I cannot hide what I am

Don John: I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour.

Conrade: Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

Don John: I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.

- Much Ado About Nothing

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Ssssshhht

Tink, tink, tink

Tonk...tonk...

Ssssshhht

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Where I skate upon the thin edge of my sanity

Do you know what the Golden Ratio is? The Golden Ratio. It's a mathematical precept where the ratio of a smaller number to a larger number is the same as the ratio of the larger number to the sum of the numbers. It manifests itself in a variety of places, such as the Fibonacci sequence (where the next number of the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers, i.e. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...). It also manifests itself in architecture, such as in the construction of the Pyramids and the Parthenon. But even more so, the Golden Ratio is found in nature. For example, the graphical depiction of the Fibonacci spiral, which shows the Golden Ratio as boxes with a curve connecting the corners.


Is often correlated with the pattern of growth of Nautilaus shells.


Or the shape of the human ear.

The Golden Ratio is also found in the shape of a Pentagon/Pentagram. Here the colored segments are in Golden Ratio to each other.

And the human body maintains this aspect ratio.


People find the Golden Ratio everywhere. It constantly crops up in nature, and people use it in music, art, architecture, finance, etc.

The Golden Ratio is also a fractal.

A fractal is a mathematical equation that repeats itself on finer and finer scales. Think of it like this. You know when you look at the reflection of a mirror within a mirror you see the same thing repeated smaller and smaller? Like this:
No matter how small you get there's still a smaller version inside it? A fractal is the same thing but with mathematics. They tend to look pretty neat. And make good wallpapers.


Fractals are all over nature, where it becomes like the movie Pi. If you look, you are sure to find one. What does that mean? Who knows.

But all that is in my mind while I read this Cracked article about a guy who got beat near to death by some muggers, but as an unexpected result his brain was altered and now he essentially sees fractals. As in, when he looks at his hand, he sees the fractal shapes that make the hand. When he sees a cloud trail away, he sees the fractal spiral that makes that trail. I encourage everyone to read the story, I'm not doing the description justice. It's quite amazing.

Not only does he see fractals, he understands and has progressed the mathematics of fractals. The thing that has stuck with me from the article is that guy has found that Einsteins E=mc^2 equation is actually a fractal. And somehow this seems so very, very profound. I don't know why. I'm not a mathematician. I only know about these things on an intuitive sense. But it's something about the fact that one of the bedrock equations of physics now turns out to be a fractal. Fractals are found in nature a ton, but in physics? Now in physics.

So what does that mean? What is it about fractals? Repeating mathematical formulae, cropping up here and there and everything, in art, in nature, in physics. What does that mean for us? Are we just fractals? Are we just repeating mathematical formulae, replicating on infinite scales, through space and time? Everyone says history repeats itself, is human history a behavioral temporal fractal? If you crack the equation of the fractal, could you know the future?

I guess it's the same quantum equation people have been grappling with since fate and determination and mathematics intersected, but it's come through a lens of fractals. I don't know, I'm just rambling. A better man could make a story of this. Me, I'm just intrigued.

Enough

I don't want to feel any more. I want my emotions burned out of me. I want the wick of my nerves lit, and as my nervous system flares the silhouette of my skeleton will strobe through my skin.

The hail has the cats startled, and the late night Saturday has me scared of the ghosts of Sunday afternoon as they walk along the street, and the stabs of random pain I can't seem to shake.

Sometimes I wonder what holds up the thin wall between my current self and the full goose bozo of a state institution. Clearly I'm the craziest person around, and the guilt of bringing such harmful words as these to eyes of my friends has risen past my knees. They are good people, they do not deserve such unkindness. But I have to get these words out. It's a compulsion as strong as addiction. Even so, as I type the keys I can hear the legions of internet commenters yell "cry more, emo kid" and I laugh, as if my pain makes me special. Somehow I don't think I left my 15 year old behind. You'd think I'd be able to exorcise that demon. All the words I write strike me as so much bad poetry written in the back of a mascara-stained notebook. But writing them makes me feel better. What is there to do with pain but keep on living?

Edit: and now after spending time organizing a folder of 80's pop music, I somehow feel better. Man those songs were upbeat. They may be fueled by cocaine mania, but they sure seemed happy about it.

Son of a fucking bitch

Ok, at a certain level, I can accept having night terrors. It sucks, I want them to go away, but I can deal. I wake up screaming, shaking uncontrollably, then I calm down, go back to bed, and don't have to worry about that particular problem for the rest of the night.

Except lately when I've been woken up with night terrors it's taken me so long to calm back down that by the time I actually fall asleep again I get a second round of night terrors. That happened to me twice last night. That means three sets of night terrors.

That's not fucking fair, ok? That's salt in the wound. Foul: piling on. Unnecessary roughness. 15 yard penalty, first down.

Pointless waste of time

No, I'm not talking about my life. Badumching. I've decided to go through my Netflix queue and find strange combinations, meaning two movies next to each other in the queue which seems odd or humorous. This is more to kill time than be actually interesting. Feel free to disregard.

Don't Drink the Water
Once Upon a Time in Mexico

The Fast Runner
Like Water for Chocolate
(I'm disgusting)

Dead Man
An Ideal Husband

Mrs. Henderson Presents
The Matador

The Weather Man
Lord of War
(sounds like a post-apocalyptic pulp novel)

The Majestic
Kinky Boots

Cry-Baby
Dracula 2000

Mini's First Time
Merry Christmas

Sexual Matrix
Babe
(what a twin bill that will make)

The Last Kiss
The Wedding Date
Dance With Death

Red Sun
Holy Mountain
(by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

A History of Violence
Blow Up

A Killer Within
The Dreamers
(another pulp novel)

Sex Sells
Masked and Anonymous
(Taco? Is that you?)

Sunshine
Under the Tuscan Sun

What a Way to Go
Lars and the Real Girl

Mona Lisa Smile
Paris, Je T'aime

Stir Crazy
Bukowski: Born In This

Eagle vs. Shark
The Chronicles of Riddick
(the next Riddick movie in the series will be...weird)

Gattaca
Frida
(I'll have the Gattaca Frida, with cheese)

Moon
Leave Her to Heaven
(sounds like a sappy chick flick)

Peeping Tom
Wanted
(for peeping, I'm guessing)

The Tenant
The Time Traveler
(short story, time traveler moves in next door, and he blasts his damn stereo)

And I've got Before Sunrise and Before Sunset next to each other, which makes sense, but I think I need to move After the Sunset after Before Sunset.

I think what we can take from this little exercise is that I have a very poor sense of humor.

Addendum: man, now I want to write a story called "The Weatherman, Lord of War" about a weatherman that, out of his ability to somewhat accurately predict the weather, holds sway over a Bartertown-esque post-apocalyptic settlement.

CotD: Bloodthirst edition

Again, apologies to Taco for stealing his format.

Coyote and I were talking and he was telling me about his movie idea where a bunch of nerds travel to California to kill Michael Bay. I wanted more directors to die. We further brainstormed. Then I came up with this idea.

fett: Easy video game tie in's. Oh man, a Doom like level where you wander around Skywalker Ranch murdering CGI villiansprites.

CoyoteExile: Want. A level where you kill everything that moves inside Platinum Dunes Studio. Robo-Bay boss fight at the end. Robo-Bay will of course be so overly complex you won't know which end is up.

fett: It'll be a fight in mid air, as he is suspended by helicopters, and when you come close everything goes into slow motion.

CoyoteExile: Random shit in the level like potted plants and water coolers will just explode for no reason.

fett: I want a level where you have to stalk and kill Francis Ford Coppola through his own vineyard armed with nothing but a compound hunting bow, a wine bottle and an mp3 player containing the One From the Heart soundtrack

CoyoteExile: Done!

CoyoteExile: A Brian de Palma level where it's just 1 20 minute cutscene with no cuts

fett: And, to be perfectly honest, a Spielberg level where you find him sitting on a golden throne sucking his own dick

CoyoteExile: Win