Just want to ride on my motorsickle

Hm. I fell asleep shortly after 8 last night, and now I'm awake and don't feel tired. Ah, old age.

So, picking up where I left off two entries ago, we will now go further into the Wayback Machine of blog entries never written, and talk about the philosophy and psychiatry meeting back in May or whenever it was. It was a lot of fun, with interesting talks, and I got to say hi to some people and meet a few more.
There's not a lot else to say about it, I guess...it was about race, which I don't know much about, and which sort of pulled together a bunch of themes sort of haphazardly. This is partly because the association presents such a wildly disjointed range of backgrounds and methodologies (this is partly what I love about it), though I suspect that it is also just pretty difficult to have something novel and systematic to say about race and psychiatry nowadays.
Next year's topic, however, sounds awesome: "Political Extremism and Psychopathology," and word is that the 2008 international conference will be on freedom, so I will probably try to attend one or both of these.

I have just learned about something kind of scary. From the food timeline, which in turn comes from Jann, here is an article about Kool-Aid pickles.

I know!

It sounds horrifying. And now I can't stop thinking about them.
I admit, I have been won over by fried pickles, but Kool-Aid pickling is just a completely different kind of atrocity. I try and try to wrap my head around it, but there is just no room in my feeble comprehension for the Kool-Aid pickle.
I'm probably going to have to make some.

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill

It's my lunch break right now. For the first time, all of my subjects decided to have lunch at the same time, so I get a break too. I spent five minutes of it lounging out in the sun and eating my sandwich, but the sun turned out to be hot, so I went back inside to write a blog entry.
This is a problem with the sun.

I have decided that it is okay to title a post with lyrics from a previously-used song if it turns out that they would make an even more fitting title the second time around. Unimaginative, but okay.

Ryan did a Choose Your Own Adventure comic on Friday; coincidentally enough, over the 4th I unearthed my old CYOA trove and reread a couple of them. Captain U read us one recently, but otherwise I hadn't had any systematic exposure to these things for quite some time. One thing I noticed is that there were a lot of random phrases and descriptions that forcibly jogged my memory, even in the books I otherwise didn't remember at all (and assumed I hadn't actually read), like when you tell your alien friend that he should take on an inconspicuous form, like "a schoolkid with braces or a mom with three kids or something," or when you claim that a sand crab is laying eggs on the front seat of the beach patrol's hovercraft.
But the thing that really startled me was how overtly the books encourage certain values. I think I was dimly aware of this in my youth, but it was pretty striking this time around. In, for example, R.A. Montgomery's Project UFO (#143), there are various scenarios in which your options are to confront an alien antagonist, or turn tail and run. On page 80, either choice (surprisingly!) leads to a happy ending, and a lesson on bullying and either confidence or mercy, respectively. However, in a similar situation on page 65, when your friend has the alien momentarily subdued and urges you to run away and save yourself, you lose unless you stand your ground and fight alongside him. Aside from the healthy dose of surprise deaths (>why did I reach for the mirrored surface instead of moving toward the warm light?), it seems like being reckless, selfish, or otherwise unvirtuous is the main thing that will kill you.
This, coupled with the discovery that so much of these books' content is lurking in dormant areas of my memory, means I am now pretty worried about the effect that they could have had on the development of my moral character.

Oh and since I keep talking about space (and honestly, weren't the best CYOAs the ones in outer space?), here is a neat astronomy link from Jeff.

Gettin crazy, anticipating love and music; play play play

You are all no doubt well acquainted with my habit of promising to write about some recent event and then failing to do so. Accordingly, today I am going to revisit some no-longer-recent events, just to keep you off balance. Nyah.

So, I believe I mentioned seeing a couple shows in the last month or so. I enjoyed The Clientele, though they unfortunately were not at the top of their game, due to stupid sound issues and their drummer being deathly ill. Surprisingly, Beach House, whom I was looking forward to seeing the least, was fantastic. I'm not sure their album is as good though; I might have to give it another listen or two.
Much the same description applies to the Lavender Diamond show; sound problems, but overall enjoyable, and, listening to the album, I find that it completely pales in comparison to the live shows. When Becky Stark sings "Here Comes One," there's a richness and a force that they fail to capture in the studio. The songs are still pretty and all, but they come off as thin and faintly twee in comparison.

Speaking of which, I've lately begun to catch up on all the albums I've been missing out on for the last several months. Quick roundup, if anyone's wondering:
Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan - Pullhair Rubeye: intriguing, but I doubt I'll really get into it
Blonde Redhead - 23: so good
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country: yes, I'm late to the party on this one, and yes, it's as good as they say
The Gothic Archies - The Tragic Treasury: extremely listenable, sometimes hilarious, everything you'd expect from Merritt and Handler
The New Pornographers - Challengers: pretty good, especially considering that I seem to remember being bored by this band
Scissor Sisters - Ta-Dah: they're going in an unusual and not entirely good direction, but there's a couple good songs on it. It may grow on me

Lastly, and still speaking of music, the latest AR songfight is now up. You might want to check it out, and those of you who are musicians might want to contribute to it. Not that I am thinking of anyone in particular; I'm just tossing that out there.