Forbidden Planet

Yep, wasted my time on yet another silly test. Not a terribly surprising result. You can take the test here You Are Incredibly Logical (You got 100% of the questions right) Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

On 21-September-2004, the following was part of the contents of an e-mail I sent to my wife. As usual, asking me to think about what I want is hard. Unfortunately, my head still does not know what to do. It is very frustrating for me to not know what I want. I only continue to know that I cannot continue as I am. Sometimes I just want to go away by myself for a few months. But I worry about Jason (Tania is bigger and seems to be more independent, so I don't worry about her as much - but then again, maybe I don't worry because I have not spent enough time with her and now we are drifting apart ... who knows? All I know is that I don't know.) Life used to be simple - sure there were a few things I didn't understand, but aside from that life was great. But now I feel burdened, trapped, out of control. I visualize my earlier self as sitting or lying on a raft drifting lazily through a river called life - enjoying everything as I passed by. I am no longer am I drifting lazil...

You can find a collection of them here here . I rather fancied this one from Kozan Ichikyo, who died February 12, 1360, at 77 : Empty-handed I entered the world Barefoot I leave it. My coming, my going -- Two simple happenings That got entangled.

My kids like pancakes. Especially my boy. Unfortunately, I am often called upon cut up the pancakes. I used to use a fork and knife, but it is too difficult (the initial cuts are fine, but the perpendicular cuts are trickier, since the pieces slide around). I then hit upon the idea of using a pizza cutter. This works much better and is faster. This morning, my wife caught Jason using the pizza cutter to cut his pancake. Her immediate reaction was to tell him this is wrong and he should be using a knife instead. Naturally I intervened and said it was better to use the pizza cutter. My wife responded with the typical arguments of "That's not the way it is done. He has to learn how to do it properly." blah, blah blah. I think applying creative solutions to problems is a good thing. My wife worries about "normalcy". sigh.

Well ... not really.

I baked a batch of muffins yesterday. Since the oven is on the fritz, I used the microwave - and I think they came out well, if not browned. I bought an extra small metal muffin pan (4 muffins at a time), since microwaving in just the paper cups results in non-muffin shaped muffins. I had thought about buying one of those silicon baking trays, but went with metal. Hint, it takes about 3 minutes to nuke those muffins at full power. Anyhow, returning to my topic ... Jason, for some obscure reason has just decided to take a bite out of each muffin. I can only imagine this is some sort of instinctive urge to mark his territory and property. I had left him alone for less than 5 minutes and WHAM! every muffin has been bitten. For those who don't have kids, they are extremely fast and energetic - they can expend an enormous amount of energy in an incredibly short period of time. For example, it is not uncommon for me to go upstairs to fetch something (say some cookies or milk), return dow...

A while back I was listening to CBC radio. Shelagh Rogers was interviewing some poet. There was nothing terribly interesting until they spoke about the poets work being translated into some non-Indo-European tongue. And I thought, "Does that make sense?" I can understand transliterating a poetic work (say Njal's Saga, or The Odyssey), but I am not so sure that translating poems is really sensible. The original meaning, play of the language, lyricism is lost. Even a good translation is only a pale imitation of the original (except, it seems, when Akira Kurosawa adapts Shakespeare). A good example of this is the haiku. I've read some translated haiku - they seem weird to me. On the other hand, maybe it is the form of the haiku that seems weird to me.