you to continue on your former path, and one will lead you closer to the guide you had until he left you in the canoe. Man, decide what your life will be!"

As Sasha spoke his choice in words that trembled almost as much as his hands, he wondered if the tradeoff was going to be worth it.

Like the SAT, but for Compatibility **UPDATED**

You should take my "just for fun" compatibility test, and let me know how you scored. If you don't feel like saying who you are, that's fine; just leave an anonymous comment here - I'm collecting scores because I'd like to see if I made the test too hard. (So far nobody's scored above 64% awesomeness, which is kind of sad).

Anyway, have fun. and don't take it too seriously. :-)



(Uhhhhh blogger appears to be completely stripping out my html tags, so I
apologize for the non-hyperlinked web address below. Not cool.)


*Grumble* Technology hates me. It should work now. Sorry about that.

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=3986740252238524329

Home!

Am finally back home for Thanksgiving. The last few weeks have been really hectic, and it's good to have some time to take a few deep breaths, get some sleep, and do a lot of homework in the comfort of my parents' house. Thoughts:

*The drive back last night was wonderful. We drove the "long" way and took mostly all back roads. Once we were past Pittsburgh traffic was completely fine, and so the journey was mostly just driving at night through back roads, listening to good music and enjoying life. One thing I've really learned over the semester is the value in actually living in the moment, without even worrying about the past or trying to plan for the future...taking the long way back meant that there was this one big long awesomely zen moment to just soak up and enjoy some peace and quiet in between classes and the hectic holiday season, and it was just what I needed.

I then proceeded to come home and pass out for 10 hours, and am still trying to get over that groggy "Holy crap, I slept way way way too much" feeling, he he.
Per usual, I have work to do, so I'm going to get to that here shortly....

*I've been thinking a lot about the 212 assignment that was due shortly before break. I did an AWFUL job on it...I was in the typical college-y "wait until 3 nights before it's due to even look at or start it", and for the way I work, that just wasn't enough time. I've been able to do well on the other assignments because I've given myself the time to look at the problem descriptions, think, and then plan, and then write the code. I didn't need more than a day or so of coding, probably, to actually code up the solution to this one, but I just didn't have enough time to think about how to approach the problem...by early Monday evening ( it was due at midnight) I felt like I was just kind of killing time until the deadline, because sitting in front of a computer wasn't going to help me code, not sleeping wasn't going to get it any closer to finished (even though I really didn't sleep much while trying to get it done.) It's really embarassing, because I did a shitty job on the parts I got done (I didn't even get things down for all of it) and I woke up yesterday morning realizing that there were some some debugging things I'd left in the code that weren't still supposed to be there but I never changed into the correct things before submitting because I was so completely exhausted when I did submit it.

The whole thing could have been avoided, had I just reminded myself to even LOOK at the assignment earlier. That's what's frustrating. It wouldn't have taken too much more time away from anything else I was doing just to look at it, but for some reason I just took it for granted that I could get it done and...argh. It's in the past now, and I can't do anything about it. This was the first time I've run into a situation where I'm actually physically limited in being able to get something done, and the solution isn't a matter of staying up / pushing myself harder /etc. So I've learned a bit about myself, which is good, and next time I'll know exactly what I need to do so I don't have another embarassignly poorly done assignment to turn in...


*Finally, I had some strange dreams last night, per the whole sleeping for a long time thing. Here are the fragments I remember:

-Talking with some girl who looked kind of like me, but had a different face and bright red glasses. I liked her glasses, and my glasses bent funny so then I couldn't really wear them anymore.

-Being at my Grandpa's house (for some reason, a LOT of my strange dreams take place there) and there were a bunch of guys I didn't recognize sitting around. They all had their shirts off, and their um..."upper body anatomy" was decidedly FEMALE. I was serving them milk or something to drink, and they were all just hanging out like nothing strange was happening. Then Christina's ex showed up, and he was the only one who looked like a guy. At first he was really embarassed that I'd recognized him there (in my own grandfather's kitchen) and he was really hesitating to take one of the drinks, saying that he didn't really want to end up like a woman. So I pulled him into another room (for some reason I didn't want the other guys to hear) and told him that with the amount that he worked out, he'd have nothing to worry about.

Er. I'm not sure why I'd care at all about Christina's ex being emasculated. But for some reason my dream self did. Blerg. I mean, he's obviously a symbol for someone or something else but I don't know anyone like him...? Blah.

*Finally: I came across an awesome quote this morning.

Ahem.

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." -Iris Murdoch

Existence and Other Questions

-I think there's a tendency to idealize people that we don't know very well. It's easy to take the surface of what a person presents when you hardly see them and genearlize that into being who they "really are"...and then when you're closer to a person, it's easier to nitpick and judge them becuase you see all of their imperfections. It's really easy to discount people and take them for granted the better you know them. Or perhaps a less cynical restatement is that maybe it's worth it, with the people you are close to, to remember who they "try" to be, and what that face they show to "the world" is. I really think in a lot of ways that the way we act around strangers is a good indication of the way we really are inside (or at least I'm that way), and so it helps to balance out the picture when it gets too easy to just build up a person's faults.

(Then again, there are a lot of counterexamples to that, like when you judge a person especially harshly when you first meet them. So that theory isn't really all it's cracked up to be, I guess. It made sense when I first thought of it, though.)

-I've had a lot of conversations this week that have gone something like, someone else says
"Yeah I was talking to so-and-so the other day, and...." or "Yeah, so-and-so and I did ____" - where the so-and-so has actually been ME, and the other person has forgotten and for some reason substituted in someone else. It's starting to feel a bit like that week when a bunch of people, none of whom knew each other, kept accidentally calling me Jessica. Heh.

Time Wasting

I just took a "what is your personality defect?" test. Here are the results:


He he he.

Emo Kid
You are 28% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 14% Brutal, and 42% Arrogant.

You are the Emo Kid, best described as a quiet pussy! You tend to be an intuitive rather than a logical thinker, meaning you rely more on your feelings than your thoughts. Not only that, but you are introverted, gentle, and rather humble. You embody all the traits of the perfect emo kid. You are a push-over, an emotional thinker, gentle to the extent of absurdity, and so humble that it even makes Jesus puke. (And Jesus almost never pukes, being immortal and not requiring an act of puke to dispell toxins from his corporeal manifestation.) If you write poetry, you no doubt write angsty, syrupy lines about depression, sadness, and other such redundant states of emo-being that go something like this:

life is a spike / upon which i have impaled mysefl / fuck you dad

So, your personality is defective because you are too gentle, rather underconfident in yourself, decidely lacking in any rational thought, and also a bit too inhibited. Plus, your poetry really upsets your father.

I probably made you cry, didn't I? Fucking Emo Kid.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Smartass.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hippie, the Televangelist, and the Starving Artist.

Truth

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend today about truth.

It's really interesting to watch how much energy people end up having to put into questions, analyzing, frustration, resentment...things that come up when trying to deal with someone who just isn't willing to be direct. And it's senseless even moreso when you consider how much energy it usually takes the other person to be nondirect....I think that a sharp emotional slap in the face is much easier to deal with (even if it hurts more at one given moment) than a series of misleading and opaque statements or situations, especially when it seems like two people may be looking (or worse, hoping for) different outcomes.

I think it tends to put people who tend to be either really analytic or really compassionate in some difficult situations. If you can think of easily 4 or 5 good reasons for someone's behavior, and some of the reasons are pretty divergent, it's hard to know whether it's better to keep approaching an ambivalent person/situation, or if the right thing to do is to step away from that person. The practial thing is to just let go and step away, but I think it's probably hard to actually do that, especially when there are real emotions involved. All the same...sometimes directness has to be self-imposed for one's own sake if it's not going to be offered by the real actor.

In all, I'm kind of preaching to the choir here. I'm thankful that there aren't that many people in my life that really put me through those sort of interactions.

blues brothers

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile, but finally remembered.

So, I'm sitting in Signals & Systems right now. A lot of the labs we've had this semester have involved various forms of speech processing. And one of the speech samples we've worked with a couple times has been the following...

"Four fried chickens, and a coke. And some dry white toast, please."

OMG Blues Brothers in lab. So so so incredibly awesome. I mean, if you're going to slave over some MATLAB for a few hours, you might as well have the cheery voice of Jake Blues to carry you along. Good times.

Happy

You know.

I have been honestly happy these past few weeks.

Earlier in the semester I wrote about how life seemed to be so much of an up and down all the time, without much in the middle, but I feel like I've actually been in that nice middle place a LOT recently. Classes are still hard and stressful, but...I'm more peaceful, more complacent, or something.

I've had a lot of long days recently, between meetings and labs and classes, but I've gotten through them all just fine, and I'm not waking up anymore and cringing against the day. I'm still getting to hang out a ton with Brian too, which is awesome, especially at the end of the longer days.

In other (slightly more interesting) news, I registered for next semester yesterday.

I'm not taking a SINGLE class in the ECE department. HA! HA! HA!*

I'm taking two CS classes, though - 213 (systems programming in C; the big lab is implementing malloc() ) and 381 (Artificial Intelligence! woo!). I also signed up for graph theory (apparently being taught by an awesome professor) and for my two humanities I've got Chinese History in Film and The Literature of War. Since the Chinese History one meets once a week for 3 hours in the evening it's kind of taking the place of an ECE lab; because of that, I'm tempted to sign up for another humanities class so my schedule will be more like it usually is...then again, the spring is going to be REALLY busy with Carnival and ECE day, and my hard classes are going to be *hard*, so...we shall see.

*Let it be known that I love my major. However, I'm not too upset about taking other classes for once.

buggy!

So, today was my first time using a radio for "real". I've had my license for about a month, but I've either been out of town or rolls have been cancelled whenever I've signed up to go out for buggy. And they got cancelled this morning but it was after everyone was out and ready to go and the net was running, so I still got a bit of the experience.

I knew I'd enjoy it, but it was actually more fun than I'd anticipated. So that was good.

And then I spent the rest of the day being semi-productive. Got my foreign policy project done, read half of the novel for Russian history, and got signals and systems 2/3 finished.

I also got to listen to a fascinating talk by a Pentacostal minister and his wife. My RA decided to run a series of religion events bringing different sorts of ministers of different religions in to talk with us (followed up by us going to their sevices), and today was the first one. The smallish group of us had lunch and just talked. The minister is actually a philosophy professor at Carlowe and got a PhD from Duquesne, and so it was kind of cool to see some religious arguments with intellectual depth attached to them (even if I did disagree slightly with some of what he said, or some of his perceptions about the nature of God, Holy Spirit, etc.) - it was great to hear a different, well-reasoned perspective. I went to Mass tonight, so I can go with the group to check out the Pentacostal service tomorrow...should be interesting, if nothing else. :)

Mindful Violence (aka Only A Dream)

I had had it. I really, once and for all, had had it.

"You're so unhappy all the time, but have you ever, even once thought about thinking about anyone besides yourself and what you want all the time?" I demanded. Her petty attitudes and self absorbed running commentary...ALWAYS running...combined with that aggravating whiny voice pushed me over the edge.

She glared at me in shock. "I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE TO TALK!" She said.

She said it again.

"You never think of anything but yourself! It's always about yourself! You're never even going to find happiness until you stop! You're never happy, and I don't think you even want to be!" I couldn't quit yelling, even as I realized that my words were (again) provoking her into action.

The closest object to her came hurtling through the air at me. "You aren't even a good friend, you never are!" Her words hurt more than the lamp, which shattered harmlessly off to the side.

I was stuck in the scene. It wasn't moving, wasn't changing. The same yelling. The same objects, always just barely missing me. I was yelling about her selflish attitude and she was retorting with comments about my lack of emotional involvement in the lives of people around me. We yelled. It turned into something heartless. The anger remained, but the newness of the moment was wearing off.

I finally woke up. My neck was tense and it was like I'd gotten more tired from being alseep.

Democracy, etc.

I voted today. I don't support all of the issues supported by the candidate I voted for. I voted for him primarily because I perceived his opponent as incompetent and generally useless, and because I think he might accomplish a couple goals that I think are really worthwhile. I died a bit inside to do it, though, because some of his perspectives and methods run counter to some of my deep-seated ideals and values, and so it makes me feel a bit like I'm betraying myself. At the same time...that's the price of progress? It's better than just voting for an empty figure who purports to stand for my values but fails miserably at carrying them out?

Overall, life is going pretty well, I think. I've been getting my projects and assignments in and still getting a relatively sane amount of sleep (at least 5 hours a night). Tomorrow I have to finish up a five page paper, and then Thursday I might actually start to get ahead a bit on the upcoming weeks' work.

Another somewhat odd dream of mine from the other day. In the dream, I was at church with Brian, and we both went up for communion. Instead of giving me one host, the priest gave me about 5 or 6. I walked back to the pew, unsure of what to do - if I was supposed to give the extra back to the priest, or consume all of them? I knelt down and just kept them cupped in my hand - afraid to do anything with them.

I think in some ways that's a metaphor for love (religious and romantic). You can be offered all of the grace and love in the world, but you have to be comfortable with accepting it...for some reason, I was still relatively uncomfortable with God in my dream; I was frozen and afraid to do the right thing...afraid to even try to listen to my heart.

I'm learning a lot about trust; real trust.

Men Are Ignorant Pigs

let val soapbox = Jennifer.angryRant("Men Are Ignorant Pigs",
emotions.disgusted (lots),
people.qualifiers(7/10) )
in
val rant:string = fn (soapbox => "

Okay, it is time for some male bashing. Males, I am sorry. Chances are that if you're reading this, it doesn't apply to you. Maybe.

I just can't get over the sheet NUMBER of men in the world who really honestly see women as nothing more than objects/pieces of meat/etc. I know, that sounds really naive, and needleslly confrontational - but, seriously. On so many levels. I have never seen females be so shallow and degrading towards guys as guys are in the opposite direction.

Case #1. Guys who don't listen to what you're actually saying. Where do you get "Please try to put your paws all over me and act like a borderline stalker and generally be creepy!" from "I'm really busy, I'm doing homework, no really, that's fine, I actually don't need anyone right now..." I have seen SO many guys do that to girls recently. It's like they already have your mind made up for you, just because there's something else they're looking for and they see you as the most available object to give it to them. It's disgusting. Instead of actually listening and caring and being a friend, it's just looking for opportunities.

Case #2. The more extreme case, and less of a generality. So I recently joined okcupid, but NOT TO FIND DATES. I actually joined because Brian showed me the site and there were some interesting personality tests and the site uses some interesting algorithms. Oh yeah and procrastination, and I decided to try and write a test of my own. On my "profile", I mention (in more than one place) that I'm not looking for dates...besides that, I have just about every characteristic that screams "conservative in relationships and excessively virginal" in my profile and...I guess I should have expected it, but I have gotten an insane number of messages from all sorts of scumbags...and yes, it's easy to ignore, and yes I do ignore it but my point is more that guys feel comfortable doing that sort of thing at all. I got one message from a guy saying something like he was really turned off by the fact that I'm an engineer but he'll deign to try to get to know me if I think we might have sex because I'm hot.

Why is there this assumption that I'm LOOKING to have sex with any asshole who happens to stumble across my existence? Why are guys so presumptuous when it comes to girls? It's like it doesn't even occur to them that someone might have actual standards, and thoughts and desires of her OWN. I mean, I can already hear the chorus of "But we're not all like that, Jenn!" and that's definitely true, (and I'm really lucky to know all of the "good" guys that I do :)) but....I'm just really shocked at the percentage of guys that seem to choose the opposite behavior.

I am probably going to delete my okc account after I finish writing my test and let people take it. It's kind of an interesting site but I have no interest in just putting myself out there to be degraded. I'm definitely more willing to make myself part of the solution and quit bitching about all the jerks of the world, but...the idealist in me is still asking why it's okay for people to act like that, and why it's really my responsibility to avoid it instead of other people's responsibility to act like decent, rational, human beings.

"
end

Stress Talking

It's been a pretty good day. Free rolls (buggy) got cancelled but I was up anyway so I tried to get some work done. The CS assignment I'm working on is just kicking my ass. Maybe I should stay up and work on it - it's due tomorrow at midnight - but I think I'll be better off going to bed and trying again tomorrow morning.

Right now I'm just sitting here listening to lots of Elton John and staring at the flowers I bought myself on Friday. The seller on the corner had a really pretty boquet of pink mini roses, and they were cheap, so I bought them. I figure it's okay to do something nice for myself, and I'm worth it.

Elton John has always been my comfort music, and it's become that even moreso this semester. I've been listening to a lot off of his self-titled album; songs I haven't listened to much since high school when I'd play the old vinyl while I did homework, or just laying in bed not doing anything at all. It reminds me of old thoughts, old feelings, old ideas, perspectives, beliefs, values. I can't quite find the words I'm looking for right now. It's not a bad feeling, though. Just kind of introspective without really looking for anything n particular.

It's funny how much life does go in cycles. It's so easy to all of a sudden be in a position where you're on the other side of a situation that you've been in from the other side. That keeps happening to me, and it's become more frequent recently. I like it. I feel like I'm learning a lot about people, and I'm gaining a lot of perspective. :)

More Dreaming Vividly

It took me awhile to fall asleep last night.

When I finally did, I was in a hotel in France. My parents got separated from me, and I think Brian might have been there somewhere, too. I wandered around the hotel, just feeling lost, looking for an idea of how to get to them. I had a vague idea that they were across a bridge or something (my parents.) I called them and wasn't able to reach them, so as soon as I found an elevator I jumped in and tried to go to their floor (4th).

I got off the elevator, and found myself in an area with lots of tables and rooms along the side. I saw inside one of the rooms, and there were a bunch of men with half-naked women on their laps. Great. I'd ended up in some sort of ... gentlemen's club. I panicked a bit and started to run. A bartender saw me and told me to relax, that they liked girls walking around. I shook my head at him and told him I was trying to find my family. His face clouded over and he told me that he wasn't sure what to tell me - I might try heading for one of the "other towers."

I got on the elevator, pushed a button, and got off. I was back in the same smutty place with scantily clad women grinding around on men all dressed in business suits. I think at this point I ran into Brian...he was off looking for someone or something else, and so he went on his way and I went on mine.

I headed off and tried the elevator again. When I got off the second time, I was on the roof. The sun was going down, and there was some homeless man standing next to me. My heart sank. I told him that I needed my parents, and he just pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked out into the distance. I was starting to become emotionally numb to the situation, resigned to the fact that I'd have to find my family eventually, and it just might take awhile. I couldn't just be alone. I couldn't.

I was going to try again - try something else - when my roommate's alarm went off and I woke up. I like to think that the dream was headed for a happy ending.