A new favorite word
module:an independently-operable unit that is a part of the total structure of a space vehicle. It is also a cognitive science/AI word, adapted to mean independently operable _logical_ units. In my impossible cognitive development class with Howard Gardner, he used that word ALL the damn time. In my little world, it's the perfect word to describe all the little random pursuits that add up to some larger pattern I have yet to figure out through this blog.

words that j and i laugh at
henry wadworth longfellow: obvious. think about lyndon johnson
longbaby: j was a long baby (he's tall and thin). i named my mac 'longbaby.'
longpillow: this awesome pillow i got from the philippines that j and i used to fight over. now we share.

as they're bombing the hell out of Baghdad:
i feel numb. nothing. survival mode. national guardsmen with huge rifles at the grand central shuttle and west 4th street. what if a guy accidentally drops it and it fires? the idea of a nuclear bomb dropping and blowing us all to bits, for some reason, makes me want to laugh.

post-traumatic dissociation.

i remember seeing the second WTC tower fall before my eyes as I fled to bobby's house from work. i was standing on 7th ave & 15th street. felt nothing. wanted to go home via subway. asked bobby to pray for me and left his house again. i got on the train, and prayed again not to get bombed in the subway. let off at times square, they wouldn't go any further. walked to sixth avenue. streams of office workers walking up the avenue from downtown. as if it were saturday. but they all walked in the same direction.

i got on the last bus to my neighborhood, sat in the entrance stairwell because there was no more room, and peered through the accordian doors at all the people walking, walking, walking. and the midtown electronic newsbelt at the nbc studios screamed the disaster we were living in. when i got home my neighborhood felt like a little green terrarium with people walking their small dogs along central park west. one officer with his car parked across the closed off streets was the only indication of... anything.