Today I woke up at Helen's house in the early freakin morning so we could drive down to Portland for her friend Toms' daughters' first birthday. (Helen was named Godmother. Yes. Quite humorous, that designation.) It is now 2 AM tomorrow (temporal paradox ignored) and I am still "awake". While we were down there, we stopped at Powell's Books (because it is nearly impossible to go to Portland and not return to this bookstore once primed for it) and bought books (because it is psychologically impossible for me to go to Powell's and not buy a book). My book is by a computer science professor at Yale, and it's about trying to computerize the poetry of the mind (found in the neuropsych section). I'm thinking of it now, because the short section I went through in the bookstore was about different levels of coherent sharpness. For instance, when your mind is in a state of high coherent sharpness, you think clearly, quickly, and analytically. When it is at a lower level, emotional reactions begin to replace logical processes, and thinking gets blurrier. Right now, I'm pretty low. Duh duh. Helen's book is about Jungian psychology, but it's hard to describe exactly what application it relates to, since Jungian terminology seems so frooty and poetic. I think it's about, sorta, "why men are like how they are when they're fucked up". It's got the word "patriarchy" on the back cover, so I'm going to guess that it interests Helen because she's a radical feminist with a psych degree and an interest in that area in particular. On the way back up, we discussed this a little. I'd always felt a little insulted by popular feminist rhetoric, which starts out something like, "Men fear women, so they hate them, so they made this patriarchy to control them." I mean, really. I don't hate women. I assume most guys wouldn't describe themselves as "women haters". Why are they all accused of this? Well anyway, it was a long discussion, as one might imagine. Basically, I agree with the idea of equality in treatment of men and women. I don't agree with blaming either one specifically for how fucked up things are now. Everyone had a hand in this, I'm thinking. No one is entitled to righteousness.

Obviously, books are a rich source of car conversation and freewrite material. I want to read more, but it requires long periods of seclusion. These are rare, simply because contiguous blocks of unallocated time are hard to come by these days. After the layoffs, I find myself doing a couple different people worth of work (at least) and I lost all my project managers and admin assistants. Boo hoo, I have to make my own copies and keep track of what I'm doing. I can't read books as often as I'd like. Upside: I'm still allowed to stay at home all week and they direct deposit cash into my bank account twice a month. I get unsurprisingly little sympathy during stressful periods of intense work respnosibility.

You've made your point so why not shut up? -- Too Much Coffee Man

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