“personal”

(...and a teriyaki New Year!)

Last night’s dinner, courtesy of Nippon-do (Miguel Ángel no. 224 Tel: 36-41-29-69) —in my opinion, Guadalajara’s best kept oriental secret. They even cooked it all at 10PM so we would eat it hot!

Of late (and not a minute too late, some will say), I’ve been studying tact. Here are two nice anecdotes I’ve stumbled on.

Do you know more?

This is, I think, a pretty good glimpse of one of the roles I want to play the next decade—don’t give up on me! :)

I feel — numb. Distant. Detached. Separate. Futile. Tepid. Coward. Been on a media breakdown^ELZR for too many days now—Scrubs^WP, Nausicaa^WP, The Economist, The New York Times, porn, (Ben Shneiderman’s) interface design articles, Wired, (so many) books. Unprecedented amounts of physical exercise sprinkled throughout (bizarre, I know). Much been thought, outcomes uncertain (to put it hopefully).

Only 30 pages into Finite and Infinite Games^AM I think it’s the best book I’ve read. ”Seriousness,” it says, ”is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.” Been far too serious in my life lately. Too scared.

Stupid death won’t go away. Seems my (maternal) grandfather has lung cancer—most likely metastatic. Brutal prognosis. He’s been staying here at home and I’ve been escaping it all—so far away. So serious.

And yet I’m hopeful now. I can never force myself to post something until I’m hopeful. Until I’ve a plan. Until I’m back. (Too scary otherwise.)

Gonna play.

Almost got myself killed driving—too distracted—to the worst theater performance of my life. Saw a girlfriend’s mean true colors. Lost my car keys, panicked, found them later in my own satchel. Back home, found the little brother of one of my high school’s closest friends died tonight. Ran at 2AM to the wake, dazed, crashed into the neighbour’s pickup. So many old friends there, so adult now. And my friend impossibly tall, so beautiful, so sad—his little bro killed himself.

The tide brought with it a berry, which I can’t wait to hack, and the final book-batch^ELZR, which I can’t wait to read. Good times.

An epithet is a term used to characterize a person or a thing—a meaningful nickname if you will—and I’ve been obsessed with them (through my obsession with self-definition) for a long time. Examples abound, from the simple Dougie Houser, MD, to Warrren Buffet, the sage of Omaha:

• Claude Piron^WP, famous Esperantist and psychotherapist, calls himself ”plifelicxigisto” (literally, more-happy-maker), because most of the people that come to him don’t do it because of a particular ailment but because they want to enjoy life more.
• Piron also famously described Esperanto as ”la bona lingvo” (“the good language”).
• Margaret Thatcher is “the Iron Lady”.
• Guadalajara^WP prouds itself as “The Pearl of The West.”
• Among the X-Men, mutant Forge^WP, whose special power is technological brilliance (that is, a superhuman ability to understand, conceive, and build machines), is often referred as “Maker” (and that has got to be the coolest, most heretical epithet ever).
• William Gibson^WP is invariably introduced as “the coiner of the term ‘cyberspace’”.
• William Shakespeare is “the Bard (of Avon)”.
• Steven Johnson describes himself numerically as “a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books.”
• Lord Voldemort^WP is best known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”.
• Benito Juarez^WP is the ”Benemérito de las Américas” (“the meritious one of the Americas”).
• Juan Gabriel^WP is fittingly called “El divo de México” (“Mexico’s male diva”).
• In role-playing games epithets according to your level and race are common; I remember Erasmo, who usually used Yang, an assassin, as his main character, really fancied his early-level epithet: “Yang, the man.”
• Adolfo calls himself (amusingly) an “infoplebeian.”
• Carl Friedrich Gauss^WP is “the prince of mathematicians.”
• Madonna^WP has long been known as “the material girl.”
• Shiva is usually “the destroyer”, but he is given thousands of names^WP in Hindu scriptures.
• Satan is “the prince of darkness”, or, in Michael Bakunin’s famous description in God and the State, “the eternal rebel, the first freethinker, the emancipator of worlds.”
• Jaime Sabines wondered, upon being called “a great poet”, if he could even be considered, simply, but truly, “a poet”—only to conclude he’s actually just “a pedestrian.”

I could go on forever.

But on a more pedestrian note (or not) what epithets do you fancy for yourself?

Without any pretense of deserving any of them, I personally like webcraftsman, formist^ELZR, and whimsicist^ELZR (which I stole shamelessly from someone I can’t remember now!). Other favorites, preceded with the same warning as before, include singularitarian, amateur, (techno-)libertarian, anarchocapitalsit, dynamist, reader, freethinker, and designer—this last one with or without any qualification, but I’m particularly fond of interface designer and analytic designer. Symbolist would also be a nice (undeserved) compliment and so would hacker. As of this moment, perhaps my favorite epithet of all is conceptual designer—a huge post on the subject upcoming.

For my webfront and brand-to-be, , I came up with the sloganesque epithet of “avantgarde webcraft” and I quite like it.

But really, I’m all ears, what labels look good on you? (And you don’t have to write them here, just think about it, between you and you.)

This past week was frantic and exhausting (not boring!) but yesterday it was all worthwhile: we—my sisters, cousins, and me—threw mom one helluva birthdayparty. Preparations started Sunday, August 20, at a virtual meeting of the Parra Cardenas where a Jewish theme was decided, an impossibly long menu was agreed upon, and (since we wanted something picnicky despite the monsoon that is August) we were all set for a tenting-camp dinner at the new store’s roof.