*Transcendental *Logic

The process of working my way into grad school has begun.  It could take less than a year, or less than a decade, or more than a decade, or maybe I’ll be one of those crazy old people working in the bookstore who never got admitted to the program.  Don’t care, really, because I can honestly say the process itself is worth it.  On the other hand, wouldn’t I make a badass PhD?

I love Ann Arbor.  Not only is it probably the best city in Michigan, but it’s really odd (and yet somehow fitting) that Michigan, home of one of the worst cities ever, is also home of one of the best — AA was voted Best College Town in the USA quite a few times, and being there it’s not hard to see why.  I’m gradually moving my way there, oddly enough — grew up south of D-town, moved to D-town, now I live northwest of D-town, about halfway between where I grew up and where I’m heading.  Funny!

I now live with my best friend, who’s been my best friend for a decade without ever having shared even a state with me since the first three months we knew each other.  It’s weird to take someone so entrenchedly long-distance and plant them into your house!  Things are going very well, but it’s a big change.

The reason we moved in together like this, or the biggest reason anyway, was to Change The World.  Now we need to figure out what that means — turns out that a decade of conversations didn’t even clear up whether we meant Change THE World or Change OUR World.  I’m playing a video game right now where the objective is to change two worlds, which just seems ridiculously perfect, considering.

What do you want to change? 

Me, I’m a believer in "there is no spoon" — the only real change happens by changing yourself.  But that still leaves me wondering what the purpose of the lifelong project my friend and I are engaged in is…do we change ourselves such that we change the world for ourselves and our family, or is the actual goal a bigger one?

I’ve made some big personal changes lately, and am making more as we speak…some of it is to Bend The Spoon; some is just to keep my sanity somewhat intact in this crazy place and time.  I never realized when I was younger how big a part of adult life is caught up in Sanity Management, but it’s true — what’s scary is how true it is for people who don’t know they’re doing it, too.  Sometimes I think that more grownups would be happier with themselves if they realized how much of what they’re doing is for Sanity Management purposes…for one thing, they’d probably realize that they could be doing a better job.  But it’s hard to do a job right when you’re not aware you’re doing it!

(Funny — I just wrote "Sanctity Management"…and maybe that’s a part of it too.)

Most of us have vices that we don’t realize are our way of dulling the pain caused by something fundamentally wrong with our lives … I just finally got the courage to give up a big one last week.  And now, it’s not living without my vice that’s hard (that’s been surprisingly easy), it’s living without that protective gear on … things are louder, clearer, higher and lower, and I can no longer pretend I don’t see them or feel them.  Still, I decided that it’s better to die of exposure to reality than to live forever wrapped in blankets.  Without your protective gear, the world is big, layered, haunted, meaningful and magical — you know what I mean, because we’re all born without that gear and we all experience the world that way as kids.  Moments take lifetimes, emotions are grenades, everything matters and yet everything also flies out of your hands so quickly; it’s only insulated by the blankets that anything can really linger.  I dunno.  Maybe I’m full of it … but it’s not bad stuff to be full of!

I guess that’s all for now.  I have no idea where this site is going, so for those of you who still read it, hang in there and I’m sure eventually it’ll cook into something — cake, quiche, mud pie, who knows? — but with any luck and a little help from the Great One, hopefully it’ll be a tasty something.  Sleep continues, but I just feel like I ran out of things to say about it — if you’re here for polyphasic information, it’s all here (follow the links on the right or buy the book (thankyou!)), but I’m not sure I’ll be adding to it any time soon.  I’d say it’s because I bore easily, but two solid years is hardly being flaky, is it?  Anyway it’s an interesting topic and I’m sure I’ll come back to it.

Happy Spoonday!

Hehe, I always feel like a Bad Blogger for forgetting to check my stats for months on end…but then, when I do, I get a nice surprise, because there’s always *tons* more people here than I thought.

It’s an intimidating surprise, especially when I think back on some of the posts and they could have been better, for sure…but it’s still a nice surprise.

HI, EVERYBODY!  ISN’T THE INTERNET COOL??!

…Another surprise lately has been this television show ReGenesis.  I’m not a TV person at all, at all, but lately I’ve discovered that Good Scifi actually does exist on TV, and I’ve been having fun mining for it, even if this often means digging through the poop that is nearly everything Joss Whedon’s ever written.  (It’s higher-quality poop than most non-sci-fi TV poop, to be fair.)  Anyway, recently I was running out of .AVIs to plunder and when I went looking for more, I found mention of this Canadian laboratory-drama that you apparently need a PhD to detect bullshit in.

I believe it — it is probably the hardest science I’ve ever seen on TV by a mile; and if that weren’t nerdvana enough, it’s also pretty shockingly well-done in terms of characters and plot, too.  I found it thoroughly entertaining and interesting at first, but by the end of the first season (which I just blew two hours watching because I could not stop after the second-to-last episode) I was totally in love with every single character, except the ones I totally hate.  That’s a good drama, in my book.

Good SciFi on TV … maybe I hunt for it because finding it is always a nice surprise.

Er…I have more to say, but it’s random enough that I’m splitting up the posts; otherwise the challenge of tagging this will only be surpassed by the challenge of reading it!

That’s right, you can all go ahead and scream FINALLY! now — it’s done!

I’m reminded of the day I decided to write this book…two years ago in May. It was part of my decision to take up a polyphasic schedule again. I’d already decided that I needed better notes, and more actual research into this thing, to handle the type and volume of questions that were coming my way — as well as my own turgid curiosity and the world’s refusal to take up the torch for me. After six long years, my own memories of Uberman, recorded but not terribly carefully, were starting to seem uncertain and overplayed; and while the group of interested people was small, it was interested, and it was asking really good questions, one of which was whether Everyman was a viable alternative to Uberman.

Well, a whole lot has been learned in the last two years. It was hard to get here and hard to adjust to all the things that being "here" has meant, but the schedule I’ve worked out makes so much else in my life easier, I honestly don’t know how I’d manage without it. I hope that the combination of hard/easy doesn’t come across in the book as confusing…think of it as just another in a long line of paradoxes, if you like.

Some practical information:

First, I have not yet held this book in my hands. Lulu’s printing is normally excellent — I’ve used it before (on my poetry book) and my husband uses it too, and we’ve always gotten good results. I’ve checked and triple-checked the minutae of the design and seen every line of the print-ready proofs, and it all looks perfect to me. But I cannot promise, if you order a physical copy right-this-second-now, that it will be without flaw. If it’s way screwed up, I will replace it if I can afford to (i.e. if you’re planning to order ten, better wait). But I just can’t make a personal guarantee until I see it. The electronic copy is all tested and good, though.

I’ve ordered mine, and it should be here in about a week. So if you want a hard copy, you may want to wait that long, or order the electonic copy first if you don’t mind paying for both, and can’t wait.

Pricing is $9.95 for the (softcover) book, $4.95 for the downloadable PDF. The PDF does not have the covers, but is otherwise identical.

You can buy the book right now by going to this link. I will put a permanent link on the site as soon as I can (but for now, I’m already doing this when I should be doing homework!). Searching Lulu.com for "Ubersleep" or any other reasonable keyword ought to pull it up, too.

There is a free preview on the buying page as well. It’s just the covers and the first handful of pages, but it gives you an idea, I think. Note the Table of Contents if you want to see what the book contains before you buy it.

Remember to keep your receipt, since if there’s another edition of the book and you already bought one, I’ll pass you a free electronic copy of the new one.

You can also rate the book and leave reviews at the buying page; whether you do or not is totally up to you.

And I would be a total buttface for failing to take some space and say THANK YOU to everyone who asked about this book, had conversations with me about this book and/or about polyphasic sleep, told me they wanted to buy this book, and contributed to the body of knowledge on polyphasic sleep in any way. Obviously this whole deal is a lot more about you than it is about me, and I hope the book does your questions and your learning and your pioneering spirits some justice.

Good ni–oh, wait.

It’s not naptime for a while yet!

;)

Sorry for the outage earlier, everyone…I still don’t really know what happened, but I know the site was down for the better part of today, and it ate a post that I would rather it not have…

The good news is, not only are we back up, but today’s other technical issue, which was keeping me from finalizing the publication of Ubersleep, is also resolved. w00t! So I’m sitting here finishing that tonight, and with any luck, tomorrow’s the day.

Cross your fingers and kiss your timers for me, heh.

(I don’t know who to credit for the picture, so if you know, drop me a line. But it’s too cool to not post, and you know it!)

FWEEEEEEET!  Name Change!

::tries to get everyone to run in circles because it’d be funny::

Yup, this old horse was due a name-change…I like name-changes, especially when something suddenly strikes me as appropriate, or more fitting, and this one did.

Transcendental Logic is a term from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which you can go ahead and look at me funny for enjoying; it is a bit like saying you’re a fan of the Finnish phone book.  But check out what it means:  The principles of pure thought.

Pure, as in Pure Doxyk if you’re feeling that way, the principles of Pure’s thoughts.  I giggled so hard I almost dropped my homework.

(I would bet that part of the coolness is the really odd translation of CPR I’m reading this time — the translators obviously tried very hard to make some small sentences in there, which Kant just doesn’t contain — you’re talking heavy-dirty epistemology written in 18th-century German by a kick-ass professor who was, he admitted, working too fast and too hard to really make much effort to make it readable…there’s just no way to translate this into modern English without writing insanely long sentences or sacrificing some content.  Either way you tend to short some wiring in the reader’s brain.  Me, personally, I like to burn some wiring now and then, so whatever; points to this translation for the name-change, but I think the long-sentence translations I’ve read were more elegant.)

So, there, your insanely obscure Chinese-fire-drill of the day.  FWEEEEET!  …And break.