Diary—IIC


#### 205 — Monday 10 July 2006 — "Heavy Theory"

D.—

It _could_ be that I am truly coming into my own.

I bagged a job at a Safeway, and went in for my first time today. I took a lot of training and notes from computer presentations. It seems I am going to be put to usefulness in the Starbucks stand that exists within the Safeway store. I filled out some paperwork and was given a little safety tour. I have positive impressions of Tracy.  
I want to do well on this job. I don't want to screw it up. It could almost be as if I feel awkward or bad consuming all this training when I am to go away to University in September. But I made it clear last week that I will be going to school, so everything should be fine. And I think Safeway has two stores in Santa Cruz—perhaps it would be possible for me to work in one of those stores on weekends during University. And there is the matter of my wisdom teeth—I can get stressed.

Yesterday, I went to the Young Thinkers' Society Salon, and I bought some nicer clothes for myself. Seanan has put together a decent website for the society at _theyoungthinkers.org_.

I think I made a mistake in neglecting to reserve space to attend Summer Orientation for University. I simply did not think it could be all that important. On Friday I cried. After that I went to Diablo Books and bought three books, in the process burning up the credit I had for that store. I bought _Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern_ by Douglas R. Hofstadter, _The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender_ by Martine Rothblatt, and _A Void_ by Georges Perec and translated by Gilbert Adair. Then I went to the library and picked up _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_ by Steven Pinker.

I am your correspondent,

Zack M. Davis

1605


#### 206 — Thursday 13 July 2006 — "Register"

D.—

Today I was at work from 0630 to 1530, with an hour lunch and two ten-minute breaks. I think I am learning my position well. Today I worked the register a fair bit, made some drinks, helped with supplies and boxes, washed containers, _&c._, _&c_. I wrote in my green secret notebook during lunch.

I feel very adult. If I have not yet entered "the Real World," then I have gotten my foot in the door, and it looks about like I thought it would (as it were). I don't think I'm quite happy. Emotionally, I'm easy to hurt. But my Situation is well, or well enough. I've no more work this week, and I'm working for 24 hours next week. There exist pressing matters that weigh on me, such as the thing about the wisdom teeth, the problems with time management and organization, the issue of getting good classes for University, and the decision of whether to work part time during University (should I get such an opportunity). I can get hurt, and I can get _worried_ over even unlikely hypothetical future scenarios. (But _are_ they unlikely?) And there is the matter of the division of private and public spheres (in the personal, not the political, sense). How much and many of my convictions am I to wear on my sleeve (or on my bag) and what is the content, scope, and degree of those convictions?

I think "The Greater Glory of Our Humble Academy" is taking shape, but a novella-in-progress that has merely _taken shape_ is not enough to be something grand to show for my summer (_cf_. 100, 101, 204).

Rocks the shadow on the wall, rocks the shadow on the wall, _&c._ I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent,

Zack M. Davis


#### 207 — Wednesday 16 August 2006 — "Vicissitudes of Summer (Martine Rothblatt Is a Raving Loon, and That's Why We Heart Her Edition)"

D.—

I greet you, Diary; sorry I've not written in so long ...

Oh, what am I apologizing for?—and to whom? I'm sorry. Or, "Oh, well," I should say, remembering Gunnison's dictate. If I recall correctly, she should be having her baby this month—or maybe she's already had it, the month _being_ half-over as it is. O terrible time scarcity! _Time scarcity_—I kvetch about that a lot. But surely a world without scarcities is impossible to imagine even in principle, so there's no way to know whether to desire it or not. Or, to be more precise, it doesn't even make sense to speak of deciding whether to desire it. All this is very conceivably boring prattle, perhaps even more so then the rest of the glorious Diary, so maybe I should just get on with it.

But _what_?

Maybe I have had a good reason not to write you (in more ways than one!) for a month, Diary, a far better excuse then some obscure mumbling about the process of copying a file from one computer to the next. That being, that things are "just the same, only more so." I cannot help but judge that my life is going well right now: I am employed and I am to go to University in a month's time. But all I feel are the same types of things I have always felt, or _always_ since the emergence of my current self. I eat; I sleep; I masturbate (the fantasy, straight _and boring_ as it is); I go to work; I write genius things in my little secret notebook. I have made money and I have spent money.

I might have thought that working has taught me to value my free time greatly. I practically worship free time. And yet, for all my paeans to it—this—_now_—is all it is. I suppose _writing_ should be glorious enough for anyone, but what do I write? I'm good in the secret notebook, and the green secret notebook is probably on par with the blue one (which has a title, of course) in terms of quality. And after a month's void, there is _you_, yet—"The Greater Glory of Our Humble Academy" is stagnating. I need to bring more order into my life. Since I _have_ an agenda, why don't I stick to an agenda?—I suppose I've never tried, not _really_. O terrible laziness!

On 15 July, my parents got me a new computer—it's a MacBook and it is splendid.

The other day, I entered the comments thread to a _Pandagon_ post. I usually avoid commenting on blogs; I can get _so_ emotionally involved in a bad way—but maybe it's healthy. I need to learn to deal with people's opposition, as well as having my hand in multiple endeavors. The internet is wonderful, but it may require a slight reärrangement of our concepts. What's publishing, but the same thing that you do when you post a comment to the thread of a blogpost? Wouldn't having one of my great novels (_to be_) of ideas in print be basically the same thing—"just the same, only more so"? I'll check up on that thread again later.

I have to be at work today at 1530.

I guess I'm still emerging. For all the guff I pump out about response ability and adulthood, I'm still really just a kid, in some senses. At work, do the adult employees really think of me as one of _them_?—surely not. Oh, surely I'll be a responsible adult someday—"just like everyone else." It's just that I thought I had wanted it before my time ...

Some people would say that my problem is that I think I have to be better than everyone else. I would say that my problem is simply that I'm _not_.

I can reconcile myself to the fact that this is all there is. But I cannot accept the hypothesis that this is all I am.—as I _am_,

Your _increasingly rational_ correspondent,

Zack M. Davis

1405


#### 208 — Thursday 17 August 2006 — "Agonies and Vicissitudes of Closing Shift"

D.—

Mankind's original sin is not wanting to cry. Rather, mankind's original sin is crying in the restroom stall while on break and hoping that someone will come in so that when he asks "Is someone crying in there?" one can say "No, I'm urinating through my eyes." (In most cases I would say "humankind," but of course, girls don't cry.)

Yesterday I worked closing shift and got very emotionally distressed. My coworker Enrique Lopez worked later than schedule _off the clock_ just because he thought I would need help to get everything ready for closing. I kept telling him to go home, but he wouldn't. I told him he needed this job more than I did. I told him, for instance, that this was contrary to every known law of economics, and that he should go talk to the professors at George Mason University, as they'd have a fit. A little after 1830, I told him that he'd just cheated himself out of $4.

I didn't clock out on time, _and_ I didn't get to quite everything. I couldn't find the cart of dry floormats anywhere in the backroom. After I clocked out, I was helped, and the cart of mats just turned out to be in the meat department.

Then I burnt some good money on a donut and a bottle of Sprite, which is better than burning it on beef jerky and a bottle of Dr. Pepper, but probably not by much.

Zack M. Davis

0957

ADDENDUM—" 'It Is Not Linear' "— In the afternoon today, I watched "Emissary," which was a dumb move; I'd already seen it. Mother and I got green tea freezes in town. It was decided that I would drive her to pick up her car later in the evening—her car had been left near a medical building, as she drove in the morning to a doctor's appointment, and could not drive back, as her eyes were dilated. She's been having eye problems—a torn retina (that has now been treated by lasers), I think. At around 1830, I biked to Las Lomas, because I was in a "depressed and whimsical mood"—or at any rate, that's what I told people. It was the "Tri-S", you see. I went to _The Page_ subscriptions table, where I saw Corey Jacobson and Sydney Koliha. "How much?" I said. A subscription to _The Page_ is $25, so I wrote a check for $30, and said, "Keep the change." Writing checks makes me feel beautiful and powerful. (It could be that at least one of the two implies the other.) I'll give them my University mailing address when I get it. Then I went to the cross country practice, and saw the people there; did a little core, a little running (as well as a lot of walking!). I hadn't been on a serious run since 19 November 2005 (_cf_. 163), and told people so. Well, I _still_ haven't been on a serious run since that date. Cameron, the wife of coach Dan Madigan, is visibly pregnant. My green secret notebook split, and the pages facing the splitting point were smudged rather badly—and they were very good pages. I can _essentially_ make them out, though, and surely the book can be repaired. I'm not hurt by it—I still have the book. I think actually losing a notebook would hurt me very badly. I should not worry about the tension between notebooks and Diary because I am a limited creature and the most important thing is that I _am writing_. Even if—well, _of course_ there exist doubts.

After I got back from the runaround at my old school, I drove Mother to get her car. I think, near the end of the run-walk, I got some very small insight about my novel idea that I am allowed to talk about. My protagonist, Brooke Durant, will have a _regular_ philosophy column in her school newspaper, a column that relies on actual reporting. Durant is a fifteen-year-old black girl who acts like a sexless Howard Roark. And perhaps I will change the novel's epigram to the chorus of Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine." I've thought that song very well conveys a "compatibilist ethos"—I've even started composing a long post to that effect to put on the Young Thinker's Society forum. Oh!—I have wanted my perfect adulthood before my time, but I fear now I am still only a silly, immature _boy_ with emotional problems and a chronically messy room. A boy who could use more friends—Seanan is out of town, and Josh is not always reachable whenever I want to talk. Katie Kolodzie (beautiful, beautiful Katie Kolodzie) might qualify as a friend, but maybe not. I could not call her and tell her the things I want to say; we are not that close. I wonder if my prime motive for wanting a girlfriend (only I would call her a _partner_) is the acquisition of some sort of proof for my ideology—and I think that if that's so, it makes me a very strange boy. I have to work tomorrow!—for all my paeans to glories and efficacies, I watched "Emissary" today. And now it's late. It's August. I hope I don't get fired; I have behaved poorly. And yet surely I am so beautiful and powerful! See what I'll prove. _Enough_. —ZMD, 2153


#### 209 — Thursday 24 August 2006 — "Shopped"

Diary, how would you evaluate the hypothesis that everything is going to be splendid after I recover from getting my wisdom teeth out? Soon after I will go to University, and surely just the appreciation of being there will be more than enough to offset any stresses and messes I make there.—but that's wishful thinking, I'm sure, because shouldn't everything be splendid now?—shouldn't I just be greatful that I am employed and admitted to University, and have lots of time to write (if I so choose)?

Oh, but things seemed like they were going to be splendid, today. Before clocking in today, I got to throw a dart, my throw determining what prize I would get. This because sometime before I got _shopped_ and got a "10." Secret shoppers come, you see, and they're just like regular shoppers except that they file a report on what kind of service they got and from whom. My throw got me a $10 Safeway gift card.

I got my regular pay, too—a check for $289.74! During my lunch hour, I went to a Wells Fargo ATM and deposited it. I sneezed a few times during that lunch period, but I don't think I thought _too_ much of it, then.

But then, while I was on duty, my nose really started acting up. It iched like crazy. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had an office job (O glorious offices!) but when you work in drink preparation, having _symptoms_ is a horrible, horrible thing.

I tried to be good.

Enrique was late.

After I clocked out, I called via cellular phone the office of Drs. Hom and Lam (I had tried calling at lunch but did not reach a human) because I wanted to ask about the impact of this betrayal in relation to my surgery tomorrow and to inquire further about recovery time (I am scheduled to work on Monday). I talked with an office woman, I guess, and I started crying. Then, while driving out of the parking lot, I did not take proper care, and someone honked, which put me into further hysterics, which receded I think quickly.

I have important things to say that I mean to say in fiction. I can get so scared—as tugged around by my body. By feelings, by _hormones_. But I _don't_ have a soul, so if I'm going to be something glorious, it's going to have to be rigged from the machinery you see here.

I can get so scared and hurt. But you _know_ this, Diary. O personal slang! Enough.

I am your correspondent,

Zack M. Davis

2017


#### 210 — Sunday 3 September 2006 — "Last Throes of We-all-found-a-starstationism"

D.—

September is splendid!—that's what I have thought, and that's what I'm going to make it. Didn't Ms. Ciano once say that the way you get really good at something is by repeated drilling?—perhaps, then, it is to my credit that I have done so much tiresome obsessing over _glorious adulthood_.—so I'd hope, but I know that writing _of that sort_ is a poor drill for this.

The drill is living it.

I threw a bad fit _at work_ on 31 August, and I left the kiösk unattended for a little bit. Ozzy (who is moving to Santa Cruz) gave me a counseling talk. O terrible indignity!

I am going to University _in less than two weeks_ and I need to get my affairs in order.

Yesterday, I ordered a book as a surprise gift to Seanan, spurred by something he wrote in an email to me. (I imagined telling him mock-seriously that there is one and only one reason why anyone would mention her _amazon.com_ Wish List in an email. In my email to him I wrote, "Consider your hint taken.") Then I bought _Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Music from the Series_ for myself. I very much hope it arrives before I depart for University. But that is by far of the _least_ of my hopes!

People always choose what they prefer more over what they prefer less—it's axiomatic. So my true preferences (rather than those ghosts of the second order) are revealed by what I choose to do. The clearest way to say what you value is to truthfully say "I'm living it." Only so many people do not have the means.

It has been said that the young think they are invincible. But I know better: enough to want certain things before my time. _I'm not getting any younger_. I may well be starting a family in a decade. And _this_ decade—now that I can properly think in terms of decades—I am not going to let slip away. Yet I have done so much slipping. Oh, I bore you, Diary!—"oh, well." I will have more to tell some day—with more description of other characters. In the mean time just know that I am going to University and trying desperately to _think economically_.

That wisdom teeth surgery was moved to December because I was feeling a little sick morning of. Today I am to bake cookies which I will take to Salon. I have not been very progressive about my fiction, which is sad and shameful. Seanan reports that Ms. Gunnison had her baby. And don't even _think_, Diary, of asking whether it is a girl or a boy! I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent,

Zack M. Davis

1037

ADDENDUM—"Index Funds"— Oh, Diary, I have had fun, and such meaningful fun! I went to Salon. We had a better turnout this time: Seanan, Katie, Inna, Tania, Menard, Brian, and I showed. I brought orange juice and my cookies. The purposeful discussion included at the beginning a little rehash of last week's hunting topic, and then went into—oh, memory fails me now. I _guess_ we touched on religion again, and—oh, this only serves to illustrate how important it is to take notes. So many things which are said and not written are too easily lost. But talking is still glorious!—and after the talk, I have _you_, Diary, to keep _something_ of it. Oh, Inna explained her position on dairy. After Salon, I did the "hanging out." Menard talked about order-of-magnitude estimates, and I was reminded of how awesome they are. Menard also demonstrated a cute "proof" that one equals zero. After everyone but Seanan and I had gone, I kept talking with Seanan. For _hours_. We talked of marriage, for one thing. He complained a lot about injustice in Journa. And we fulfillingly talked about Kathy Ackerman-Alexeeff, and I expounded on the topic of Kathy as an ideal of Justice. It was said that we were doing a neat thing, like a literary analysis (Seanan's analogy) of social life—an abstracting of principles out of it. Seanan asked me to compare Katie and Kathy and I said that I didn't worship Katie in the way I did Kathy—Katie was more of a person, in one sense, than an ideal. (Although of course the ideal is to be both a person _and_ an ideal, I mentioned!) I explained how if Kathy is an ideal, Katie is a proof. That Katie exists shows that I am right about gender. Oh, we talked and talked, and near the end, just before he got picked up, I even mentioned the fantasy (_cf_. 53A, 67, _&c._). This is only notes, a sketch of some of the things that were said, so I don't lose all of it. I got home at about 2010. I need a productive day tomorrow. But O glorious friendship! It's been the kind of day that makes me feel really good about sex. And that's saying something. —ZMD, 2100


#### 211 — Friday 8 September 2006 — " 'Friends Forever' "

D.—

Yesterday I talked for a long time with Josh Meltzer over the telephone—going late, I think into the calendar-today. So I slept late today, which has a way of hurting me subtly. O but to _talk_!

Today, "a day off." I went out with Mother: I deposited a paycheck at an ATM, picked up a book at the library, and dropped off my bike at the shop. I bought an iced tea at my workplace. I called Seanan back on my cellular (he had called me on said phone earlier) and we agreed to meet.

_O to talk!_

My CD arrived in the post. Yesterday I helped move a piano. I remain,

Your increasingly rational correspondent,

Zack M. Davis

2110


#### 212 — Saturday 16 September 2006 — " 'Hi Hi' "

D.—

_O glorious University!_

I moved in yesterday, and surely everything is going to be splendid. That there can be annoyances in paradise, does not change the fact that it _is_ paradise.

Today I went out around campus on foot with a map to get my bearings. I think my MWF commute will work out: it took me about eleven minutes to run from a bike rack near Oakes 105 to Room 101 in the Jack Baskin area.

I went to the bookstore, and ended up purchasing my textbooks. The store was apparently out of used copies of the calculus book, so I bought a new one. Oh, maybe I could have shopped around for a better price online, but—O glorious University!—I wanted the book _then_. I did buy _Dictionary of Poetic Terms_ used. I also bought a three-hole punch and a ministapler. All this ran me $156.67.

O terrible inferior glues! The calculus book came with CDs, but in removing them, the inside cover of the book was damaged. That _really_ bothered me—for there to be _damage_ on the _inside cover_ my _brand-new book_! But I've got to _let it go_, make it stop bothering me. Because it _is_, an annoyance in paradise.

More later. —ZMD, 1437

ADDENDUM—"The Holder of Keys (At the Baby Mall)"— I have reread a good deal of _Oryx and Crake_, listened to Puffy, and masturbated. And I took a shower. Masturbating, I think, is something I won't be doing as often as I have in the recent past: there's generally not much privacy here. I'm glad. Letting certain fixations grow may well be equivalent to looking to bust. I'm not looking to bust. (Looking _for_ it is another matter, altogether—the proposed equivalency notwithstanding.)

I _need to write that essay_ on _Oryx_. But I'm happy, now, again; I'm really so happy to be here. I love this _room_, with the coed bathroom just across the hall and to the right, and I love my _sheets_, and this _desk_, and I love my _books_ on the _shelf_: two new, one doubly so. I have been good with motifs in writing. Let me also then be good with themes in life. Here's one: _I'm not going to let myself screw this one up._

So I haven't been on the _most_ glorious behavior so far, and I've neglected my writing—assigned _and_ chosen. Say I don't know what to make of my roommate, Michael Zelikovsky, or that talking to him makes me feel stupid. "_I'll make the most of it_." I can have my books in plain view on the shelf, and I don't even have to explain it to people, yet.

I am reminded of a scrap of lyrics from some beautiful music I once wrote in my head (I am unsure of how best to punctuate it here): "It doesn't matter if it's true; just act like you've got nothing to lose." It just occurs to me that I could instead make the line end with "something to prove."

But that's ridiculous. Because it _does_ matter. —ZMD, 2243


#### 213 — Monday 18 September 2006 — "Operations in Paradise Prelude"

D.—

I have written of bringing things into order for years. _Now_ is the time. University is where things get set up. I thought the behavior of many of my contemporaries at the Frosh Academic Orientation this morning was undignified. So I should present my alternative.

I've been telling you things like this for a long time, Diary. So I should have an explanation for why this time is different; why now I am ambitious _in fact_. But isn't the passage of time explanation enough?—and the passage of place, of course.

University is championed by kids as a wonderful place of freedom: no parents! And in this I agree: it is a wonderful place of freedom: no parents! But I get the sense we mean it in different ways ...

Oh, perhaps I vastly underestimate others. I must remember that as things stand I am _not_ the smartest, nor the most hard-working, nor the most independent. Why, then, do I feel so _different_ from everyone else?—in a way that I think is more than just the ordinary sense of being an individual that surely everyone feels. But why do I think that?—it is a matter for further study.

Papers and plans must be put into order! If I want the double-major in pure mathematics and the creative writing concentration within literature—well, at the first I have to find out if that's even allowed or makes any sense—what it would mean, and what it would take.

Haven't I grown so much, reading blogs?—but there are many ways to grow.

But you've heard the prelude before. Enough!—a prelude it is to _what_?

Zack M. Davis

1419

ADDENDUM— And judging by the clock, it's been the same old story. Why do I bother swearing oaths to you, Diary? What do I need, to be able to write? Where's my fury of opposition?

Right now, I don't think I deserve to be here. This must change, so I will act. After this ... —ZMD, 1932

SECOND ADDENDUM— Well, I feel fine now. But I can't rely on this sort of behavior to get me lucid again. What was it I just did?—a double session, nothing pleasurable enough to make sense of anticipation, and the whole thing being distressing anyway because it also hurt, the organ having been irritated somehow again, apparently?—finish with a long shower. Why should it hurt? I can be so backwards. (_It is better that people publish newspapers_ ...) It is not worth the time figuring out in what ways I am different from most of the others. What matters is that I throw myself into my work. Josh and Nicole had urged me to socialize—but they don't understand, because I am different from them, too—I mean that in a nontrivial way. Of course I need people, just like everyone else—but not, I think, in _quite_ the same fashion. I've gone a long time without a partner—I can go longer. At some point I'll get myself a personal copy of _The Feminine Mystique_. And I do want the double-major. I want many things—well, I'll allocate, having known _some_ things—double. Say I'm antisocial. Say I'm local color. Just don't fuck with me, and I'll try not to fuck with me, either. —ZMD, 2057


#### 214 — Tuesday 19 September 2006 — "Depth of Concession"

D.—

Today I got my picture taken for my student ID card. I went to the literature department orientation, and about half of the math department orientation.

And somewhere, somehow, later, I got into one of my moods. Nothing hysterical, but—nothing very productive. Not academically, anyway. I read a really good short story on the internet—and I think it had a big effect on me. Maybe it hurt me when I was already a little hurt for no reason. I don't know—I'm not—I don't think I'm writing so well at this moment. (_It is better that people publish_ ... ) I stumbled on the story by means of a link from a blog, and—oh. Maybe that was it.

Emotions are hard, and I am sorry that this writing is not up to par. Maybe I shouldn't even bother writing to you, Diary, when I don't feel like being specific. Maybe this is defiling the Diary, in that it is so vague, and these words do not do a good enough job of conveying the truth of my day. But don't I have bigger problems than the problems with documentation?—what am I going to do with my life?—and my _belief_?

I think I know how religious people feel when they read something sacrilegious.

I sent an email to Seanan. I talked on the phone with Mother. I talked with Josh on the telephone.

I was deliberately vague with Josh, as well.

I watched "All Good Things ..." with some guys who live in a triple room nearby. _Guys_.

Oh, how could I have left so many things yet unwritten? I really do believe in myself, and everything that self implies. But how does it reduce? Why do I get hurt when I have something to prove?

I'm no good right now. I'm just going to stop this entry, leave it at this, as it is. Forgive me. —ZMD, 2334


#### 215 — Friday 20 October 2006 — "A Statesperson's Pink"

Diary, who can say but that I am in the process of abandoning you? Oh, I have been _doing_ personal writing; it's just been in my current red secret notebook. What does it say about me, when _you_ pass as formal? Really, I must focus harder on my studies. Mustn't there be a limit to my solipsism? And there's my continual dreams of writing fiction—so vital! I need to act economically. I can write this—so as to give more of a history than could be extrapolated from the fancies in my notebook—but I shan't _fuss_ over it! There's no time! There has never seemed to be enough time. I'm blowing off a math assignment that I should be entering in tonight.

I _am_ an adult; there's no doubt about it. I just haven't been a very good one. On the eighteenth, I cried on the telephone to Nicole because I was upset at least for the most part about the poetry essay due today, which I uploaded today. I also threw fits on the eighth and the thirteenth. O terrible!—that everything should be so _messy_—but it should _not_, and I will not let it continue to be so. I have been a little upset over an email exchange between Father and me. Should I paste it in?—or save space and future paper, summarize, gloss the thing? Accursèd problem with documentation! I want my life to be _orderly_. But you know that, Diary, and it would be disorderly to trouble you with the same notions again and again. It _has_ been disorderly to ... I am out for my purposes; I don't need to apologize for _everything_. And still there are always worries about sustainability and chemical hazards.

Has freebooking degraded my writing control? Shouldn't I say things to you in a dignified way, Diary?—just tell the facts of what has happened to me, as this gushing is getting old and has been freebooked? You _will_ forgive me.

_Someone must forgive me!_

Maybe I will abandon you _formally_ while I "get my act together." And no, Diary, you need not remind me that I have been nominally in the process of getting my act together since I started you. Why don't I calm myself down?—reach a decision on what gets spent?

Oh, "_onward feminist soldiers!_" Enough. —ZMD, 2236


#### 216 — Saturday 21 October 2006 — "Self & Society (Tierney Allen Public Works Edition)"

D.—

Today I volunteered as a tour guide of Crown College, this for the University's Preview Day.

I will be voting in the November 7, 2006 California General Election by absentee ballot. My selections are as follows:

Governor: abstain / Lt. Governor: Lynette Shaw / Secretary of State: Gail K. Lightfoot / Controller: Donna Tello / Treasurer: Marian Smithson / Attorney General: abstain / Insurance Commissioner: abstain / First State Board of Equalization: Kennita Watson / U.S. Senate: Michael S. Metti / Tenth U.S. House: abstain / Fifteenth State Assembly: abstain / Judicial: abstain for all / Fourth Contra Costa Community College Governing Board: abstain / Walnut Creek School District Governing Board: abstain / Walnut Creek City Council: abstain / Walnut Creek City Treasurer: abstain / Second EBMUD Director: abstain / Central Contra Costa Sanitary District Director: abstain / Prop. 1A: Yes / Prop. 1B: abstain / Prop. 1C: No / Prop. 1D: No / Prop. 1E: Yes / Prop. 83: abstain / Prop. 84: abstain / Prop. 85: No / Prop. 86: No / Prop. 87: No / Prop. 88: No / Prop. 89: No / Prop. 90: abstain / Measure L: No / Measure M: abstain

Zack M. Davis—1800


#### 217 — Sunday 22 October 2006 — " 'Call Me What You Like' "

D.—

Today I biked into town. I got a haircut and went to a drugstore. At the store, I bought a nail clipper, some nail color, some nail polish remover, and some condoms. The condoms were the lubricated kind, which I had never tried before.

Zack M. Davis at 1433


#### 218 — Tuesday 24 October 2006 — "Androgyny as a Cultural Identity"

D.—

I've really messed things up. It should be so simple to concentrate on one's schoolwork.

It's an interesting, if not exactly well-documented process, how one issue can enter one's consciousness—and within a time (they say it could be years) come to dominate one's sense of life. I'm thinking about starting to go by "Z. M. Davis." Oh, people would probably still call me "Zack," yet—what, really, is wrong with being addressed by two letters? People have done it. Didn't a girl—sorry, _female person_—in my old school go by "C.J."?—I think those were the letters. [Was it "P.J."?]

Why can't I just get myself together? It should be easy enough. There're [...] some mathematical techniques to learn—a paper to write. So one learns—one writes.

One setting oneself up as an exception has a special burden to be productive. If one is unproductive, if one cries too often, then one is liable to be labeled mentally ill in one way or another.

I need to focus on my studies and figure out exactly what I am to be. Mutually exclusive goals?—certainly not! Only I must _prove_ this.

Enough. I am,

Z. M. Davis

1747


#### 219 — Monday 30 October 2006 — "HQ 1206"

D.— _With some willpower_, November stands to be a wonderfully busy month! _Surely_ I am given to love academia, and there is so much to learn. For my creative project in Core, I'm writing a short story titled "Pastime"—I've written about 2650 words. O glorious!—only then what's today? I had planned to do a lot of math studying on my own today, but I got so hurt and distracted. I think that it is good that I am seeing a shrink tomorrow, the Dr. A. Patrice Monsour.

Today I introduced myself (as "Zack") to someone whom I have wanted to meet for some time. Her name is Kelsey. Only what do I do now? Today I talked to Nicole on the telephone. —Z. M. Davis 2102


#### 220 — Saturday 11 November 2006 — "Catharsis Null"

D.— I have been hurt or confused or distracted again, as has always happened to me from time to time. O terrible that I have neglected my studies!

Last night, I talked to Seanan on the telephone for hours, and I still felt unfulfilled, and I ended up talking to someone here who I think is named Andrew for some time after that. It had gotten very, very late.

After that, I masturbated. I masturbated again after I woke up. I went to a review session for the mathematics midterm which is on the fifteenth.

The occasion for writing to a relic like you now, Diary (as so much of my personal writing, as you know, now goes into secret notebooking) is that I have read the Greg Egan story "Closer." "Closer" is about understanding what it is like to be (someone)—so of course it involves bodyswap, though of course it does not stop at that, either.

I think seeing fiction that touches to my fantasy is emotionally hurtful to me—it strikes deep. It is as if the fantasy is just so _personal_ that to see _someone else's_ treatment of it is maddening.

Greg Egan is a powerful writer. Was it last Sunday that I read "Oceanic" and "The Planck Dive"?

Maybe now I have catharsis, though, or I will have it soon. Maybe I have read enough and thrown enough fits, that I can accept some simple truths and move on. I will always remain unkown to a large majority of the world's inhabitants. I am a man. Being a man is different from being a woman, but not very, and certainly not in the ways my ideological enemies think. I masturbate to fantasies of taking on a woman's body, but I am not the first to have considered this concept. I am not the first to have been sexually aroused by it.

I wonder: would my fantasy still be as alluring if it weren't a secret? If it turns out that it wouldn't, should I then make sure to tell as many people as I can?.

If Egan can write "Closer"—if someday nonconscious machines will write touching fiction—why don't I write _Take It_, and very soon? Why can't I just be honest and open and unafraid? If fucking _Robert A. Heinlein_ can explore a theme, why don't I say what I think of it?

I have been messy; I have been hurt; I have been lonely. Life without emotions may be unimaginable, but that doesn't mean having them isn't difficult.

Well, leave it at this, I guess. —Z. M. Davis 1802


#### 221 — Saturday–Sunday 18–19 November 2006 — "Am Too a Threat"

"Tessa Verhoef, a first-year student at UC Berkeley, said that many Berkeley students do not consider Santa Cruz a big sports threat and tend to make fun of the UCSC banana slugs.

"'I do think I view the sports at Santa Cruz slightly differently due to their mascot not having the same "masculine" qualities as something like the "Golden Bear,"' said Verhoef. 'The banana slug on the other hand is seen as "cute" and not as a threat.'" —"Spirit of the Banana Slug Never Shrivels Up" by Andrea Pyka, _City on a Hill Press_, 16 November 2006

D.— I've never ended up actually applying the nail polish I bought (_cf_. 217). Right now I don't think I will. (I was going to, once, some time ago, but Michael reëntered the room and I put my supplies away.) Of course it's one of those things where if you try it and you don't like it you can always take it off. But if I can fret to such a large extent about chipping and finger foods and chemical risk and fumes and stigma—it's best that I just forget about it. Only how do you dispose of unused product?—and should you?—you might change your mind. _Really_, Diary, _surely_ there is nothing so wrong with having two bottles of chemicals sitting on a shelf in your closet at University, even when you have no intention of using them.

My antisexism is about seeking the best, right? Does my vision of the best really include spending time slathering chemicals on my nails to make them look pretty? My feminist energies are best directed into buying books.

My energies are best directed. I've been unwell lately—refusing to focus on my schoolwork.

On the sixteenth, I was feeling bad about my laziness—I had an essay for poetry class due the seventeenth at midnight (or 0000 on the eighteenth, you could also call it). I had a conversation with Mitchell Owen, and on his initiative we ended up walking through the open space—and getting very lost. Eventually we met a kind stranger who gave us a ride back to campus. That night there was a blackout of the electrical power. During the blackout I could still use my computer on battery power, and I did so. I didn't sleep that night, but I didn't write my essay, either. Sometime after 0800 poetry section on the seventeenth I took a nap. Upon waking up, I hurried to get to 1230 poetry lecture, where the class was informed that due to the blackout the essay was now to be due at midnight of the eighteenth. I ended up writing the essay on the eighteenth—but I didn't start in the morning. It's been submitted, though, and now I am left to plan exactly what I am going to do in order to finally be good.

Diary, was it _particularly_ sinful to have written the essay on the eighteenth, given that the original due date was earlier? When the professor moves the deadline for whatever reason, the new deadline _is_ the new deadline, even if you own a laptop, right?

The NCS Cross Country Championships were on the eighteenth. The Las Lomas girls took third in Division III and the boys took fourth—to my understanding, they're both then going to State. Drosky took the race. I guess I shouldn't be afraid or guilty. I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent,

Z. M. Davis, 0103 Sunday 19 November


#### 222 — Tuesday 21 November 2006 — Untitled

D.— This evening I cried on the telephone to Nicole. This was not the first time I have called her and subsequently been brought to tears. I've decided I like it. Systematize _this_! When at some point Nicole asked why I wanted to cry, I said it was to prove that I can. She asked to whom (I think she really said _whom_), and I said something about the stupid ugly world. When at some point I said that it shouldn't matter that they outnumber us, Nicole asked who _they_ was, and I said something along the lines of "And who's us?—can't talk." Nicole has told me more than once that if I can't talk about it, she can't help.

Diary, how does one account for insane fears that worry one, even as one _knows_ the fears to be insane? Just recently I have been distracted by (what must be) a truly absurd scenario: that I will include in one of my novels lyrics that I once long ago posted in a _sluggy.net_ Random Silliness thread, without remembering that I had so posted, and that unbeknownst to me, someone will have stolen my lyrics from the thread, published them as his own, and will then accuse _me_ of plagiarism. What if I were to decide I want to use lyrics that I _do_ remember posting in RS?—well, they're _my lyrics_ just the same. I also remember another absurd thing hurting me, back in September: there had been a dollar bill on the surface at work, and then at a later time there was not, and _surely_ I put it in the register, yet I had no memory of doing so...

Oh, how public is one to go? Do you try to convert as many people as you can, or do you live a more personal life? Is the middle excluded?

_Does_ it matter if they outnumber us? The vendetta is such a rare meme—and it could get to seem that the rarer it is, the less likely it is to be true. But that can't be so, because so many people still seriously believe in God, and not just because Pascal's Wager terrifies them.

If I get so worked up and so hurt, should I just retreat? Renounce ideology, and just live for myself? But without the vendetta, I'm not sure I have much of a self anymore. How can I live in this world?

Crying is better than orgasm. And less messy.

Z. M. Davis 1941


#### 223 — Thursday 23 November 2006 (Thanksgiving Day) — "Year in Reverse"

D.— I'm staying at my parents' house for the holiday—or should I still call it "home"? Crown is home. Not that I'm paying for either. Yesterday, I met with Ben Goldhaber and Josh Brett. Father picked the three of us up from University and drove us back to the San Francisco Bay Area. In the mail that had come to 290 Lakewood Rd. for me, there was a letter exhorting me to take a survey and containing a $10 check which I would be welcome to cash or deposit once I completed the survey. A pleasant surprise (ten could buy a book)!—I filled out the survey online. Oh, what am I doing writing about money?—say I'm really writing about _books_.

Diary, I should not let antifantasy (_cf_. 222) get in the way of my ambitions. Say I could shy away from engaging with the world for a year (not that I've _done_ that)—and just _write_—and _study_. O terrible that I have been delinquent in my studies! Do I feel that I need to plague myself with guilt in order to keep my innocence? Fine. Keep me humble, but know that I'm innocent—of everything but laziness. Critical thinking doesn't mean being afraid of things as you know they _aren't_. So right this wrong: write of this wrong, and after that just keep writing!

Winter Quarter will _have_ to be glorious. I've already registered for classes.

Nicole gave me a bonny Novartis tee. More later. I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent, Z. M. Davis 1257

ADDENDUM—"Nine"— We went up and walked a little in the open space. Mother left early to check on the cooking; she came back later when Nicole and Father and I were playing frisbee at Indian Valley. So we were all throwing around the frisbee. As much as I have turned away from sport, it's still fun to run and to catch. Only now it makes me think of antisexism. Like everything else, I guess. It is at this time a distraction to think of publishing: to think of what vicious slanders people might tell about me when they notice my work, or what I will do if no one notices my work. It is better to live personally. Take a year or something.

It's not a race. —ZMD 1531


#### 224 — Monday 11 December 2006 — "Sigma"

D.— I'm staying at my parents' house for the long break. My wisdom teeth removal surgery was rescheduled due to sickness yet _again_. Mother drove me to the oral surgeon's office this morning, and it was just a _little_ bit of coughing and sneezing (and apparently wheezing) that I had, which would not be _nearly_ enough to keep me indoors from some public engagement, but it would seem that one must be very careful with the nitrous oxide. If I'm better by the twenty-second, the surgery will happen then. Mother and I went to Burger King and to Ross; at the latter, she bought me a jacket.

My doubts might be hurtful; my feminist energies might be undirected. Only Menard and Seanan and I showed to Salon yesterday. I don't think it was a very productive session. We ended up walking to Bonanza St. Books. There, I bought a collection of James Tiptree, Jr. (which isn't her real name), Joanna Russ's _The Two of Them_, and _The Feminine Mystique_ (_cf_. 191, 213A2). Am I a spendthrift? I want my possessions to be important and orderly and not a distraction. Books are important.

Doubtlessly I watched a lot of _My Life as a Teenage Robot_ online on the ninth. I'm not ashamed.

On the eighth, I visited _The Page_. I stayed for a while—or far too long, when you consider how my mood degraded. It is shameful to show so much inexplicable shame: what's an egoïst to do? I think my entrance was very classy and funny, though.

I might end up getting a very, very bad grade in my math class. I'll keep you posted, Diary, and I will _have_ to study vigorously over this break. I think I did a decent job with my final exam essay for my poetry class. It's as Adrienne Rich is not so opaque when one really _thinks_.

I think I may have made a friend at University. His given name is Sean, and I think his last name is Smith.

And, Diary, what about when you're not alone, but when you consider your company, you sort of wish you were? This is in memory of a terrible line of conversation that occurred in the Crown/Merrill Dining Hall. No details, only I will fear no evil ... [_cf_. 220]

And when you make whatever allusions are convenient? Let it pass.

It may be a matter for contention when a work is _finished_, but in any case I have a version of "Pastime" that runs continuously from start to finish. (Naturally; it was my creative project for "Ethical Issues.") I sent "Pastime" to Amy Clarke, and just yesterday I sent it (I guess with a line edit or more over the Clarke version, not that this is really necessary to note) to (beautiful, beautiful) Katie Kolodzie. With Amy it was an exchange I initiated, but I haven't gotten to reading her story yet. Katie won NaNoWriMo.

I am so privileged, and with certain measures of devotion, I just might end up creating something truly special. So where's the devotion? I can't expect Kelsey and Kathy and Katie to achieve my excellence _for_ me, for more reasons [than] just that they're busy with their own respective excellences. I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent, Z. M. Davis 1652

ADDENDUM— Having facial hair is nothing special (_cf_. 158A2). —ZMD 2227


#### 225 — Thursday 14 December 2006 — Untitled

D.— I might have a habit of apologizing to people for no apparent reason. I should not feel guilty when I know that I have done no wrong, because if I continue to do so, people are liable to think that I really am guilty of something, even though I am in fact perfectly innocent. I might be looking forward to seeing the Dr. A. Patrice Monsour again on eighth January, because I might have issues that need to be dealt with concerning groundless feelings of guilt and fear. Please, enough.

Mother and I went out to a coffee shop (I did not get anything, nor did we stay and sit), and in town [before arriving at the coffee shop] we encountered Ms. Reeves-Hampton, whom it was pleasant to see. Upon arriving home, I watched some _Star Trek_: "Sons and Daughters" and "Hide and Q."

I'm starting a new notebook. I like my new jacket, Diary.

And I'm innocent. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— Oh, and my grades: Crown core, A; poetry, B; math, B. —ZMD


#### 226 — Friday 15 December 2006 — "Deer"

D.— There was some major family psychodrama last night. I am sorry, Diary: no details.—other than it touched on the vendetta.

I have shaved some amount of hair off my arms and legs.

Today I took the Civic to town, buying gloves and milk on Mother's request, and candy and condoms for myself.

I saw "Datalore."

I cried and talked to Nicole on the telephone. —Z. M. 2359


#### 227 — Friday 22 December 2006 — "Rover"

D.— This evening I played _Scrabble_ with Mother and Father, and I won. The scorecard shows me with 188 points, Father with 160, and Mother with 128. I executed a particularly opportune tile exchange, unloading the _Q_ tile from my rack, having noticed the quantity of _U_ tiles already played. My moment of triumph came when, late in the game, I laid down _R_, _A_, and _V_ tiles (the _V_ on a double-letter premium space) to form _ROVE_ and _VIA_, scoring 21 points and taking the lead.

I saw a good deal of _Star Trek: Voyager_ this week. (Perhaps it was a bad deal.) I am,

Your increasingly rational correspondent, Z. M. Davis 2007


#### 228 — Wednesday 3 January 2007 — "Ought Seven"

D.— _O glorious University!_ Today I am back at University.

It is at least possible that today I have independently made some progress towards curing my recent madness. On twenty-sixth December I saw a professional, this because on I think twentieth December I had a crying fit, Mother called Kaiser on me, and somehow I made it through triage.

On first January, I cried over the telephone to Nicole.

Today I bought books for my classes, as well as two binders. The book for my linear algebra class I ordered online.

Diary, you can infer that I am now nineteen years of age (_cf_. 183).

I have removed more body hair (_cf_. 226). I am,

Your increasingly old correspondent, Z. M. Davis 1649


#### 229 — Monday 8 January 2007 — Untitled

D.— On Saturday the sixth I threw a fit and was privileged with the company of Sean. Today I saw the Dr. A. Patrice Monsour and cried.

There has only been one meeting of it to date, but I think my "Ethics and the New Eugenics" class is wonderful.

One's work being the important thing, in the end, it may not be so important to keep a chronology of madness. —ZMD


#### 230 — Tuesday 9 January 2007 — "_Chronology of—"_

D.— Today after my eugenics class, I did a lot of talking with the instructor, Eric Cummins. Much of this was in a room with a copier, and a student named Abigail was also there: Abigail had recently had eye surgery, and increased-size copies were made of text from the course reader.

I received my math book.

I don't know how to account for my recent madness.

Z. M. Davis 1746


#### 231 — Friday 19 January 2007 — Untitled

D.— From my notebook:

If nothing else will convince you of the

seriousness of this entire endeavor, consider when

I STOOD ON THE STAIRCASE OF THE UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY, PRESSED THE KURZWEIL BOOK FAST TO

MY CHEST, & PRETENDED I WAS KATHY.

Diary, I don't suppose you are entirely obsolete, even if it turns out that I have become more intimate with my notebooks.

On Tuesday the sixteenth, I saw a psychiatrist, a Dr. Holland. We talked, I degenerated into a fit, and he ended up writing me a prescription for some Ativan. I have not filled the prescription as of yet. On Wednesday the seventeenth, I saw the Dr. A. Patrice Monsour. She gave me some references to off-campus counseling services, and later, I suppose it was the next day, she called me and gave one more reference. I _think_ I cried a _little_ during the appointment on the seventeenth. I saw the Dr. Holland again today, and I was much calmer; I had been much calmer since I suppose the evening before, when I suppose I wrote some things in my notebook. You could say I was animated, even, while explaining what I had been thinking and writing about. Near the end of the session, I basically said that I wanted to cry but couldn't. I have an appointment with Dr. Holland again on Tuesday the twenty-third.

Diary, how does one account for one's past madness? When one has every reason to believe in one's innocence, it is senseless and even immoral for one to feel scared or feel guilty. But even when one's emotions and doubts have been completely irrational and out of touch with reality, one cannot deny that one had at one time felt them—or at least, that one has reason to believe that one had at one time felt them. Past events cannot be _erased from the timeline_ no matter how senseless they were.

I have received _Myths of Gender_ in the post.

This afternoon, I masturbated and napped. Tonight I posted (from a computer lab) to a _Feministe_ thread that implored lurkers to post.

I think I'll be okay. I might want to indulge in the luxury of more extended therapy, though. Externally everything is perfect—I have so much opportunity to achieve all sorts of glorious things at glorious University! Internally—I think I've been very erroneously hurt lately. _Erroneous_ because I have had no reason to be hurt.

I'm innocent _in fact_.

Diary, you will forgive me where I have been vague. On second thought, don't. —Z. M. Davis 2305


#### 232 — Sunday 21 January 2007 — "_Ani Yodea Eyfo Atah Khai_"

"The cheerleaders all say that they have had to deal with some degree of heckling from people around campus, both at and away from basketball games. For Logan, the lone male cheerleader, the satisfaction he gets from cheering has certainly come with its share of teasing." —"Short Skirts & Thick Skin: UCSC Cheer squad fighting stigmas, indifference" by I. A. Stewart, _City on a Hill Press_, 18 January 2007

D.— I was sad or upset for what I will call much of the day yesterday. I spent a long time using the internet in the Crown computer lab. At dinner I saw Sean and Nora and I associated with them for hours and hours—long past midnight. I apologized a lot. I gather Sean and Nora are together.

Mother and Father were to visit today, but did not. Mother saw something, and so she and Father went to the emergency room to check on her vision (_cf_. 208).

I locked myself out of my room today by neglecting to bring my keys when I went to shower. I borrowed someone's cellular telephone, and called the RA on call, who let me into my room.

Today I went to the library, and, consulting an appropriate dictionary, translated (perhaps not perfectly) something into Hebrew, this for an idea Sean had in response to something Michael allegedly did. I have printed out the Hebrew text from my computer.

I watched others play, and eventually played a little myself, with a Wii. —Z. M. Davis 1710


#### 233 — Tuesday 23 January 2007 — "Computer (Life) Science"

D.— From my notebook:

I may often be mistaken, but rarely

obviously so.

Today I met with the Dr. Holland, eventually getting hysterical to an extent. I am to see him again on the thirty-first. I talked with Cummins after my eugenics class. I watched _Gilmore Girls_ in the community room. —Z. M. Davis 2124


#### 234 — Thursday 1 February 2007 — "Fora and Fauna"

D.— From my notebook (Tuesday 30 January; this excerpt must have started in my room and I think was finished in the community room):

> I'm waiting again — O glorious — only there  
> is this totally unrelated — O loneliness. I want  
> to share these ideas with someone — & sex  
> with the same. & I want Michael to leave the  
> room so I can pretend I can take on the  
> form of [redacted] — & be a butch feminist  
> in that body — with that voice —WITH THAT  
> CHEST! O DESIRE!—I write as outwardly I  
> must seem perfectly calm—O DESIRE! O  
> DESIRE!  

I recall being distressed in the evening Monday and happy in the evening Tuesday.

Yesterday, the thirty-first, I had another session with the Dr. Holland, and I threw a pretty bad fit at the end. I filled the prescription for Ativan afterwards (_cf_. 231). Later that day, I dressed nice and went to the Crown science table, which I had signed up for previously. Gabrial Elkaim was the featured faculty member. Elkaim works on autonomous systems—robots, you could say. The talk and presentation was interesting. I took some notes.

This morning I got up in time to have what might have been breakfast—a bagel and some Mountain Dew. I had the nerve to ask a woman (Nicole Brescia) who greeted me by name ("Z. M.") where exactly I knew her from. She cited CruzDate and (as I recall) acquaintance from her work in the dining hall—and I then remembered.

A short time after philosophy lecture, I went to the office hours of the TA Paul Tokorcheck, who was late. Another student was there before me. Before Tokorcheck arrived, the other student gave me a lead on a problem for which I had thought I got the right answer, but had needed a calculator to so get it. Tokorcheck was helpful. I made corrections in red ink to the homework and turned it in.

After eating, I had my way with _The Double Helix_ in the Crown library, this for my eugenics class. I browsed the internet in the Crown computer lab. I posted a comment to a _sluggy.net_ reactions thread.

In eugenics class, Cummins mentioned an event to take place at 1600 in a room in Engineering 2—a session featuring Jenny Reardon and David Haussler. Cummins had mentioned the event previously, and, if I recall correctly, I was already intending to go, which I did. Cummins showed later than I. I took some notes. During the break I asked Reardon how I could find out more about the field of science and technology studies.

I felt ambitious and even euphoric. I started feeling zealous during my eugenics class, likely more towards the end. We watched video.

In the night, I attended a panel discussion on the topic of depression and suicide. There was video afterwards.

I am still concerned about my recent psychological unsoundness.

_Pandagon_ blogger Amanda Marcotte has accepted a position with the John Edwards campaign.

At least I'm passionate, right, Diary? —Z. M. Davis 2328


#### 235 — Saturday 3 February 2007 — "Cyber"

D.— Yesterday, I posted to a _Hit & Run_ thread, the leading post of which attacked Amanda Marcotte (_cf_. 234).

_Feministe_ linked to an online face transformer. The user chooses a photo to upload, and selects the sex, age group, and best-fit race of the face in the photo. After a zoom-crop operation (if necessary) and calibration, the user can select one of many transformations to apply to the face. For example, the image can be transformed to make it look more like it was of another age group, or race. Also for example, there was a "Botticelli" transform. And if the user had indicated the face in the input image was male, there was a "Feminise" option—the reverse was also the case.

I spent a lot of time (not all continuous) playing with the tool. I got some pleasing results, particularly after I got the idea to use outputted images as new imput images, and to set the sex-age-race information to my purposes. I enjoyed myself very much.

Only it's unfortunate that I came with my underwear and pants on.

I disapprove of pornography, generally.

Later I printed out a page with four transformed faces on it, but later still I put it in the recycle bin, after my second "cup of tea," as I recall. But I don't recall using the printout very much for that "cup."

Diary, I don't think it would be proper to suppose that I have been _particularly_ concupiscent lately (_cf_. 234). Diarism is a necessarily selective practice.

Today is Family Day at Crown, and Mother and Father are to visit.

My psychological health would seem to have improved. It would better to have a fuller account of things. Diary, you know well that I do not consider "Nobody's perfect" to be much of an excuse for anything.

Enough for now. —Z. M. Davis 1044

ADDENDUM—"Fiat K."— Mother and Father have come and left. I was bought a University tee, one with the "FIAT SLUG" emblem. Astronaut and oceanographer Kathryn D. Sullivan gave an inspiring speech. —ZMD 1837


#### 236 — Thursday 26 April 2007 — "Under the Wheels at Chalk Farm"

D.— Questions exist. Having seemingly doubted one's innocence, how can one come to be dauntless? Without becoming dauntless to an extent in certain respects, how can one live? Manifestly _being_ manifestly innocent, by what mechanism can it sometimes come to pass that one would seemingly doubt one's innocence?

On fourth February, a policeman drove me to what I believe is the psychiatric ward of Dominican Hospital. I was handcuffed in the backseat of the police car. I was released later that night.

Marcotte stepped down.

I have neglected writing.

My Winter Quarter GPA was 3.80.

I have acquired a Facebook account.

On what I think I have some reason to suppose was nineteenth April, I told Kelsey Collier (who has apparently read Ball's _Mathemagics_) that I have had a crush on her.

On the twentieth, I saw the Dr. Jennifer Kaupp, whom I am to see again tomorrow. Afterwards, at a local bookstore, I purchased both a Joanna Russ novel and Egan's _Distress_, the latter of which I had benefited from the year before, and of which I wanted a personal copy. On the twenty-fourth, I saw the Dr. Holland.

Yours, Z. M. Davis 2355


#### 237 — Sunday 29 April 2007 — "Appearances and Icosahedrons"

D.— Yesterday I attended a talk given at the Cultural Center by the Dr. Cheryl Scott.

I shaved my eyebrows.

In the evening, I ended up accompanying Sean, Richard, and Sam to town, as there had been a power outage. We took a bus to the Metro Center and ate at a vegetarian diner. I behaved poorly. After returning to campus, I was awake to some ridiculous hour, playing some _Dungeons & Dragons_ variant with these three. (Diary, I suppose that the term "Naruto d20" means little to you.) My character, created during that session, is a fourteen-year-old journalist (and, I think, ninja) named Akimoto Ami. I have very much neglected my studies. Yours, Z. M. Davis 1621

ADDENDUM— Consulting Wikipedia, I wonder if "_Dungeons & Dragons_ variant" is the best term to describe the game—to call it a variant of "d20 Modern" might be more accurate. (Diary, you will understand that this is not my field.) I do remember seeing a book at the session that bore the words _Dungeons & Dragons_. Oh, what _exactly_ were the words of Sean's characterization? (How does one know with absolute certainty where one's memory is verbatim?) Look—_suffice it to say_ that it was the sort of activity that involves dice and character sheets. You understand me, Diary. I want to do things right. —ZMD 1650


#### 238 — Tuesday 1 May 2007 — Untitled

D.— Yesterday I cut my class on energy and the environment. I have similarly skipped quite a number of mathematics section meetings.

I have a mathematics exam tomorrow.

That I do not seem to be able to make sense of some feelings I have seemed to feel recently, is not a sufficient justification for my destruction. —ZMD 1541


#### 239 — Wednesday 2 May 2007 — "Passages of Hope Betwixt Patches of Savagery?"

D.— By now it should be even more manifest than it was before that my recent lifestyle is unsustainable. Between my recent madness and my perennial laziness, I have been performing poorly, and if my hysterical fits of recent months don't demonstrate my dysfunction, then my grade on today's exam is likely to.

Clearly I am going to have to transition somehow. (No jokes, please.) How can one convert the emotional force of _"having an agenda"_ to practical measures like having a literal _agenda_? How can one establish one's personal right to flourish?

It is late, but by no means is it too late. If, tragically, I have not had full moral majority for Philosophy of Biology, then perhaps I can have it for Intro to Feminisms. Yet am I presently to isolate myself from my friends at University until I have some measure of it?

And if I were to fail mathematics, what then? —Z. M. Davis 0437

ADDENDUM—"They'd Look Up the Plurals of _Status_ and _Stasis_"— _Of course_ I did poorly on the exam, but I would not call myself doomed. I saw the Dr. Holland today. Perhaps I will be okay. One ought not destroy oneself on account of some (I hope this is the correct word:) delusions suffered during what they call freshman year. I have an essay to write that is due tomorrow. Diary, I think I am a very fragile person. —ZMD 2221


#### 240 — Tuesday 8 May 2007 — "Natural One"

D.— I saw the Dr. Kaupp on the fourth, and am to see the Dr. Holland today. On the fifth, I played the game involving icosahedral dice with the group. It was a long session. I think it was scheduled to begin at seventeen (what we call _five_), though I suspect play actually began some number of minutes later. I recall that when I first entered the room, only the gamemaster, Richard, was present. I had to go back to my room to get my character sheet. (How does one be rigorous in the reporting of times? What is what is called a bright line, and what is a blurry process? And are we not denied certainty even in our estimation of the proper extent of our uncertainty?) At some point, there was a meal break (and after I was personally done eating, I went up to my room and called Mother), but the session was not really concluded until approximately midnight. I had a lot of fun.

In an email timestamped (or at least, the copy in my "Sent" folder is so timestamped:) 02:38:56 on the seventh, I wrote to Richard "that it is likely that I will not participate in this week's session; perhaps I am done permanently. I fear that presently I am far too dysfunctional to be able to afford such activity." The "Mini-Feed" on my Facebook profile presently contains an item for that day timestamped "2:37 am", stating that I left the associated Facebook group.

You are aware that I cannot tell you literally everything that happens.

Yesterday, I did not attend my mathematics lecture. I think that I was asleep for some or much or most of its duration. Instead of my energy class being held in its normal location, we were to attend a presentation given by the Dr. Holmes Hummel, a woman with a gloriously androgynous appearance. I arrived late. Afterwards, I went to the Community Room and watched some _Voyager_.

Tonight, what I am given to understand will be the penultimate episode of _Gilmore Girls_ in the world, will air. It is also College Night.

Diary, let me mention to you a most wonderful song that I have purchased recently. It is titled "I Got Nerve" and is preformed by Miley Cyrus, also known as Hannah Montana. It is a song of dauntlessness and romance.

Diary, suppose that it is not horrible to have started writing an entry, only to get distracted and do something else before finishing it up. —Z. M. Davis


#### 241 — Monday 14 May 2007 — "OpeRand"

D.— Truths which are known can generally be stated. Those for which one cannot find the words, one can, one thinks, at least graze, and one can state that this is the situation. When one feels uncertain, one can state this, and state its extent. The extent that one is uncertain about this, can be stated—and this loop or extension of a type which no doubt you have seen before can be followed as long as one determines is proper.

It seems that I have been scared for my innocence. I have called this, quite appropriately I think, my recent madness. But I think that there does _not_ exist a reason that I can see to think that I have actually committed a sin in the way that I had been scared of. It would seem that I ought to stop being so scared, and that I should try simply to be a more perfect manifestation of my ideals.

Sometime—and I do not at this moment of writing know exactly when it was, except that it was rather recent or what one might call fairly or relatively so—I came up with a new scene idea for one of my glorious novel ideas. Brooke (who is dauntless and a wonderful manifestation of her ideals) shows her suicide plan, which she does not expect to use, to Stephanie (who is dysfunctional and a religious fanatic). Stephanie is very surprised—how could _Brooke_ have such a plan? Brooke explains that the plan exists _in case she ever did something she could not live with_. Brooke assigns an extremely low probability to this contingency, but believes that the possibility exists. She can live and flourish without perfect certainty.

Can't I live and flourish? Can't I believe in my innocence? _As far as I know_, I have not committed a major sin. If it turns out that that italicized qualifier cannot be eliminated, aren't I nevertheless entitled to seek my maximum utility?

I did end up participating in the most recent RPG session. I might not have gone to math class at all last week. —Z. M. Davis

ADDENDUM—"Analytic Synth"— Oh, Diary, don't I look beautiful in my headband and my gray jacket over a white collared shirt and my black pants and my pink new shoelaces? I got a 95/100 mark on my first paper for Phil. of Bio. I, having opposed Quine, have some homework due later today which I have not done. (Yet Quine has nothing to do with my laziness.) —ZMD 1007

SECOND ADDENDUM— Today I skipped math class. Does that mean I've missed four lectures in a row?—oh, dear. As I recall, I did not wear my headband to my energy class. What do you say about qualifiers that one might be inclined to think are completely unnecessary? And if I am really now on my way out of my recent madness, haven't I still ruined myself academically this quarter? —ZMD 2356


#### 242 — Tuesday 15 May 2007 — "Queer Relation"

D.— I saw the Dr. Holland this morning. There was a quiz in Phil. of Bio., to which I arrived late.

Father called today. He does not want me developing a victim mentality. (Diary, you will not joke about how I've been reading so many feminists.)

I have received the Volume 56, Issue 7 _Page_.

I attended a little event at the queer center on the topic of asexuality.

Diary, suppose that I am so arrogant as to think myself a philosopher with important work to do.

I may resent his manner, but I think Father has a certain point. Suppose I've been hurt. Say I have been uncertain, that I have suffered, that I have been terrified, that I have not had the pride to exist stably. These are not reasons to shy from bringing things into ever-greater order and ever-greater documentation, for beyond this quest, what else do I have but pleasure?

"The Greater Glory of Our Humble Academy" contains the theme of coping with the common opposition of pleasure and glory. The work about Brooke Durant contains the themes of coping with the aforementioned opposition, with epistemic uncertainty, and with the subjectivity of all value. The work about Lance Atherton is a manifesto. Yet I have written very little.

There are things I have not told you. This is trivial: not everything can be told, even (I am inclined to think:) in principle, for then also one would have to tell the story of the telling, and that of the telling of _that_, into infinity. But the triviality of the unrealizability of this infinite does not render trivial the selection of what is told and how it is ordered—the motivations structuring this particular structure. How do I prove to you that I'm doing it all _correctly_? When I tell you that I care, how can _you_ know whether this was written by someone who cares, or by someone who instead only wishes to leave this impression?

> How will this record be stored, and what resources will it take?—can these be afforded?
>
> And who would read it?

Perhaps (and perhaps this entire line should be read as speculation strictly) it is understandable that one could get hurt dealing with these basic ruminations in addition to the intellectual endeavor itself. Still, hurt or only seemingly so, one must not give up the work.

Only masturbation is just _so much easier_. And you realize that I might have grown a little proud of my autogynephilia, in a way. —Z. M. Davis 2359


#### 243 — Sunday–Monday 20–21 May 2007 — Untitled

D.— The Phil. of Bio. lecture of the seventeenth addressed evopsych.

It turns out that I got a 76/100 mark on the mathematics exam (_cf_. 239A).

On the eighteenth, I had a session with the Dr. Kaupp. Also, Mother came to visit. My mouth started "acting up," as it has done from time to time: it would seem that the area where I had salivary stone removal surgery last year has never healed properly.

I've also been a little sick, having what I suppose you would call a sore throat.

Today I attended a room selection event for next year, and received Rutherford 213. It's a double, though I do not know who I will get as a roommate. I think Michael and I have gotten along pretty well this year, even if I have no special fondness for him. He's actually gone a lot. He is often away on the weekends, and even when he's at the University, he's not in the room a whole lot, to the extent that I remember quipping that I have a "virtual single."

Diary, at the risk—or say the certainty, rather, of repeating myself: I need to grow up. I think it has been demonstrated that I have the raw ability required for University-level work. What I need is the will to not be scared or sad, and the will to not be lazy. My failures in these two respects are manifest in the disappointment of this quarter, and of this whole scholastic year.

_O glorious University!_

O putzy Zach Davis!

Diary, I will tell you what I want. I want my room to be clean, and I want to be clean myself, and I want to dress nice (as I define this), and I want to receive good marks in school. I want to walk quickly with poise, and hold my books against my chest. I want the bravery to ask to be called "Z. M." when I go back to work in the summer, and the competence to perform well there out of all proportion to my meager experience. I want a romantic relationship (as _I_ understand this) with a woman who is butch and beautiful (as _I_ define this), and who will read all this and affirm its goodness. I want a book deal; I want to be relatively prominent. (Prominence, of course, is a continuum, or can be approximated by one. Being famous like Daniel C. Dennett is not the same as being famous like Roderick T. Long, but I would imagine that both philosophers are pleased to be listened to.)

I want to not repeat myself overmuch.

What prevents me internally from acting on the premises that I really do want all these, and that I really deserve them? What drove me to purchase so many television episodes on iTunes? (The music purchases are quite defensible.) It is not as if I've been working on a treatise on gender anxiety in _Hannah Montana_, or moral principles in _Voyager_.

I could need some time to sort things out. Only then what have I been doing since December?

It would be terrible if I were to fail my energy class.

I love being at the University, but there is an upside to the scholastic year being so close to over. (There is also the downside of how little time there is to ensure that I pass my classes this quarter.) A new interval means a new chance to redeem myself, to break out of this loop spanning my time with you which you no doubt have noticed.

I hope this explanation is adequate. Remind me to engage in some metaDiarism sometime soon. —Z. M. Davis

ADDENDUM— Doing philosophy feels so wonderful! If you wanted to be cute, you would call it a "mode that affirms." Only I have been so careless in life. —ZMD 0958 Monday 21 May


#### 244 — Sunday 27 May 2007 — Untitled

D.— Being happy, how can one make sense of having been scared? Being scared, how can one make sense of anything? Being innocent (save of indolence) through all of this, how can one make sense of the destructive sequence of events? Diary, I'm a mess yet again—if I haven't been a mess _continuously_. It's horrible. Somehow, someday soon, I must have some greater measures of my glory (else—?), only what will I do presently? —Z. M. Davis


#### 245 — Tuesday 29 May 2007 — Untitled

D.— Why is the typical therapy session only about fifty minutes, or whatever it is? There is no way one can cover every area of concern in all desired detail in so short a time. Too often one finds oneself longing for the next appointment. Suppose this is part of why people form relationships. Only who would take me?

One can spend hours reading blogs while forgetting the essence and proper place of the intellectual endeavor of which the blogosphere is a manifestation. People are looking for _the truth_, and they are also deciding what ought to be, and are trying to persuade each other.

The internet rose into prominence in my lifetime; I would consider life without it to be noticeably impoverished. If projections hold, I will also get to see the coming advances in—any field I care to name.

Civilization _will_ progress (for the moment). I want to participate!—to add my contribution to that mass, to nudge it (my tiny thrust netting componentwise for and against billions of other such nudges) in the direction _I_ want it to go—to document all this. Diary, I am _your correspondent_.

Only I've been disastrously lazy. And lately I have even seemed to be scared for my innocence. Well, how much reässurance do I need?—and how much damage have I done with my recent misbehavior? It's very bonny to sing of some high endeavor, but this glory would not seem to hold one as strong when one is sleepy, or scared, or hungry, or—I'll say _concupiscent_. This is not to say that given the chance, I would readily give up my faculties of slumber, or emotion, or consumption, or even sex. (It would, of course, depend on the alternatives.) It's only that it's easy to get distracted, and it is almost as easy to get _hurt_.

If I really want to seek the truth, I would do well to remember those I already know. For example, that I too am subject to economics. (It's like physics, or, perhaps regrettably, biology.) I have not been justifying my parents' great investment in me. I should expect to suffer as a result.

Diary, aren't I insightful, that I have written this?—special, that I have kept glorious notebooks, even if I have recently lapsed in this practice?—valuable, that as I recall, teaching assistant Robert Harada, after clarifying interlocution, couldn't see anything wrong with my conclusion (as I think I presented it to him:) that Pr(B)Pr(AB|B)≤Pr(A)? Aren't I brilliant enough that this "small" matter of my recent madness (if I am not too bold in calling it even that) can be understood and forgiven?

I think that I have every reason to think that I'm _innocent_. Who can claim more than that?

And who can need more?

I hope that these words are adequate. —Z. M. Davis 0510

ADDENDUM— I have gone to "office hours" and talked philosophy with Prof. Kevin Brosnan. O glorious, to construct and examine arguments! I admitted that I haven't been doing the reading for his class.

Even _if_ I have sustained permanent emotional damage from my recent madness or my perennial carelessness, it could be very mild; I am not destroyed. I am innocent. I believe I can do many glorious things if only I try. To prove this, I'll have to actually try. —Z. M. Davis


#### 246 — Wednesday 30 May 2007 — "True Endeavor and Potential Propensities"

D.— You know that it is possibly tempting for one to argue that one is not lazy, but rather has merely been working on tasks other than the one prescribed. You also know it's a cop-out. I am very privileged, to be able to spend so much time observing the blogosphere and to concern myself with truth and ideology. One concerned with truth must not ignore the facts of her own situation; one whose ideology holds responsibility to be a virtue must confront and correct her own irresponsibility. It could be (let me speculate:) that sometimes it seems almost understandable to have been scared: just how much is uncertain?—how devastating is the problem of predictive equivalence?—how much potential certainty and productivity never came to be because of failures to act? However, isn't the realization of the immensity of uncertainty and fragility, coupled with an assessment of the seriousness of this entire endeavor, all the _more_ reason to be brave, learn discipline, and cultivate my missionary personality? No doubt some will insist that I'm raving. Well, say I'm raving; I think everything stands as well.

Only—can I reasonably expect this sense of insight to last? When I have spent myself to exhaustion, will I feel so as-blessed simply to have this entire endeavor? How about when I am being yelled at?—or when and if I find that I have failed two classes? Fluctuations in mood occur far too often to be fully documented, even while writing.

Still, why _can't_ I be indefinitely propelled onward by my pride, love, and knowledge? (It's probably the same reason I presently choose to write this instead of frantically trying to catch up in school.)

Oh, Diary, there is so much difficulty! For what measures of triumph will I have the strength and fortune?—and will I get my romance (and thus, a very important demonstration)? Suppose I am obsessive. If this is really so, let it lead me to glory rather than madness!—although, if I _really_ have to, I might possibly be willing to settle for both. It's an observation with utility in a variety of situations: that two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And if inquiry indeed be free (as no doubt it must be), then one ought not feel scared to ponder the origins of this conjunction or this construction, nor has much or anything of value been diminished in noting this.

Maybe I'm sicker than I have at times thought. But perhaps likely not. —Z. M. Davis

ADDENDUM— Perhaps I have failed to appreciate the extent to which one cannot be driven at every moment by passion for the endeavor. If this is the case, by what other means can I come to advance in character? The waves—by what means can I even get myself to work hard enough in the coming days to avoid becoming subject to disqualification? You know, Diary, I would really hate myself if I weren't so beautiful and powerful. —Z. M. Davis 0953

SECOND ADDENDUM—"It Was, Like, This Early Feminist Rant"— It was more than two years ago—on seventh May, 2005, to be precise—that I took the SAT. On that test, one of the reading passages particularly interested me. It was about a newspaper reporter named Georgia, and it was labeled as an excerpt from a 1909 novel. I was curious about the identity of the novel, and over some time made small efforts to discover it. Internet searches were unsuccessful. I called an SAT telephone hotline and sent a query through the county library system's email reference service, but I was without luck.

Well, today, I finally found it, thanks to Google Book Search! (Perhaps if I had remembered the fiancé's surname correctly, then previous internet searches would have succeeded.) It's _The Glory of the Conquered: The Story of a Great Love_ by Susan Glaspell. Oh, Diary, wouldn't it be splendid if _I_ were to write a novel which would go on to hit people from 98 years out?

Maybe staying in school would help. —Z. M. Davis 1219

THIRD ADDENDUM— I had a session with the Dr. Holland and subsequently chanced into Nora. One might _want_ to say that even the most complicated study of energy production and policy is an order of magnitude easier to understand than the etiology of one's own emotions, but it's an empirical question. —Z. M. Davis 1720


#### 247 — Monday 4 June 2007 — Untitled

Diary, if you were rather less risk-averse, how much, if anything, would you be willing to bet that dishonesty is positively correlated with laziness, as well as with other sins? If such a relationship exists, it would of course be far from "perfect"; it would be _abhorrent_ to, from the mere fact that one has been lazy, infer that one has been dishonest, or that one has committed some other sin.

There are at least two obvious reasons why there might exist a correlation between dishonesty and other various sins. One is that one's general level of scrupulousness affects one's propensity towards many or most or all of the sins defined by one's morality. The other has to do with incentive structures, which many reputable economists would have us believe matter. One who has behaved poorly and is subsequently questioned about one's behavior can avoid or lessen the discomfort of a immediate confrontation by lying or unduly equivocating.

I saw the Dr. Kaupp on the first. I am to see her again today; I have an appointment for 0900. Diary, I think that my innocence has been established (in the sense of its truth having been demonstrated), so surely I must very soon learn to act on that proposition, and go on to establish my independence (in the sense of constructing it). You know that I have neglected my studies; I think myself in danger of failing two classes. No doubt I will suffer consequences for my folly; unresolved are the questions of what they will be, and how I will adapt.

I hope I am not already permanently damaged (I think permanent damage can be subtle, sometimes); I hope these words have been adequate. —Z. M. Davis

ADDENDUM—"32 Modulo 24"— I have eaten breakfast, Diary, and I am a disgrace. I deserve to fail two courses; it is dishonorable to try to bargain for a grade. I want to defend and expand my glory. I want to document my thought. I want my romance, and if it is a biologically improbable one, then this only illustrates the immensity of required attendance to the endeavor. Maybe there is hope for me; maybe there is time to change, that I might fulfill these desires: it is said that "Rome wasn't built in a day." Only despite the passive voice, nor was it self-assembling. —Z. M. Davis 0815

SECOND ADDENDUM— I did not attend any class at all today. Philosophy section I perhaps did not _ditch_—I had previously (apparently at around "Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:19:57" as it is timestamped in my "Sent" folder) sent an email to the philosophy TAs, asking if I could attend Thursday's section rather than today's, this because of the appointment I had made for today with Kaupp. So far, I have not received a response to that message. Math and Crown 80S (the two classes _I am in danger of failing_) I ditched. I have slept. I have talked with Sean on the telephone. Maybe I'll give Avery a copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ for his fourteenth birthday—only that's in 2020. Therapy is a luxury of which it seems I only want more. How much does it really help, and how much has to be fixed alone, through an act of will? But a good materialist knows she can't count on a _deus ex machina_ like will unqualified and unexplained. There exists a _mechanism_. —ZMD 2102

THIRD ADDENDUM—"Deconstructed Niche"— It's not as if I'm terrified all the time. Nothing can excuse my laziness. How long will it take for me to redeem myself?—how long will I need to make myself humble before I become spaceworthy and really start to present my alternative? I guess you could say that my equilibrium needs punctuating—only what are the units of selection here? Am I referring to dispositions within myself, or am I the entire organism to face judgment?—no judge required, naturally. —ZMD 2354


#### 248 — Tuesday 5 June 2007 — Untitled

D.— I want more therapy—I want a resolution to my madness. You know I have a vision of myself as a competent figure: single-issue Z. M. Davis, presently of the University of California at Santa Cruz, simultaneously and without contradiction both ideologue and seeker of truth, able to say, "If nothing else will convince you of the seriousness of this entire endeavor"—and _finish the sentence_. I want to be able to reject _enjoying myself_ at times, that I would be able to engage in _liking myself_ (_cf_. _inter alia_, 179, 180). I will affirm every miserable truth of evolutionary biology, and avoid referring to myself with third person pronouns.

To do all this—even to insist simply on being referred to by that ridiculous pair of letters positioned as a name—takes a certain confidence in temperament, and focus in application. Else, one should only expect to be written off. A man aiming to escape what it's said that means needs means—data streams through the air are not paid for _with_ air, nor is housing cheap in beautiful Santa Cruz on the Pacific.

I wonder if there is some way to determine objectively the _proper_ level of doubt, or if it is all a matter of one's personal level of risk aversion. I want to know if there is a true answer to the question of whether one has achieved reasonable certainty, or merely the delusion of this—and if there is none, how to cope. But any conclusions reached on this line would also be subject to doubt, or so one might be inclined to think.

I want more therapy!—I need a resolution so I can get on to do the glorious things I have described to you, Diary! Only it's not clear how much of my current predicament should be blamed on my seeming psychological infirmity, and how much on _ordinary_ weakness of character. Yet you know this. —Z. M. Davis

ADDENDUM— Rand really made a lot of important points. One ought not apologize for one's values. I've probably felt like this before—I repeat myself, perhaps overmuch. However, it is not the case that I _never_ change: witness my seemingly unprecedented recent madness. No doubt I can change for the better. It seems that I have feared for my innocence and my honesty. But I think that I am innocent and honest _in fact_. I have not been perfect, of course—neither has anyone else. Perfection is the limit at infinity that we are endeavoring to take, and this is irrelevant to the present discussion, because when we describe a person as _innocent_ and _honest_, we are saying just that she is those things, and not that she is perfect. Indeed, I have contended previously that it's not even clear what it means to apply the concept _perfect_ to a human. Given that I am innocent _in fact_, it was wrong and unfortunate that I came to feel the emotion of doubt about this at times—_if_ that's what really happened. But one ought not be destroyed because of some having-been-hurt, when one is _in fact_ innocent. Declining to endlessly discuss the irrelevant details of some period of mental illness suffered in one's youth is extremely different from living with some evil and terrible secret, as should be apparent to every person who is not a fool or a coward. I should try to avoid being permanently damaged. Suicide is not on the table. Those who forfeit existence voluntarily should not expect to apply their ideology to affect existence. To give up the intellectual endeavor, to become a _complete_ hedonist, is as good as a suicide, and is perhaps even less brave. Those prohibited, what else is there to do but strive for greater certainty and goodness and documentation, and to take this quest seriously? And, Diary—if nothing else will convince you of the seriousness of this entire endeavor, consider when I stood on the staircase of the University Library, pressed the Kurzweil book fast to my chest, and pretended I was Kathy. (For the record, that sentence is poetic in spirit, and is not intended to be a journalistic account of _exactly_ whatever it was I did and thought that one day on that staircase in the science and engineering library.) —ZMD 0944

SECOND ADDENDUM— I have been to Phil. of Bio. lecture. Even if I have made some progress towards resolving my recent madness, progress is not necessarily permanent (_cf_. 228). Besides that, I am still presently a failure. There remain hours to be productive in, but my sex drive does not have a toggle switch, nor can I function overlong without sleep. Father will likely expect answers and policy plans, rather than some appeal to a late-emerging classical will. I might consider it significant if today I would just get myself cleaned up and my side of the room into decent order—but that would leave me a failure. Of course, it's the fifth of June, and at this point it would be some amazing feat to escape being a failure. I think I can get annoyed sometimes when Michael is in the room, even though I get it to myself so much of the time.

Diary, I'm presently not very powerful at all. —ZMD 1216

THIRD ADDENDUM— I have slept. I have talked to Sean on the telephone. O wonderful to engage in discourse as an agent! I am innocent, and I should not be destroyed—that's what I _think_. I must be sure to live with absolute care, knowing my propensity to self-doubt. Things must be thought through and documented. Only if I were really living with absolute care, wouldn't I be working frantically to _catch up_? I don't want to give up this measure of self-esteem I feel, but—after all I've wasted this quarter—? Perhaps it is unclear how I ought to feel. Can't I go on to conduct investigations?—to seek out my glory, defiance, and romance? I think I am _innocent_. I will work and present _evidence_. Don't I have at least as much of a right to pursue glory as the others around me? Maybe I can use my neuroticism (or whatever it is about me that seems like this) as a driving force. Or perhaps I will be destroyed. —ZMD 2107

FOURTH ADDENDUM— Diary, I am going to love having long hair! I mean, I will, _if_ I have enough confidence to exist. —ZMD 2234


#### 249 — Wednesday 6 June 2007 — "Prelude to Foreclosure"

D.— I have been lazy for a long time, but I've never before allowed so much destruction as I have now. There's so many smart people at the University to whom it is glorious to talk. There's so much that needs to be thought through and documented. And I just let myself fail in my few duties that justify the latitude given me. I am continuing to let myself fail. There is less than two weeks left at University. Surely a reasonable man—I choose that word in order illustrate how powerless I've let myself become—would suspend his pleasure-seeking for this short interval to engage in a frantic rush to earn passing marks. But I'm weak, and it's late in the quarter, and I just want a new start.

I've demonstrated that I can't yet be trusted with so much latitude. I am disposed to be taken down a great many pegs. Who am I to insist on choosing my own hairstyle or my own name, while being an economic sinkhole? I cannot say what this means for the endeavor.

I want therapy. I do get to meet with the Dr. Holland today. —Zach Davis


#### 250 — Thursday 7 June 2007 — "Slow Arc"

D.— The Dr. Holland prescribed me more medication. Consulting the internet, I am given to understand that lorazepam can have amnesiac effects. It is very important to remember things.

I have been informed by Mother that Safeway has called for me. Back during Spring Break, I had inquired, and the manager James Morris said there would be a position for me.

I have downloaded the free _Ugly Betty_ clip show (intended, I imagine, to get new viewers hooked or up-to-speed) that is available on iTunes, and I was impressed. The show could become a bonny local replacement for _Gilmore Girls_ (_cf_. 240)—although perhaps I have forfeited much of my claim to entertainment.

O glorious fiction!—the _Voyager_ theme is locally a _hymn_. (Oh, to be "intrepid class"!) Is/ought separation seems almost self-evident to me. I should engage in vigorous exploration of both sides of it—that I would never lose track of that which exists, while devoting my life to fantasy and morality. The separation in its absolute strictness does not mean that the one is irrelevant to the other. Moral and aspirational propositions are of course affirmed or denied by minds, which are either physical or determined physically. (I think the difference is likely semantic.) Also, morality _refers to_ the physical—in addition to definition, one needs to know _what has occurred_ in order to know whether or not one has sinned.

Diary, I'm inconstant. I want to engage in unwavering quest for truth and glory and pleasure (that's in descending order of importance)—but sometimes lately it seems I fear that I am not righteous, and oftentimes across all my past time I have put pleasure first—and I mean _immediate_ pleasure, not a maximal integration of pleasure with respect to time.

At some point, I am going to need to reject fear and laziness and learn absolute devotion.

Diary, I repeat myself: I am a mess, a wreck. How will I defend my glory and my name? Should I make myself humble, or be unapologetic and insist that because I will make up for my having-wasted, my case ought be gotten off of? —Z. M. Davis


#### 251 — Sunday 10 June 2007 — "Corner of Coates and Audelle"

D.— I've checked out. True, I don't drink alcohol or have sex, but I might as well be playing the playboy. (One must be twenty-one to purchase alcohol; I do not know of anyone who wants to have sex with me. At least one of these facts is irrelevant.) I have read blogs, and eaten candy, and slept ridiculous hours, and watched television on my computer.

Oh, maybe I should just snap out of this slide: examine the facts and my glorious ms. and be done with all this self-doubt and self-indulgence-cum-self-destruction. It _is_ that easy—but ask yourself if you think I mean this tautologically.

Really, Diary, it's evident that if I'm depressed about chaos, then sitting around won't help. I have so much glorious potential—and if I don't defend my queer name, then no one will. But I'm alone. —Z. M. Davis 1117

ADDENDUM—"Second Prelude to Foreclosure"— A feeling can temporarily fade away without a solution to its underlying cause, but fortunately I am not the type to confuse natural anesthesia for health.

My mathematics final is _tomorrow_. I am destroyed.

Diary, I want to _make sense_ of what's happened to me, of the disgusting apathy and the devastating anxiety. I want to demonstrate my goodness. Oh!—I also want to sleep and perhaps even masturbate—you see what powerlessness I've come to? The fantasy I come to is another matter entirely, and if it is beautiful, well, my behavior hasn't been. Diary, I'm confused. Diary, I'm destroyed. Diary, I'm—Z. M. Davis. 1607


#### 252 — Monday 11 June 2007 — "Nonproliferation"

D.— A true story is a coherent narrative, but a given coherent narrative may not be true. What will happen to those poor folks (I think it reasonable to suppose that they exist) who don't even have a coherent narrative?—those who through drink or injury or madness cannot give a fully structured account of the nature and sequence of events in requisite detail? And then given a narrative, how does one determine what is an adequate glossing (in the sense of explanation and interpretation), and what is a deceitful and self-serving glossing over (in the sense of failing to provide the true and structured account in requisite detail)?

How does one determine what's a genuine concern or mental malady, and what is an excuse? I might be inclined to think this question meaningful even though I do _not_ consider affectation to be a deception; that which is chosen and willed is arguably _more_ genuine to oneself than that which merely emanates from one's uncultured nature. This point or a similar one is made near the end of the first part of Egan's _Distress_.

I think I'm confused. Or I'm not sure. Or I am sure, but I might not be sure of this. Perhaps I repeat myself overmuch. Recursion and repetition are distinct although not unrelated concepts.

Diary, am I going to be intermittently messed up like this for as long as I live? Did some irreplaceable part in me break in 2006, just as I was continuing to get ever more beautiful?

I have been noted to have something of an all-or-nothing mentality. Should I interpret all this, then, as an exclusive disjunction that must be faced, even without health?—that I would _either_ stand up and be an officer of reality _or_ follow our dear Chancellor off a high building.

It is at least conceivable that we need _my help_ to make it a liberal-feminist Singularity. But right now, _I_ need help. Or so I am given to think. —Z. M. Davis 0556

ADDENDUM—"A Kidney or a Spleen"— I completed my birthday poem for Sydney and posted it to her Facebook wall, and I posted a comment to a _Feministe_ thread. I still haven't done my laundry or called Safeway. I am inclined to think my failing mathematics is now a _fait accompli_—how much material can I teach myself in the time until the exam at sixteen? And what of my madness?—if I'm okay now, how can explain the cause of my having been so irrationally hurt and scared? (I know I repeat myself, but this question is extremely important.) Will I be as-haunted indefinitely? —Z. M. Davis 1325

SECOND ADDENDUM—"Fuckup Davis"— I have called Safeway and spoken with Tracy. O glorious business! I think she said there was a possibility of me working in the office with her. O glorious professionalism! Oh, Diary, mightn't it really be reasonable to look at things in disjunction? I have seemingly feared for my innocence—well, what has moping and indulging myself done, except render me less fit and therefore less innocent along one dimension? Manifestly I must simply work to further my glory and my innocence, and if I am judged evil, then I must examine the allegations carefully and respond to them honestly. If I find myself truly and immutably evil, then I should destroy myself—but I don't think this will happen (_cf_. 241). It is going to take a lot of work to restore my respectability after my contemptible behavior this quarter, and I may have to take up a furious program of documentation to belay my fears, besides. I still fear that I will be permanently damaged from my recent madness. But _damaged_ need not mean incapable of glory or happiness or innocence.

Is this sense of resolution reasonable? Diary, you know I am variable, and much of what I infer or feel now may soon be reversed. You _know_ that what I declare beyond the strictly empirical is very tentative. But Diary, what the fuck—what in the waves can I do? Either I am to be saved or I am to be destroyed. And all these decisions are made alone—I could write: "with God Herself as my witness," but I know of no reason to think that God exists. —Z. M. Davis 1459


#### 253 — Tuesday 12 June 2007 — "Tenuous"

D.— How _dare_ I have taken free time on the internet this morning? Don't I know I'm on probation?—a personal one, if not _yet_ an official one. If I care to advance, I'll have to take care to advance only the most considered propositions—and I advance that it matters not if they're not well-considered by men—only I'll have to be brave.

I think I did better than I think I expected on the final. This is not to say that I did well, nor is it to say that I expect to pass the class.

I have taken some of my clothes downstairs. —ZMD 1034

ADDENDUM— Diary, there is a difference between recognizing biological forces and capitulating to them which I think some fail to grasp. There are things about order, care, and contingency which I would like to learn. —ZMD 1041


#### 254 — Thursday 14 June 2007 — "Probationary"

D.— I am to depart tomorrow.

As I recall, today I did the reading for, wrote, and turned in my final paper for Phil. of Bio.

I have told Father about my academic debacle; I spoke with Mother as well.

It is a time to be serious. —Zachary Michael Davis


#### 255 — Thursday 21 August 2008 — "Amnesiac"

I _do_ hate metaDiarism. It should be enough to simply give an account of one's doings and life, without having to give an account of the account. But then where would I state, for the record, that I think my standard has been that it's okay to make _post facto_ edits to titles of and proper names within Diary entries, but other edits require brackets, but that I'm not sure when I settled on this, and so I can't tell you with absolute certainty exactly where it has been violated? Similarly, it simply would not do to leave the impression that I had abandoned you for the space of more than a year, which is what one would think upon observing the dates on this entry and the last.

Diary, this may come as a bit of a shock. It's not that _I've_ been away for _that_ long—but that _you've_ been damaged.

My hard drive died. I think that was in May. Why, then, the reader must now be asking, is the entry before this one dated in _June 2007_? _Surely_, she says, the author was not so foolish to go some eleven months without backing up important files?

Surely—but then you know me.

I've changed, Diary. Let's get to know each other again, shall we? Year in review—

Well, I quit school.

Twice.

I bought my first dress. I've gotten to be a bookkeeper-cum-customer-service-rep at Safeway.

I've been heavily influenced by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I knew of Yudkowsky before your injury, but it's now that I've virtually devoured the entire canon, which is expanding daily over at _Overcoming Bias_. I actually got to meet Yudkowsky at the _Overcoming Bias_ meetup in Millbrae on 21 February.

One of the things he teaches is that a belief is justified or not on the basis of its true causal determinants: if you're _already_ firmly precommitted to a particular conclusion, it doesn't _matter_ how many clever arguments you can come up with _afterwards_ ("The Bottom Line").

The point is obvious after someone points it out explicitly, but even after you've been told, it's so difficult to apply. I have some clever arguments for the supremacy of autodidacticism, but how do I know that they're not just rationalizations written over the bottom line of "school hurts"?—or is "school hurts" itself a legitimate argument in favor of autodidacticism? Mere introspection is not sufficient to uncover the truth about my present, let alone my past. I'm not smart enough or rational enough to know whether I'm making the right decisions, even when the _rightness_ is defined by my values. (Hence "CEV," I guess.)

And yet I know more than I can say. —ZMD


#### 256 — Saturday 23 August 2008 — "Error Term"

I enjoyed very much talking with Steve Pollack at the lake party! Diary, is there anything more important than conversations with smart people? I can console myself a little with the thought that in some alternate Everett branch, an alternate Z. M. Davis went to Bettina Aptheker's office hours and expressed his concerns—and no doubt he is living a glorious life, but that doesn't help me _locally_.

My hair is so beautiful! Someone with such beautiful hair ought to be a beautiful person on the inside, too!—ought to be as such _in fact_, and not just potential. I say this as I say from time to time: symmetry demands it!

Steve said—and contemptible that I'm just a human and can never remember exactly what was said—he said something about not everybody living a straight path. It's true—Father was once very poor. And it could be that I'm going to be poor. I can't, I won't do school right now, just when everyone is saying you need a college degree to do anything.

Maybe I was exposed to _Atlas Shrugged_ a little too early, but it could be that I expect people to be good, but then it turns out that people are fuckups. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they get addicted to recreational drugs, they get divorced—they drop out of school. What's wrong with us? I remain yours. —ZMD


#### 257 — Tuesday 26 August 2008 — "Research"

I've lamented this attitude so many people seem to have nowadays: that if you want to know something, you should take a class in it. A _class_?—this is the Information Age! The knowledge is out there! Just _take_ it! Grab it and run!

Only if I had done a little _research_ and found out about the CompTIA certifications after I left the University, maybe I never would have gone to Heald. (I often use "only" where most would say "but," only "only if" has its own meaning. Do I misuse it here?)

Today I cried before a Dr. Streifer, whom I had hoped would be more sympathetic. I have an appointment for ninth September with a Dr. Street, who can prescribe drugs. I've thought that maybe I should cancel the appointment, and try cognitive behavioral therapy first, on my own, with a book.

Human intelligence is such a beautiful thing! O what glory to feel the whirl of notion into notion, the push and tug of _modus ponens_ against _modus tollens_!

I'm so hurt and scared. I wonder what I would be like if I were not broken. I consider my gender-related ambitions to be very important, but if I'm too emotionally trashed to be able to make a living, then I can hardly accomplish anything on that or any other front. —ZMD


#### 258 — Wednesday 27 August 2008 — "Small Comforts"

Sunk costs shouldn't play into your decision theory. If autodidacticism _really is_ a good idea, then the shame of my formal schooling simply isn't relevant. Isn't that so, Diary?—and if it _really is_ so, then one would _think_ it is not simply a card being played against "The Bottom Line."

Mary, who has noticed my distress, believes that things happen for a reason, that there are "no atheists in foxholes." I am comforted by my pride in having no such comfort.

I cannot allow myself to believe _whatever_ gets me through the day, because what if it isn't true? I am allowed only small comforts. For example: I haven't _completely_ wasted my youth. I don't do recreational drugs.

I didn't get pregnant. —ZMD


#### 259 — Saturday 30 August 2008 — "Putting It Behind?"

Diary, when am I going to stop feeling trashed about school? Can't I just list out all the various arguments against it, and be done with the matter for now? I had no clarity of purpose at the University (although that doesn't explain Heald); there are massive diseconomies of scale in education; I just prefer to study on my own; grades and assignments are antithetical to the spirit of genuine inquiry; every moment you spend worrying about grades is a moment you could have spent acquiring knowledge; rather than driving myself into hysterical madness trying to follow every instruction and complete every assignment, I can just fall in love with the material, without agonizing over trivialities like what exactly constitutes reading the chapter; an autodidact has the advantage of fully adjustable pacing—you get the picture.

Is a rationalist allowed to forget? Of course it is wrong to scrub some shameful part of your past from memory simply because it is shameful. But one would think it altogether virtuous to just _not think about it_, when there are other, more important things to think about. It's not so important that every Diary entry is written without interruption, and _maybe_ it is not so important that I understand every facet of my past. O but I do want to understand my past, and the exact details of my own objections! It's just that what is most important is all the knowledge I need to acquire! You must forgive me! —ZMD


#### 260 — Sunday 31 August 2008 — " 'Open Thread' "

Diary, pretty soon I am going to have to let go of this shame about school. Maybe I am afraid of being tainted forever. I profess to love knowledge, and I professed fondness for the Coon and Mitterer text, so why didn't I do the reading on time for that psychology class? My procrastination about the assignments for the professional career development class can be explained well enough as the understandable frustration of a curious person with better things to do with her time, but why didn't I do the psychology reading from that beautiful textbook?

I get the sense that a lot of students just want to muddle through somehow. They won't _cheat_, but they don't, say, feel a duty to explicitly mention to the teacher that they didn't do the reading, on such occasions that they don't get around to it. Well, I think I _have_ felt that sort of duty, only it's such an awkward thing to do. For my business class, at least, I remember telling Ms. Perez very explicitly that I had done very little reading. I remember working in a mention of my neglect before psychology class really started. I remember telling Prof. Kevin Brosnan that I didn't do all the reading when I visited his office hours. (O glorious office hours! O terrible what I have missed!)

But in my poetry class, I might not have done all the reading, but that was nearly two years ago and I can't tell you from memory exactly what I did and didn't do. And in Math 19B, our homework was submitted over an online portal, and who can say but that I guessed on some of the multiple choice questions?—again this was nearly two years ago, and I cannot tell you from memory what I did or didn't do. (Also, I should note there exists a continuum between certainty and guessing.) I think that for at least some of the assignments in this math class, you could resubmit your answers more than once, and I seem to have a vague memory of some other student mentioning how he submitted answers multiple times, gaining points through sheer selection, in the obvious way.

Oh, Diary, I can only give you these vague human memories, and these as clumsily packaged by my vague human powers of articulation!

Maybe another day I will continue this catalogue of scholastic memories, and I hope it is not altogether sinful that I don't have them all in the same dispatch. The _point_ is, that I _do_ care about knowledge, although not nearly enough, and I _do_ want to succeed, but I _don't_ want to succeed through stealth, and I _don't_ think one must have explicit malice in one's heart in order to commit stealth.

So I can't go back to school. My heart is _broken_, and I should have realized this when I left the University, but I _don't_ want to be poor, and I _don't_ want to be ignorant. So I am left to develop a new method—or rather to the intensification of the method that created me. Can it likewise sustain me?

So I should let go of my shame. At some point, I should tell you more of my thoughts on this matter of my education, but I should stop obsessing. Oh, Diary, you don't even know—when one is reading for oneself, there are no moral ambiguities, there are no duties to obey! It's just the person and the knowledge! O purity! Did I say it right? Forgive me!—and I remain yours. —ZMD


#### 261 — Friday 5 September 2008 — "Modal Temperance"

I had a few hysterics at work today.

Diary, it really shouldn't be that hard. It's not as if there are brownshirts on every streetcorner demanding to see your papers and taking you away to the ghetto if you can't produce a college degree. If anyone _asks_, I can say that the short version is that I prefer to study on my own. And if they ask for the long version, I can say, "I just don't think school has anything to offer me. What do you do in school? They tell you to read things, to write things, to work math problems. But I read, and write, and do math on my own. Maybe if I had a somewhat different temperament, it would make sense to go back for the sake of the credential, but to tell you the truth, school makes me very unhappy. I'm happy when I'm working, or studying on my own."

Still, it's sad that I've been so sad. There are those who would say it is the very [height] or depth of irrationality to feel bad about feeling bad, but I think it's perfectly sensible: if you were stronger, you would have been able to endure without breaking down, but you _weren't_ and you _didn't_—if one is allowed to lament anything, why not that?

Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if I truly understood, but introspection fails. Does the very thought of schoolwork make me sad because I think it's meaningless bullshit, or do I think it's meaningless bullshit because it makes me sad?—I can't prove it to you either way, and the truth is likely to be much more complicated, involving feedback loops and other structures that can only be described mathematically.

No matter what narrative I settle on, can I at least be proud to have reached this level of reflective capacity? Uncounted young men in my position have lashed out in anger at the System, never even considering that _they_ might wrong. Uncounted young women in my position have thought that everything happens for a reason.

And mightn't I be right about school, at least in part? When, in school, has my writing hit this sort of _depth_?

I wonder which is more painful: to discover the unpleasant truth about some grand issue like God or gender, or the unpleasant truth about oneself? Even before Yudkowsky posted about it ("Leave a Line of Retreat"), I've tried to learn to assume the worst, and work on mitigation. Here, the worst case that my arguments for autodidacticism are facile rationalizations, and the real fact of the matter is that I'm too lazy and hysterical to cope with a simple thing like going to school. Couldn't I continue to live, if that were true?—and that can't really be the full story. Much as evopsych and liberal feminism can _both be true,_ I can _simultaneously_ legitimate grievances against the system, and also be too weak for it.

Diary, we _both_ wish for a better world in which this _particular_ self does not exist. If metaphysics and deontology permitted it, we would gladly assent to our mutual annihilation in favor of improved versions. We dream of myself as a more confident man in a world where autodidacticism is better respected, or, perhaps, as a hotshot young transwoman psychologist doing great work at the University.

Modal selves can only care for themselves. What can _this_ instantiation do but lick his psychic wounds and try to move on? —ZMD


#### 262 — Thursday 18 September 2008 — "Cognitive Archeology"

What did I know and when did I know it? I am firmly opposed to school, but again, it would be nice to make sense of the cognitive history behind this position. How many separate justifications do I have, what are their histories, what roles do they truly play in the causal network controlling my decisions?—and there I go throwing around a term like "causal network" as if I understood it in detail, when really I have not significantly read Judea Pearl and am unlikely to for some time yet.

There's my overcalibrated moral sense. There's my procrastination problems, and the fact that I have other priorities—or are those two even different things? There's the issues of efficiency and diseconomies-of-scale and clarity-of-purpose.

There's always the naïve empiricism of "school just wasn't doing it for me."

I've even wondered (somewhat whimsically, I hope) if Occam's razor could apply: going to school is such a _specific_ sequence of actions, compared to the space of possible things you could be doing instead, that you need a lot of evidence to justify it.

There's the subgoal stomp argument. When you're at work, you actually have a _task_ to _accomplish_, and obeying orders and following the rules are subgoals of completing the task. You don't have to feel bad if you break one of the company's many inane rules in the course of doing your job, because the important thing is that you _do your job_. At school, however, there's nothing to do _but_ obey every command and follow every rule, and feel bad when you don't. This account makes a lot of sense, but can we be sure that it truly explains the psychological facts of the matter?

I'm not sure I can make sense of it all. Not going to school is clearly the right decision, but the matter is so complicated and emotionally charged that I'm not sure I can present a clean, calm narrative. Will temporal distance help?—when the bad feelings go away, will I be able to figure out what was really going on? Or will that just make it easier to make up some comforting lies?

You know, Diary, this could actually be a chance for a real-life application of Bayescraft. I could list out the relevant facts, and try to figure whether they are best predicted by the "laziness" or "subgoal stomp" theories.

Again, my true reason for leaving doesn't have to be exactly the same as my true reason for not going back. I remember telling people that I might (or did I say that I _would_?) come back to the University the next year and graduate with the class of eleven.

I remember being in grade school—probably the first or second grade—and working through the a math workbook at my own pace. I remember being really far, on chapter thirty or something, while some other student—Chelsea, maybe—was much farther behind, on chapter six or so.

I remember that in the first half of 2004, we had to do a reading log for Mr. Cautero's English class—maybe there was more than one reading log period, but I remember in particular drawing up my own log, upon which I probably recorded more than two thousand pages of reading. _Atlas Shrugged_ was on there (_cf_. 2, 3).

You'll remember, Diary, that my sister is an academic hotshot, currently a grad student at MIT. Yet she doesn't seem _curious_ in the way I think I am. —ZMD


#### 263 — Friday 19 September 2008 — "Theories and Queries"

I spent a lot of time in the library yesterday. That's what I want to do with all my days off work: just go to the library and divide the time naturally between reading and writing and thinking and pacing and working linear algebra problems. I think I go for the change of scenery, the being-amongst-people, and the symbolism; I bring my own books.

(I should admit that I didn't do any linear algebra yesterday.)

Diary, where was I when I first read Asimov's "The Dead Past"?—could it have been in the University library? Well, I looked over it again yesterday, in one of the library's books; it has a new relevance to me. To the waves with their courses and curricula! Why can't they just give a person time to be curious? Just drop me off at the library and _let me loose_! (I bike.)

_O rapture!_

In one of the anthologies that I brought, I read a really good story about this dead transgirl. Now, how would I have had time to read that at the University, where they would have made me write some essay about Plato? I don't _need_ Plato; I have Eliezer Yudkowsky. My mind burgeons with theories and queries; a hundred thousand blogs have hundred thousand fewer readers than they deserve; how could anyone equate _completing school assignments_ with _education_, when we are so unfathomably rich?

I must study harder.

I overslept my alarm this morning. Stacy's back is hurt. —ZMD


#### 264 — Wednesday 24 September 2008 — "The Shadow on the Wall"

The school pains haven't totally gone away yet. Is this where I fall down as a rationalist? I don't have a clear, coherent narrative about myself and the world. I am—is it fair to say _frequently_?—beset with shame or fear or anger. When your arguments vary with your mood, that's a red flag, but what can you do but note the flag and continue thinking? Perhaps I will always be somewhat haunted by "The Bottom Line." It is _not_ the case that I was a sixteen-year-old academic hotshot who decided to quit school after reading Grace Llewellyn and soberly weighing the costs and benefits. I did _not_ decide to leave the University in order to devote myself to my novel—indeed, it will not be for quite some time, if ever, that I am ready to pledge my life to _Preserved Under Symmetry_.

The _fact_ is, school gives me crying fits. No matter how many times I cite John Holt in the nicest MLA formatting I can muster, I have to live with that.

Even so, the entire _idea_ of school seems _wrong_. If there's something I want to know because it is beautiful or important, I will study it. And if there's something I need to know for my job, I will study that, and pass the appropriate certification test. _Shut up and leave me alone with my books!_ I will let the others have their schools and their grades, titles and collar pips. I will have my books.

I am really (and I know you tire of this, Diary, but I mean it in a different way now) going to have to step it up. I should like to make an independent living, but my autodidacticism and my gender trouble are going to make things difficult—and I would like to increase my gender trouble. There is far too much of which I am ignorant. Let me state plainly to everyone that I haven't always acted from perfect purity of heart. Of _course_ I haven't, for who among us does _not_ wish she had more willpower? This does not mean that I have _never_ done any true knowledge questing. Actually, I have done quite a lot. I must simply do more, _ever_ so much more if I am to reveal true secrets of ultimate gender.

I won't make excuses for my past; I will not rationalize that _something_ had to boot me off the mainline, and it might as well have been madness. I'm _already_ far off the mainline; there's no going back to school. I must only study. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— Can I imagine my character Brooke Durant as anything but an autodidact? No?—then end of story. —ZMD


#### 265 — Thursday 25 September 2008 — "Montessori Method"

On 28 June, I had Seanan and Katie over for dinner; I was crossdressed. It's too bad I couldn't enjoy the occasion more, but I was emotionally trashed from something Michael Vassar said to me in an _Overcoming Bias_ thread.

In an _Overcoming Bias_ thread from last year, Vassar wrote: "There are [...] important practical consequences to following orders as opposed to acting from one's own initiative. Psychologically, the former will create resentment and dissatisfaction while the latter will not. The latter will favor initiative, and active pursuit of the best satisfaction of one's (hopefully ethical) desires, while the former will focus only on satisfying some perceived standard of acceptability [...] Actions 'above the call of duty' depend entirely upon self-driven internalized ethics."

_Internalized ethics_. It might sound arrogant to say so, but hasn't that been what so much of my life has been about? Could not a plausible case be made that I could have muddled through Heald or the University with a three-point-something if I just _didn't care so much_?

On 3 January, I sent the following email to Meggie Sprengel, who TAed one of the classes I had taken in my last quarter at the University:

> Dear Meggie,  
>
> I hope you are having a pleasant winter break. I am   
> writing because my grade for \_Introduction to  
> Feminisms\_ is presently listed as a B+ on the MyUCSC  
> portal, which puzzled me, because I thought it had  
> been manifest that my performance merited an F or D  
> grade. This email is just to alert you to this error.  
> All my best; I am,  
>
> Your correspondent,  
> Z. M. Davis

This was the reply:

> Dear Z.M.,

> I hope that you enjoyed your break! At the end of the  
> quarter I set up another meeting with Bettina to discuss  
> your progress/grade in the class. She was aware that you  
> were planning on withdrawing from the school to take a  
> leave of absence. She decided that this warranted a type  
> of "medical emergency" which more or less allows some  
> flexibility in regards to paper due dates. She read all of  
> the work you turned into me and was duly impressed by your  
> writing and thoughts. We scored each paper and totaled up  
> the points and you ended up with a B+. It is certainly  
> understandable to be confused by this grade due to  
> previous discussions I had with you where I expressed  
> concern about your grade, but please feel secure knowing  
> that Bettina and I both value your work and feel that you  
> deserve the grade we assigned you. However, if you have  
> any questions please feel free to contact me again or  
> Bettina. Thank you for all of your work and for your  
> honesty. Best of luck.  
> With warm regards,  
>
> Meggie

Today was a good day. It was library day! My conjecture about the angle formed between the kernel and image subspaces of a linear transformation and its transpose (_viz_., that they are equal) didn't pan out. Maybe the conjecture is true after all, and my calculations are erroneous, but I decided not to pursue the matter further at this time. I finished reading the expansion bus chapter in my A+ book.

_Ethics_, Diary. I want to cultivate the will to knowledge.

There is a discomfort in my left wrist which I hope is not anything serious. —ZMD


#### 266 — Sunday 28 September 2008 — "Water Finding Its Element"

Yesterday was a good, busy day of work. I probably set a speed record, finishing my series [of] morning bookkeeping tasks culminating in the carry-forward at about forty-three minutes under par. Later, there were all sorts of issues I had to deal with.

Diary, what could my life possibly be like without Eliezer Yudkowsky?—or much worse, what if I had never heard of compatibilism?

In my sophomore year of high school, I wrote a column for _The Page_ firmly insisting that violent video games couldn't possibly cause violent behavior, because humans have free will (_cf_. 1). You must laugh at me now, Diary, although I'd much rather you cried. Wikipedia (I think) later rescued me from me folly, and in the first issue of the next volume of _The Page_, I wrote a column headlined "Why causality might apply to you, too, and why it doesn't matter."

I've come a long way in those four-and-change years: from believing in the stupid version of free will, to, now, trying to understand the intricacies of my own determination. How worried should I be, if the narrative of my failure still makes me look good in some ways?

Though I _do_ detest metaDiarism, I should mention that it's okay to correct italicization in previous missives without including brackets.

I just might be returning to health. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— Yudkowsky teaches us that in answer spaces of increasing size, the probability of getting the right answer by chance correspondingly decreases. However, the size of the answer space depends on what you count as an answer. The space of possible lives I could live from here on out is unfathomably vast, but we can divide that space into the _two_ classes of "go to school" and "study on my own." ("Don't study" is morally inconceivable; I should rather die.)

It might be a little unnerving to think of how much my ambitions can be pushed around depending on what I happen to be reading _at the time_. There's so much to be, even within the human realm. How many people self-identify as genderqueer _and_ have in-depth knowledge of evolutionary psychology? Who is the youngest female actuary in the world? Did anyone in Phoenix get the reference when they saw how I wrote "N\*A\*S\*C"?

"I prefer to study on my own." It's short; it's simple; it's _true_. Maybe I don't need to trouble myself with longer stories. School is _unwinnable_ for me, so—so _nothing_; I don't need to speak of it. I can merely say it softly or whatever as a simple matter of objective fact: "I prefer to study on my own." —ZMD

SECOND ADDENDUM— The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Goddam am I a fucking irresponsible piece of shit; I spilled apple juice on the computer. It still seems to work, though. However, it was _too close_. _Ugly Betty_ or no, I should not have been eating by the computer. I _knew_ about disjunctions; even if the probability of spilling during any one session is one in four hundred, that agglomerates to even odds over a four-hundred-day interval. This afternoon, I went to Salon at Maanvi's urging, and got to practice my gender lecture. The quick brown fox does not forgive. —ZMD


#### 267 — Monday 6 October 2008 — "Dim"

I dropped Mother off at the airport this morning; Father is out of town, too.

I had not planned to, but today I crossdressed, played with that online face transformer (_cf_. 235), and came. I continue to maintain that autogynephilia is a special, sacred thing, however inherently futile.

Oh, Diary, I seek a way upward! I am so ignorant and so fragile. For all those years, I felt bad about not doing my homework—now my loyalties have shifted somewhat. Have I been good? I want to be good, and I'll have to be careful, given that I have wandered so far off the mainline. I imagine there are places even in this country where just my hair would be unacceptable—and there is so much more that I want than just my hair. Really, go on, tell people that you don't believe in gender, and that you believe in education but you don't believe in school. Even as they understand that you don't mean _belief_ in the rationalist's sense, they will still only wonder what the fuck you _are_. And how do you explain _that_, when you're not entirely sure yourself?

How weird can I be? I haven't acted randomly, or defiantly _as such_. I know much more than I can say.

I remember my favorite math class was Patrick Tantalo's linear algebra course at the University. That was Winter Quarter 2007, my best quarter, even as I was suffering my recent madness. I recall the course ran rather slow, but is it not better to cover the material slowly and thoroughly, than to rush and learn shallowly? I remember asking Professor Tantalo why our definition of the dimension of a subspace didn't imply that the zero vector is a subspace of dimension one: of course I understood that a point should be defined as dimension zero, but it _was_ spanned by one vector. Tantalo's response included mention of the empty product. That's so beautiful!—I said. Well, I've made _someone_ happy, said Tantalo. —ZMD


#### 268 — Thursday 9 October 2008 — "Where It Bottoms Out"

Apparently one of the things the Evelyn Wood speedreading crowd recommends is using your finger as a pointer and tracing along the words. It _seems_ to help! Diary, you may be surprised to learn that today was a good day. Oh, who could I possibly be kidding?—_of course_ it was a good day; it was library day! You know that there is so much to do; so much power bound up with secrets and theories! It is one thing to use a computer (I've done this practically all my life), but also there exist books that explain to you how they work on the inside! It is one thing to know that such things as error-correction codes exist; it is another to know (in principle) how they actually work linear-algebraically.

I've been catching up with our friend Harry Potter. There's a crossdressing reference on page 370 of _Phoenix_!—although if memory serves, that's not _half_ as kinky as something that went down earlier in the series. (Those outraged arch-conservatives might have actually been onto something.)

It's just like I had told Josh, like I told you: I love what I'm doing right now, but I wish I had come to it in a different way. I am _old_ (don't laugh, Diary, as you know it's true), nearly twenty-one. There is so much time I've wasted: time I've wasted in school, time I had to myself and wasted anyway. It was not long ago that I was thinking about finishing my novella so that I could get my ears pierced in time for the Singularity Summit—well, that's not going to happen. However, I do seem to have a shiny new career path before me; I can get my ears pierced someday when I'm more settled and have my confidence back. (_Back_?)

And I _will_ finish that novella. Eventually. I _mean_ it, Diary! —ZMD


#### 269 — Wednesday 15 October 2008 — "Such a Beautiful Diary"

Diary, I have written to you many times about my desire for change. Could it be that I am also afraid of change? For years I have wistfully thought of making a _break_ with my past. Now—it's far from clean, but I am making [a] fairly drastic break from my past. We were raised to believe in school, and I don't, anymore. The very idea that an institution can be responsible for a person's education is absurd and harmful. It's not that they don't mean well, it's that they _can't do it._ Students' intellects just don't _fit_ within an arbitrary timetable and curriculum; we're not robots—or not _that_ kind of robot.

I must be exaggerating—if my wandering off the mainline leads me into rebellion, then that's okay, but I'm not going to be a _stupid_ rebel. As an aspiring rationalist, I know that there are _reasons_ why things are the way they are—but there are also reasons why I do the strange things I do.

My life hasn't been a complete waste. I've read a few good books, turned a pretty phrase every now and then. I'm a materialist. I have beautiful hair. I have a _life_, Diary, rich with beautiful things, private things!

If my approach to education is simply going to be an intensification and taking-seriously of what I was going to do anyway, maybe (shades of James Bach) so too goes my approach to time management. Rather than trying to force myself into obeying a schedule—even one I set myself—I will try to act from an internalized moral sense: I _want_ to work; I _want_ to study (_cf_. 265).

Imagine, Diary, what it would be like were I to stay in school, or even go to grad school: class after class, paper after paper, for year after year after year after year.

I know: "The Bottom Line." If I could practice the schoolbound morality I used to have, then I probably never would have come up with this one. What else can I do, though? I spoke of change, and maybe I never dreamed too seriously (_cf_. 130) that it would take just this form—but this is what I want, _now_; this is who I am, _now_. I spoke of change then, but how could I possibly have it if I think I have to justify what I'm doing now in terms of who I was then? My past self was ignorant of many things; I cannot be bound to abide by the terms of his confusion.

We have a new courtesy clerk named Ellen. She has short hair, and you might say she looks like a boy. Stacy indicated to me that she thought we had a lot of new courtesy clerks. I said something to the effect that I couldn't think of any besides Ellen. I think Stacy said, There's a girl, too. I don't think she said this out of ignorance of Ellen's sex, but rather neglect of it. I am,

Yours,

Z. M. Davis

0023 Thursday 16 October


#### 270 — Thursday 16 October 2008 — "My Purity Born of Pain"

Diary, why can't I just stop obsessing about it, when I know that you know that I should be obsessing about gender?—although I guess reading John Holt isn't going to help, if what I want is to forget—but that's not what I want. Intending to forget is a way of cowards or men. I have to live with the fact of my pastward extension. I may reïnvent myself, but not by means of lies. I may say that I regard my past selves before my compatibilist enlightenment as just some dumb kid whose memories I inherited, but you understand that this is only my way of speaking. That being understood—Diary, it is very unsettling to realize that I may soon have to regard my current self as similarly just some stupid kid. Right now, I'm still recovering from my schooled childhood, but since I can't go back to being a schooled person, I'm going to have to become a powerful, confident autodidact—and that means leaving so much of a mindset behind. Maybe that's not true; maybe it's not so big of a discontinuity. Whatever form the exact network takes, I know a big part of the reasons for this juncture is that I _have_ been learning on my own all my life. I am not disowning those days when I would spend hours exploring the greater feminist blogosphere; rather, I am pledging my loyalty to the spirit of those hours!

Father told me recently that up until quitting the University, I had not been determining my own path in life. Oh, Diary!—if only I had properly researched professional certifications after quitting the University, I never would have gone to Heald, and I probably wouldn't be as hurt as I am. I _should_ know that if I have this wish for my past, then I should apply it to my present: _exactly_ what jobs will are A+ and such likely to get me?—I can't actually tell you right now.

Oh, Diary! You know I have done some good things! Can't I be intensely proud of my purity borne of pain, even as I sincerely wish it were a purity borne of reason? I may have to accept that the full story, with all its reasons and passions, is far too complicated and emotionally charged for me to recount, even to myself. Is it enough that I have told you some of what I understand? If anyone is really curious, can't I just show them excerpts of you (with appropriate redactions)?—and I hardly think anyone will be that curious. Maybe if you're a hotshot Stanford alum you can impress some people, but in general, no one cares where you went to school. "I prefer to study on my own" should satisfy just about everyone, except the school cultists who seem to think that knowledge is strictly a classroom phenomenon—and Diary, don't you think they can just go fuck themselves?

In future dispatches, I will recount some more memories to you, and maybe rave just a little more, but pretty soon I'm going to have to move on. There's no going back. —ZMD


#### 271 — Tuesday 28 October 2008 — "With All My Creepy Singularitarian Friends, Part One"

Weirdest weekend of my life?

The second _Overcoming Bias_ meetup was held on the twenty-fifth in San Jose, there being an unusual concentration of readers in the area for the Singularity Summit.

I worked in the booth that day, as I do on most Saturdays. In my training, I've been instructed that if I have to give a loan before the carry-forward, I'm not supposed to enter it into VeriCash until after the carry-forward, and the loaned money is to be counted as part of the safe. But on the previous day, Friday, the twenty-fourth, I accidentally entered such a loan into VeriCash, and rather than undoing it with a pickup or a negative loan, I left it.

And the numbers were fine. Nor can I easily conceive of in detail the exact mechanism by which early loans were hypothesized to mess things up. Diary, you really have to wonder how much inefficiency there is in the world just as a result of people following directions without any thought or understanding of what the directions are _for_ (_cf_. Yudkowsky's "Lost Purposes").

Anyway, I guess I had a good day at work Saturday. After getting home, I talked to Sean on the telephone and left for San Jose early. I hung out in the city: I walked, and I went to Starbucks, and I read, and I notebooked. I noticed that the post-Summit mingle session was still going on a little bit before the 1930 meetup was scheduled to begin in a nearby restaurant, Il Fornaio in the St. Claire, so, after gaining assent from someone at the threshold who looked like staff, I entered the throng and milled around. I sighted Yudkowsky and Shane Legg and Ben Goertzel and Razib of _Gene Expression_. I greeted Legg without introducing myself, which was silly. I greeted and introduced myself to Robin Gane-McCalla, with whom I had interacted by email.

I had a substantive conversation with one Carl Schmidt. I was rather self-deprecating; he was friendly (lowercase-_f_). He had never heard of CompTIA, and said that he's been hiring and firing software developers for years, and never once has he looked at a professional certification. I said I was a loser; he said he didn't think so—but then, what kind of person would have agreed, when it's not as if I'd declared Crocker's Rules? It was just that talking to him, and just after, I realized more fully than I usually do the great extent to which _I don't know what I'm doing_.

Well, to the meetup.

I ended up being seated next to Paul Rhodes, with whom I rather hit it off. Rhodes is a philosophy major at GMU; he heard about the Singularity last winter, and he's already signed up for cryonics.

To be continued. —ZMD


#### 272 — Wednesday 29 October 2008 — "With All My Creepy Singularitarian Friends, Part Two"

There was good table discussion, talk of the blogging professoriat at GMU Econ; someone had heard of Roderick Long.

As I recall, Rhodes said he wanted to make an intellectual contribution, but wasn't sure that he could. I told him I knew someone he should meet. You see, after I posted my email address in the October Open Thread, Anna Salamon emailed me expressing interest in contact. She had written that she, Steve Rayhawk, and Rolf Nelson were living in Sunnyvale, and that she and Steve were attempting FAI research. Later, I overheard a woman say that she had wanted to meet Z. M. Davis—it was Anna, of course, and I introduced myself to her, and introduced her and Rhodes.

I got to meet Nick Tarleton, whose comments I've enjoyed: it's as if we think on the same (de Broglie) wavelength. Based on the Facebook profile, of someone else with the same name, I was expecting him to be a middle-aged man from Bristol; he's actually a freshperson at Carnegie Mellon. It's a strange effect when your expectation of someone's appearance diverges so much from the reality. Years ago, I probably would have insisted vehemently that it doesn't matter, and of course I was basically right, but I can no longer insist you draw _no_ inferences on the basis of sights that aren't printed words. Still, you'd wish we know explicitly what we were doing when appearances cause us to run an update.

I wonder how it felt to be Lara Foster, when she posted that she "didn't even realize [I was] a man posting."

I recall Razib greeted me of his own accord.

Later, Michael Vassar made his appearance. Vassar is a _fascinating_ character. Rationality, he said, is the only thing that matters. Rationality and humanity, he added. Sitting across from Paul Rhodes and I, he asked us how it felt to be two to four orders of magnitude more important than we were previously.

I was invited to stay the night at the house where Anna, Steve, and Rolf lived. I wasn't the only one there: the Harvey Mudd/CalTech delegation stayed the night, and I understand Nick and Vassar were living there for the duration of their Bay Area stays. The place had lots of whiteboards.

Rolf asked, What if you made an AI while falling into a black hole?

Back in September, there was a _Distributed Republic_ post asking readers what their biggest regret was, being that the world was about to end—a joke, you understand, Diary, referencing speculations about the startup of the Large Hadron Collider. I left a comment saying that I wished I had studied harder and quit school earlier. I'll still affirm that wish—but we cannot speak of what would have happened if I had taken an explicit commitment to self-education at an earlier age, when as it is I can hardly make sense of what _did_ happen. It is strange: my school record is mediocre, Tom Hughes got a better SAT score than I; Seanan got a _perfect_ score; and yet there _I_ was that weekend, hobnobbing with these brilliant people, seeming to hold my own in conversation, and feeling even as if I belonged somewhat. I think one of the Harvey Mudd people mentioned that some students were given something and told that gravity exists, and had to prove that mass and energy were conserved. Oh, yeah, I said, "Noether's theorem." I knew from Wikipedia, so did Nick. Doesn't that count as education, even if neither of us can actually produce the proof?—just yet. At the meetup in the restaurant, Nick admitted to me (and it's shocking enough that I should wonder if I'm remembering it correctly) that he doesn't really read a lot of books; he learns from short articles. On Sunday morning, I had a nice discussion with John, the guy from CalTech, while most of the others were still asleep. John was interested in finding out more about AI. He accorded me with respect, and I'm tempted to wonder if he assumed I was really smart because this was a gathering of really smart people. I accorded him with respect and assumed he was really smart because he goes to fucking _CalTech_. I mentioned something about evopsych (I was reading _Adapting Minds_), and one of the Harvey Mudd people said that he'd like to take a class on evolutionary psychology. I said that I don't believe in classes; just buy the books. Of course, I added, I'm also going to be poor, so don't listen to me.

Oh, Diary, what is true education? Where do I really stand?

Vassar thinks that this year's Summit was a net loss to the cause; he wants Tyler Emerson out. He still gives us one chance in six of a win. That's cheery, don't you think, Diary? Vassar stresses the importance of having Something to Protect; Nick agrees. At one point, I said I was a wreck; Nick said he was a wreck, too, before—and I don't remember exactly what he said, but I think it was something about taking the Singularity seriously. Diary, I _thought_ I had Something to Protect. I remember the sense of rationalist's-equivalent-of-spiritual awe I felt when reading that post, or possibly its successor, "Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality." I _do_ have a very important story to tell: oh, but how, given what it involves? How does J. Michael Bailey talk about his research at cocktail parties?

On Sunday night, I went for a walk and talk with Vassar. I think he said that I was trying to be reasonable, and he wanted to help. He asked me questions, and I told him about how I found _Overcoming Bias_, and my thoughts on Yudkowsky, and about my school troubles. I think he dismissed my concerns about "The Bottom Line," saying that I already knew I could learn on my own. I think he thinks people can learn a lot on their own, and that smart people can learn virtually anything on their own. (O terrible vagueness of human memory!—what did he say _exactly_, so I could quote it?) He thinks my feeling of obligation to declare when I didn't do the reading is stupid. We got a little lost and someone picked us up in a car, after which the three of us went on walking and talking.

Well, I can never tell you everything (we always know much more than we can say), but I hope this account will suffice—I do have other things to do. Oh, Diary, just imagine what a great primary source you could be for historians if it turns out that we do save the world!—I mean, if it weren't for the fact that postSingularity historians wouldn't have to rely on _documents_ when they could just download the memories themselves.

Oh, well. —ZMD


#### 273 — Monday 3 November 2008 — " 'Causal Validity Semantics' "

Oh, Diary, you know that I love names and titles. I've decided that the name of the computer I'm going to build will be _Memoryless Distribution_—I've already designed wallpaper. It's a nod to the exponential distribution, of times between events in a Poisson process: the events that have just occurred have no evidential bearing on future events. Working out the personal symbolism is left as an exercise to the reader. Plus, you can interpret _distribution_ to refer to a _distribution_ of Linux, of which the machine will boot a few, plus XP. Don't you think it's clever, Diary?—for a human boy, I mean.

The whole idea of open source just suits my mood lately. We do not study for _grades_, we study for _knowledge_; we do not code for _licensing fees_, we code because—because—well, it's just what we do.

I want to be _good_, but I am _stupid_. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a human boy to be rational?—not only to believe true things and make good decisions, but also to do these for the right reasons, and the right metareasons? It's nice to _say_ that we need to focus on things that actually _help_, rather than simply doing what we were told to do, but then you are left with the enormous problem of figuring out what actually constitutes helping, and then actually going out and doing that thing. There was a time when I thought I would graduate University and go disappear in some corporate bureaucracy somewhere. Doing _what_, exactly? I didn't know; maybe I didn't even _ask_. Who can say but that I'm making a less egregious form of the same mistake now? I say I'm studying to break into IT—and do what, _exactly_? How does a sysadmin's day break down minute by minute, and how does mine in the booth?

Maybe I don't need to feel bad when I read some professor's Op-Ed about declining standards in the academy. Maybe I should remind myself (if and only if it's actually true) that when people complain about my generation or my sex, they're not talking about me. You don't have to be a macro person to care about the world. I care about the world; I just don't care about politics. Or something like that?

Diary, I'm confused, I know I'm confused, and yet it doesn't seem like anyone else has the answers that I'm looking for. —ZMD

ADDENDUM—"Year in Recovery"— My Network+ book and _Sex Differences in the Brain: from Genes to Behavior_ arrived in the post. Oh, Diary, when will I just get over it? I should just devote myself to the spirit of true inquiry without tormenting myself with the shameful memories of my schooling past. I know: it wasn't _all_ shameful. However, of the things I did do right, don't I judge them as right, because I'm proud of the object-level achievements, rather than the meta-level grades? So why shouldn't I seek out that object-level sparkle of work-for-itself? Sunk costs are _sunk_; it doesn't matter what I used to think. I can only do what I _now_ think is really-truly for the best, and it doesn't matter if I thought something different the moment before, or am to think something (unpredictably) different the moment after. This is what our best decision theory tells us, isn't it?

Oh, Diary! I just want to be good! I just want to understand! There's always something I could be doing: I have a great many books. There is always more math that I don't know, always new science that I have hardly yet heard of. Why don't I just devote myself wholeheartedly to the spirit of true inquiry? I don't have to be terrified all the time. Please forgive me. —ZMD


#### 274 — Sunday 9 November 2008 — "Exact Terms of Our Eternal Tragedy"

Barack Obama was elected president on Tuesday. The "America Serves" page on his administration transition website (_change.gov_, no joke) used to say that "Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year." The language has been scrubbed since, to make it sound less coercive—apparently the college students would not be forced; they'd be getting a $4000 tax credit.

My linear algebra textbook told me that Euler showed us that any length-preserving linear transformation in three dimensions will include a nonzero vector that remains unmoved. Clearly, the result does not hold for rotations in two dimensions, none of which have this property (except the trivial rotation—Diary, you know what I mean). Given the general form for two-by-two matrices representing a rotation by an angle theta, it is not difficult to derive an expression for the eigenvalues lambda-sub-1 and lambda-sub-two in terms of theta, both of said eigenvalues being complex unless lambda is a multiple of pi. But "ar-two" is boring. The _important_ question is what happens in _four_ dimensions. It's important because it's important to me.

There is so much to read, so many ideas worth following up on; I will never have enough time (before the Singularity, natch) to do everything that I want to do. I don't whether to call it wealth or poverty, but in light of whatever-this-is, how could anyone think that our friends in Washington know how to spend my time better than I do? They don't _know_.

Today I've read a good deal of Alfie Kohn's _Punished by Rewards_, and some pathetic philosophical confusions in the first chapter aside, I'm really liking it. Of course, I suppose liking something should be a cause for suspicion: do I like it because it plays to a false self-serving narrative of mine, or because it genuinely helps explain what I've been going through?

The application is curious, though. In running my own life, it really does seem to make sense to try to rely on intrinsic motivation as much as possible, to amp up the curiosity, to think of things worth doing, and then do them because they are worth doing. But if you try to apply this philosophy on a political scale, don't you just end up with anarcho-communism? If you just left people to work as they please, how could you ever produce an operating system?

Okay, bad example.

Oh, Diary, I find myself so confused, yet I seem to be in a much better position than most. Maybe it's just that my evaluation of my position uses a different weighing than most. I'm not doing a good job of optimizing for sex or money, after all.

Oh, Diary! Protect me. —ZMD


#### 275 — Thursday 13 November 2008 — " 'Bourne Again' "

The other day (I could just say "Tuesday") I installed Debian on _Application Thickness_, which is what I decided to call the old machine with the touch-and-go power supply. At least, I suspect it's the power supply, which is what my A+ book said to suspect for intermittent problems. Anyway, I was kind of expecting a GUI—you can see how spoiled I am, Diary. Later that day, I tried to install Ubuntu, but for one thing, I didn't have the proper amount of RAM, and for another, the installation program had trouble reformatting (or repartitioning?) the hard disk, so that didn't fly. —ZMD


#### 276 — Sunday 16 November 2008 — "Bash"

Oh, Diary, what is worth doing? I would condemn those who spend their days playing video games, but I would not be so quick to condemn those who spend their days reading science fiction novels. Is this simple media bias on my part, or do I have reason?

My autogynephila is not just not unique; bodyswap and the like is a fucking _genre_. They write some of it for _children_. (_Help! I'm Trapped in My Sister's Body_ by Todd Strasser: innocent kid's fantasy novel, or _incest porn_ for autogynephiles? I haven't read it, so I couldn't tell you, but consider what it means that the question should even come up.) Can I afford to buy more books? I should do some calculations re my near-term income and expenditures.

Today I went to Fry's. I bought a new power supply for _Application Thickness_, a cheap NIC, some CD-Rs, some antistatic bags, and an antistatic workspace kit. —ZMD


#### 277 — Monday 17 November 2008 — "Minutes and Moments"

I finished _Adapting Minds_ today—I mean, I'm pretty sure I had skipped or skimmed parts of the first chapter that were discussing things I (thought I) already knew, but don't you think it's fair to say I _read_ the book? I've previously thought of using the format "had my way with (title)" to describe books I've profited from without _necessarily_ reading in full, or without being _entirely_ sure that I have read in full (_cf_. 234), but I _really_ shouldn't do that because it sounds like a rape metaphor. No doubt many volumes could be written on the microprocess of reading, volumes full of shocking insights utterly unanticipated by many a lifelong reader, but really, Diary, do you think I have _time_ to meditate overmuch on that shit? You know where this leads. This is not the time of my recent madness; this is the time of my purity borne of pain. So we say, confidently, that I read the book.

I swapped the power supply on _Application Thickness_—and the machine behaves just the same, I think.

I don't think I _truly understand_ Linux (slash UNIX). Then, did I ever _truly understand_ Windows?—or OS X?—which might just be UNIX with a flashy GUI and some pretty trinkets.

Last week (although I should really mind the tenth virtue and say "Thursday") Nora Murphy, noting a link that I had posted, sent me a link to a Psychology Today interview of Robert Epstein, who would do away with adolescence as we know it. "Incidental memory—what you remember by accident, and not due to mnemonics—is remarkably good in early to mid teens and practically nonexistent by the '50s and '60s," says Epstein. Diary, isn't my entire educational program based on incidental memory? What other kind of memory is there _really_? Aging is _scary._ When you consider all that there is to do and be, you can see that I'm not crazy to think that every moment counts (though I don't always act like it).

Ellen's shift overlaps with mine tonight. I've thought of asking her out for ice cream ("frozen yogurt"). Will I actually do so? Expect an addendum. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— I have an ice-cream date with Ellen! Note, Diary: an ice-cream date, not a _date_ date. When I first asked, she said she didn't have any money (which I guess means she's poor, thrifty, or already finds me obnoxious) but then I said it was my treat and she said yes! —ZMD


#### 278 — Thursday 20 November 2008 — "Complex Eigenvalues"

It is hardly an exhaustive account, but not even you can have everything, Diary: apparently Monica's uncle had a heart attack, so I was called in to work from noon to sixteen. After my shift, I ate at Evie's and went to the library. I did some linear algebra and wrote in my notebook. Jessica noticed my shoelaces and insinuated that I was gay; I don't think I denied it explicitly.

Ellen and I hit it off quickly! Could this be the end of my long time of sadness? Don't bet on it, but—oh, Diary! Ellen must have such a rich private world! —ZMD


#### 279 — Saturday 22 November 2008 — "Sigterm"

The reason customer service jobs are glamorous is that it takes special talent to truly do them well. I had an intense period of work today trying to resolve issues relating to the (too complicated, in my opinion) gasoline rewards program. I performed fairly well, but all that stress took its emotional toll later: I started thinking about school and broke down a bit. _Why can't they just leave me alone with my books?_

But they do. It's just that I'm still wounded. Why can't I just get over it? Is it that I need closure?—but what further insight into the matter could I possibly have that I haven't already thought of _n_ times over the past year? I should just commit the matter to the ashes and joyfully seek out knowledge as if that were what everyone did—which strategy I have thought of _n_ times over the past year, never to actually practice it.

You know that lately I've been trying to internalize the notion that sunk costs truly are _sunk_ (_cf._ 269, 273), that you can only do your best each moment, no matter what happened the moment before. (Maybe it's a trite lesson that Mother could have told me, but it's the decision-theoretic justification that makes it meaningful to me. Bromides don't impress me; two-molar sodium bromide solution does.) I've sometimes thought that the refusal to honor sunk costs might make rational behavior seem wildly erratic, but historically my behavior is wildly erratic in _any_ case; "_tsuyoku naritai_" has nothing to do with it.

There was an episode of _The Fairly OddParents_ that featured a gender-bending plot; I bought it from iTunes today. I guess I have to approve of the moral, but _really_, Diary! Maybe some would say I'm just bitter about the unpopularity of [_MLaaTR_], but I don't think so.

Ellen accepted my friend request on Facebook. She's a member of no less than five gay-rights-related groups. Of course this is proper: it's an important issue, and good people everywhere would do well to show their support for equality, even when it's only by means of joining a Facebook group. Ellen is in seventeen groups total, though, and though I haven't done the exact Bayesian calculation (where would I get the likelihood ratio from?) I have to suppose that her interest is perhaps more personal than strictly political (insofar as we can draw a partition between the two, natch). Well, what did I expect? (That's the problem of priors.)

Most guys (I am not a _guy_) who wish for girlfriends are wishing for someone to fuck. That's not the case with me (a possible advantage of having an impossible orientation: you don't _expect_ anything better than masturbation). I want a _romance_: someone to share _you_ with, Diary. Failing romance, though, it would be nice to have a female friend. Nora and I aren't close anymore, if we ever were, and Katie Kolodzie doesn't count; she's Catholic. I remain yours. —ZMD


#### 280 — Sunday 23 November 2008 — "Maybe I Understand Why Everyone Loves Paul Graham, but I Pretend That I Don't"

I had car trouble today while trying to get to Seanan's house; the Civic will have to be taken to the shop on Tuesday. (It turned out that Seanan had forgotten about our planned meetup and was in San Francisco. I will probably meet with him Tuesday after dropping off the car.)

_Jimmy Neutron_ did a bodyswap story in one episode; I bought it from iTunes today. _Really_, Diary! Who _writes_ this stuff? (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers, I bet you both got off on this one, didn't you? Don't ask me how I know; I _know_.)

I finished David C. Geary's _Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences_. I think evopsych doesn't scare me anymore. I can read entire books about sex differences without being periodically stricken with waves of cold horror. Why should I? It's just science. We'll see how I feel when I hit that Susan Pinker book.

I must be honest: my math and technical studies aren't going nearly as well as they should be. Sure, there's much to be said for browsing Wikipedia on computer hardware or going through the Vim tutorial, but I really should get to building _Memoryless Distribution_ and passing the A+ exam.

Do I really want to be a tech? It's not exactly playing to my strengths—but I've got to do _something_, and my true strengths are private in character. There are those who can pour their hearts into programming, or scrape a fair income out of something squishy and creative like graphic design. My heart has other plans. I want something concrete that I can trade against, some secure source of funding for my dilettantism. I will never be the sort of person who derives her identity from her day job: there is no Zack the Tech here, just a person who does useful things with computers for society, respectability, and book money. I need to get my wages into the double digits, quickly; if I find [myself] out of place, then maybe I could become an actuary later. (Am I overconfident in my study skills?—but I _am_ intelligent, Diary.)

I'm optimizing for so many things at once; I can't count on winning across the board. Which parts of my self will triumph, then, and which parts will stagnate? Will working in a male-dominated profession force my gender presentation to the right? Can I maintain my intellectual passion through age, increased responsibility, and forty-hour weeks?

Spacing corrections do not require brackets,

Z. M. Davis


#### 281 — Monday 24 November 2008 — "Space"

Diary, it was more than a year ago that I read of "Lewontin's fallacy" and applied it to sex. People say (correctly) that there's a large amount of overlap between women and men on a trait or many traits. In fact (I once noticed) it's not until _d_ > 2 that you even see bimodality in the complete population's distribution. However, this is no argument for the collapse of the gender binary: load up a more than one trait in a configuration space, and you may well find that the groups are cleanly separable by a hyperplane, even if there is substantial overlap along any dimension considered singly.

Again, that's all old news. Today I figured out what happens to the distance between the groups' midpoints as more and more traits are considered: it grows, in proportion to the square root of the number of traits. _Obviously_.

Actually, I would do well to explore this _apparent_ result more thoroughly. I didn't do much, after all. I supposed that the midpoints were separated by one standard unit in one dimension, for a norm of unity. Then I supposed that the midpoints were separated by one standard unit along one dimension, and another standard unit along another dimension, which quick inspection reveals gives a norm of the square root of two. The generalization to arbitrary _n_ is trivial: but I must remind myself that this is a toy, not a _result_. What happens when we're not dealing with one standard unit along each dimension? What happens when we deal with full-on Gaussian distributions, rather than simple midpoints? Could I make a pretty picture if I ran this procedure with Janet Hyde's dataset?

What does the abstraction _truly mean_? You wouldn't actually want to say that women and men _become more different_ the more aspects of them you consider, but that the rate of this increase in difference decreases as you consider more and more aspects.

Where do I fall in the space? Where does Ellen?

Why didn't I think of this years ago? _What happened to my youth?_ —ZMD


#### 282 — Wednesday 26 November 2008 — "Pop"

So far I've burned through 145 pages of Susan Pinker's _The Sexual Paradox_ today (_modulo_ the myriad subtleties of the microprocess of reading that no doubt have befuddled many cognitive scientists, _cf_. 277). Now we _really_ know that evopsych doesn't scare me anymore, when even the _popular_ books don't seem to fill me with cold horror. Diary, I'm weird, and I want to be weirder. I like people _and_ systems, and not just because I know that people are a kind of system. Is there space in this world for a gender-variant intellectual generalist who hates school?

I don't know why my back hurts. —ZMD


#### 283 — Friday 28 November 2008 — "Themes and Seams"

I just finished _The Sexual Paradox_. As much as I regret my poor study habits, it still seems like I've gotten most of the low-hanging fruit about sex differences. (See, Diary? Men can gather, too!—Katie Kolodzie can do the hunting herself.) I know the names, from Buss to Zucker; I've heard the ratios, from digit length to waist-to-hip, and if despite all this, I seem no closer to _core insight_ than I was this time four years ago, it's only because I'm stupid. (I'm not stupid.)

The bit about brilliant male dropouts was interesting. "Looking in the rearview mirror," Pinker writes, "the peripatetic school histories of many leaders and luminaries seem trivial compared to three other prerequisites for spectacular achievement: native smarts, investing at least a decade of hard labor to master a discipline, and a monomaniacal preoccupation with a subject."

Hey, Diary. You know what they say about two out of three.

Two out of three is _shit_.

Skipping back a bit, Pinker says that women are more motivated by intrinsic goals—which is comforting to know.

Diary, should I be getting ready to give myself over to this project, this lifework of which I have been thinking about for years, without ever truly starting? We already know I'm not going to save the world. I'm probably not going to make six figures (in 2008 dollars).

What to keep private—isn't that an old topic? Shouldn't I have resolved that one by now? I am wildly inconsistent; I am fragmented. Diary, in what portfolio of directions do we spread across the many worlds? I'm old; I can't waffle forever. —ZMD

ADDENDUM—"Seconds and Networks"— As I once thought, the question is not whether I can write a novel, the question is whether I can write a novel in polynomial time. Great works have been written by people with less time and fewer resources than me. However, comparison should be primarily for informational use: I can't let myself get caught up in zero-sum status games of which there is no way I can win. _Fame_ is a chimera, so I'm not jealous of Ted Chiang. _The work must exist_. That is all.

There's so much! I want to be a tech; I want to study math; I seek true knowledge of ultimate gender. Every minute counts, doesn't it, Diary? I'm so incredibly confused. My utilization of time since I got off work today has not been so bad, but if I'm really going to be a tech and everything else, I must do ever so much better!

Edits to day names in entry headers don't need brackets, but you knew this. —ZMD


#### 284 — Saturday 29 November 2008 — "Shoulder Voices"

I had a nice, busy day at work today, but my productivity at home has not been very good. I shouldn't think about how to justify my abysmal technical study to Father. The entire point of my purity borne of pain is that life is not _about_ justifying things to others; the _reason_ we care about credentials and appearances is that we expect them to correlate with the true facts of things. If I am ashamed of my inefficiency, it should be because it _really is_ important that I get skills for a better job. I've always been working for my own conscience.

I'm meeting with Josh tomorrow. On top of everything else, I also need to burn through that online traffic school soon, and clear up that eBay debacle. —ZMD


#### 285 — Monday 1 December 2008 — "Friends and Legends"

I didn't do any studying yesterday because my meetup with Josh ran long. We talked for hours, as we always do. I bought a belt and some taffy. We now have the _best_ idea for Halloween costumes: black jumpsuits with plain white masks, Josh with a black porkpie, me with my hair down and breastforms. You guessed it, Diary—it's the Black Hat Guy and his girlfriend from _xkcd_!

Later we met up with Alyssa, and the three of us ended up having supper at an Indian restaurant. I tried a yogurt drink that tasted like a mixture of blood, seawater, and cream: I didn't finish it. My rice-lentil pancake was good, though. We went back to the Meltzer house and remained there for some time. Josh lent me _Neuromancer_. I took Josh and Alyssa to the Amtrak station and saw them off.

Diary, is this just terrible writing? I have other things to do today, as you know. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— I started taking apart the really old computer—I guess it needs a _name_, doesn't it?—call it _Adaptive Problem_. It has an AT motherboard (specifically, a FIC PT-2006) with four PCI slots, three ISA slots, one SDRAM bank, and four banks for the even older kind of RAM whose name I can't recall for you just this moment. Can I point to our friend Northbridge?—it's one of those two big square chips in the middle, isn't it? Diary, I'm not trying to con some teacher into believing that I know things. I just want to be good. I had told Josh that sometime in the near future I would really have to make a decision about whether I really wanted my novel to happen. Yudkowsky was right: you have to set out to _win_, not merely to _try_. What gives me faith that now, finally I can actually turn things around, rather than only talking about doing so? The answer is that it's not _faith_; it's the memoryless stare of an expected utility maximizer that has disregarded sunk costs.

This is not adolescent mysticism, this is Change You Can Believe In. I really must leave for work. —ZMD


#### 286 — Tuesday 2 December 2008 — "Hemophilia, and Other Sex-Linked Conditions"

I seem to recall there exists a popular webpage about how to read above your level. Now I wonder if this is proper. Diary, a proposed definition: a text is said to be above your level if and only if you _can't_ read it. _Sex Differences in the Brain_ is a beautiful book, but I lack the biochemistry and neuroscience backgrounds needed to make sense of large swaths of it.

Josh had asked after whether I would have trouble picking up the novella I dropped so long ago. I had said it would be no problem, but perhaps it'll be a little more difficult than I indicated then. How do I finish a story about self-discipline when I no longer believe in "discipline" _as such_? Easy: give my current view to a secondary character: that's a good new scene right there. Why, Diary, if I'm not careful, I could accidentally write a novel!

_Right_. Diary, if I'm not careful, I could become _destructively self-delusional_.

I had thought I was healing, and I guess I am, but it's such a slow process. If I am _really_ just out for knowledge-for-itself and don't care about impressing other people, then I shouldn't have to spend _quite_ so much time scripting clever lines to this effect, nor should I fantasize about rubbing it in Ms. Gunnison's face.

I gave my telephone number to Ellen.

_Neuromancer_ seems boring. Token ring is so much more elegant than Ethernet. —ZMD


#### 287 — Wednesday 3 December 2008 — Untitled

I had some minor hysterics at work today. A year has passed since my final disgrace at the University—I really should have gotten over it by now. It's a sunk cost. I don't need to torture myself over my failure to obey perfectly. I have other things to do. I really have to teach myself not to care what other people think—or maybe that's a poor phrasing. Of course it matters what other people think: other people are _intelligent_; they can point out things that I've missed. Diary, what I mean is, I just might _have_ the meaning of my life, and so I can't let it slip through my fingers just because someone would taunt me for doing what I care about rather than going to school. There will _always_ be someone to taunt you, even if you have a Ph.D. —ZMD


#### 288 — Sunday 7 December 2008 — "In Which Your Correspondent Demonstrates Himself to be a Micro Person"

Diary, I'm stupid. Oftentimes during my lunch, I would do something like buy a donut, or candy from the contraption in the breakroom. What is the _true value_ of a donut, though? Each donut contributes to my future coronaries across the many worlds, costs three-quarters of a dollar, and gives me maybe two minutes of pleasure. Also, I'm not good at reading while eating the way Kelsey is. For completeness we have to consider also the opportunity costs: what else I could have done with the time I was eating, and the time spend waiting at checkstand one. Maybe _time_ isn't the best way of thinking of it: you can think about other things while eating. However, _time_ is something we can all understand; to speak sensibly of (something like) _cognitive processing power_ probably requires much science of which I am ignorant. "Processing power"—such a clumsy metaphor. I (the aspiring technician) don't even know how a computer allocates its processing power (if in fact it does any such thing—the notion of _allocation_ is probably nontrivial), and the brain isn't _literally_ a computer.

I digress, Diary. You understand my point in all this: that donut probably isn't worth it. You eat the donut, the donut eats at your expected lifespan, and the seventy-five cents eats at your next donation towards SIAI. Compare that for a mere twenty-two twenty-fifths of a dollar, you can buy a song that will make you truly happy for hours. Of course, time listening to music can be wasted, too. Growing up as a Jewish (_ugh_) boy (double _ugh_), I was deprived of Christmas music as a child, so lately I've been entranced by "My Only Wish (This Year)" and a modern cover of "Sleigh Ride," and of course this is beautiful, but that doesn't mean my listening patterns are optimal.

Last night I wasted a lot of time talking to some of Seanan's acquaintances. How people like that get into Stanford, Diary, I don't know. This is after I came home from the party at Dr. Bob's house, at which I ate a lot of desserts, despite everything I had already been thinking about donuts, _&c_. Diary, you will also understand that maple bars count as donuts. —ZMD

ADDENDUM— Nicole called. I think I have a tendency to get on her nerves. I wish I were more articulate—they say women are better at recalling words than men, but I don't have the citation on hand for you, Diary. I know more than I can say, but exactly how much good does it do to _tell_ you this? —ZMD

SECOND ADDENDUM— School is wrong, but that doesn't tell me what's _right_. My private reading and wondering has been so valuable! _Why doesn't it count?_—I cry in rage and frustration, until I remember that it does count. The schools don't count it (they couldn't if they wanted to), but I don't have to please the schools anymore. I've done some good things this year—but that doesn't mean I'm not doing things horribly wrong. Reading the blogs for so many hours is good; it's just not good _enough_. So how do I do better? I've said I should read less blogs and more books.

Last week, I had asked Ellen if she wanted to hang out with me again, but she was busy that week. Today, _she_ initiated followup with me—I probably would have asked if she didn't, but she did!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Goldhabers' house to help Marilyn with a computer problem and hopefully see my former friend Sam. I hardly think Sam and I would connect, both of us having changed so much—he's a pothead now. Maybe we _never_ really connected. You know how boy play is, Diary: more chasing and wrestling than deep and meaningful conversation. Well, I think I would still enjoy wrestling, but I'm not a boy anymore, _I should hope_ in more ways than one. Chuck is the only true intellectual among the triplets—strange then that I was always furthest from him.

There's an _Overcoming Bias_ meetup on Wednesday that I have RSVP'd in the affirmative to; apparently Robin Gane-McCalla is organizing them regularly now, although I didn't attend the first in the series.

I hope Ellen and I become close friends, but Diary, that's far from my only wish this year. —ZMD

THIRD ADDENDUM— Haven't I read quite a lot? Don't understand a few things? Doesn't it _count_? It's easy enough to _say_ that I don't care about pleasing others, that I'm only out to satisfy my own ravenous curiosity, but in these moments of confusion you can see there's still a level on which it's not really really true. Haven't I been somewhat good? Surely no one will blame me for not knowing everything; no one knows everything. People specialize into fields—and if I have no academic field, if I am a generalist, well, I already _have_ the meaning of my life, and it's interdisciplinary. —ZMD


#### 289 — Tuesday 9 December 2008 — "Regular Transition"

Diary, I feel ignorant. Have I been insolent?—but I had a point. If you're ashamed of your ignorance, then go and study—it doesn't matter how you were before, you don't have to impress anyone else, and you don't have to pay retail.

I don't really understand evolution. There's an information-theoretic argument that sex helps genomes acquire information more rapidly—so did _that_ give us sex, and then isogamy, the sexes?

I did a bit of linear algebra yesterday. I did go to the Goldhabers' house (_cf_. 288A2): it was nice to meet Sam. I think I impressed him, but he's kind of a loser. Then, so am I. —ZMD


#### 290 — Thursday 11 December 2008 — "Net Plus"

Diary, _why_ haven't I been spending enough time in the library lately? What is wrong with me that makes me forget about my true loves? I've known for some time now that I need to make some changes to my diet: less blogs, more books. And: more writing, more math. You might wonder how I'll squeeze it all in, but when you consider that I've never been operating at anywhere near peak capacity, it makes you hopeful—_modulo_ all your worries about the proper definition of _capacity_. I mustn't feel that I am somehow unworthy of moving forward.

Today I finished with that farcical online traffic school. Ellen canceled on me; she is sick. Is it wrong that I should write that so casually?—except you can hardly expect me to have formed a deep emotional bond with a person I've talked with for perhaps some forty-five minutes, if that. I went to the library anyway. O rapture!

The main portion of the meetup yesterday was not very good, but the mingle session was better. How can I explain to you about Anna Salamon?—Diary, I'm a terrible writer. Just _terrible_, I'm sure. —ZMD


#### 291 — Monday 15 December 2008 — "Generalist"

It's just been a splendid day. I finally started putting _Adaptive Problem_ back together. I took a library day, then had ice cream ("frozen yogurt") with Ellen afterwards.

You know, Diary, it's lamentable that I didn't think of it earlier, but you can buy a card for the University library in Berkeley. It's one hundred dollars for a year of borrowing privileges. Historically, Diary, I am just the kind of stupid bastard who likes to actually own books, but this will save me money and space—and really, Diary, I do not make a whole lot of money.

O glorious free library time! You can really study whatever you want, whenever you want!—and if it is lonely, if no one will listen to you, if you have to do something else to pay the bills, is this not a small price to pay for freedom? Why isn't autodidacticism _normal_? My emotional wounds are not yet fully healed, but I think I'm getting better. Oh, Diary, how I must study! Maybe I don't have to make sense of my past because I have too many other things to think about, and maybe I don't have to make sense of my past because it doesn't actually make sense. —ZMD


#### 292 — Wednesday 17 December 2008 — "Need I Remind Myself I Don't Have Exponential Time?"

Diary, I'm an idiot. By my reckoning, I've spent more than $845 this year on books for myself from Amazon! I should have thought of getting a University library card this time last year! To be sure, Amazon has a wider selection unless you're dead-set on the journals—consider the glorious smut I'm expecting care of The UPS Store—but really I must think of my finances. One who would value her time should likewise value her money. Exactly which books are worth owning?—it is a burden to compute.

I burned through the remainder of Michael Rutter's _Genes and Behavior_ today, but I'm not sure how much I got out of it. Was trying too hard to go fast, such that my comprehension took a hit?—or am I just not as smart as I think?

Diary, what if Ellen and I set aside an hour and a half, for her to explain her future screenplay and me to explain my future novel? Is it too soon? Maybe creative people shouldn't talk about their respective lifeworks on their third meeting for the same reason that lovers shouldn't have sex on the third date. Am I too forward? Do I truly feel anything for this woman, or is this all an exercise in extended narcissism?

It's okay to read the new _Sluggy Freelance_ comics, but nothing could justify browsing the archives. I should be using RSS feeds, shouldn't I, Diary? I am despicably ignorant. You will forgive me—_after_ I collect some certifications, and finish my novella, and bind myself to true secrets of symmetric matrices. —ZMD


#### 293 — Monday 22 December 2008 — Untitled

"If there's not a common area of life about justified true beliefs I would expect that justified true beliefs come from hobbyists working largely outside of whatever system they are nominally embedded in, for instance, from scientists who work within academia because they were drawn to it because of it nominally being about justified true beliefs but who have subsequently recognized the need to compartmentalize their life between the search for justified true beliefs which they value intrinsically (and would do on their own if there was no academia) and the academic status optimization that they suspect contributes nothing socially useful." —Michael Vassar, in a recent _Overcoming Bias_ thread

Diary, I'm going to call today a minor win. I picked up my box of books from the UPS store (I had been _expecting_ an email from them, but whatever): _Seahorse Variations_ by Thomas Boggs, _A Woman's Passion_ by Alan Barrie, _The Other Sex: Transfiguration in the Kingdom of the Concrete Lions_ by Don LoCicero, and _The Original Sex Gates_ by Darrell Bain (_cf_. 276, 292). Sure, it's smut, but it's _thematic_ smut, and therefore research.

Then I took a library day. Regrettably, I didn't do any math, just a lot of reading, and thinking, and notebooking.

I had supper at Taco Bell. A middle-aged black woman who I have seen around the library asked if I could give her a ride to the BART station. I agreed. Her name is Carol.

Nicole is home for a while. The other day we had a conversation in which I objected to the president-elect's national service plan, arguing that mainstream discourse neglects opportunity costs. Nicole said that I assume too many people are like myself.

Diary, I wish I knew how education _works_. You read, and read, and read, and it makes an impression, but it's hard to give a capsule summary: you don't _know_ everything you know. People go to schools so they can put a capsule summary on their resumes: 3.*v* in _w_ studies at the University of _XYZ_. But what really happened on the _micro_ level; what _core insights_ were achieved? You read lots of books on the same topic, and you feel the ideas link up with each other, and you see different writers all cite the same pool of studies, and you think you _know_ things—but how do you explain? I burned through Deborah Blum's _Sex on the Brain_ recently. Maybe a past self (or a cousin a few Everett branches over) would say the book is as readable as it is obnoxious, but I can't, so I'll just say that it's very readable. Anyway, one of the researchers Blum mentions is Daryl Bem, and of course I already knew about Daryl Bem and his partner Sandra, but from where?—I don't _know_, the information just _stuck_, from _somewhere_, or multiple somewheres. I have a vague memory of a website now. You could say that this is a good thing (for a human with a merely human memory): you _want_ a broad knowledge base that stays with you. I _am_ clued in, Diary, if not as much as I want to be. But I don't have, and don't _want_, that goddam piece of paper, even though the lack of which can seem to throw everything into doubt. Maybe things deserve to be thrown there; certainty is only good when you're actually _right_. I remain yours. —ZMD