aten's allure

man, some days it hardly seems amazing that the ancients chose to revere the sun as a god. today is one of those days. hot damn. have i mentioned that i love fall?

i woke up this morning to the sun streaming through my window, accompanied by a gentle breeze of cool, fresh air, and it just made me feel all good inside, for no reason at all. i love that. i don't understand it even a little bit, but i love it.

thursday, i saw "the house of flying daggers" with markus and michele (just to avert confusion, that's the italian form of "michael," and is a man's name, despite what it might look like). that movie was wicked cool, and fantastically beautiful---though those are not unrelated phenomena. i love the way how, at various points in the film, they reveal a new tidbit of information that suddenly changes your understanding of everything that came before.

yesterday, we taught our first lab for SC741 (alcherio's class). it seemed to go alright, but will probably take the students much longer than we had anticipated. hopefully this will mean that it will be easier to write the later ones, since we can give them less to do. we also had a prospective post-doc visit, and give a talk on his thesis, and stuff.

now, this is hardly related to his visit, but it's what i spent most of the day thinking about after his talk, so i feel like writing about it anyway. it really disgusts me how shallow and superficial i can be sometimes, especially with respect to first impressions of people. i wish i could blame it on some sort of additional sense that allows me to sense people's aura, or something ridiculous like that, but i'm afraid (to my everlasting shame) that most of it, plain and simply, just boils down to physical appearance. the funny part is that, if anyone is actually reading this, they're probably thinking that the reason i'm berating myself is that i feel guilty for pre-judging a nerd, and not giving him a chance. quite the contrary. within mere moments after i first saw him, his name got inked onto the "people i want to get to know" list in my head. and i hate it when this happens (it actually happens rather frequently), because i know it's totally unfair, and prevents me from getting to know, or probably even meeting, a whole world full of cool and special people.

also, if my demons work in shifts, then i think jealousy is due for a big fat overtime paycheck sometime real soon. i hate who i am when i get like this; and in no small part because after comparison to whomever i happen to be coveting at the moment, i just hate who i am.

i want to be self-confident and charismatic too. i want to be one of the people that inadvertantly oozes "you _will_ like me, because i'm not only tall, beautiful, (and most importantly, slender), but i'm also fun to be around, and despite the fact that i'm brilliant, i'm also modest, kind, and considerate." "i always have something appropriate to say, no matter what the topic of conversation; but i never say so much that i sound arrogant or boring." "oh, and by the way, because i'm european, i was born speaking half a dozen languages, even though my family moved to the united states when i was four." "and let's not forget that i already have my phd, even though i'm only a year older than you."

the worst part is that i'm often actually successful at manipulating these people into being friends with me (c.f. enno), and it makes me feel dirty inside. probably manipulation is my talent; but even that's depressing, since it would mean that "taking advantage" of people is my special skill. people shouldn't be taken advantage of---especially the good people that i feed off of, but really, noone deserves that. it's neither fair nor kind, but i keep doing it anyway. i am a grotesque slimeball, and i hate myself.