I'm already limited to about 5 hours of sleep tonight, but since I finally have access to high-speed internet for the first time over break, I'm going to write up a quick post, just to assure people that I'm not dead.
Cable is actually not available in my area... That's right, I'm one of those poor back-woods hicks that still can't get cable. Thus, I'm restricted to dial-up, and I refuse to use it because I hate it. So I check my email at work. This is about the only thing I can use the internet there for, mainly because computer use is heavily monitored, both remotely by scary tech people and locally by my boss. So this is the first post of the break, because it's the first time I've been at a friend's house who happens to have any form of high-speed internet.
Break has been good so far. Working retail over Christmas is busy as hell (another reason I haven't been posting), but very worth it, because I enjoy the store, I enjoy my co-workers, and I make a lot of money.
I have various things to write about, but as I need to get some sleep before I work tomorrow, I will leave them for later posts. Upcoming attractions: if all goes well, I'll be leaving a drunk post on 21st birthday. Chances are I won't update between now and then, but I'll try to make it entertaining.
Si Legebis, Scribam
There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.
-- Quentin Crisp
This doesn't quite apply to me, as I'm not writing for profit at all, but of the two remaining choices, I have to go with the latter. I think that I've always written for myself, and to help myself understand what and how I think. I never have anything inspired to say, and I usually do write just because I have nothing better to do.
But I'd be lying to myself if I said that I didn't want people to read what I have to say. Maybe I want people to tell me that I make sense, or that what I have to say is interesting. Maybe I need validation for what I do. Even the entries that I write but don't publish because I don't want someone to read them, I want them to be read eventually, if only so that part of my life will be preserved.
Really, though, am I alone in this? Does anyone actually write just for themselves? I very much doubt that anyone does. Even the people with secret diaries probably hope, in their heart of hearts, that someone will find it, read it, and comfort them for their heartbreaks, congratulate them for their cleverness, and just come to an understanding of them in general. That's really what it all comes down to. People write to be understood.
I wrote a while ago that an essay is a facet of the author, and that the only essay that would ever be truly "completed" would be one that encompasses all of the author's thoughts and experiences. This implies that every human experience is connected in some way or another. The farther I come along in my liberal education, the more I tend to agree with that implication. It also implies that honest writing is a deeply personal act. There are all sorts of cliches that come to mind: pouring one's soul onto the page, sharing one's self with one's readers, baring everything, etc. Cliches are, well, cliche... but for something to become cliche, it must be used regularly - and to be used regularly, there must be something about them that people understand. They have a kernel of truth in them.
So people write, and in doing so they are revealing part of themselves to their readers. Why do this? Do all people seek validation for the way they think, and the way they are? Or perhaps they have realized things that they want their readers to also realize? I suppose it depends on the writer. And maybe that's exactly what Quentin Crisp was talking about - maybe the writers seeking validations are the ones who have nothing better to do on a winter evenings, and the writers trying to share a realization are the ones who want to speak to the world.
I'm still not quite sure which one I am. I don't necessarily have anything important to tell to anyone, though I know a few people are amused by my writing. But I don't think I'm writing just for validation, either. Perhaps a simple dichotomy is too restrictive, and there's a third option out there. I'll figure it out someday.
But as for now, I must wrap this up. I have better things to do on this long winter evening.
Defensio Mei Vestitus
I write this as a general response to those who claim that I have somehow "sold out" by changing my manner of dress. There have been at least three people who have made this or a similar claim, and while I don't believe that they were completely serious about their criticism of my choices, I do believe that there was an underlying belief in their accusations upon which their jokes were based. So it is to this that I respond.
Starting several months ago and continuing up to the present day, my wardrobe has been slowly changing. My old stand-by, which was basic jeans from a supermarket and a random t-shirt has been gradually supplanted by clothes which are considered more stylish by the mainstream market - clothes of brands such as Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, etc. Along with the change in brands, there has also been a change in style. Gone are the large t-shirts with something nerdy on them. Instead, I have button-down short-sleeve shirts, or polo shirts, and so on. Also being replaced are the generic Wal-mart or Meijer jeans. In their stead are faded jeans from the Gap or AE. These changes have not gone unnoticed.
Most have commented favorably. But there are those people who consider wearing clothes from such retailers to be selling out. The claim is that in wearing these clothes, I am joining a part of society which they dislike. They say that I am trying to imitate the popular people, that I need to fit in with the crowd, and that I am trying to define myself by what I wear.
But this is absurd. The only people who would make such claims are people who are themselves defined by what they wear. Or, more specifically, defined by what they don't wear. I am wearing these clothes because society has deemed it more stylish to wear these clothes. Yes, I am changing what I wear on the whim of the masses, but I don't define myself by what I wear. Someone who refuses to wear certain clothes because certain portions of society also wear them is defining himself by what he wears, and is thus guilty of the very thing they accuse others of. They somehow believe that wearing certain clothes will identify themselves with a part of society which they hate because it is, in part, defined by its clothing. But in doing so, they are the ones defining that part of society by its clothing.
I for one have no qualms about wearing the clothes that I do, because the way I dress is pragmatic. I dress comfortably and (I'm still working on this...) stylishly. I may dress like certain parts of society which they dislike, but they should define those parts of society by their actions, not their clothes. In not doing so, they are being as shallow as the people they scorn.
I am not defined by the clothes I wear, but perhaps they are.
Starting several months ago and continuing up to the present day, my wardrobe has been slowly changing. My old stand-by, which was basic jeans from a supermarket and a random t-shirt has been gradually supplanted by clothes which are considered more stylish by the mainstream market - clothes of brands such as Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, etc. Along with the change in brands, there has also been a change in style. Gone are the large t-shirts with something nerdy on them. Instead, I have button-down short-sleeve shirts, or polo shirts, and so on. Also being replaced are the generic Wal-mart or Meijer jeans. In their stead are faded jeans from the Gap or AE. These changes have not gone unnoticed.
Most have commented favorably. But there are those people who consider wearing clothes from such retailers to be selling out. The claim is that in wearing these clothes, I am joining a part of society which they dislike. They say that I am trying to imitate the popular people, that I need to fit in with the crowd, and that I am trying to define myself by what I wear.
But this is absurd. The only people who would make such claims are people who are themselves defined by what they wear. Or, more specifically, defined by what they don't wear. I am wearing these clothes because society has deemed it more stylish to wear these clothes. Yes, I am changing what I wear on the whim of the masses, but I don't define myself by what I wear. Someone who refuses to wear certain clothes because certain portions of society also wear them is defining himself by what he wears, and is thus guilty of the very thing they accuse others of. They somehow believe that wearing certain clothes will identify themselves with a part of society which they hate because it is, in part, defined by its clothing. But in doing so, they are the ones defining that part of society by its clothing.
I for one have no qualms about wearing the clothes that I do, because the way I dress is pragmatic. I dress comfortably and (I'm still working on this...) stylishly. I may dress like certain parts of society which they dislike, but they should define those parts of society by their actions, not their clothes. In not doing so, they are being as shallow as the people they scorn.
I am not defined by the clothes I wear, but perhaps they are.
In Me Aspecto
I'm convinced we all are voyeurs. It's part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There's an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do?
--David Lynch
Recently, I've been in a situation where I'm not quite sure of what I'm doing. So I've looked to others for advice. But every piece of advice I've gotten I've discarded almost out of hand, telling myself that I know what I'm doing better than this or that person does. I'm being vague, but basically I feel like I don't exactly know what I'm doing, but I know better than anyone else does. And I suppose that makes sense, as the situation isn't really a public matter, and I know it better than anyone else save one. So I have to go it alone, and trust my own instinct.
Of course, my instinct was bred from subconciously observing others in similar situations. So am I actually doing anything autonomously? Does anyone ever do anything original? Well, originality doesn't really have anything to do with autonomy. Scratch that. But am I acting of my own free will, or am I just doing what I've been programmed to do by the unique set of circumstances that got me to where I am today? Am I wholly defined by external events that have shaped me and will continue to shape me?
I don't think I can answer those questions without writing for a very long time, and since Dan complained about the length of my posts (and I tend to agree with him), I guess I'll just stop there and not really worry about it. Instead, I'll just do the best I can with what I have. I know what's going on in my life better than anyone else, so I'll have to rely on my own judgement. Whether or not that judgement has been programmed into me my upbringing and so on is a moot point; it won't change the fact that I need to use my judgement.
And honestly, for all the talk and feelings of being unsure, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. I just need to go do it.
In Vino Veritas?
The phrase "in vino veritas" is usually translated as "the truth is in wine" and is used to imply that when a person is drunk, they're more honest. As far as the translation goes, I'm not too sure about it, because there's no verb there at all. From what I know of Latin, it should be literally translated as "the truth in wine." Maybe it was originally "in vino veritas est" and "est" simply got dropped as the phrase travelled through the centuries. Or maybe there's something about Latin that I don't know yet.
But more important than the translation is the idea behind it. Am I more honest when I drink? Well, I do say things that I wouldn't say when I'm sober. But is that really honesty? It seems to me that choosing when, where, how, and to whom you say certain things is as important as what you actually say. So if wine (or any other alcoholic beverage) makes me say something that I normally wouldn't, it's not actually making me honest... In fact, it makes me dishonest, because I would usually have the tact to avoid saying certain things.
No, that doesn't make any sense at all... maybe I'm being dishonest to my own sense of tact and social graces, but that doesn't mean that I'm not telling the truth. Just because I normally wouldn't say something doesn't mean it's not the truth. So yes, I think that there is truth in wine.
Is this a good thing? I usually end up feeling embarassed by something I've said after drinking, and I certainly don't like feeling embarassed. This blog itself is a perfect example of this. Most posts I make while drunk are deleted the next morning, and the ones that aren't I'll end up feeling vaguely unhappy about until they're safely out of sight and out of mind. (Like the post just before this one...) Yeah, drunken rambling is something I don't enjoy dealing with once I'm sober again.
But why not? Why do I worry about it at all? Isn't honesty the best policy? Shouldn't I be trying to get rid of these social inhibitions anyway? Yes, no more lying, no more facades, no more pretending to be happy when I'm sad, or sad when I'm happy, or any one other of a myriad of emotions when it's not real. Yes, drunkenness is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is a good reason for me trying to hide certain feelings. Perhaps there are parts of me, feelings or urges that I have that should remain concealed. And that's why I delete my drunken blogs. Because the social inhibitions have a very real and very positive function in my life. Because the checks that we place on ourselves, the checks that are ignored when one drinks, are part of what enables society to function.
Johnathan Swift wrote a poem detailing the process of a woman going about her daily chores to make herself presentable and beautiful. He said in his poem that the beauty is only skin deep, and anyone who has seen a women go through this process or cleaning and beautification would only find the finished product to be disgusting, considering the filth from whence it came. This is Mr. Swift's position on the matter, but after some reflection, it really is poor position to take. Maybe the underlying thing isn't beautiful, but there is a process for beautifying the unbeautiful. The fact that beauty is a facade for an ugly reality doesn't make the beauty any less beautiful.
This is where this tangent joins my earlier discussion - being completely honest simply for the fact that being anything else is only covering the filthy truth is silly. Or is it? Maybe I'm just trying to escape the reality that seems so ugly to me. Is this why I get depress when I drink? Because I'm honest with myself as well as with everyone else, and honesty is depressing? It's a distinct possibility.
Of course, I have to wonder which is better: being happy and dishonest with myself, or being sad and truthful. Perhaps there's a third option: truthful, but able to find the beauty in the truth, and thus happy. I think I'll have to think this one over, and take a more careful look at the world before I can say that any of these three options are the case.
I probably should have thought about this before I started writing about it. But to be quite honest, I don't think I would have ever gotten to this point if I hadn't been writing. That's the beauty of blogging. And of course, I really doubt that I would have gotten to this point if I hadn't been so drunk.
Maybe this is one drunk blog that I won't delete and I won't feel ashamed of. Tomorrow morning will tell.
But more important than the translation is the idea behind it. Am I more honest when I drink? Well, I do say things that I wouldn't say when I'm sober. But is that really honesty? It seems to me that choosing when, where, how, and to whom you say certain things is as important as what you actually say. So if wine (or any other alcoholic beverage) makes me say something that I normally wouldn't, it's not actually making me honest... In fact, it makes me dishonest, because I would usually have the tact to avoid saying certain things.
No, that doesn't make any sense at all... maybe I'm being dishonest to my own sense of tact and social graces, but that doesn't mean that I'm not telling the truth. Just because I normally wouldn't say something doesn't mean it's not the truth. So yes, I think that there is truth in wine.
Is this a good thing? I usually end up feeling embarassed by something I've said after drinking, and I certainly don't like feeling embarassed. This blog itself is a perfect example of this. Most posts I make while drunk are deleted the next morning, and the ones that aren't I'll end up feeling vaguely unhappy about until they're safely out of sight and out of mind. (Like the post just before this one...) Yeah, drunken rambling is something I don't enjoy dealing with once I'm sober again.
But why not? Why do I worry about it at all? Isn't honesty the best policy? Shouldn't I be trying to get rid of these social inhibitions anyway? Yes, no more lying, no more facades, no more pretending to be happy when I'm sad, or sad when I'm happy, or any one other of a myriad of emotions when it's not real. Yes, drunkenness is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is a good reason for me trying to hide certain feelings. Perhaps there are parts of me, feelings or urges that I have that should remain concealed. And that's why I delete my drunken blogs. Because the social inhibitions have a very real and very positive function in my life. Because the checks that we place on ourselves, the checks that are ignored when one drinks, are part of what enables society to function.
Johnathan Swift wrote a poem detailing the process of a woman going about her daily chores to make herself presentable and beautiful. He said in his poem that the beauty is only skin deep, and anyone who has seen a women go through this process or cleaning and beautification would only find the finished product to be disgusting, considering the filth from whence it came. This is Mr. Swift's position on the matter, but after some reflection, it really is poor position to take. Maybe the underlying thing isn't beautiful, but there is a process for beautifying the unbeautiful. The fact that beauty is a facade for an ugly reality doesn't make the beauty any less beautiful.
This is where this tangent joins my earlier discussion - being completely honest simply for the fact that being anything else is only covering the filthy truth is silly. Or is it? Maybe I'm just trying to escape the reality that seems so ugly to me. Is this why I get depress when I drink? Because I'm honest with myself as well as with everyone else, and honesty is depressing? It's a distinct possibility.
Of course, I have to wonder which is better: being happy and dishonest with myself, or being sad and truthful. Perhaps there's a third option: truthful, but able to find the beauty in the truth, and thus happy. I think I'll have to think this one over, and take a more careful look at the world before I can say that any of these three options are the case.
I probably should have thought about this before I started writing about it. But to be quite honest, I don't think I would have ever gotten to this point if I hadn't been writing. That's the beauty of blogging. And of course, I really doubt that I would have gotten to this point if I hadn't been so drunk.
Maybe this is one drunk blog that I won't delete and I won't feel ashamed of. Tomorrow morning will tell.
Cautious Optimism
Well, I don't have the time or energy to write too much on it, but everything seems to have been falling into place recently.
I was running out of money... and I got a Christmas job which pays on commission. Kick ass.
I decided that I did want a girl... and lo and behold, something comes along that looks quite promising. I'm approaching it with what I would call cautious optimism, based on previous experience, but it has potential. We'll see.
I'm disgruntled with classes... and every class I signed up for next semester is interesting to me. Especially "Movies as Medium," and the English class I'm taking. And the sociology class.
Yes, things are working out well. More posting to come as events and sobriety warrant.
I was running out of money... and I got a Christmas job which pays on commission. Kick ass.
I decided that I did want a girl... and lo and behold, something comes along that looks quite promising. I'm approaching it with what I would call cautious optimism, based on previous experience, but it has potential. We'll see.
I'm disgruntled with classes... and every class I signed up for next semester is interesting to me. Especially "Movies as Medium," and the English class I'm taking. And the sociology class.
Yes, things are working out well. More posting to come as events and sobriety warrant.
Confusion, Casual Dating, and Careful Planning
This post is essentially a record of me thinking through various issues I have with dating. It's a bit long, but I think I've worked through it as much as I can on my own.
Confusion has set in. Assumptions are being challenged and things that were once facts are evaporating. I don't know what to think anymore. The key revelation, described in the previous post, was that no matter how much I may try to delude myself to the contrary, I'm still single because I've chosen to be that way. But where do I go from here? I have questions about dating need to be answered. I looked at them briefly at the end of Tuesday's post, but didn't really delve deeply, or even answer them at all. Now, a more systematic approach to the problems I've been having.
First of all, do I even want a girlfriend right now? A week ago this question would have seemed absurd to me. Of course I want a girlfriend! Now, I've realized that I've actually been answering "no" to that question all along, I just didn't realize it. So do I? I suppose I could just say "forget it," wait until after college, and spare myself the trouble. It would mean a lot less stress. But of course that's just putting off the problem until a later date, and it would be completely stupid, because in college I'm surrounded by more girls my own age than I will be ever again. Ultimately, there's no real point to waiting until after college. The stress would still be there anyway, I would imagine. So I was wrong all along. I do want a girlfriend right now.
But what type of girlfriend? This is the key problem. Do I wait for the one I want to marry? The "knock your socks off" type of girl, the love at first sight girl? That's what Dave G. did, and it worked for him. Of course I realize that no girl will ever be completely ideal. But maybe a girl that just throws the whole system off kilter will show up. She might not be perfect, but she'll be different enough that I can't really hold her to the same standards as the rest. And when I meet her, I'll pursue her. That sounds like a pretty good deal.
There are two problems with this. The first is that the ideal I hold in my head right now may actually not work out at all for me. I mean, maybe I think that a certain thing about a girl would be great, but maybe once I actually start dating her, I'll find out that it's actually a bad thing. I would end up finding the "almost-perfect" girl, start dating her with the full intention of getting married eventually, but find out something that made her so close to perfect initially is actually a drawback. What it comes down to is that I don't have an well-informed idea of what I really want in a girl.
The second problem is that I'm assuming the sole purpose for dating is to be a lead-in to marriage. There is, I'm told, another type of dating. This is dating used to get to know the person better, and to see what you like and what you dislike about them. This is dating to have someone to be close to, without having to rule out being with someone else ever again. This is dating with few or no serious commitments. The type of dating that can be cut off without either party going through a huge heartbreak. This is dating with the understanding that it probably won't last. This is casual dating.
But how does casual dating work? I agree with those who say that there can never be a truly platonic relationship between a man and a woman (excluding homosexuality). And by extension, I find it hard to believe that two people could date for any substantive amount of time without at least one of them becoming more emotionally involved than casual dating would necessitate. If you casually date someone for a certain length of time, it's almost guaranteed that one of you will start seeing commitments where none were intended to be. It's human nature. And once this happens, it's no longer casual dating. It's a "commited relationship," so to speak. Somewhere in your subconscious thoughts, one of you will want the relationship to turn into a marriage, even if your conscious thoughts don't want that. And the effects of that subconscious attachment will be heartbreak when the relationship ends, or when the feelings aren't reciprocated.
This problem really really worries me, too. I have a feeling that, because I've never dated before, I would get quite emotionally attached very early on in a relationship. This would be fine if I ended up marrying the first girl I ever dated, but the chances of that are fairly slim if I start off with casual dating. I'm worried that I would end up latching on to the poor girl, then she would dump me. I would end up heartbroken, and she would end up thinking I'm weird. Which would be the case, because you aren't supposed to get so emotionally involved in casual dating.
The solution, besides not being so fatalistic, would be to never go on more than a few casual dates unless you think that there's a good chance that the relationship could work out. Now that I write that down, I realize that maybe that's what casual dating is supposed to be anyway - no more than a few dates, just to get to know the person and decide whether to go any farther. It seems to fit the description I made of it earlier. A dinner and movie or two, a few good conversations, then deciding whether or not it might work out. Of course, the conversation deciding whether or not to end it would be very awkward. I suppose I would just say the truth. If we ended up at odds on the matter, I would just have to trust us both to handle it maturely. It would make any friendship after the fact a little awkward, but since there was so little commitment in the first pace, it wouldn't be too bad. I don't really see any major problems with having a few casual dates like that. In fact, it would probably end up being a good thing, because I get to know more about what I'm looking for in my ideal girl, and I have a much better chance of finding her, because I'm not automatically discarding girls who don't make a good initial impression. So casual dating answers both of the problems that I can see with jumping directly to courtship.
Now we're getting somewhere. I've decided that I do want a girlfriend right now, and that casual dating can work. Since casual dating, unlike courship, doesn't require long periods of waiting and searching to find the right girl, it seems obvious that I should be able satify my desire for a girlfriend fairly soon. There's no real reason to wait that I can think of.
But where do I start? Do I ask some random girl what she has planned for tonight at lunch or something? Somehow I imagine that this wouldn't go over too well. Perhaps I should ask one of the girls with whom I'm already good friends if they'd like to go out to dinner. I'd probably get just as weird a look from a friend as a stranger for a move like that, because I don't ask girls out on dates, but at least with a friend I'd have a chance to explain myself. Of course, there's the age-old "we're too good of friends!" line. I always thought that that line never really happened, because it seems to be a load of bullshit. If you're not attracted as anything more than as a friend, just tell me. You don't need to sugarcoat it. But I've heard it said about me before, so I know it exists. And I have a feeling that I'd end up hearing it a lot more if I were to start asking some of my close female friends out on dates. It is a shame, because there are some of them to whom I am attracted, but I think for the first few dates I ought to avoid the likely rejection that would come from that particular group. So that leaves us with casual acquaintances. In this group, I would place all but one or two of the single girls whom I've met since the beginning of school this year. This leaves me with a nice mix of girls, and I probably have a chance for a casual date with at least one of them.
How does one go about asking a girl on a date? This is the stuff I should have been working on in highschool. Now I'll be nervous and stumble over the unfamiliar words, embarassing myself and making her wonder why I'm having so much trouble. The ultimate would be for a girl to be attracted to me, and have gumption to ask me out. Like Demi Moore did in A Few Good Men. That situation I could handle. I suppose it would help to look like Tom Cruise. Of course, from what I've been told by female friends, it's probably a hundred times harder for a girl (well, most girls) to ask a guy out than it will ever be for me to ask a girl out. And really, it won't be that hard at all. Especially if I'm just asking an acquaintance anyway... much less to lose.
OK, so asking isn't going to be a problem... now what do I do if she says "sure"? Once again, this is the stuff I should have been taking care of in highschool - figuring out what makes a good date. I suppose, for a first casual date, I ought to find a restaurant in the area that has good food, but isn't too well known, so it doesn't seem like I'm doing the same-old same-old. And after dinner... a movie seems a bit cliche. Maybe I should offer her a few choices and see which she wants to try. After all, the wife of Bath's tale in The Canterbury Tales says that the best way for a man to get a good woman is to allow her to choose. And she knows what she's talking about. Actually, I think I'm reading way too much into this. I'll just go with the flow, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I need to stop turning things over in my head, forget the careful planning, and just act.
Confusion has set in. Assumptions are being challenged and things that were once facts are evaporating. I don't know what to think anymore. The key revelation, described in the previous post, was that no matter how much I may try to delude myself to the contrary, I'm still single because I've chosen to be that way. But where do I go from here? I have questions about dating need to be answered. I looked at them briefly at the end of Tuesday's post, but didn't really delve deeply, or even answer them at all. Now, a more systematic approach to the problems I've been having.
First of all, do I even want a girlfriend right now? A week ago this question would have seemed absurd to me. Of course I want a girlfriend! Now, I've realized that I've actually been answering "no" to that question all along, I just didn't realize it. So do I? I suppose I could just say "forget it," wait until after college, and spare myself the trouble. It would mean a lot less stress. But of course that's just putting off the problem until a later date, and it would be completely stupid, because in college I'm surrounded by more girls my own age than I will be ever again. Ultimately, there's no real point to waiting until after college. The stress would still be there anyway, I would imagine. So I was wrong all along. I do want a girlfriend right now.
But what type of girlfriend? This is the key problem. Do I wait for the one I want to marry? The "knock your socks off" type of girl, the love at first sight girl? That's what Dave G. did, and it worked for him. Of course I realize that no girl will ever be completely ideal. But maybe a girl that just throws the whole system off kilter will show up. She might not be perfect, but she'll be different enough that I can't really hold her to the same standards as the rest. And when I meet her, I'll pursue her. That sounds like a pretty good deal.
There are two problems with this. The first is that the ideal I hold in my head right now may actually not work out at all for me. I mean, maybe I think that a certain thing about a girl would be great, but maybe once I actually start dating her, I'll find out that it's actually a bad thing. I would end up finding the "almost-perfect" girl, start dating her with the full intention of getting married eventually, but find out something that made her so close to perfect initially is actually a drawback. What it comes down to is that I don't have an well-informed idea of what I really want in a girl.
The second problem is that I'm assuming the sole purpose for dating is to be a lead-in to marriage. There is, I'm told, another type of dating. This is dating used to get to know the person better, and to see what you like and what you dislike about them. This is dating to have someone to be close to, without having to rule out being with someone else ever again. This is dating with few or no serious commitments. The type of dating that can be cut off without either party going through a huge heartbreak. This is dating with the understanding that it probably won't last. This is casual dating.
But how does casual dating work? I agree with those who say that there can never be a truly platonic relationship between a man and a woman (excluding homosexuality). And by extension, I find it hard to believe that two people could date for any substantive amount of time without at least one of them becoming more emotionally involved than casual dating would necessitate. If you casually date someone for a certain length of time, it's almost guaranteed that one of you will start seeing commitments where none were intended to be. It's human nature. And once this happens, it's no longer casual dating. It's a "commited relationship," so to speak. Somewhere in your subconscious thoughts, one of you will want the relationship to turn into a marriage, even if your conscious thoughts don't want that. And the effects of that subconscious attachment will be heartbreak when the relationship ends, or when the feelings aren't reciprocated.
This problem really really worries me, too. I have a feeling that, because I've never dated before, I would get quite emotionally attached very early on in a relationship. This would be fine if I ended up marrying the first girl I ever dated, but the chances of that are fairly slim if I start off with casual dating. I'm worried that I would end up latching on to the poor girl, then she would dump me. I would end up heartbroken, and she would end up thinking I'm weird. Which would be the case, because you aren't supposed to get so emotionally involved in casual dating.
The solution, besides not being so fatalistic, would be to never go on more than a few casual dates unless you think that there's a good chance that the relationship could work out. Now that I write that down, I realize that maybe that's what casual dating is supposed to be anyway - no more than a few dates, just to get to know the person and decide whether to go any farther. It seems to fit the description I made of it earlier. A dinner and movie or two, a few good conversations, then deciding whether or not it might work out. Of course, the conversation deciding whether or not to end it would be very awkward. I suppose I would just say the truth. If we ended up at odds on the matter, I would just have to trust us both to handle it maturely. It would make any friendship after the fact a little awkward, but since there was so little commitment in the first pace, it wouldn't be too bad. I don't really see any major problems with having a few casual dates like that. In fact, it would probably end up being a good thing, because I get to know more about what I'm looking for in my ideal girl, and I have a much better chance of finding her, because I'm not automatically discarding girls who don't make a good initial impression. So casual dating answers both of the problems that I can see with jumping directly to courtship.
Now we're getting somewhere. I've decided that I do want a girlfriend right now, and that casual dating can work. Since casual dating, unlike courship, doesn't require long periods of waiting and searching to find the right girl, it seems obvious that I should be able satify my desire for a girlfriend fairly soon. There's no real reason to wait that I can think of.
But where do I start? Do I ask some random girl what she has planned for tonight at lunch or something? Somehow I imagine that this wouldn't go over too well. Perhaps I should ask one of the girls with whom I'm already good friends if they'd like to go out to dinner. I'd probably get just as weird a look from a friend as a stranger for a move like that, because I don't ask girls out on dates, but at least with a friend I'd have a chance to explain myself. Of course, there's the age-old "we're too good of friends!" line. I always thought that that line never really happened, because it seems to be a load of bullshit. If you're not attracted as anything more than as a friend, just tell me. You don't need to sugarcoat it. But I've heard it said about me before, so I know it exists. And I have a feeling that I'd end up hearing it a lot more if I were to start asking some of my close female friends out on dates. It is a shame, because there are some of them to whom I am attracted, but I think for the first few dates I ought to avoid the likely rejection that would come from that particular group. So that leaves us with casual acquaintances. In this group, I would place all but one or two of the single girls whom I've met since the beginning of school this year. This leaves me with a nice mix of girls, and I probably have a chance for a casual date with at least one of them.
How does one go about asking a girl on a date? This is the stuff I should have been working on in highschool. Now I'll be nervous and stumble over the unfamiliar words, embarassing myself and making her wonder why I'm having so much trouble. The ultimate would be for a girl to be attracted to me, and have gumption to ask me out. Like Demi Moore did in A Few Good Men. That situation I could handle. I suppose it would help to look like Tom Cruise. Of course, from what I've been told by female friends, it's probably a hundred times harder for a girl (well, most girls) to ask a guy out than it will ever be for me to ask a girl out. And really, it won't be that hard at all. Especially if I'm just asking an acquaintance anyway... much less to lose.
OK, so asking isn't going to be a problem... now what do I do if she says "sure"? Once again, this is the stuff I should have been taking care of in highschool - figuring out what makes a good date. I suppose, for a first casual date, I ought to find a restaurant in the area that has good food, but isn't too well known, so it doesn't seem like I'm doing the same-old same-old. And after dinner... a movie seems a bit cliche. Maybe I should offer her a few choices and see which she wants to try. After all, the wife of Bath's tale in The Canterbury Tales says that the best way for a man to get a good woman is to allow her to choose. And she knows what she's talking about. Actually, I think I'm reading way too much into this. I'll just go with the flow, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I need to stop turning things over in my head, forget the careful planning, and just act.
An Odd Morning
I apologize for the length of this post, but I had a lot to say. It is written in a story-like style, but in all but a few minor details, it is an accurate description of my morning.
The day began well. I awoke when it was still dark, and a glance at my clock informed me that the I could sleep for another hour and a half. The only time I enjoy a false start is the beginning of a day. Perhaps when I'm older I'll become one of those people who feels guilty about wasting the early morning hours, but as for now I relish falling back asleep.
I finally did climb down from bed an hour before my first class. The new shampoo I bought last week felt chill on my scalp, and I massaged it down to the roots, just so I could feel the warmth of the cascading water wash it away. I dressed quickly, as always, and wore one of my favorite shirts. Recently I've been paying more attention to how I dress, and it seems to be paying off. I receive more compliments at least. I thought about getting a girlfriend.
Two girls from a neighboring house walked up the hill to campus with me. They talked the whole way, and I think they may have tried to involve me in the conversation a few times. But I was walking quietly, staring at the ground and contemplating life in the way that one does when one has just woken up. I ended up considering girls in general, and girlfriends in particular. What attracts them? What do I do or not do that renders me single? I imagine that there is just a certain way of carrying one's self, a certain deportment, that tells girls that you are not interested. Or that makes them uninterested. And I have this deportment. I don't want to be like this, but I simply don't know how else to be.
Of course, I used to be unable to talk to girls back in highschool. What have I changed since then? And now that girls are attracted to me as a friend, how can I change that a bit more to make them attracted to me as more than just a friend? Maybe it wasn't even something in my manner that I changed, maybe it was something in my appearance. Actually, I'm inclined to think that I learned how to talk to girls last year, when I was practically forced to talk with them. No magical or sudden life change that makes me able to be friends with females, but a slow learning process that I didn't even realize was occurring. And I suppose by the same token that the easiest way to learn how to get a girlfriend is to actually get one. I need to bootstrap my love life, one might say.
As I walked, I decided to look up and start dealing with the rest of the world. Being lost in my thoughts was becoming oppressive. Everything was shrouded in a white fog, and the steam from my breath was adding to it. It made the world seem clean. Maybe it just hid the imperfections, but it was pretty. I decided to talk to the girls I was walking with. I don't remember what we talked about. After breakfast, I went to my first class. I don't remember what happened in there, either.
After my first class, I visited a friend working at the coffee cart. She is a good friend, but I'm always a bit nervous when I talk to her. For me, she herself -- her body, her attitude, her entire person -- embodies sexuality. She would (and will, if she reads it) object to this, and it would be a valid objection, but somewhere deep in my brain, she is inextricably tied to sex. Which is why I'm always a bit nervous and a bit thrilled to talk to her. It is always a struggle to keep the desires of the flesh from overtaking the rationality of the mind, especially when I am good friends with her. I manage though. I had my moment of weakness last year, and it won't happen again, for a variety of reasons.
She invited me to lunch at the her sorority house. I accepted, and we set up a time and a place to meet. On my way home, the fog was still about, and I decided that I would sit on the porch to watch the world go by until my next class. I took my pipe downstairs, packed it with a nice blend of amaretto tobacco, and quietly puffed it while sitting on the porch and contemplating life once again. But as before, "life" turned quickly to "girls."
The talk at the coffee cart, even though it had been about mundane things, made me take a step back from the whole situation. I needed to take a more careful approach to all of this. It reminded me of the difference between my flesh and my mind. It helped me put physical attraction and the physical relations with a girl in their proper place. I needed to look at the subject from a different angle.
So, starting fresh, what do I think about all of this? Lamenting about not having a girlfriend seems to be a rather stupid thing to do when one doesn't actively pursue a girl. So why don't I? Maybe it's because I don't have any confidence in my ability to attract a girl, so I'm afraid of ending up as that annoying kid who latches on to girls. That was part of the problem in highschool I think. It was the classic "afraid of rejection" thing. But really, that's not a problem anymore. I'm not as worried about that as I am now, because I realize that I am somewhat attractive (or at least, female friends tell me that I am), and I know that I have the tact to stop when something isn't working. So why am I not actively pursuing a girlfriend?
I sat in the stillness of the morning and contemplated that for a while. The only movement was the smoke from my pipe curling up and mingling with the fog above my head. Well (I thought to myself), once I realize the fact that I don't have self-confidence problems, I begin to see that I have had plenty of opportunities for girlfriends so far this semester. Well, maybe not plenty, but a few at least. There are girls whom I could have successfully pursued. And really, I've known this all along. I haven't had self-confidence problems since the the beginning of this summer or so. So why have I not pursued a girl?
Puff, puff, puff. I love smoking my pipe. It smells nice, you don't inhale the smoke, so there's no coughing, and you still get pleasantly buzzed. It works well socially, or in more personal settings. It is a thinking tool, and one of the better investments I've made in the past few months. The fog was slowly beginning to lift as I sat there and contemplated my pipe and life. I began to realize just what I had been doing wrong. The only reason that I had not been pursuing a girl... was that I didn't know one whom I considered worth pursuing.
I had been waiting for the perfect girl. The girl of my dreams. The girl that would make everything right. And she doesn't exist. I had made a classic mistake. Everyone writes about it - waiting for a better girl and consequently never really committing to the one you're with. Clerks, High Fidelity, maybe even The Quiet American to some degree... they all have protagonists who need to realize that the ideal woman is a figment of their imagination. And I fell for the same trap. Of course, I don't actually have a girl like Dante, Rob, or Fowler did in their respective stories. But I had been avoiding commitment at a deeper level, refusing to even date casually. I had always told myself that I just wanted a girlfriend, that I wasn't picky. But I was. I thought I was too damn smart to fall for that. I suppose I should re-evaluate a lot of the other beliefs I hold, now that I know I can make such large mistakes without realizing it.
But for now, the issue at hand. Perhaps I'll either have to look for something different in a girl. Or I'll just have to wait patiently for the perfect one. My friend Dave waited patiently for three years, and now he's happily married. But then again, maybe no one can meet my dreamed-of standards. I tend to lean toward the latter. Or maybe I should just date casually, not for a serious relationship, just to get some practice. Something more to contemplate...
My pipe was just about done. I finished it up, and was quite buzzed. I had finished it quickly. With my motions hazy from the pipe, but my mind clear from the same, I went upstairs and got ready for my second class. As I walked up the hill, a slight rain began to fall. The fog which had veiled the world in a clean whiteness had evaporated to reveal a dreary gray morning, but at least I could see clearly.
The day began well. I awoke when it was still dark, and a glance at my clock informed me that the I could sleep for another hour and a half. The only time I enjoy a false start is the beginning of a day. Perhaps when I'm older I'll become one of those people who feels guilty about wasting the early morning hours, but as for now I relish falling back asleep.
I finally did climb down from bed an hour before my first class. The new shampoo I bought last week felt chill on my scalp, and I massaged it down to the roots, just so I could feel the warmth of the cascading water wash it away. I dressed quickly, as always, and wore one of my favorite shirts. Recently I've been paying more attention to how I dress, and it seems to be paying off. I receive more compliments at least. I thought about getting a girlfriend.
Two girls from a neighboring house walked up the hill to campus with me. They talked the whole way, and I think they may have tried to involve me in the conversation a few times. But I was walking quietly, staring at the ground and contemplating life in the way that one does when one has just woken up. I ended up considering girls in general, and girlfriends in particular. What attracts them? What do I do or not do that renders me single? I imagine that there is just a certain way of carrying one's self, a certain deportment, that tells girls that you are not interested. Or that makes them uninterested. And I have this deportment. I don't want to be like this, but I simply don't know how else to be.
Of course, I used to be unable to talk to girls back in highschool. What have I changed since then? And now that girls are attracted to me as a friend, how can I change that a bit more to make them attracted to me as more than just a friend? Maybe it wasn't even something in my manner that I changed, maybe it was something in my appearance. Actually, I'm inclined to think that I learned how to talk to girls last year, when I was practically forced to talk with them. No magical or sudden life change that makes me able to be friends with females, but a slow learning process that I didn't even realize was occurring. And I suppose by the same token that the easiest way to learn how to get a girlfriend is to actually get one. I need to bootstrap my love life, one might say.
As I walked, I decided to look up and start dealing with the rest of the world. Being lost in my thoughts was becoming oppressive. Everything was shrouded in a white fog, and the steam from my breath was adding to it. It made the world seem clean. Maybe it just hid the imperfections, but it was pretty. I decided to talk to the girls I was walking with. I don't remember what we talked about. After breakfast, I went to my first class. I don't remember what happened in there, either.
After my first class, I visited a friend working at the coffee cart. She is a good friend, but I'm always a bit nervous when I talk to her. For me, she herself -- her body, her attitude, her entire person -- embodies sexuality. She would (and will, if she reads it) object to this, and it would be a valid objection, but somewhere deep in my brain, she is inextricably tied to sex. Which is why I'm always a bit nervous and a bit thrilled to talk to her. It is always a struggle to keep the desires of the flesh from overtaking the rationality of the mind, especially when I am good friends with her. I manage though. I had my moment of weakness last year, and it won't happen again, for a variety of reasons.
She invited me to lunch at the her sorority house. I accepted, and we set up a time and a place to meet. On my way home, the fog was still about, and I decided that I would sit on the porch to watch the world go by until my next class. I took my pipe downstairs, packed it with a nice blend of amaretto tobacco, and quietly puffed it while sitting on the porch and contemplating life once again. But as before, "life" turned quickly to "girls."
The talk at the coffee cart, even though it had been about mundane things, made me take a step back from the whole situation. I needed to take a more careful approach to all of this. It reminded me of the difference between my flesh and my mind. It helped me put physical attraction and the physical relations with a girl in their proper place. I needed to look at the subject from a different angle.
So, starting fresh, what do I think about all of this? Lamenting about not having a girlfriend seems to be a rather stupid thing to do when one doesn't actively pursue a girl. So why don't I? Maybe it's because I don't have any confidence in my ability to attract a girl, so I'm afraid of ending up as that annoying kid who latches on to girls. That was part of the problem in highschool I think. It was the classic "afraid of rejection" thing. But really, that's not a problem anymore. I'm not as worried about that as I am now, because I realize that I am somewhat attractive (or at least, female friends tell me that I am), and I know that I have the tact to stop when something isn't working. So why am I not actively pursuing a girlfriend?
I sat in the stillness of the morning and contemplated that for a while. The only movement was the smoke from my pipe curling up and mingling with the fog above my head. Well (I thought to myself), once I realize the fact that I don't have self-confidence problems, I begin to see that I have had plenty of opportunities for girlfriends so far this semester. Well, maybe not plenty, but a few at least. There are girls whom I could have successfully pursued. And really, I've known this all along. I haven't had self-confidence problems since the the beginning of this summer or so. So why have I not pursued a girl?
Puff, puff, puff. I love smoking my pipe. It smells nice, you don't inhale the smoke, so there's no coughing, and you still get pleasantly buzzed. It works well socially, or in more personal settings. It is a thinking tool, and one of the better investments I've made in the past few months. The fog was slowly beginning to lift as I sat there and contemplated my pipe and life. I began to realize just what I had been doing wrong. The only reason that I had not been pursuing a girl... was that I didn't know one whom I considered worth pursuing.
I had been waiting for the perfect girl. The girl of my dreams. The girl that would make everything right. And she doesn't exist. I had made a classic mistake. Everyone writes about it - waiting for a better girl and consequently never really committing to the one you're with. Clerks, High Fidelity, maybe even The Quiet American to some degree... they all have protagonists who need to realize that the ideal woman is a figment of their imagination. And I fell for the same trap. Of course, I don't actually have a girl like Dante, Rob, or Fowler did in their respective stories. But I had been avoiding commitment at a deeper level, refusing to even date casually. I had always told myself that I just wanted a girlfriend, that I wasn't picky. But I was. I thought I was too damn smart to fall for that. I suppose I should re-evaluate a lot of the other beliefs I hold, now that I know I can make such large mistakes without realizing it.
But for now, the issue at hand. Perhaps I'll either have to look for something different in a girl. Or I'll just have to wait patiently for the perfect one. My friend Dave waited patiently for three years, and now he's happily married. But then again, maybe no one can meet my dreamed-of standards. I tend to lean toward the latter. Or maybe I should just date casually, not for a serious relationship, just to get some practice. Something more to contemplate...
My pipe was just about done. I finished it up, and was quite buzzed. I had finished it quickly. With my motions hazy from the pipe, but my mind clear from the same, I went upstairs and got ready for my second class. As I walked up the hill, a slight rain began to fall. The fog which had veiled the world in a clean whiteness had evaporated to reveal a dreary gray morning, but at least I could see clearly.
Don't Tell Me...
I decided today to try to avoid learning the outcome of the presidential election for as long as possible. I won't watch any election coverage, I'll avoid all new sites for as long as possible, and I'll tell all my friends to avoid talking about it while I'm around. There's no particular reason for doing this, no grand sociological experiment or anything, no examination of how quickly the media can saturate the country with information. I'm just curious. Realistically, I don't expect to last beyond Wednesday morning, considering the college that I attend. Who knows. Maybe I'll last a whole 24 hours. Wish me luck.
But of course, we all know that the election has already been decided by the Redskins losing to Green Bay today, so there's really no point to this at all...
But of course, we all know that the election has already been decided by the Redskins losing to Green Bay today, so there's really no point to this at all...
First Drafts, Essays, and Commentary
Every essay that I have ever written is a first draft. This isn't to say that I don't make changes to my writing. I'm no Mozart. But when I write, it is a constantly evolving thing. I revise as I write more, and I revise what I plan to write in my head before I actually write it. It moves organically from one phase to another. There is never a point where I stop and say "OK, this is the first draft." When a teacher demands drafts as a proof of progress, I can't really do it. I have to take a single frame of the film that is my paper. It is the point that I am at currently, but I always have changes planned, or new ideas to work in. Everything I write is in a constant state of revision, even if I've "finished" it. I can look back at every essay I've ever written and every blog post I've ever written (OK, maybe not EVERY one...) and remember how I wanted to keep going with it, but just stopped because I needed to hand it in, or because I simply didn't feel like writing any more (though I still had ideas). I suppose that this is nothing new; I always hear writers say that nothing they write is ever completed. But my main point is that asking for first drafts is bullshit, and I hate having to do it. I hate having to end the growth of my creation prematurely, then continue it later on just to make it look like I added on to my draft.
But is that true? Can you really say that "no essay is ever truly finished"? I mean, I always feel that I have more connections to make, more avenues of thought to explore. But don't the connections have to become circular eventually? Don't the avenues have to dead-end somewhere? It seems obvious that they have to. There is a limit to one's experience, and one can only write about what one has experienced. So perhaps the only truly completed essay is one that embodies the whole individual. If one were to write all of their experiences and all of their commentary on their experiences (i.e. the thoughts they have about their experiences), that would be a complete essay.
The idea of commentary is an interesting one. It seems obvious that everything that one writes must be either a record of an experience they've had, or a commentary on something they've experienced. (I use "experience" in a very broad sense: something that happens to you, something you read, something you hear, etc.) But is it even possible to record the experiences that one has without somehow commenting on them? If you read a book, then try to record the experience, the only way to do so without giving some sort of commentary is to copy the book verbatim. Paraphrasing consitutes a commentary, because you have to interpret the text, and in paraphrasing, you are putting your own interpretation (commentary) into writing.
The same idea can be applied to other types of experiences besides reading, and the same principle remains. You cannot talk about your experiences without commenting on them somehow. And of course this raises all sorts of questions about reality being interpreted, since the only way we can express what we've experienced is with commentary. So is there an objective reality? Something that exists without commentary? Without being interpreted? I have to stop here, because I lack the training in philosophy to be able to explore that issue as well as it deserves.
In fact, I think I'm just going to stop here completely. Sleep calls. This post is far from done, of course, but I have to leave it as it is.
(Oh, and to just in case you can't think of any halloween costumes, here are some suggestions...)
But is that true? Can you really say that "no essay is ever truly finished"? I mean, I always feel that I have more connections to make, more avenues of thought to explore. But don't the connections have to become circular eventually? Don't the avenues have to dead-end somewhere? It seems obvious that they have to. There is a limit to one's experience, and one can only write about what one has experienced. So perhaps the only truly completed essay is one that embodies the whole individual. If one were to write all of their experiences and all of their commentary on their experiences (i.e. the thoughts they have about their experiences), that would be a complete essay.
The idea of commentary is an interesting one. It seems obvious that everything that one writes must be either a record of an experience they've had, or a commentary on something they've experienced. (I use "experience" in a very broad sense: something that happens to you, something you read, something you hear, etc.) But is it even possible to record the experiences that one has without somehow commenting on them? If you read a book, then try to record the experience, the only way to do so without giving some sort of commentary is to copy the book verbatim. Paraphrasing consitutes a commentary, because you have to interpret the text, and in paraphrasing, you are putting your own interpretation (commentary) into writing.
The same idea can be applied to other types of experiences besides reading, and the same principle remains. You cannot talk about your experiences without commenting on them somehow. And of course this raises all sorts of questions about reality being interpreted, since the only way we can express what we've experienced is with commentary. So is there an objective reality? Something that exists without commentary? Without being interpreted? I have to stop here, because I lack the training in philosophy to be able to explore that issue as well as it deserves.
In fact, I think I'm just going to stop here completely. Sleep calls. This post is far from done, of course, but I have to leave it as it is.
(Oh, and to just in case you can't think of any halloween costumes, here are some suggestions...)
What Am I?
I am not intimidated by anything. I am utterly confident in any situation. I am saying exactly the right thing. I am devoid of nervousness. I am the life of the party. The world revolves around me. I am radiant. I am catching the looks of all the girls. Everyone wants to say 'hi' to me. I am tripping the light fantastic. I am sweeping across the dance floor. I am bumping and grinding with the beautiful girls. I am everywhere. I am able to have any girl at the party. I am not even worrying about the little crush that was dead before it started. I am saying all the right things. People want to listen to me. I am the man with the plan. I have the hook-up. I am the man for my place and time. I am perfect. I am... drunk.
Adventures in the Blogosphere
Over the past few days, I've been wading through the mass of inflamatory political rhetoric, teen angst, poor spelling, terrible HTML, and occasional genius that is the blogosphere. Using the "next blog" button on the blogger bar, I've been reading random blogs in my free time. It has been an interesting experience. I'm not done with my adventure yet, but I have been through enough blogs to make a few general remarks about bloggers and blogs.
The most immediately apparent unexpected fact is that a great many people blog in foreign (i.e. non-English) languages. This really shouldn't be a surprise to me, as the majority of the population of the earth don't speak English as their native language, but it's not really something I ever thought about. Probably because I've never lived in a non-English speaking country. Or because I'm uncultured American swine. A gaijin, if you're feeling Japanese.
Speaking of Asians, most of them who do blog in English are virtually unreadable because they misspell words so badly, and because they find it necessary to capitalize every other letter. And because they use templates that are terrible. Most people (not just Asians) who design their own templates have no clue what they're doing. I particularly hate the ones that pop up the javascript boxes to tell me that I'm "entering the dream" of some 14 year-old who can barely spell, much less write an interesting post. Or even a post that doesn't involve the person with whom they're "in love." But I won't even get in to that.
Really, there aren't (proportionally) that many interesting blogs on the web. Over the past 3 days or so, I've been through hundreds of blogs, and I've only found 10 that were worth keeping bookmarks for. There were others that may have deserved it too, but they all had at least one recent post that irritated me enough to disqualify them from the distinction of being in my bookmark list.
One of the most annoying things was false modesty. The vast majority of blogs (like 99.5% of what I've seen) are self-deprecating to one degree or another. They call themselves "uninteresting" or "random ramblings" or the like. I must admit that I'm guilty of this too, but some of these people take it to an extreme, and it's still obviously contrived even with the ones who use it moderately.
The best I can figure is that people do this to keep readers' expectations lower, then they hope that people will read their posts and think that they're brilliant. The author tries to convince the reader (and even his or herself) that they aren't anything special, while at the same time desperately hoping that someone will think they're smart. It's a gimick, and it's stupid.
Which brings me to my main point for this post: from now on, I won't apologize for anything I post. No more "if this makes any sense to anyone but me" or "of course, I don't know anything" or "but who am I to speak?" or any other stuff like that. I was even thinking about declaring myself a genius (like Dali did), but I decided that losing modesty is one thing; being pretentious is another entirely.
Which brings up another key point: false immodesty is also just as stupid as false modesty. Being arrogant or pretentious about the quality of your blog is either going to be false modesty in disguise (see above), or (if it is real arrogance) just stupidity. There are people who almost pull it off, but so far I haven't found anyone who is immodest about their blog and has a right to be.
So I suppose the best way to avoid all of that trouble is to simply write posts that aren't self-referential. That way you don't have to worry about being arrogant or falsely modest, because you simply don't talk about the quality of your work. So that's what I'll do. No more talking about how good or bad my posts are.
Meanwhile, my adventure through the blogosphere will continue. I think that I'm going to start posting comments soon. I'll call bullshit where I see it, commend people for well-written posts, and offer insightful thoughts on posts that make me think. I'll be a defender of all things good in the blogosphere. So much for not being pretentious.
The most immediately apparent unexpected fact is that a great many people blog in foreign (i.e. non-English) languages. This really shouldn't be a surprise to me, as the majority of the population of the earth don't speak English as their native language, but it's not really something I ever thought about. Probably because I've never lived in a non-English speaking country. Or because I'm uncultured American swine. A gaijin, if you're feeling Japanese.
Speaking of Asians, most of them who do blog in English are virtually unreadable because they misspell words so badly, and because they find it necessary to capitalize every other letter. And because they use templates that are terrible. Most people (not just Asians) who design their own templates have no clue what they're doing. I particularly hate the ones that pop up the javascript boxes to tell me that I'm "entering the dream" of some 14 year-old who can barely spell, much less write an interesting post. Or even a post that doesn't involve the person with whom they're "in love." But I won't even get in to that.
Really, there aren't (proportionally) that many interesting blogs on the web. Over the past 3 days or so, I've been through hundreds of blogs, and I've only found 10 that were worth keeping bookmarks for. There were others that may have deserved it too, but they all had at least one recent post that irritated me enough to disqualify them from the distinction of being in my bookmark list.
One of the most annoying things was false modesty. The vast majority of blogs (like 99.5% of what I've seen) are self-deprecating to one degree or another. They call themselves "uninteresting" or "random ramblings" or the like. I must admit that I'm guilty of this too, but some of these people take it to an extreme, and it's still obviously contrived even with the ones who use it moderately.
The best I can figure is that people do this to keep readers' expectations lower, then they hope that people will read their posts and think that they're brilliant. The author tries to convince the reader (and even his or herself) that they aren't anything special, while at the same time desperately hoping that someone will think they're smart. It's a gimick, and it's stupid.
Which brings me to my main point for this post: from now on, I won't apologize for anything I post. No more "if this makes any sense to anyone but me" or "of course, I don't know anything" or "but who am I to speak?" or any other stuff like that. I was even thinking about declaring myself a genius (like Dali did), but I decided that losing modesty is one thing; being pretentious is another entirely.
Which brings up another key point: false immodesty is also just as stupid as false modesty. Being arrogant or pretentious about the quality of your blog is either going to be false modesty in disguise (see above), or (if it is real arrogance) just stupidity. There are people who almost pull it off, but so far I haven't found anyone who is immodest about their blog and has a right to be.
So I suppose the best way to avoid all of that trouble is to simply write posts that aren't self-referential. That way you don't have to worry about being arrogant or falsely modest, because you simply don't talk about the quality of your work. So that's what I'll do. No more talking about how good or bad my posts are.
Meanwhile, my adventure through the blogosphere will continue. I think that I'm going to start posting comments soon. I'll call bullshit where I see it, commend people for well-written posts, and offer insightful thoughts on posts that make me think. I'll be a defender of all things good in the blogosphere. So much for not being pretentious.
Let's Talk About Music
Underrated/underexposed artists to whom everyone should give at least a quick listen:
Belle & Sebastian (start with Expectations or Like Dylan In the Movies)
The Beta Band (start with Dry the Rain or She's the One)
Skillet (start with The Thirst Is Taking Over)
Keller Williams (start with It's A Plant)
Leo Kottke (start with Airproofing)
The Bad Plus (start with Dirty Blonde)
California Guitar Trio (start with Beethoven's 9th)
Col. Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade (start with Up On the Roof)
Dizzee Rascal (start with I Luv U)
G. Love and the Special Sauce (start with Free At Last)
Jesse Cook (start with Brio)
Some of these are... weird. Or just different. Or they take time to develope a taste for. But I enjoy them, so I figured I'd give them a plug. Try them out. Especially Belle & Sebastian and the Beta Band.
Belle & Sebastian (start with Expectations or Like Dylan In the Movies)
The Beta Band (start with Dry the Rain or She's the One)
Skillet (start with The Thirst Is Taking Over)
Keller Williams (start with It's A Plant)
Leo Kottke (start with Airproofing)
The Bad Plus (start with Dirty Blonde)
California Guitar Trio (start with Beethoven's 9th)
Col. Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade (start with Up On the Roof)
Dizzee Rascal (start with I Luv U)
G. Love and the Special Sauce (start with Free At Last)
Jesse Cook (start with Brio)
Some of these are... weird. Or just different. Or they take time to develope a taste for. But I enjoy them, so I figured I'd give them a plug. Try them out. Especially Belle & Sebastian and the Beta Band.
Acting, Empathy, and Hive Mind
I appoligize for the length of this post. The words just kept flowing. If you want to get the gist, read the last paragraph. If you want to wade through it all, good luck. With that word of warning, I present Acting, Empathy, and Hive Mind, or, Ill-Formed Thoughts on Individuality and Lies:
Acting is an interesting phenomenon. Or maybe not acting is actually more interesting. We all act all the time. We pretend to be happy when we're not, or upset when we're not. We pretend to be things that we're not, or we hide things that we feel. Even if you intend for people to know that it is acting (for comic effect or whatever reason), you're still behaving in a way that is contrary to how you feel.
Is this a good thing? I used to think that the world would be a better place if everyone were completely honest about everything. Where everyone always told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time, and expected the same from everyone else. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it would be a good thing, but really it's impossible to prove or disprove that it would be better or worse, because such a world is not only impossible to achieve, but (for me) it's impossible to imagine. If I were to tell people exactly what I thought of them, and they knew that I wasn't lying, I have no idea how they would react. I suppose that's by nature of being different people. And I suppose that that lack of knowledge about them is what makes me not want to reveal everything.
So there is a certain gap between every person, and because of that very gap, we are afraid to totally reveal ourselves. And possibly lessen the gap? I think that revealing how we feel or think to people would lessen the gap between people, the gap that is our inability to empathize completely, the inability to feel and think like the another person. Are we afraid of becoming more like other people? Perhaps we need our individuality. Empathy is all well and good, but maybe total empathy with another person would present all sorts of problems. Studying Milton's Paradise Lost, we are shown that it isn't the opposites who become enemies. It's the individuals who become too like each other. One tries to imitate the other, and does it too well, and is thrown to hell because of it. So we need our individuality. So that we don't get thrown to hell.
No, no... So that we don't fight the one who begins to steal our identity, the one with whom we empathize. For a while at the beginning of the semester, there was a kid who looked kind of like me (before I got my hair cut). At first, it was interesting to see people's confusion. But after a while, it got annoying when people started asking why I hadn't replied to them when they said 'hi' on the way to dinner. It was frustrating. How much worse would it be if someone empathized with me, understood me enough that when someone said 'hi', he could reply, and have a conversation, with the other person not realizing it wasn't me. I would lose out on a conversation that should have been mine. I would want my 'self' back.
But what if I could empathize with this person, too, and regain that experience? If everyone did this, it would be a hive mind. Without the ability to withhold some of the truth, to exagerate the truth, or to simply lie (in short: to 'act') humanity would be a hive mind. So when I said that I couldn't conceive of a society where no one acted, I lied. I simply hadn't thought it through.
So is a hive mind better than the sorry state of mankind as it is? I don't think so. Maybe we would do away with fighting, and everything anyone ever did would be for the benefit of all. But even such a prize would be too small for the cost of individuality. For the cost of me. Ha! See, it's human nature, and it's a self-perpetuating state of being. There is no way out of this mess that we've gotten ourselves into. A hive mind only works if everyone joins, and good luck convincing everyone to agree to give up their identity, even if there is no conflict. You'd need to do it by force. Like the Borg. And we all (or at least those who watched Star Trek) know how scary they are.
But there is one situation where total empathy should (ideally) exist. And the two shall become one flesh... Marriage is essentially the joining of two people into one. So there is supposed to be no acting between spouses. At least, not when there is a serious conversation. Don't hold back any of the truth, don't add to the truth, and certainly don't lie. But human nature again comes into play, and it becomes all but impossible for this to happen. But then again, they will become one flesh... But not one mind. So maybe lying to your spouse is OK? I don't know, and I don't feel like going there. Maybe another time.
I don't know if I've proven anything, or done any sort of good at all, but for what it's worth, I've clarified some things in my own mind. And to me, that counts for something. The Aesopian lesson to keep from all of this is that it's OK to act (in the "pretending" sense of the word). It's OK to not be yourself all the time. And it's OK to lie sometimes. Smite me now, I think I've just rebuked both popular culture, and fundamentalist Christianity. Where shall I turn?
Acting is an interesting phenomenon. Or maybe not acting is actually more interesting. We all act all the time. We pretend to be happy when we're not, or upset when we're not. We pretend to be things that we're not, or we hide things that we feel. Even if you intend for people to know that it is acting (for comic effect or whatever reason), you're still behaving in a way that is contrary to how you feel.
Is this a good thing? I used to think that the world would be a better place if everyone were completely honest about everything. Where everyone always told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time, and expected the same from everyone else. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it would be a good thing, but really it's impossible to prove or disprove that it would be better or worse, because such a world is not only impossible to achieve, but (for me) it's impossible to imagine. If I were to tell people exactly what I thought of them, and they knew that I wasn't lying, I have no idea how they would react. I suppose that's by nature of being different people. And I suppose that that lack of knowledge about them is what makes me not want to reveal everything.
So there is a certain gap between every person, and because of that very gap, we are afraid to totally reveal ourselves. And possibly lessen the gap? I think that revealing how we feel or think to people would lessen the gap between people, the gap that is our inability to empathize completely, the inability to feel and think like the another person. Are we afraid of becoming more like other people? Perhaps we need our individuality. Empathy is all well and good, but maybe total empathy with another person would present all sorts of problems. Studying Milton's Paradise Lost, we are shown that it isn't the opposites who become enemies. It's the individuals who become too like each other. One tries to imitate the other, and does it too well, and is thrown to hell because of it. So we need our individuality. So that we don't get thrown to hell.
No, no... So that we don't fight the one who begins to steal our identity, the one with whom we empathize. For a while at the beginning of the semester, there was a kid who looked kind of like me (before I got my hair cut). At first, it was interesting to see people's confusion. But after a while, it got annoying when people started asking why I hadn't replied to them when they said 'hi' on the way to dinner. It was frustrating. How much worse would it be if someone empathized with me, understood me enough that when someone said 'hi', he could reply, and have a conversation, with the other person not realizing it wasn't me. I would lose out on a conversation that should have been mine. I would want my 'self' back.
But what if I could empathize with this person, too, and regain that experience? If everyone did this, it would be a hive mind. Without the ability to withhold some of the truth, to exagerate the truth, or to simply lie (in short: to 'act') humanity would be a hive mind. So when I said that I couldn't conceive of a society where no one acted, I lied. I simply hadn't thought it through.
So is a hive mind better than the sorry state of mankind as it is? I don't think so. Maybe we would do away with fighting, and everything anyone ever did would be for the benefit of all. But even such a prize would be too small for the cost of individuality. For the cost of me. Ha! See, it's human nature, and it's a self-perpetuating state of being. There is no way out of this mess that we've gotten ourselves into. A hive mind only works if everyone joins, and good luck convincing everyone to agree to give up their identity, even if there is no conflict. You'd need to do it by force. Like the Borg. And we all (or at least those who watched Star Trek) know how scary they are.
But there is one situation where total empathy should (ideally) exist. And the two shall become one flesh... Marriage is essentially the joining of two people into one. So there is supposed to be no acting between spouses. At least, not when there is a serious conversation. Don't hold back any of the truth, don't add to the truth, and certainly don't lie. But human nature again comes into play, and it becomes all but impossible for this to happen. But then again, they will become one flesh... But not one mind. So maybe lying to your spouse is OK? I don't know, and I don't feel like going there. Maybe another time.
I don't know if I've proven anything, or done any sort of good at all, but for what it's worth, I've clarified some things in my own mind. And to me, that counts for something. The Aesopian lesson to keep from all of this is that it's OK to act (in the "pretending" sense of the word). It's OK to not be yourself all the time. And it's OK to lie sometimes. Smite me now, I think I've just rebuked both popular culture, and fundamentalist Christianity. Where shall I turn?
Homecoming
Well, audioscrobbler seems to have bitten the big one for the time being, so just ignore the links I posted previously.
It was homecoming weekend these past few days, which means parties, football, tailgating, lots of handshaking, and general tom-foolery and shenanigans (and other cliche words for mischief). What draws these alumni back? Why bother hanging out with a bunch of frat boys? Nostalgia is probably a motivation for some, but I don't think that that would be enough for everyone. After we did our end-of-party songs last night, I overheard one of the early 90s graduates say something like "that's awesome, those're the same songs we did when I was here." Maybe it's things like this that really draw them back. They're not coming back just to re-live the old days, or just to see their old buddies. The alumni come back to make sure that a bit of their legacy lived on. Not quite in the same sense that a man's children carry on his legacy, but similarly. They want to see that the traditions, even the minor ones, are alive and well, and still fun. Well, there is nostalgia in that too, but I still think that it goes beyond it. They're not recapturing a piece of their youth, they're making sure that the young still enjoy their own youth. Or maybe I'm just imagining what I want my experience as an alumnus to be, or what the ideal alumnus should feel. I can't speak for the motives or intentions of a few dozen people whom I met for no more than a few minutes apiece while they were drunk. Oh well, it's something to think about at least.
It was homecoming weekend these past few days, which means parties, football, tailgating, lots of handshaking, and general tom-foolery and shenanigans (and other cliche words for mischief). What draws these alumni back? Why bother hanging out with a bunch of frat boys? Nostalgia is probably a motivation for some, but I don't think that that would be enough for everyone. After we did our end-of-party songs last night, I overheard one of the early 90s graduates say something like "that's awesome, those're the same songs we did when I was here." Maybe it's things like this that really draw them back. They're not coming back just to re-live the old days, or just to see their old buddies. The alumni come back to make sure that a bit of their legacy lived on. Not quite in the same sense that a man's children carry on his legacy, but similarly. They want to see that the traditions, even the minor ones, are alive and well, and still fun. Well, there is nostalgia in that too, but I still think that it goes beyond it. They're not recapturing a piece of their youth, they're making sure that the young still enjoy their own youth. Or maybe I'm just imagining what I want my experience as an alumnus to be, or what the ideal alumnus should feel. I can't speak for the motives or intentions of a few dozen people whom I met for no more than a few minutes apiece while they were drunk. Oh well, it's something to think about at least.
Carmen
I've decided that I really do love the French language. Even though I scraped by with a C in the class, and hated every minute of it. I think the main problem was the teacher, not the language. Or maybe it was my unwillingness to study. I'm not sure. But, while Latin is fun, and I'll keep up with it, a part of me wishes that I had kept up on French. Maybe I'll try it again later in life, when I'm rich and famous. Yes, it is a beautiful language. Especially when sung. In opera. Yes! I admit it! I like opera! I had my playlist on random, and part of Carmen came on... And I didn't skip it. I couldn't skip it. So I started at the beginning and I've been listening ever since. I think it's what I'm going to be listening to for a week or two, just so I have a chance to absorb the whole work. It's going to screw up my audioscrobbler statistics terribly, but I just don't care, because it's that good. Give it a listen if you have a chance and you're feeling open-minded.
Audioscrobbler!
Check out Audioscrobbler. You sign up, then install a plugin for your favorite music player (pretty much everything is supported - Winamp, XMMS, Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc.) and it updates what you've been listening to recently, and does some neat statistics and so on. And it puts this on the web for all to see. Which could, of course, be a bad thing if you're a closet Backstreet Boys fan or something, but that's your problem. It's fun to see what your friends have been listening to recently, and giving it a listen if it's something you haven't heard before. My profile is at http://www.audioscrobbler.com/users/vokyvsd. Give it a shot.
HIV, Heroin, and Homosexuals
The continuing saga of the lectures...
The speaker today was some quaint old lady. I've pretty much forgotten any of her arguments because of one part of her speech. She claimed that the only way that the HIV virus can be transferred is by male homosexual activity and dirty needles used for mainlining heroin. Now before you object and mention blood transfusion, heterosexual sex, and various other methods of transferring bodily fluids, bear in mind that I'm well aware of all of these. But according to this speaker, there are only two methods of contracting AIDS. She continued on with her speech, while Noah, J, Spence and I kinda looked at each other with our jaws on the floor. So then during questions and answers, someone called her out on it, mentioning the AIDS epidemic sweeping Africa, and the notable lack of homosexual activity or heroin usage accompanying it. She replied by saying that she doesn't know what "those Africans" (her terminology, not mine) are doing, and we have no reliable sources of information over there. So then a girl got up and said that she had been on mission trips to Africa, and had seen first hand that AIDS is very real over there, even among, and that there is no homosexual activity or heroin. Plus, she knew heterosexual people with AIDS. She stood there with the microphone saying this, and when she finished, that quaint old lady looked the girl in the eyes and told her that what she had just said was not true, and that there is no way to contract AIDS without dirty needles or male homosexual activity. Noah got up and left at this point. I almost followed, but I wanted to see what would happen next. When she started talking about how the kids get AIDS because their parents are addicted to heroin, and it's passed that way. Then J and I left. As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be fairly conservative on most issues, but deliberately ignoring reality because it doesn't suit your agenda is stupid, illogical, and just insane. I really can't comprehend how this lady has managed to twist her own mind to believe the things that she does. Not only this, but she had the temerity and poor grace to tell a girl that she had not seen what she said she had seen. I have to stop, I'm getting upset again.
The speaker today was some quaint old lady. I've pretty much forgotten any of her arguments because of one part of her speech. She claimed that the only way that the HIV virus can be transferred is by male homosexual activity and dirty needles used for mainlining heroin. Now before you object and mention blood transfusion, heterosexual sex, and various other methods of transferring bodily fluids, bear in mind that I'm well aware of all of these. But according to this speaker, there are only two methods of contracting AIDS. She continued on with her speech, while Noah, J, Spence and I kinda looked at each other with our jaws on the floor. So then during questions and answers, someone called her out on it, mentioning the AIDS epidemic sweeping Africa, and the notable lack of homosexual activity or heroin usage accompanying it. She replied by saying that she doesn't know what "those Africans" (her terminology, not mine) are doing, and we have no reliable sources of information over there. So then a girl got up and said that she had been on mission trips to Africa, and had seen first hand that AIDS is very real over there, even among, and that there is no homosexual activity or heroin. Plus, she knew heterosexual people with AIDS. She stood there with the microphone saying this, and when she finished, that quaint old lady looked the girl in the eyes and told her that what she had just said was not true, and that there is no way to contract AIDS without dirty needles or male homosexual activity. Noah got up and left at this point. I almost followed, but I wanted to see what would happen next. When she started talking about how the kids get AIDS because their parents are addicted to heroin, and it's passed that way. Then J and I left. As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be fairly conservative on most issues, but deliberately ignoring reality because it doesn't suit your agenda is stupid, illogical, and just insane. I really can't comprehend how this lady has managed to twist her own mind to believe the things that she does. Not only this, but she had the temerity and poor grace to tell a girl that she had not seen what she said she had seen. I have to stop, I'm getting upset again.
Underpopulation?
I've decided to stop naming my posts after whatever song I'm listening to at the moment, mainly because I just don't feel like doing it anymore. So now the titles will actually have something to do with the content of the post.
There was a lecturer on campus today who talked about the constitutionality of gay marriage and so on. Irrespective of my personal views on the matter, there are certain arguments which simply don't work. The lecturer (I can't remember his name) asserted that and increase in gay marriages leads to a decrease of birth rates. This makes sense. But he went on to say that a decreasing birthrate is a bad thing, because the world is underpopulated. My initial reaction to this was to paraphrase Reservoir Dogs - "That is the most insane fucking thing I have ever heard." Then I decided to step back, give him the benefit of the doubt, and question my own preconceptions. I was halfway through an interesting train of thought about farm land will eventually be valuable enough to make it more profitable than developing. But then he kept going, and said that the reason we need more people is that if we don't continue to increase the population, we'll end up spending more of the GDP on retirees. So we need more people to tax. Human beings are the greatest replenishable resource that we have, isn't that right? Yeah, so the population needs to increase until the end of time. Because if it doesn't, we're going to have to change our budget. We should ignore reality because it's inconvenient. I consider myself to be generally conservative, but when we start running up against finite limitations of natural resources, it's time to start making changes, no matter how painful it may be. And it's not like this is an abstract thing years down the road. He himself admitted that birth rates are dropping because it's not economical to have so many children. It sounds to me (to use a Hillsdale cliche) like the market is solving already. The human population has reached the limit of what the earth can sustain, and it has started to plateau. We need to change the way we conduct our business. We no longer have an infinite army of new taxpayers arising every generation. Time to change things.
There was a lecturer on campus today who talked about the constitutionality of gay marriage and so on. Irrespective of my personal views on the matter, there are certain arguments which simply don't work. The lecturer (I can't remember his name) asserted that and increase in gay marriages leads to a decrease of birth rates. This makes sense. But he went on to say that a decreasing birthrate is a bad thing, because the world is underpopulated. My initial reaction to this was to paraphrase Reservoir Dogs - "That is the most insane fucking thing I have ever heard." Then I decided to step back, give him the benefit of the doubt, and question my own preconceptions. I was halfway through an interesting train of thought about farm land will eventually be valuable enough to make it more profitable than developing. But then he kept going, and said that the reason we need more people is that if we don't continue to increase the population, we'll end up spending more of the GDP on retirees. So we need more people to tax. Human beings are the greatest replenishable resource that we have, isn't that right? Yeah, so the population needs to increase until the end of time. Because if it doesn't, we're going to have to change our budget. We should ignore reality because it's inconvenient. I consider myself to be generally conservative, but when we start running up against finite limitations of natural resources, it's time to start making changes, no matter how painful it may be. And it's not like this is an abstract thing years down the road. He himself admitted that birth rates are dropping because it's not economical to have so many children. It sounds to me (to use a Hillsdale cliche) like the market is solving already. The human population has reached the limit of what the earth can sustain, and it has started to plateau. We need to change the way we conduct our business. We no longer have an infinite army of new taxpayers arising every generation. Time to change things.
Shorty
One of my favorite websites to visit just to do a quick scan down the page is Fark. The stories are usually pretty good, and sometimes awesome, but the headlines can be spectacular. For example: "Janet Jackson's boob costs CBS $550,000. Not bad, considering it probably only cost Janet five grand" or "Scientists to map known universe, find Carmen Sandiego" -- brilliant. There are so many different media for humor. I mean, who knew that single-line headlines could be such a comedy goldmine?
On a tangent, who thought up sarcasm (or any other "type" of humor for that matter)? It's obvious that new jokes need to be invented, so they don't get boring, but entirely new fields of humor? How would peole find it funny at first? Sarcastic wit probably just made people seem like assholes before sarcasm was wide-spread. So I suppose that humor only changes when culture changes in such a way to make a new type of humor widely accepted. When humor changes, it is an indication of a shift in society as a whole. (By the way, I'm making this up as I go along, so if I end up taking a few paragraphs to reach an obvious conclusion, I apologize.) It makes one wonder what the hell kind of culture we have that finds most of the sitcoms out there to be funny. There, I said it. Well, sitcoms on network TV do need to get huge ratings to be profitable, because all of their revenue is from advertising, and huge ratings require catering to the lowest common denominator. Everyone has their own sense of humor, and the networks need to find comedy that can tickle as many funny bones as possible. Uniqueness is the bane of network television. Hmmm... That opens the door to all sorts of critiques of pop culture, capitalism, MTV, and so on...
But it's past my bedtime.
On a tangent, who thought up sarcasm (or any other "type" of humor for that matter)? It's obvious that new jokes need to be invented, so they don't get boring, but entirely new fields of humor? How would peole find it funny at first? Sarcastic wit probably just made people seem like assholes before sarcasm was wide-spread. So I suppose that humor only changes when culture changes in such a way to make a new type of humor widely accepted. When humor changes, it is an indication of a shift in society as a whole. (By the way, I'm making this up as I go along, so if I end up taking a few paragraphs to reach an obvious conclusion, I apologize.) It makes one wonder what the hell kind of culture we have that finds most of the sitcoms out there to be funny. There, I said it. Well, sitcoms on network TV do need to get huge ratings to be profitable, because all of their revenue is from advertising, and huge ratings require catering to the lowest common denominator. Everyone has their own sense of humor, and the networks need to find comedy that can tickle as many funny bones as possible. Uniqueness is the bane of network television. Hmmm... That opens the door to all sorts of critiques of pop culture, capitalism, MTV, and so on...
But it's past my bedtime.
Hey Ya!
OK, I don't care what anyone else thinks, or what's expected of me, or what my parents tell me I can think: Hey Ya! is a great song. It opens talking about his girlfriend and the relationship they have: He thinks that they're in love, and that he can trust his girlfriend completely, but he ends the first verse admitting that his parents have a better relationship. Then the second verse is soul searching about the nature of love: "If what they say it 'Nothing is forever' then what makes love the exception?" How the hell are relationships supposed to last? Then, the last line of the second verse: "Y'all don't want me here, you just wanna dance." The song completely shifts. No more soul searching and questioning the nature of love, rather we have typical rap inanities and so on. For example, "What's cooler than bein' cool? Ice Cold!" and "Shake it like a Polaroid picture!" It's the type of stuff that I usually make fun of rap for - but Andre 3000 knows exactly what he's doing. Tongue firmly in cheek, he's giving his audience exactly what they want to hear, and making fun of them at the same time, ala Devo's "Whip It" or Nirvana's "In Bloom". And not only are the lyrics brilliant, but the beat and chorus are incredibly catchy, if not good. So yes, I don't generally like rap, but OutKast has been growing on me.
I saw Garden State. I'm going to save the time and just tell you to go see it if you have a chance. It's very worth it, even if you have to sit in a squished back seat of a car filled with girls listening to N'Sync for half an hour. That's an exaggeration, but not too far.
On a final note, it turns out that 92% of all college men drink less than I do. Take that for what it's worth.
I saw Garden State. I'm going to save the time and just tell you to go see it if you have a chance. It's very worth it, even if you have to sit in a squished back seat of a car filled with girls listening to N'Sync for half an hour. That's an exaggeration, but not too far.
On a final note, it turns out that 92% of all college men drink less than I do. Take that for what it's worth.
The Battle of Evermore
I usually divide my social life into two parts: the sociable frat boy and the recluse geek. It's very rare to find a situation where the two cross paths. That's why, when people ask me how I wrote ffsearch, or when people start asking me about linux or some other geeky topic, I get embarassed and usually don't want to talk about it. Most of the time, I try to distance myself from the part of me that can write code and have long discussions about computer-related topics, because I'm quite frankly embarassed by it. I think it might be because I fit (or did fit) the stereotype so well: skinny, pale, annoyingly sarcastic, having a maddeningly superior air, and so on. And I don't like the stereotype. Or maybe it's because I'm insecure in my ability as a geek. I really don't know how to program all that well, and I know that one day I'm going to run in to someone who could talk circles around me about computer programming. So I try to keep it on the down-low, so that such a thing never happens, and I don't have to realize just how little I know. Whatever the reasons, I am embarassed by my geekyness, and try to avoid it in every-day speech.
That's why things like performance programming are so weird to me. I mean, programming on stage probably seems weird to everyone in some way or another. But for most people it's because such a thing is unusual, and not something that they would think of doing. My problem is that I could think of doing it, but I can't imagine that you actually would want to. After years of Pavlovian training, I'm automatically averse to any public display of nerdiness. And live coding is definitely that.
I think it all comes down to the fact that geekyness is (in my mind) inherently un-sexy. So I try to avoid it, because I want a girl. Maybe the type of girl who would refuse to go out with a geek isn't the type of girl I'd want anyway. But I still can't bring myself to be unashamed of being a geek, after so long of trying to avoid the stigma. Oh well, I'm going to lunch.
That's why things like performance programming are so weird to me. I mean, programming on stage probably seems weird to everyone in some way or another. But for most people it's because such a thing is unusual, and not something that they would think of doing. My problem is that I could think of doing it, but I can't imagine that you actually would want to. After years of Pavlovian training, I'm automatically averse to any public display of nerdiness. And live coding is definitely that.
I think it all comes down to the fact that geekyness is (in my mind) inherently un-sexy. So I try to avoid it, because I want a girl. Maybe the type of girl who would refuse to go out with a geek isn't the type of girl I'd want anyway. But I still can't bring myself to be unashamed of being a geek, after so long of trying to avoid the stigma. Oh well, I'm going to lunch.
Just Like Kurt
Some people are just in their element in certain media. For example, Dave Chapelle was/is pretty good at stand-up. But with TV skit comedy, he's in his element, and utterly hilarious. Seinfeld isn't that great of a stand-up comic, but with an episodic TV show about nothing he was brilliant. Conversely Robin Williams is a decent comic actor, but his stand-up is simply amazing.
Interjection by Dan: "Why are so many DJs for rappers white or Asian? Because it involves technical complexity!"
We were watching DMX on the Chapelle show.
I had a point to all of this, but I lost it. Damn it all.
Microsoft is playing catch-up again. They're no longer young and innovative. They can't compete. They're going to try to get into the online music store business. I mean, how can anyone consider them a good investment? They're a stagnant company. The only thing keeping them afloat is bureaucratic inertia and so on. Within 15 years, they'll have lost the gigantic lead on the desktop which they've enjoyed for so long, then they'll have an excuse to do some restructuring, slim down everything, and become competetive again. Unless they manage to illegally maintain their monopoly. But what the hell do I know? Anyway, what I was talking about originally is that their music store is coming out a year too late, they don't have a killer profit-making device to add on to it (ala iPod), and it's getting released as a beta. What the hell are they thinking? Oh well, they have the billions, not me.
...
Yet...
Interjection by Dan: "Why are so many DJs for rappers white or Asian? Because it involves technical complexity!"
We were watching DMX on the Chapelle show.
I had a point to all of this, but I lost it. Damn it all.
Microsoft is playing catch-up again. They're no longer young and innovative. They can't compete. They're going to try to get into the online music store business. I mean, how can anyone consider them a good investment? They're a stagnant company. The only thing keeping them afloat is bureaucratic inertia and so on. Within 15 years, they'll have lost the gigantic lead on the desktop which they've enjoyed for so long, then they'll have an excuse to do some restructuring, slim down everything, and become competetive again. Unless they manage to illegally maintain their monopoly. But what the hell do I know? Anyway, what I was talking about originally is that their music store is coming out a year too late, they don't have a killer profit-making device to add on to it (ala iPod), and it's getting released as a beta. What the hell are they thinking? Oh well, they have the billions, not me.
...
Yet...
Across the Sea
I have gmail invites (again)! Seven, to be precise. It's pretty much first come first serve, with a bit of discretion on my part. So yeah, let me know if you want one.
Having re-read my last post, I realize that I was pretty toasted when I wrote it. Damn it was random. And on the verge of incoherent toward the end. But I stand by it. I think.
I have absolutely nothing of interest to say, so I'll just leave it at that.
Having re-read my last post, I realize that I was pretty toasted when I wrote it. Damn it was random. And on the verge of incoherent toward the end. But I stand by it. I think.
I have absolutely nothing of interest to say, so I'll just leave it at that.
Pulling Teeth
Why do I have to be drunk before I'm really honest? Am I scared of who I really am? Of what I've done? I've never done anything shameful. Today I've admitted to people that (1) I've never had sex and I'm happy about it, (2) I don't think I'd be strong enough to say 'no' if a girl wanted to have sex with me, (3) I am Christian (really), (4) I wasn't (really) one until December 2003, (5) pledging Sigma Chi really did make a huge difference in my life, and (6) I care about certain people, about whom I never really would have admitted I do care. I suppose anyone could have found these things out if they took the time to look, but it felt nice to get them all off my chest in a real conversation, not in just a self-indulgent online journal that a few people read every now and then.
Yeah, it was a good night. I told myself I wasn't going to get that drunk. But I dropped $1000 on tuition in the morning, so what the hell was another $15 for a fifth of vodka, lemon juice, and some sugar? Lemon drops are damn good... I was drunk fast, then I nursed it with beer for most of the night. I had an awesome heart-to-heart with Caity and Brandon, then later on I had the same with Dwight and Dan. Each one made me think about who I am, what I believe, and why I believe it. These are the things that people talk about when they talk about the college memories that last a lifetime. Actually, there were really three conversations like that tonight, though I was only directly involved in the two already mentioned. The other was with a girl who was over on the porch at The Cabin (Dylan and JC's house). She was talking (mostly bullshitting) and Dwight called it... not with more bullshit, but with reality. And she didn't know what to do. She basically backtracked without admitting that she was backtracking. I think it confused her that she couldn't win us over with her boobs. The dynamics of the conversation were fascinating to watch.
Now it's three in the morning, and I have class at 2:30PM. I'll be up in plenty of time and all, but I'm throwing my nicely arranged sleeping pattern into a complete disarray by mid-weeking and blogging. Oh fucking well. In other news, Gilbert quit his job and is using the new-found freedom to tour the world. Or southern Michigan. Which is the world to me. I really should get out to different places. I haven't been out of the Midwest since... the time I went to Boston. Which was basically driving to Boston, seeing the Phish show, then driving straight back. And before that it was New York. Which was basically bussing to NY, walking down Broadway, walking back, seeing the show, then bussing back home. I haven't seen much of the world. I can form my opinions about it from my sheltered life in Hillsdale College, but won't I just be reciting the party line which Fearless Leader feeds me? I mean, maybe it is right, but how will I know unless I go out and see shit for myself? But on the same token, how can I possibly know how life is everwhere? Graham Greene spent years in Vietnam, and only captured a small portion of the culture and general reality of what was happening there in the 1950s. How can I make informed decisions about foreign policy? How can ANYONE make an informed decision? The new president (whomever he may be) has his work cut out for him. And I really doubt that he'll do a good job. (Either Bush or Kerry). Bah humbug. Fuck politics. It's russian roulette with all chambers loaded.
Well, I've decided that this semester will be a good time to start looking for a girlfriend. (This was decided quite a bit before The Conversations of tonight). I've even asked friends for suggestions. But I've realized that I don't know for whom I'm looking, I don't know what to do once I find her, and I don't know how to keep her if/once I've got her. Hmmm... Suggestions welcome.
I'm going to bed.
Yeah, it was a good night. I told myself I wasn't going to get that drunk. But I dropped $1000 on tuition in the morning, so what the hell was another $15 for a fifth of vodka, lemon juice, and some sugar? Lemon drops are damn good... I was drunk fast, then I nursed it with beer for most of the night. I had an awesome heart-to-heart with Caity and Brandon, then later on I had the same with Dwight and Dan. Each one made me think about who I am, what I believe, and why I believe it. These are the things that people talk about when they talk about the college memories that last a lifetime. Actually, there were really three conversations like that tonight, though I was only directly involved in the two already mentioned. The other was with a girl who was over on the porch at The Cabin (Dylan and JC's house). She was talking (mostly bullshitting) and Dwight called it... not with more bullshit, but with reality. And she didn't know what to do. She basically backtracked without admitting that she was backtracking. I think it confused her that she couldn't win us over with her boobs. The dynamics of the conversation were fascinating to watch.
Now it's three in the morning, and I have class at 2:30PM. I'll be up in plenty of time and all, but I'm throwing my nicely arranged sleeping pattern into a complete disarray by mid-weeking and blogging. Oh fucking well. In other news, Gilbert quit his job and is using the new-found freedom to tour the world. Or southern Michigan. Which is the world to me. I really should get out to different places. I haven't been out of the Midwest since... the time I went to Boston. Which was basically driving to Boston, seeing the Phish show, then driving straight back. And before that it was New York. Which was basically bussing to NY, walking down Broadway, walking back, seeing the show, then bussing back home. I haven't seen much of the world. I can form my opinions about it from my sheltered life in Hillsdale College, but won't I just be reciting the party line which Fearless Leader feeds me? I mean, maybe it is right, but how will I know unless I go out and see shit for myself? But on the same token, how can I possibly know how life is everwhere? Graham Greene spent years in Vietnam, and only captured a small portion of the culture and general reality of what was happening there in the 1950s. How can I make informed decisions about foreign policy? How can ANYONE make an informed decision? The new president (whomever he may be) has his work cut out for him. And I really doubt that he'll do a good job. (Either Bush or Kerry). Bah humbug. Fuck politics. It's russian roulette with all chambers loaded.
Well, I've decided that this semester will be a good time to start looking for a girlfriend. (This was decided quite a bit before The Conversations of tonight). I've even asked friends for suggestions. But I've realized that I don't know for whom I'm looking, I don't know what to do once I find her, and I don't know how to keep her if/once I've got her. Hmmm... Suggestions welcome.
I'm going to bed.
Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass
I'm drunk and happy. I've moved in and so on. Our (Drenth and my) room is fucking sweet. (Or "pimp", if you're so inclined.) All of my friends are back. The barbeque was PERFECT. I got pleasantly drunk, met a few really good people, etc. Craig never showed. Asshole. All of my thoughts are really disconnnected right now because I'm drunk and watching Army of Darkness. This is my BOOMSTICK! Oh yeah. All sorts of sexual connotations come to mind. If only I could deliver. *sigh* But everything was awesome. I can't begin to describe just how awesome this entire day was. It's going to be a great semester. WOOHOO!!! Anyway, details to follow.
Disappearing Boy
So much to do. I need to finish up the Hillsdale Book Exchange, finish up the work on ffsearch that I want to do, install like a billion computers at work tomorrow, pack and get everything loaded into the van to take out to the 'dale tomorrow morning, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. But I'm blogging instead. Which is rather silly, as I have nothing interesting to say.
Ummm...
I read The Bourne Identity the other day. Before I did, I had liked the movie based on it. It was at least a fun ride, with one of the best car chases ever. But now, having read the book, I can see why people really don't like the movie. I mean, people complained about LotR not being true to the book, but I assure you that LotR has NOTHING on the Bourne series. The book and the movie start at the same point. Then they diverge at a fairly narrow angle. That's OK, a lot of movies diverge from their books slightly. But the problem is that they continue to diverge at the same rate throughout their respective narratives, so that by the end, you look at the movie, then look at the book, and wonder what the fuck happened. And the book is Oh So Much better. I think I'm going to read the rest of the series if I have the time.
I also watched High Fidelity again the other day. As that movie is wont to do, it re-kindled my enjoyment of Top-5 lists. So, without further parley: my desert island, all time, top 5 favorite songs of all time, in alphabetical order by artist:
Sleep the Clock Around by Belle and Sebastian
Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits
One by Metallica
Down With Disease by Phish
Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies
Of course, this list is subject to change without notice.
I guess I have more to talk about, but none of it is interesting, so I'm just going to stop now.
Oh, and:
2 Days Remain
Ummm...
I read The Bourne Identity the other day. Before I did, I had liked the movie based on it. It was at least a fun ride, with one of the best car chases ever. But now, having read the book, I can see why people really don't like the movie. I mean, people complained about LotR not being true to the book, but I assure you that LotR has NOTHING on the Bourne series. The book and the movie start at the same point. Then they diverge at a fairly narrow angle. That's OK, a lot of movies diverge from their books slightly. But the problem is that they continue to diverge at the same rate throughout their respective narratives, so that by the end, you look at the movie, then look at the book, and wonder what the fuck happened. And the book is Oh So Much better. I think I'm going to read the rest of the series if I have the time.
I also watched High Fidelity again the other day. As that movie is wont to do, it re-kindled my enjoyment of Top-5 lists. So, without further parley: my desert island, all time, top 5 favorite songs of all time, in alphabetical order by artist:
Sleep the Clock Around by Belle and Sebastian
Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits
One by Metallica
Down With Disease by Phish
Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies
Of course, this list is subject to change without notice.
I guess I have more to talk about, but none of it is interesting, so I'm just going to stop now.
Oh, and:
2 Days Remain
Nitro
I've been busy. I helped Dan "remodel" his room, and I finally got the Hillsdale Book Exchange up and running. At the same time. I would take a break from painting, go into Dan's old room, write some code, then take a break from coding and go help Dan paint. It was a crazy time.
People are starting to trickle back into town. Dan, Trimbach, etc. It's cool. But it was also kinda fun to have the whole campus to myself. I would wander around while on my way to fix a computer or printer, and imagine what the future might hold. Now people are back and reality sets in:
Imagination: I'll get good grades this semester. Reality: Nope, talked to my English professor (Justin Jackson, who guest taught in my English class last semester) and it turns out we read a lot in English, and I sure as hell can't motivate myself to read that much. And I know I can't do the studying required for a foreign language, so Latin's down the tube.
Imagination: Maybe I'll meet a girl this semester? Reality kicked in when the football players got back in town. Nuts to that.
Imagination: I'll make some money this semester. Reality: Pfff. People being back reminds me just how much money I spend when friends are around. Dan payed for most of everything this weekend, yet I still managed to go through like $50. I spend money at a rate of n+1 dollars per day, where n is my earning potential. Not only that, but I owe my parents a couple grand for tuition. Bah.
But it's all silly. I can get the grades. I just need to do the work. Saying "I'm incapable of motivating myself" is so full of logical flaws that I feel stupid for even saying it. And I can get a girl. I just need to ask one out. Funny how that works. And the tuition money isn't even that much of an issue, as I already have half of it. And enough left over to pay for dues. And I don't have a credit card. In fact, I don't even know why I'm worrying. Force of habit, maybe? A throwback to the days when I was a sad, depressed, melodramatic basket-case? Fuck that.
I'm at work, so I can't type for long. And I can't think of what to say from here. I've typed myself into a corner, to mix my metaphors.
Oh! That's right: A week from today, summer is officially over. I move into the house next Friday. Damn good. The countdown ensues...
7 Days Remain
People are starting to trickle back into town. Dan, Trimbach, etc. It's cool. But it was also kinda fun to have the whole campus to myself. I would wander around while on my way to fix a computer or printer, and imagine what the future might hold. Now people are back and reality sets in:
Imagination: I'll get good grades this semester. Reality: Nope, talked to my English professor (Justin Jackson, who guest taught in my English class last semester) and it turns out we read a lot in English, and I sure as hell can't motivate myself to read that much. And I know I can't do the studying required for a foreign language, so Latin's down the tube.
Imagination: Maybe I'll meet a girl this semester? Reality kicked in when the football players got back in town. Nuts to that.
Imagination: I'll make some money this semester. Reality: Pfff. People being back reminds me just how much money I spend when friends are around. Dan payed for most of everything this weekend, yet I still managed to go through like $50. I spend money at a rate of n+1 dollars per day, where n is my earning potential. Not only that, but I owe my parents a couple grand for tuition. Bah.
But it's all silly. I can get the grades. I just need to do the work. Saying "I'm incapable of motivating myself" is so full of logical flaws that I feel stupid for even saying it. And I can get a girl. I just need to ask one out. Funny how that works. And the tuition money isn't even that much of an issue, as I already have half of it. And enough left over to pay for dues. And I don't have a credit card. In fact, I don't even know why I'm worrying. Force of habit, maybe? A throwback to the days when I was a sad, depressed, melodramatic basket-case? Fuck that.
I'm at work, so I can't type for long. And I can't think of what to say from here. I've typed myself into a corner, to mix my metaphors.
Oh! That's right: A week from today, summer is officially over. I move into the house next Friday. Damn good. The countdown ensues...
7 Days Remain
Staring at the Sun
My brother bought Doom III yesterday. He apparently walked into an EB somewhere, and at that moment the store had just found out one of their pre-orders had been cancelled, so they had an extra copy. He of course jumped on the opportunity, and managed to get the game before it was officially released, and with a special action figure that was supposed to be for pre-orders only. The game is awesome. But what's even more awesome is this comment on slashdot:
Re:Quake3 engine open-source? When? (Score:5, Informative)
by John Carmack (101025) on Wednesday August 04, @03:13AM (#9876519)
By the end of the year. There are still a lot of higher priority things, but it is coming soon.
Hopefully punkbuster will keep the source release from having any negative impact on the player community.
John Carmack
_____________
Bwah! Quake III is going to be open source. Obviously it's no where near state of the art anymore, but it can run on any computer put out in the past 3 years, and it can still look very pretty (see Jedi Knight II for an example). I can see this being quite interesting all around.
Continuing on the open sourced games thread, I saw an article on Newsforge about Doom III being open sourced from the start. I have a few thoughts about this. First of all, the author makes no distinction between the engine (which is the only part of any of the Quakes that has or will be open source) and the game files (which is what makes the game what it is, and will never ever be open source. Fortunately for the author, the game released with the Doom III engine is more than just a tech demo (as Quake III was), so his suggestion isn't completely and utterly stupid, but it must be pointed out that the majority of the money that id made from Quake III was from licensing the engine to other companies. This isn't an option if the engine is open source. What the author is suggesting is that id thow away most of its revenue and depend solely on the sales of Doom III itself. Unless he means that they should also open source the game files, in which case he is suggesting that id throw away all of their revenue. I'm sorry, but I have to go into capitalist mode here and ask "what the hell is the incentive for making games then?" I mean, obviously they do enjoy doing it, but you can't just do things that you enjoy all the time unless it's going to make you money. The system they have now, where they make a good bit of money off of the engine, then open source it, is an excellent system and should be noted by other software companies (ahem, Microsoft), but to suggest that they should open source it from the start and not try to make any money off of it (especially since it's a game, and they can't sell support contracts for it) is downright stupid. End rant.
I had to get that off my chest while it was still fresh. I'm at work, so I have to go now.
Re:Quake3 engine open-source? When? (Score:5, Informative)
by John Carmack (101025) on Wednesday August 04, @03:13AM (#9876519)
By the end of the year. There are still a lot of higher priority things, but it is coming soon.
Hopefully punkbuster will keep the source release from having any negative impact on the player community.
John Carmack
_____________
Bwah! Quake III is going to be open source. Obviously it's no where near state of the art anymore, but it can run on any computer put out in the past 3 years, and it can still look very pretty (see Jedi Knight II for an example). I can see this being quite interesting all around.
Continuing on the open sourced games thread, I saw an article on Newsforge about Doom III being open sourced from the start. I have a few thoughts about this. First of all, the author makes no distinction between the engine (which is the only part of any of the Quakes that has or will be open source) and the game files (which is what makes the game what it is, and will never ever be open source. Fortunately for the author, the game released with the Doom III engine is more than just a tech demo (as Quake III was), so his suggestion isn't completely and utterly stupid, but it must be pointed out that the majority of the money that id made from Quake III was from licensing the engine to other companies. This isn't an option if the engine is open source. What the author is suggesting is that id thow away most of its revenue and depend solely on the sales of Doom III itself. Unless he means that they should also open source the game files, in which case he is suggesting that id throw away all of their revenue. I'm sorry, but I have to go into capitalist mode here and ask "what the hell is the incentive for making games then?" I mean, obviously they do enjoy doing it, but you can't just do things that you enjoy all the time unless it's going to make you money. The system they have now, where they make a good bit of money off of the engine, then open source it, is an excellent system and should be noted by other software companies (ahem, Microsoft), but to suggest that they should open source it from the start and not try to make any money off of it (especially since it's a game, and they can't sell support contracts for it) is downright stupid. End rant.
I had to get that off my chest while it was still fresh. I'm at work, so I have to go now.
The New Year
So here I am, sitting in the snackbar and taking advantage of the wireless internet. Supposedly this guy who wants me to help him get some scripts (mailman, squirrelmail, etc) installed on his webserver is going to meet me here before 4:30, but as it's already 4:25, I don't see that happening. So I'll blog a bit. And take advantage of the fast internet to run some updates.
I have a jumble of half-formed thoughts and ideas concerning computer interfaces, their ease of use, and so on which have been slowly evolving over the past few years, and I think it's getting to the point where I'm ready to coalesce the vapors of ideas into the reality of words. I was thinking about hammering it out right now, but I think that I'm going to give this one some real thought, so instead of being the usual under-developed ramble that I usually post, it will be an intelligent and thought-provoking piece of writing. It may even be called (dare I say it?) an essay. I'll probably write it up in vim. If you know what vim is, you'll probably have a hint of just where my sympathies lie when it comes to user interfaces. The real challenge of something like this will be to make it readable and even enjoyable by mere mortals, yet not too boring and dumbed down for people like Welling or myself. And there's always the possibility that I'm fooling myself, and there's no way in hell that I'm actually going to write an essay on my free time in the summer. We'll see.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF) is one of my favorite TV shows. This is sort of misleading, as I usually don't watch TV, so it's rare that I find a see a new show at all unless one is introduced to me by a friend. ATHF is such a show, as is Family Guy, Upright Citizen's Brigade, and so on. ATHF, for you poor souls who have never seen it, is a show detailing the adventures of three... fuck it, just read their damn website. OK, now that you know what it's about, here's what I have to say about it: The characters of Frylock, Meatwad, and Master Shake are incredibly flat. If you watch the show enough, nothing that any of them do is unpredictable. But while they are flat and unchanging as characters, their interactions with each other and the outside world are constantly interesting, and often hilarious. The writers of the show are excellent at creating characters that consist entirely of one trait, grossly exaggerated. My personal favorite example of this are the two dolls in the episode "Dumber Dolls" (with the Frat Aliens, from the episode of the same name, coming in a close second). One doll ('Jingle Billy') is always unreasonably and stupidly optimistic. His answer to all problems and unhappiness is dancing. If one can dance, how can one be unhappy, and how can bad things happen? The other doll (Happy Time Harry) is the exact opposite. He is pessimistic and depressed to the point of ridiculousness. All he wants to do is drink, pop pills, pass out, and (when it gets really bad) cut himself. The interactions the two dolls have give a small slice of the conversations that can and do occur between optimists and pessimists all the time in real life. The writers pit the optimists against the pessimists, but it's clear from the outset who is going to win. Happy Time Harry finally demoralizes both his unfortunate owner (Meatwad), and his counterpart, the formerly cheerful Jingle Billy. Is this right? Does pessimism always triumph over optimism? Is that a subjective question, anyway? I personally believe that humanity is inherently bad, just like Happy Time Harry (he never really made such a sweeping statement, but I'm inferring from his general disposition). However, I also believe that there is more to reality than human thought and human action. Happy Time Harry sees the state of humanity, and decides that it is bad, and the only thing to do is to drink away the pain. It's a solipsistic point of view. Humanity is bad, therefore reality is bad. Happy Time Harry seems to be at the forefront of modern thought. Damn.
Well, It's 5:30 and the guy hasn't shown up. I think that there are some Sigs back in town in an apartment. I think I'll check that out, then head home.
I have a jumble of half-formed thoughts and ideas concerning computer interfaces, their ease of use, and so on which have been slowly evolving over the past few years, and I think it's getting to the point where I'm ready to coalesce the vapors of ideas into the reality of words. I was thinking about hammering it out right now, but I think that I'm going to give this one some real thought, so instead of being the usual under-developed ramble that I usually post, it will be an intelligent and thought-provoking piece of writing. It may even be called (dare I say it?) an essay. I'll probably write it up in vim. If you know what vim is, you'll probably have a hint of just where my sympathies lie when it comes to user interfaces. The real challenge of something like this will be to make it readable and even enjoyable by mere mortals, yet not too boring and dumbed down for people like Welling or myself. And there's always the possibility that I'm fooling myself, and there's no way in hell that I'm actually going to write an essay on my free time in the summer. We'll see.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF) is one of my favorite TV shows. This is sort of misleading, as I usually don't watch TV, so it's rare that I find a see a new show at all unless one is introduced to me by a friend. ATHF is such a show, as is Family Guy, Upright Citizen's Brigade, and so on. ATHF, for you poor souls who have never seen it, is a show detailing the adventures of three... fuck it, just read their damn website. OK, now that you know what it's about, here's what I have to say about it: The characters of Frylock, Meatwad, and Master Shake are incredibly flat. If you watch the show enough, nothing that any of them do is unpredictable. But while they are flat and unchanging as characters, their interactions with each other and the outside world are constantly interesting, and often hilarious. The writers of the show are excellent at creating characters that consist entirely of one trait, grossly exaggerated. My personal favorite example of this are the two dolls in the episode "Dumber Dolls" (with the Frat Aliens, from the episode of the same name, coming in a close second). One doll ('Jingle Billy') is always unreasonably and stupidly optimistic. His answer to all problems and unhappiness is dancing. If one can dance, how can one be unhappy, and how can bad things happen? The other doll (Happy Time Harry) is the exact opposite. He is pessimistic and depressed to the point of ridiculousness. All he wants to do is drink, pop pills, pass out, and (when it gets really bad) cut himself. The interactions the two dolls have give a small slice of the conversations that can and do occur between optimists and pessimists all the time in real life. The writers pit the optimists against the pessimists, but it's clear from the outset who is going to win. Happy Time Harry finally demoralizes both his unfortunate owner (Meatwad), and his counterpart, the formerly cheerful Jingle Billy. Is this right? Does pessimism always triumph over optimism? Is that a subjective question, anyway? I personally believe that humanity is inherently bad, just like Happy Time Harry (he never really made such a sweeping statement, but I'm inferring from his general disposition). However, I also believe that there is more to reality than human thought and human action. Happy Time Harry sees the state of humanity, and decides that it is bad, and the only thing to do is to drink away the pain. It's a solipsistic point of view. Humanity is bad, therefore reality is bad. Happy Time Harry seems to be at the forefront of modern thought. Damn.
Well, It's 5:30 and the guy hasn't shown up. I think that there are some Sigs back in town in an apartment. I think I'll check that out, then head home.
Puff the Magic Dragon
The only thing better than a fresh sandwich from Oakley is a fresh sandwich from Oakley eaten on a picnic table in the shade on a beautiful day. The only thing keeping it from being perfect was a breeze that was just a bit too strong, and not having anyone to talk to, or any music to listen to. Still, a good lunch.
I just realized that when I put up the links to the blogs of various friends several weeks ago, I forgot to include Tim. This has of course been rectified, but the oversight had consequences. My privilege of having my blog be his only external link has been revoked. Life goes on, but is it really worth living anymore? Also, I've been forgetting to check his site, because I usually just go down the list of links from my own to check friends' journals/blogs (I don't like favorites menus). It turns out that he's been busy little bee in the weeks I've been out of the loop. There are many new posts, and on a cursory review, all of them seem to be up to the usual Tim Standard. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decided what that standard is.
I'm at work now, so I can't ramble on in my usual fashion. I only posted because lunch was awesome, and because I had to put up a link to Tim's blog before I forgot about it again. Damn my memory. Anyway, au revoir, dear reader.
You know, I really should come up with a signature sign off. Ah, fuck it.
I just realized that when I put up the links to the blogs of various friends several weeks ago, I forgot to include Tim. This has of course been rectified, but the oversight had consequences. My privilege of having my blog be his only external link has been revoked. Life goes on, but is it really worth living anymore? Also, I've been forgetting to check his site, because I usually just go down the list of links from my own to check friends' journals/blogs (I don't like favorites menus). It turns out that he's been busy little bee in the weeks I've been out of the loop. There are many new posts, and on a cursory review, all of them seem to be up to the usual Tim Standard. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decided what that standard is.
I'm at work now, so I can't ramble on in my usual fashion. I only posted because lunch was awesome, and because I had to put up a link to Tim's blog before I forgot about it again. Damn my memory. Anyway, au revoir, dear reader.
You know, I really should come up with a signature sign off. Ah, fuck it.
Wild Pack of Family Dogs
I started The Quiet American last night. I finished the first chapter, then fell asleep (no fault of the book, I was very tired). It looks as promising as Our Man in Havana. Hopefully it lives up to that. I don't know if I'll have time to read it before school starts, though. So much to do.
Speaking of school starting, it turns out that we won't have an annex for parties and other brouhahas. At least, not by homecoming, which was the original plan. It turns out that the administration blocked it. Fucking fascists.
On a brighter note, the sun was out all day today. Haha. Ok, I'm done.
Zwan is a really good band. I don't know what's going on with Billy Corgan, if he has the Smashing Pumpkins back together, or what, but as much as I like the Pumpkins, I honestly wouldn't mind him dropping them for good and concentrating on Zwan. I can see their sound going more places, mainly because the Pumpkins have an excellent body of work out there, and it will be hard to remain as awesome as they are without either re-hashing or changing their sound enough that they aren't really the Pumpkins anymore. As Barry from High Fidelity would ask: "Is it better to burn out or fade away?"
In some aspects, I liked Jackie Brown more than any of Tarantino's other movies. The part that really strikes me about it is the contrast of the relationship between Louis (Robert De Niro) and Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and the relationship between Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max Cherry (Robert Forster). Louis and Melanie don't even consider that there are consequences of a relationship. They casually fuck, then as the movie wears on they grow more and more apart from each other, to the point where Louis (a bumbler anyway) shoots Melanie for making fun of him. It's an immature relationship between immature people. They have never entered the adult world. Jackie and Max, though. There's a truly adult relationship. They don't really flirt, they express interest. They actually care about each other. They don't just leap into it. And when the shit finally goes down, they both realize that it won't work, and leave with nothing more than a kiss. They part with dignity, knowing that in another life, it could have been nice, but it simply can't be. At least, that's how I remember the movie. I've only seen it once, and that was a few months ago. I'll have to watch it again sometime.
"Never make fun of people with disproportionate body parts in Wal-mart." my Dad confided with me under his breath as we walked into the store. It caught me a bit off guard. It also made me acutely aware that if he weren't bound by the fact that he's a pastor, and can't be cracking jokes like that too often, he would be really funny. Another example: When I was fairly young (maybe 10 or so) I asked, "Daddy, are there still hippies around?" He instantly replied, "Oh, they're still around, but we call them 'washouts' now." At the time I didn't really understand what he was saying, as I didn't know what "washout" meant. I thought that perhaps they all turned to surfing or something (don't ask me how my mind works, I don't even know now, and I sure as hell don't know what I was thinking back then). At some point later on, I learned what "washout" means, and even later I recalled that confusing remark my dad had made so many years ago. I started laughing out of the blue, and when I got really weird stares, I felt really embarassed, but didn't explain my laughter, because it would have been even more embarassing to tell them that I just got a joke I had heard 7 years ago.
Je suis fait.
Speaking of school starting, it turns out that we won't have an annex for parties and other brouhahas. At least, not by homecoming, which was the original plan. It turns out that the administration blocked it. Fucking fascists.
On a brighter note, the sun was out all day today. Haha. Ok, I'm done.
Zwan is a really good band. I don't know what's going on with Billy Corgan, if he has the Smashing Pumpkins back together, or what, but as much as I like the Pumpkins, I honestly wouldn't mind him dropping them for good and concentrating on Zwan. I can see their sound going more places, mainly because the Pumpkins have an excellent body of work out there, and it will be hard to remain as awesome as they are without either re-hashing or changing their sound enough that they aren't really the Pumpkins anymore. As Barry from High Fidelity would ask: "Is it better to burn out or fade away?"
In some aspects, I liked Jackie Brown more than any of Tarantino's other movies. The part that really strikes me about it is the contrast of the relationship between Louis (Robert De Niro) and Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and the relationship between Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max Cherry (Robert Forster). Louis and Melanie don't even consider that there are consequences of a relationship. They casually fuck, then as the movie wears on they grow more and more apart from each other, to the point where Louis (a bumbler anyway) shoots Melanie for making fun of him. It's an immature relationship between immature people. They have never entered the adult world. Jackie and Max, though. There's a truly adult relationship. They don't really flirt, they express interest. They actually care about each other. They don't just leap into it. And when the shit finally goes down, they both realize that it won't work, and leave with nothing more than a kiss. They part with dignity, knowing that in another life, it could have been nice, but it simply can't be. At least, that's how I remember the movie. I've only seen it once, and that was a few months ago. I'll have to watch it again sometime.
"Never make fun of people with disproportionate body parts in Wal-mart." my Dad confided with me under his breath as we walked into the store. It caught me a bit off guard. It also made me acutely aware that if he weren't bound by the fact that he's a pastor, and can't be cracking jokes like that too often, he would be really funny. Another example: When I was fairly young (maybe 10 or so) I asked, "Daddy, are there still hippies around?" He instantly replied, "Oh, they're still around, but we call them 'washouts' now." At the time I didn't really understand what he was saying, as I didn't know what "washout" meant. I thought that perhaps they all turned to surfing or something (don't ask me how my mind works, I don't even know now, and I sure as hell don't know what I was thinking back then). At some point later on, I learned what "washout" means, and even later I recalled that confusing remark my dad had made so many years ago. I started laughing out of the blue, and when I got really weird stares, I felt really embarassed, but didn't explain my laughter, because it would have been even more embarassing to tell them that I just got a joke I had heard 7 years ago.
Je suis fait.
Reba
The family is out of town on vacation for like a week, so I don't have to fight anyone for the computer. This means that I may actually be posting with semi-decent regularity. But don't count on it.
I actually wandered through one of the classroom buildings the other day. It brought back memories that I didn't realize I had. Not so much memories of specific events or people or objects, but memories of "how it was." Memories that can't be pinned on anything specific, but let you experience the past unlike any other. If that makes sense at all. It's going to be something of a shock to go back to school. To walk around campus, and have there be people I know walking around all over the place. Actually going to class, rather than working. I didn't realize just how long it's been since school got out. It feels like it's gone by in a flash, but when I think, there's been a lot that's happened this summer. But then, nothing has really happened. It's going so quickly yet so slowly. A month from now, I'll be moving into the house. A whole freaking month. But it'll probably go by in a blink, just like the rest of the summer. I'm rambling.
I finally read one of the books that Dan lent me to read this summer. Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene is an excellent book. Go read it.
I think I'm going to do a sort of a mini-series of posts, in which I "analyze" (or over-analyze) various TV shows, movies, and/or books. I don't claim to be a well-informed or well-educated critic (though I'm working on both), but there are a few things which I've watched or read and thought on for a while, coming up with some (I think) interesting thoughts. And I'm going to inflict them on the rest of the world. Stay tuned.
I actually wandered through one of the classroom buildings the other day. It brought back memories that I didn't realize I had. Not so much memories of specific events or people or objects, but memories of "how it was." Memories that can't be pinned on anything specific, but let you experience the past unlike any other. If that makes sense at all. It's going to be something of a shock to go back to school. To walk around campus, and have there be people I know walking around all over the place. Actually going to class, rather than working. I didn't realize just how long it's been since school got out. It feels like it's gone by in a flash, but when I think, there's been a lot that's happened this summer. But then, nothing has really happened. It's going so quickly yet so slowly. A month from now, I'll be moving into the house. A whole freaking month. But it'll probably go by in a blink, just like the rest of the summer. I'm rambling.
I finally read one of the books that Dan lent me to read this summer. Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene is an excellent book. Go read it.
I think I'm going to do a sort of a mini-series of posts, in which I "analyze" (or over-analyze) various TV shows, movies, and/or books. I don't claim to be a well-informed or well-educated critic (though I'm working on both), but there are a few things which I've watched or read and thought on for a while, coming up with some (I think) interesting thoughts. And I'm going to inflict them on the rest of the world. Stay tuned.
Don't Stop Me Now
Well, I suppose I better post, just to assure my faithful readers (?) that neither I nor this blog are dead. Living at home, I very rarely have access to the internet during my free time. The only time I have high-speed access is at work, and unfortunately blogging from work isn't feasible. When I'm at home, I have dialup, which would be fine for simply uploading text, but I don't want my family to watch me write, so I have to use a proxy server so I can write from my room, but the proxy server that I have is a piece of poo, and it makes posting more trouble than I care to go though. Nothing exciting is happening anyway. I usually hang out with Monroe friends after work, stay out too late, then end up getting too little sleep and nearly killing myself from falling asleep at the wheel during my hour and fifteen minutes in to work in the morning. A good time, to be sure.
Modest Mouse... After hearing good things about them from Dan and others last semester, and then having them indepedently recommended to me by John (with whom I went to the Phish concert the other week), I gave them a good listen. They're great. The remind me of the Pixies, but they're good enough and original enough that they're good in their own right, not as sounding like the Pixies. Speaking of which, I'm going to see the Pixies in November. I'm already geeked. I need to burn a CD of their songs with which I'm not too familiar and listen to it a few times during my commute. Having an 80 minute commute is very convenient as far as music is concerned. I burn a full CD, start listening at the beginning of the trip, and the last song ends when I arrive, give or take a few minutes.
That whole last paragraph was a series of tangents, each of which should be worked into full thougths. But I don't feel like sorting thought it. I need to get offline anyway, someone needs to make a phone call. How I loathe dialup. Bah.
Modest Mouse... After hearing good things about them from Dan and others last semester, and then having them indepedently recommended to me by John (with whom I went to the Phish concert the other week), I gave them a good listen. They're great. The remind me of the Pixies, but they're good enough and original enough that they're good in their own right, not as sounding like the Pixies. Speaking of which, I'm going to see the Pixies in November. I'm already geeked. I need to burn a CD of their songs with which I'm not too familiar and listen to it a few times during my commute. Having an 80 minute commute is very convenient as far as music is concerned. I burn a full CD, start listening at the beginning of the trip, and the last song ends when I arrive, give or take a few minutes.
That whole last paragraph was a series of tangents, each of which should be worked into full thougths. But I don't feel like sorting thought it. I need to get offline anyway, someone needs to make a phone call. How I loathe dialup. Bah.
Givin' Up
So it turns out that the apartment which I was going to rent is a shit
hole. Instead of renting there, I'm going to save a few hundred
dollars and just commute for the whole summer. This, of course, means
that I have no high speed internet, so blogging is and will be very
limited for the rest of the summer. Bah.
On the bright side, I finally got a hard drive for the ol' laptop. So
I've been playing with that for a while.
I saw Phish for the last time. They played at Deer Creek a couple
days ago. The show was incredible. It kinda makes me wish I was
going to VT for the last show, but I simply don't have the money or
the time. Or, in some ways, the desire. It's going to be a festival
show, so it's crowded, and it's going to be filled with moping phans.
I can think of better ways to spend my time, though it would be nice
to see their very last show. Oh well.
More later, maybe.
hole. Instead of renting there, I'm going to save a few hundred
dollars and just commute for the whole summer. This, of course, means
that I have no high speed internet, so blogging is and will be very
limited for the rest of the summer. Bah.
On the bright side, I finally got a hard drive for the ol' laptop. So
I've been playing with that for a while.
I saw Phish for the last time. They played at Deer Creek a couple
days ago. The show was incredible. It kinda makes me wish I was
going to VT for the last show, but I simply don't have the money or
the time. Or, in some ways, the desire. It's going to be a festival
show, so it's crowded, and it's going to be filled with moping phans.
I can think of better ways to spend my time, though it would be nice
to see their very last show. Oh well.
More later, maybe.
Only For the Weak
It looks like I'll have an apartment in town for the rest of the summer, which is a huge relief. Living at home would have had a few advantages (viz. saving money, being closer to Monroe friends), but the advantages of renting far outweigh the costs.
*Geek Stuff*
I did a cosmetic rewrite of my frontend for ffsearch, modeling it after everyone's favorite search engine. I gave in and actually put up a graphic, but it's small and pretty. I got rid of a lot of the needless clutter that I had put up mainly to serve my own vanity, because I simply wanted to prove that I could write it. I'm done with that now. Then I did a bit of research on MySQL's fulltext searches. Fulltext is designed to quickly search through huge amounts of text (articles, etc.) and match human-readable search patterns. I thought it might not work too well with ffsearch, but I gave it a run for its money. For my frontend, I'd been using searches similar to what the original site had used, with "WHERE FileName LIKE '%search%';" which is ridiculously slow. Fulltext gave me a speed increase of an order of magnitude. Searches that used to take almost 10 seconds are done well under a second. It's hot. And not only is there an insane speed boost, I also eliminated a lot of the complexity in parsing the search string. I used to have a rather complex and ugly recursion-based parsing function, now I simply split the words and plug them into a fulltext match. I'll probably end up putting wildcard matching back in, but it'll only be for *.??? queries. It'll probably be something like:
$query =~ s/^\*\.(...)$/$1/"
That will give me what I need to match it up against the file extension column in the database. So it's won't even be real wildcard substitution. But it'll be fast, because even fulltext takes a good 5 seconds or so to sort through a "mp3" query, and because I haven't bothered to figure out how to cache search results, that delay and cpu maxage happens every time someone checks the next page of results. I also (finally!) looked at the source for google to figure out how to have the input default to the search box on page load. I had to use javascript, but it is so worth it. I think that after I refine the new look and put in some of the functionality that comes with the default interface, I'll see if the guy wants to take a look at it and maybe include it in the package or something.
*End Geek Stuff*
So it turns out that as I was completely engrossed in the computer stuff mentioned above, I completely forgot about the movie that I was going to go to with Rhiannon and one of her highschool friends. I don't think that it was a big deal for them that I wasn't there, but I had wanted to see the movie. Damn it all to hell. This isn't the first time that this has happened, though. Programming is really the only thing that can make me get in the zone like that, but it happens pretty much every time I sit down to hack. I'm still second guessing my decision to drop computer science. But whenever I start seriously thinking that I chose wrong, I remember just how easy the decision was when I was actually in CS. But the other issue that keeps cropping up is the money. If I had stayed in CS, I would have pretty much been guaranteed a well-paying job for the rest of my life. Now, it's not so sure. Oh well. I'll take happiness over wealth any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Happiness is an interesting thing. I mentioned in a previous post that I've been happy since the beginning of spring semester, but I didn't know why. Well, I finally figured out what started the good mood. Over Christmas break, while I was working at RadioShack (again), Dave Gruden and I were talking. He was telling me about how he had decided to go back to school, and a few other thing that had been happening in his life. Anyone who knew Dave from before knows that him going back to school was pretty unusual. Then he told me that the main reason that he had decided to do it was because of me. Not because of any particular thing I had done, or any particular thing I had said, but just because of who I was and how I acted. I didn't realize it until just recently, but that moment was when my good mood started. It sounds pretty sappy. And it probably is. But really, before that moment, I didn't have any reason to believe that I mattered at all, or that I had made a difference in the world at large. Dave revealing to me that I had changed his life in effect changed my life. After that conversation, I had a purpose. A telos, if you will. I have proven that I can leave my mark on the world. And even if I fail to do so ever again, at least for one part of my life, I really mattered. If it hadn't been for that conversation, spring semester would have gone by much the same as fall semester. I wouldn't have gotten out much, I wouldn't have made too many friends, and I would have been, for the most part, not happy (not unhappy, but not happy). I very much doubt that I would have had the courage or the will to pledge. Life would be dramatically different. But I am where I am. And I'm happy.
*Geek Stuff*
I did a cosmetic rewrite of my frontend for ffsearch, modeling it after everyone's favorite search engine. I gave in and actually put up a graphic, but it's small and pretty. I got rid of a lot of the needless clutter that I had put up mainly to serve my own vanity, because I simply wanted to prove that I could write it. I'm done with that now. Then I did a bit of research on MySQL's fulltext searches. Fulltext is designed to quickly search through huge amounts of text (articles, etc.) and match human-readable search patterns. I thought it might not work too well with ffsearch, but I gave it a run for its money. For my frontend, I'd been using searches similar to what the original site had used, with "WHERE FileName LIKE '%search%';" which is ridiculously slow. Fulltext gave me a speed increase of an order of magnitude. Searches that used to take almost 10 seconds are done well under a second. It's hot. And not only is there an insane speed boost, I also eliminated a lot of the complexity in parsing the search string. I used to have a rather complex and ugly recursion-based parsing function, now I simply split the words and plug them into a fulltext match. I'll probably end up putting wildcard matching back in, but it'll only be for *.??? queries. It'll probably be something like:
$query =~ s/^\*\.(...)$/$1/"
That will give me what I need to match it up against the file extension column in the database. So it's won't even be real wildcard substitution. But it'll be fast, because even fulltext takes a good 5 seconds or so to sort through a "mp3" query, and because I haven't bothered to figure out how to cache search results, that delay and cpu maxage happens every time someone checks the next page of results. I also (finally!) looked at the source for google to figure out how to have the input default to the search box on page load. I had to use javascript, but it is so worth it. I think that after I refine the new look and put in some of the functionality that comes with the default interface, I'll see if the guy wants to take a look at it and maybe include it in the package or something.
*End Geek Stuff*
So it turns out that as I was completely engrossed in the computer stuff mentioned above, I completely forgot about the movie that I was going to go to with Rhiannon and one of her highschool friends. I don't think that it was a big deal for them that I wasn't there, but I had wanted to see the movie. Damn it all to hell. This isn't the first time that this has happened, though. Programming is really the only thing that can make me get in the zone like that, but it happens pretty much every time I sit down to hack. I'm still second guessing my decision to drop computer science. But whenever I start seriously thinking that I chose wrong, I remember just how easy the decision was when I was actually in CS. But the other issue that keeps cropping up is the money. If I had stayed in CS, I would have pretty much been guaranteed a well-paying job for the rest of my life. Now, it's not so sure. Oh well. I'll take happiness over wealth any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Happiness is an interesting thing. I mentioned in a previous post that I've been happy since the beginning of spring semester, but I didn't know why. Well, I finally figured out what started the good mood. Over Christmas break, while I was working at RadioShack (again), Dave Gruden and I were talking. He was telling me about how he had decided to go back to school, and a few other thing that had been happening in his life. Anyone who knew Dave from before knows that him going back to school was pretty unusual. Then he told me that the main reason that he had decided to do it was because of me. Not because of any particular thing I had done, or any particular thing I had said, but just because of who I was and how I acted. I didn't realize it until just recently, but that moment was when my good mood started. It sounds pretty sappy. And it probably is. But really, before that moment, I didn't have any reason to believe that I mattered at all, or that I had made a difference in the world at large. Dave revealing to me that I had changed his life in effect changed my life. After that conversation, I had a purpose. A telos, if you will. I have proven that I can leave my mark on the world. And even if I fail to do so ever again, at least for one part of my life, I really mattered. If it hadn't been for that conversation, spring semester would have gone by much the same as fall semester. I wouldn't have gotten out much, I wouldn't have made too many friends, and I would have been, for the most part, not happy (not unhappy, but not happy). I very much doubt that I would have had the courage or the will to pledge. Life would be dramatically different. But I am where I am. And I'm happy.
Piper
Do you know someone who seems to have lost all pleasure in the internet? Do they seem listless or melancholy when you send them a link to a good news story? Have they given up and accepted that pop-ups are simply the price of looking at porn? Tell them that it's not their fault. They have a disease. And there is a cure:
Friends don't let friends use internet explorer
Friends don't let friends use internet explorer
To Curry Favor, Favor Curry
I don't know if anyone is curious about this, but it's been a while since I mentioned it, so here it is: I hate thinking up names for my posts, so my standard operating procedure is to simply use the title of whatever song I happen to be listening to when I start the post. In this particular instance, it's a song by PDQ Bach (a.k.a. Prof. Peter Schickele) from the opera The Seasonings. If you have never heard anything by PDQ, and if you enjoy classical music even a tiny bit, I would recommend listening to some of the stuff. Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice (an opera in one unnatural act) is an good starting point, though maybe The Unbegun Symphony is a bit easier to digest at first. Anyway, go to it.
I got Kurosawa's Ran and Petersen's Das Boot (the director's cut version) from the library. I felt like watching some films in color, and I've heard good things about them. Again, reviews as viewing warrants.
As I was typing this, I suddenly had a strong desire to have Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream. It's time for a quick trip to Walmart.
You know, as nice as it is to be able to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's on a whim and not worry about getting fat, I really do wish that I weren't so skinny. I'm not saying that I want to be body-builder buff or anything, I just wish I had a little something to show off every now and then. I suppose that that little bit really wouldn't take a whole lot of effort on my part, but I have neither the self-discipline nor the courage to actually start working out. Damn it all.
After thinking a bit more about Touch of Evil, I saw a connection between President Bush and Orson Welles's character. It is widely believed (and almost certainly true) that the President exaggerated the threat of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to muster the political support for an invasion. Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein deserved to be taken out of office (at least, I hope no one denies it), but our invasion was illegal by international law. Hank Quinlan (Welles's character) plants evidence in order to catch a Mexican who planted a car bomb and killed two people. It turns out that the Mexican was guilty after all, but bringing him in based on the false evidence was still illegal. Both Quinlan and President Bush are people who are so sure that they are right they they will fabricate facts and ignore law to make sure that their version of justice is carried out. In both cases, their version of justice is correct (both Hussein and the Mexican deserve to be deposed/imprisoned), but in both cases, the execution of that justice was flawed. And of course, Orson Welles (as fat and ugly as he was by that point) was far better in front of a camera than President Bush is.
When I talk about "their version of justice" in relation to President Bush, I'm referring solely to the deposing and capture of Saddam Hussein. I'm not referring to ancillary events stemming from the invasion of Iraq, such as the prisoner abuse scandals. Those are most definitely not right or correct. However, I disagree with people who try to pin the prisoner abuse scandals on President Bush. I don't remember the specific quote, but I saw something which said essentially that the abuse was occuring because the guards were frustrated with President Bush's policies and the invasion in general. It neatly pinned all the blame for everything that went wrong in the prisons on President Bush. That is bullshit. I'm by no means a Bush apologist, but come on people, that's absolutely ridiculous. The people who committed those atrocities, and their superiors who turned a blind eye are the ones to blame. I mean, it's true that it wouldn't have happened if we weren't in Iraq, and we most likely wouldn't be in Iraq if it weren't for Bush, but at that point you're just tracing blame, which is an exercise in futility. Why not blame the whole scandal on George H. W. Bush for not raising his son to have proper respect for international law? Probably because George W. Bush is a grown man, capable of making his own decisions and taking responsibility for them. But by that argument, so are the guards who committed the abuse. They were perfectly capable of not abusing the prisoners, and weren't under orders or duress. Or if they were, the orders were not from President Bush, but rather from their immediate superiors.
In similar news, some people in Kalamazoo were recently charged with some crime (it may have been involuntary manslaughter) for providing alcohol to a minor who imbibed the alcohol, then went driving and ended up killing someone. Unfortunately I don't remember the specifics because I was drunk when I read the article. But it's a similar thing. How the hell can you justify charging the people who provided the alcohol? It's just tracing blame again. That tracing should stop at the first person who is capable of making reasoned decisions. In this case, that would be the kid who drove drunk, not the kids who provided the alcohol.
Or maybe I'm way off base here. I know there are people who advocate societal responsibility over personal responsibility. I haven't thought that over enough to really have an opinion on that matter. But even so, it seems that the Kalamazoo case is still trying to pin the blame on individuals. Oh well, I'm done with that whole thing for now.
Actually, I think I'm done with this whole post.
I got Kurosawa's Ran and Petersen's Das Boot (the director's cut version) from the library. I felt like watching some films in color, and I've heard good things about them. Again, reviews as viewing warrants.
As I was typing this, I suddenly had a strong desire to have Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream. It's time for a quick trip to Walmart.
You know, as nice as it is to be able to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's on a whim and not worry about getting fat, I really do wish that I weren't so skinny. I'm not saying that I want to be body-builder buff or anything, I just wish I had a little something to show off every now and then. I suppose that that little bit really wouldn't take a whole lot of effort on my part, but I have neither the self-discipline nor the courage to actually start working out. Damn it all.
After thinking a bit more about Touch of Evil, I saw a connection between President Bush and Orson Welles's character. It is widely believed (and almost certainly true) that the President exaggerated the threat of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to muster the political support for an invasion. Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein deserved to be taken out of office (at least, I hope no one denies it), but our invasion was illegal by international law. Hank Quinlan (Welles's character) plants evidence in order to catch a Mexican who planted a car bomb and killed two people. It turns out that the Mexican was guilty after all, but bringing him in based on the false evidence was still illegal. Both Quinlan and President Bush are people who are so sure that they are right they they will fabricate facts and ignore law to make sure that their version of justice is carried out. In both cases, their version of justice is correct (both Hussein and the Mexican deserve to be deposed/imprisoned), but in both cases, the execution of that justice was flawed. And of course, Orson Welles (as fat and ugly as he was by that point) was far better in front of a camera than President Bush is.
When I talk about "their version of justice" in relation to President Bush, I'm referring solely to the deposing and capture of Saddam Hussein. I'm not referring to ancillary events stemming from the invasion of Iraq, such as the prisoner abuse scandals. Those are most definitely not right or correct. However, I disagree with people who try to pin the prisoner abuse scandals on President Bush. I don't remember the specific quote, but I saw something which said essentially that the abuse was occuring because the guards were frustrated with President Bush's policies and the invasion in general. It neatly pinned all the blame for everything that went wrong in the prisons on President Bush. That is bullshit. I'm by no means a Bush apologist, but come on people, that's absolutely ridiculous. The people who committed those atrocities, and their superiors who turned a blind eye are the ones to blame. I mean, it's true that it wouldn't have happened if we weren't in Iraq, and we most likely wouldn't be in Iraq if it weren't for Bush, but at that point you're just tracing blame, which is an exercise in futility. Why not blame the whole scandal on George H. W. Bush for not raising his son to have proper respect for international law? Probably because George W. Bush is a grown man, capable of making his own decisions and taking responsibility for them. But by that argument, so are the guards who committed the abuse. They were perfectly capable of not abusing the prisoners, and weren't under orders or duress. Or if they were, the orders were not from President Bush, but rather from their immediate superiors.
In similar news, some people in Kalamazoo were recently charged with some crime (it may have been involuntary manslaughter) for providing alcohol to a minor who imbibed the alcohol, then went driving and ended up killing someone. Unfortunately I don't remember the specifics because I was drunk when I read the article. But it's a similar thing. How the hell can you justify charging the people who provided the alcohol? It's just tracing blame again. That tracing should stop at the first person who is capable of making reasoned decisions. In this case, that would be the kid who drove drunk, not the kids who provided the alcohol.
Or maybe I'm way off base here. I know there are people who advocate societal responsibility over personal responsibility. I haven't thought that over enough to really have an opinion on that matter. But even so, it seems that the Kalamazoo case is still trying to pin the blame on individuals. Oh well, I'm done with that whole thing for now.
Actually, I think I'm done with this whole post.