I finished reading Janna Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space (2016), about the history of gravity wave detection and the development of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory).

I've had a lifelong love for astronomy. This is totally boring and no one knows about it, but for that very reason why not mention it? Nothing hardcore. I never owned a telescope although at one point had getting one on my wishlist. I've had binoculars with a tripod mount that I used for stargazing. Mostly it's been naked eye observing and identifying constellations; contemplating the beauty and profundity of the vastness of the cosmos.

I've rarely lived in places that were amenable to stargazing. College at Oberlin was OK out there in farm country, and it was there that I first spotted the Andromeda galaxy naked eye and through binoculars. It's exciting stuff for people who get a kick out of that sort of thing. Deer Park Monastery also had fairly dark skies.

The darkest skies I've seen were in rural western Massachusetts where my brother was living one summer with his girlfriend and some college friends. 1986, I think. I was still in high school. Town called Monterey. It was a lakeside property and once when I visited, some of us took a boat out on the lake at night. It was the first time I realized why the Greeks named it the "Milky Way". Seeing it under such dark skies it dawned on me why the ancient Greeks might imagine milk squirting wantonly from a beautiful, young maiden's voluminous naked breasts across the night heavens. Or a cup of goat's milk spilled on the breakfast table, take your pick. Profundity of the cosmos.

I had a subscription to Astronomy magazine in the early 80s and that's where I first read about the LIGO/LISA gravity wave detectors. I likely didn't really understand any of it but pretended I did. I do remember reading about the L-shaped arm configuration of the detectors, and that's probably all that I really understood; I knew what an L looks like. And what I certainly didn't understand is that those articles were reporting on a massive undertaking that was actively being developed and people were working very hard to get money from Congress to fund it.

The distant background of the book is that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted gravity waves, but even he wasn't confident whether they really existed. The accepted belief developed that even if they existed, they were impossible to detect, being all sorts of non-hyperbolic descriptions of really, really, really infinitesimally small. The book covers the scientists involved and their backgrounds and the decades that saw inspiration, theory, experimentation, failure, and interpersonal friction and drama that eventually led to LIGO getting the green light per my Astronomy magazines. I had no idea what was going on.

Until Levin's book. Fantastic read, I think, for anyone interested in the topic. Very well written with Levin being a physics and math professor herself, so a science insider. As an aspiring writer, this book is very readable (her prior book, which I also found in the libraries, not so much) and even has some Sagan-esque moments in inspiring awe at what's going on in the universe.

It was a timely read, too, as two of the principal scientists, Rai Weiss and Kip Thorne, won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on LIGO and the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Oh whoops, damn! *spoiler alert*. A third principal, Ron Drever, who should have shared in the Nobel, despite being fired from the project, sadly died in March 2017 and thus became ineligible. I think no one doubts that, despite his being delusional and living in his own world and impossible to work with, that he was a genius and would have shared in the honors.

Timely, further, in that LIGO made headlines again in September 2017 with a gravity wave detection that immediately alerted other telescopes and led to corresponding radio and light observations of the event, making a pioneer, so-called "multi-messenger" observation of an event.

As long as I mentioned Kip Thorne, I watched the movie "Interstellar", on which Thorne acted as science advisor, multiple times when it aired on HBO. I also read Thorne's book on the relevant science of "Interstellar", as well as filmmaker Chris Nolan's book on the making of the film. I think the movie has a berth on my top ten favorite films of all time (there are probably more than 50 films on that list). Kip Thorne's book was particularly illuminating as even I started to be able to envision the physics involved. Certainly not anywhere near full comprehension, but a lot of "oh wow!" moments.

And as long as I'm mentioning astronomy, several years ago I read How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming by astronomer Mike Brown. I also recommend it for anyone interested in astronomy with the caveat that Mike Brown, although readable, writes more like a scientist. He writes about his own research and role in Pluto's demotion from a planet, but in no way is he trying to be an aspiring writer. He has no intention of giving up his day job.

Both books convey what a cutthroat world academic science is with competition as emotionally charged as any sports event, just in longer time spans, and with dramas that could put Hollywood tabloids to shame if only they involved more breasts and vapid, vacant personalities saying and doing dumb things.

These kinds of reads make me realize that I could never had made it in the academic world. I'm not that competitive or ambitious. Or smart.

I didn't have TV since the beginning of December. The provider is bbtv in Taiwan. Their internet is fine, but their cable TV service is wanting. Actually, to be fair I didn't even try to notify anyone there was a problem. I left it to other people on the floor who apparently didn't mind not having TV as much as I didn't mind. It's totally possible bbtv would have responded immediately and had service back up pronto.

Internet did go out at the end of December, the same day I killed that spider in fact. I knew someone would call the landlord for that and internet was back up two days later, but for some reason no one mentioned TV and the person who fixed the internet didn't realize TV service was out, too.

No internet was not fun. A little lonely maybe? When it was back up I wanted to run to the internet and say oh my god, i have so much to tell you! I didn't have anything to tell. That was just the weird feeling. And not to anyone, mind you, but to the internet itself. I watched three movies on my computer in those two days.

I adapted to no TV, even though it disrupted shows I was watching, notably season 4 of Fresh Off the Boat, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, and Discovery Channel shows How the Universe Works and How the Earth was Made. I'll watch anything on astronomy or cosmology, geology, earth sciences, earth history, archaeology. Things that span and give insight on how this all came to be.

After TV went dark, I checked every few days to see if it was back up, and after a few weeks I stopped doing that. I found new ways to completely fill up my time to the point that I felt I didn't have enough time. I started spending a lot more time with my bass as well as watching YouTube videos voraciously.

Today, after maybe a month I checked the TV not expecting anything and it was back up. Only Fresh Off the Boat is still airing. I missed a bunch of episodes, but they'll probably re-run them.

On one hand, two months without TV, I think, really did break my TV addiction. I don't even want it, I don't want it on all the time even in the background as I had it before. I'm sick of channel surfing when there's nothing on. On the other hand, it's February leading up to the Oscars in March and HBO is cramming Oscar classics and there's a lot I know I'm too weak to miss.

Another unexpected side effect, I think, was that what little of my Mandarin speaking ability went completely out the door. Even watching English language TV, Mandarin entered my ears through commercials. And at times I would have local news on as background noise. Without that I was completely in a non-Mandarin environment unless a Mandarin language song came up on my iPod and I long stopped trying to understand lyrics while listening.

As it is, my flatscreen is default connected to my laptop, not TV. I'll peek at TV schedules to see if there's anything of interest coming up, but I see breaking with TV as a good thing.

I went to the bank recently to add some buffer to time I have left in the form of an undated check. Currently the amount in my account will last me until June, and then I have some emergency reserves I keep in house. This injection would give me about seven months. Buffer.

Lots of psychology going on here. I don't need or want a seven month buffer, I'm hoping I don't even need until June. But there I was in the bank trying to implement this injection only to find it might not even work. Why? Because it involves my parents (even after my father died, I still can't refer to my mother as a singular individual entity). If it involves my parents, it involves chaos. It's natural law, you throw something up, it comes down. OK, maybe there's a tinge of subjective interpretation going on, but I'm working with empirical evidence.

I totally regret going to the bank. It wasn't worth the chaos and I had to implement full mindfulness practice to maintain homeostasis, giving off a general air that I couldn't care less what ultimately happens, which is true. I had prepared everything thoroughly for it to be pretty routine, but because of the chaos caused, I have no idea what's going to happen.

I'm bracing for the consequences. There weren't supposed to be "consequences". The injection was just supposed to happen as calmly as two ships passing in the night. Now there's the threat that people will try to contact me, which may sound like a "poor baby" moment, but is still disturbing and distracting. My strategy will be to smother any consequences and cut off anything anyone might try to do. The worst is anyone thinking I need money, so that's what I'll have to emphatically shut down. Fuggedaboudit, I don't need it.

I'm just really annoyed and disappointed in myself for even trying for the injection. I've been complaining about the day-to-day conveyor belt of my life and its uselessness and banality, and here I go trying to extend it? This is me mocking and making a joke of my own life. This is me insulting everything about me and myself and ascribing me to a new low level of pathetic below rock bottom. That might be magma, but that sounds too cool.

What was I even thinking? It was just a bunch of ordinary factors that fell on one day that made it seem the perfect convenient day. But not knowing there was going to be a problem, I probably would have gone eventually anyway as I watched my account decline every month. So what is the psychology of this adding buffer?

OK, even while I'm saying I "hope I don't even need until June", clearly clearly clearly if the injection went without a hitch, I would have kept on through the seven months because that's how lame I am. I have to accept that as it is. And this check isn't the only undated check I have so I have to assume I would have continued to add buffer if the option was there (they all have the same defect, so the option is gone even if this one injection works). Because that's how lame I am. That's what all the evidence of my behavior suggests. That's how I've even gotten this far in years. It sure hasn't been through hard work and ambition.

If I had known there was going to be a problem, would I have gone to the bank? Giving it a good deal of thought, I'm gonna say probably not. I could take that as a sign and resign myself that what I have left is all I have left. And if this injection doesn't go through and really all I have is until June and change, I'm not going to do anything and accept that this is it. I hope I'll accept that this is it. There is no evidence in my behavior to suggest confidence in that.

I think my hand will need to be "forced", and only then will the suicide option become a reality. This is what I mean when I keep saying I've designed my life with suicide as an end. No matter how much "buffer" I'm able to keep adding to my life, eventually there will be no more and since I don't have the ambition to find independent means to maintain my life (get a job), and do have the idealized goal to commit suicide, well then voilà.

I need to face having no option. I need that experience just as much as I need to actually commit suicide. I need it to LOOM. I need to have the train bearing down on me. I need to be in the death zone on Mt. Everest and realize I'm in serious trouble and not going to make it down. I need to be force marched into the desert by government soldiers who hold more value in toilet paper than in my life. I've pretended to be totally committed to doing it in the past, but there always was the option of coming home. I always had my house keys. Come to think of it, that's not total commitment. This time it won't matter if I take my house keys, there still will be no money if I fail. And then what? I don't even want to think of it. The alternatives in that situation are just as bad or even worse than suicide.