Sonnet 144

I love Shakespeare. In fact, while I was in college, I was a Creative Writing minor, and took several classes on Shakespeare. My professor was a soft-spoken woman, but I could tell she had an incredible passion for the Bard.

Some call him a plagarist. I learned from my classes that back in the Elizabethan era, mimicking someone else's work, and tweaking it, improving on it, was actually the highest form of praise. True, Shakespeare did that a lot on his plays, but his poetry...no.

While perusing the Internet, I was trying to remember the title of my favorite sonnet. So I typed in a line, and got back Sonnet 144:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:*

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.

To win me soon to hell*, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend

Suspect I may, but not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another's hell:

Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.*

Site popularity

Okay, so I check to see how my blog is doing at times. Call me self-indulgent...I'm just curious. I like people looking at my site and reading what I term to be my useless and inane thoughts.

So I went to www.addme.com, and clicked on Site Popularity. I looked through the links, and saw some other blog linked to one of my posts I wrote back in June of 2007, my post about quarter-life crisis:

http://www.zandria.us/archives/main/2007/07/

I'm so excited to see that some people out there in the WWW read what I have to say. Whether they like it or not, remains to be seen. Either way, I'm cool with it. :)

your body is a wonderland...

...and apparently, there's a place called Wonder Land too.

Interesting.

Got me to thinking about odd town names, so I looked it up. Man, I was amused...they have some for each state [be prepared for some reading]:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/LA-OddPlaceNames.html

I looked up some of the towns, and most of them are either ghost towns, or very tiny towns. For example, Eek, Alaska only has a population of 280. That's almost my entire graduating class. Weird.

All my life I equated "small" with the town I live in, which had 4,000 at one point.

wikipedia...apparently you can find anything on here.

I did a little experiment. Just to see.

I thought of some words, the first words that popped into my head, and typed them into wikipedia's search engine. Every single stinking word I thought of had an entry:

1. Orgasm
2. Wine cooler
3. jabberwocky
4. underwear [even talks about the freakin' history of underwear]
5. Facebook
6. itch

wow. amazing! ha ha ha.

QLC (the quarter-life crisis).

I am going to be turning 25 soon (June 20th, to be exact). I will also be graduating college in December, with a Bachelors of Science in Elementary Education. It has hit me I'll soon be out in what is termed the "real world." And I gotta tell you...

...it feels weird.

How I'm feeling actually has a term: QLC (or in layman's terms, the quarter-life crisis). I didn't even know I was in crisis mode. It even has its' own wikipedia entry:

The quarterlife crisis (QLC) is a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from ages 21 - 29. The term is named by analogy with mid-life crisis. It is now recognised by many therapists and professionals in the mental health field.

Do I possess all of the characteristics? Let's see:

Characteristics of quarter-life crisis include:

1. feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at one's academic/intellectual level (no, not yet; but I have a job prospect).

2. frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career (I'm pretty happy with being me and being alone, 'cause it doesn't mean I have to be lonely. *smiles*)

3. confusion of identity (I know who I am.)

4. insecurity regarding the near future (I'm not afraid of the future. Life is too short to worry about something you can't control.)

5. insecurity regarding present accomplishments (I'm proud that I'll soon be graduating. That is my BIGGEST accomplishment.)

6. re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships (pretty comfortable in this area as well.)

7. disappointment with one's job (well, yeah, I am...but I work at a crappy job anyway)

8. nostalgia for college life (I like college, but excited to be moving on.)

9. tendency to hold stronger opinions (I've always had strong opinions.)

10. boredom with social interactions (not really.)

11.financially-rooted stress (everyone has financially rooted stress, and I know I'll have it my entire life

12. loneliness (I have my family and friends. As far as a relationship, I'd like to have one, but that will come in its' own time. Whenever life feels I'm ready to have one, it'll give me one.)

13. desire to have children (I do want kids, even if I have to adopt. That won't come till later.)

14. a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you (sometimes I feel like that, and then I remind myself that I am doing just fine.)

So I guess I'm not in QLC. I guess I just feel weird. That's normal. Everyone's weird in their own special way. :)

the night owl gene

I'm looking at the clock and wondering why I am still awake, and why I'm not tired. I've always been a night owl.

Apparently, science has an explanation as to why I'm a night owl.

A genetic mutation called the "after-hours gene" may explain why some people are night owls...It could also hold clues for pharmacologists working to develop drugs to help people adjust to shift work or jet lag. There are further implications for the study of causes of some psychiatric disorders.

The altered gene, named "after hours" or Afh, is a variant of a gene called Fbxl3, which had not been linked to the body clock that keeps our metabolism, digestion and sleep patterns in tune with the rising and setting of the sun.

The discovery involved scientists from the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genetics Unit, Oxfordshire, the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and colleagues based at New York University.

Pharmaceutical companies are already beginning to study this class of proteins as potential drug targets.

By monitoring when and how often the mice chose to run on an exercise wheel the team spotted a change in some of the animals’ normal rhythms.

Instead of following the typical 24 hour pattern, some of the mice had body clocks that stretched to up to a 27 hour day.

Closer study of the DNA from the mice then revealed that those on a 27-hour-cycle had the after hours version of the Fbxl3 gene, one of a large family that controls the breakdown of specific proteins within body cells.

Dr Patrick Nolan, of the MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit, who led the study said: ‘‘The internal body clocks of mice with the after hours gene run on a longer cycle than mice that have a normal copy of the gene, who like most of us live on a 24 hour schedule.’’

The “cogs” of the body clock consist of interlocked cycles of proteins that wax and wane in cells. One of the key components of this loop is a protein called Cry.

“We found that mice that carried the after hours gene also had a delayed Cry protein breakdown rate, leading to a slowdown in the molecular feedback loops and a lengthening of the body clock cycle.’’

(from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/27/nclock27.xml )

Even when I go to bed early (9, 10) I still feel zonked the next day. So apparently my biological clock's batteries needed constantly recharged. Okay.

lightning crashes

I'm sure that you may have heard of the song "Lightning Crashes". It is by the band Live, and it was released in 1994. I have always loved this song, but never took the time to try and find out why the band wrote this song, or what it meant. So, to wikipedia! I looked it up and it gave me the song's meaning. But before I tell you that, here is the songs' lyrics:

lightning crashes, a new mother cries
her placenta falls to the floor
the angel opens her eyes
the confusion sets in
before the doctor can even close the door

lightning crashes, an old mother dies
her intentions fall to the floor
the angel closes her eyes
the confusion that was hers
belongs now, to the baby down the hall

oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
I can feel it.

lightning crashes, a new mother cries
this moment she's been waiting for
the angel opens her eyes
pale blue colored iris,
presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide, hide

Here is the meaning of the song: The band dedicated the song to Barbara Lewis, a friend of the band who had been killed by a drunk driver who was fleeing from the police after a robbery. Barbara had many of her organs donated, and the song lyrics reflect how her death enabled others to continue living. After the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, Ed Kowalczyk would frequently dedicate the song to the victims at live shows.

Each song has a meaning. I challenge you to look up the meaning of your favorite song today.

where do all the deleted files go?

Sometimes questions just pop up in my head, and they just keep nagging me until I type the question into Google, look it up, and then I'm satisfied...that is, until the next question comes along. This is something I have always wondered:

Where do deleted files go once you delete them?

So, I looked it up. Here's what I got:

A common misconception is that the data is actually removed from the hard drive (erased) when you delete a file. Any time that a file is deleted on a hard drive, it is not erased. Instead, the tiny bit of information that points to the location of the file on the hard drive is erased. This pointer, along with other pointers for every folder and file on the hard drive, is saved in a section near the beginning of the hard drive and is used by the operating system to compile the directory tree structure. By erasing the pointer file, the actual file becomes invisible to the operating system. Eventually, the hard drive will write new data over the area where the old file is located. (from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question578.htm)

*****

So really, all those deleted files are just hiding on our computer somewhere . Interesting. A congregation of rejected files that refuse to die!