Why I Need to Know Everything

I guess late Christmas Eve isn't the time I expected to resume blogging, but I wouldn't have expected the whole family to not have a single present wrapped yet, either. "We're a family of slackers," Melanie said. As it turns out, I didn't expect to be enjoying winter break so much, so I guess that makes for a whole round of unexpectation. Since I only had a few days to transition from studying in Beijing this summer to going to school, I haven't had a break longer than four days since June. Each day I wake up and am amazed that it's still vacation.

Vacation is always tough for me, though, because I never know how that relates to accomplishment. I usually define "rest" as anything that doesn't feel like work, but I have to watch out because the pleasure I get from doing personal projects is really similar to the pleasure I get finishing work. For example, I've been making a computer game intermittently over the last few years. It's almost finished. Andrew and I were playing it tonight. It's to the point, though, where the work the game needs is difficult and not that important. So it's mostly my perfectionistic streak that's making me continue. And I enjoy writing, but if I think of blogging as a duty then I feel overloaded. I was actually very conflicted about blogging tonight because I anticipate feeling a sense of accomplishment, and that worries me.

One thing I have been doing, though, is going to Barnes and Noble to read. I read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. It's a boring hypothesis (successful people have other things--parents, wealth, luck, culture--besides their own grit and intelligence going for them) but he cites so many interesting studies. In one page he happened to mention an IQ test for really smart people, and gave an example. "Teeth is to hen as nest is to ___"

I don't know the answer. And I think the problem is not because of my analogical skills, but because I don't know enough about teeth and hens. What's the relationship between teeth and hens? Hens are female, do teeth have something to do with that? Teeth have calcium, do hens have something to do with that? And once I did figure it out I'd have to be able to apply it to nests. I don't know anything about nests.

A few nights ago I was reading online about a study that concluded two things about octopuses: they prefer HDTV; and they have no personalities. If I only knew more, I found myself thinking, about the differences between regular television and HDTV, I'd be able to assess the researcher's results. One comment mentioned pixels and frame rate and went on to a complicated discussion about persistance of vision that I wish I had the background knowledge to follow.

That's all I'm asking for, really. The background knowledge for the world. Some people consider knowledge to be an end, but really it's only as good as you can apply it when wanted.

The point, of course, isn't to know about HDTV per se, it's to know that "hens' teeth" is a phrase as is "mare's nest." Neither of which I'd heard of before I googled the analogy, and so according to Hoeflin I might not be the smartest person ever. Wisdom is applied knowledge, so to become wise I have something to work on. But maybe I should wait until after Christmas break to do the real work on that.

That Giggly Phase

Blogging's fallen by the wayside in the days leading up to the LSAT. It didn't go as well as I hoped. I think I'm going to be disappointed with the score. My current schedule isn't much more conducive to blogging. I have two papers due by Wednesday and they are both in the beginning stages, shall we say.

I think I've reached my limit of fruitful output tonight. It's late and this is as far as I've gotten in my paper on Joyce.

look at my thesis!! this is my totally legitimate second (that is, thesis-ical) sentence, devoted entirely to hugh kenner and his dead faults, not to say that his deadness, that is, his death or dying or in the process being in a state of no longer declining through the abyss of human temporality, can be contained by what is now known to be the most extravagent expression of joyce's voices (so to speak) in his pocket at this time which is unavoidably long, however inextricably tasty the sentences might be. it is large and powerful and has voices. many voices.

Then the said creature began to laugh and laugh and laugh (indifferent voices). You are no good wife.

I wish myself well in the coming days. And a merry Christmas to all.

Katy Perry Hates Women or Gays

I'm warming up to writing my English papers. Let me practice by doing a "reading" of Katy Perry's song...

Before I start analyzing a pop song, I need to clarify that I know hits don't need to be deep for people to like them. I'm okay with "Grillz", appreciate the cohesion of "Hey Ya" even if the chorus has one and a half words, and love word play, self-centered or not, like Chamillionaire freestyling. But I do expect that a song doesn't contradict itself. In logic, there's a fundamental proposition of non-contradiction. Literary analysis has that too. People don't love nonsense, so if a work looks like nonsense, there must be an explanation for why. Let's examine what's strange about the lyrics of Hot N Cold before we propose an explanation.

The #1-charted hit in America's Top 40 this week is "Hot N Cold" by Katy Perry. It's a catchy song sung by a woman who seems to be empowering women to take control in relationships. Her significant other (in the music video, her fiance) won't commit and the singer is finally doing something about it.

At least, that's what the song is about. But if you look at the lyrics, Perry's words clash with this theme of gender equality. I'm pasting the lyrics in full; if you're going to be offended, pretend it's the word "blitch."

You change your mind

Like a girl changes clothes

Yeah you PMS

Like a bitch, I would know

And you overthink

Always speak cryptically

I should know

That you're no good for me

Chorus [

'Cause you're hot then you're cold

You're yes then you're no

You're in then you're out

You're up then you're down

You're wrong when it's right

It's black and it's white

We fight, we break up

We kiss, we make up

You!

You don't really want to stay, no

You!

But you don't really want to go-o

You're hot then you're cold

You're yes then you're no

You're in then you're out

You're up then you're down

]

We used to be

Just like twins, so in sync

The same energy

Now's a dead battery

Used to laugh 'bout nothing

Now you're plain boring

I should know that you're not gonna change

[Chorus]

Someone call the doctor

Got a case of a love bi-polar

Stuck on a roller coaster

Can't get off this ride

You change your mind

Like a girl changes clothes

[Chorus]

Frustration in a relationship is nothing new, and the song's metaphors are hardly poetic enough to sustain the theme. Instead, Perry speculates as to the underlying causes of her frustration. The song starts and ends with the declaration, "You change your mind / Like a girl changes clothes." It's feminine capriciousness that's the problem. A few weeks ago I had these lines in my head and posted my status on Facebook as "Will changes minds like a girl changes clothes." I received several comments accusing me of chauvanism.

How curious that a woman would pen them! In fact, the association between women and uncurable, undesirable character traits is stronger when we consider the next line. "Yeah you PMS / Like a bitch, I would know." Again, the problem is the masculine acting feminine. Behavior that is reproachably unnatural in a man is an unavoidable biological determinant of behavior in women. The singer cites personal experience as a testament both to her conclusion that he should change and to the accuracy of her comparison.

The message appears to be, "Don't act like a girl." Perry's identification of herself as acting bitchy, taken with her yet-confident tone, inclines us to believe that she doesn't consider women themselves to be bad. It's just that two women in a relationship is too many.

It's not good enough that one person act womanly (inconstant, sentimental, irrational) and one act manly (stabilizing, shepherding, reasoning). That's the relationship already! The singer is the man of the relationship: she's addressing the problem, she's not letting emotion get in the way of breaking up, she's not changing her mind, she's annoyed at indecision and opaque statements.

What's dissatisfactory about this situation isn't the singer's (masculine) character. We cheer on the singer. What's wrong is that the singer isn't free to be herself. A relationship with this unmanageable guy limits her self-expression, because if she acted feminine things would devolve even further.

She needs him to be opposite. At the beginning, the singer relished her "twin" who was "so in synch," but once the initial fun wore off, the pair is "a dead battery" because there are no more differences to convert from chemical energy to eletrical energy. Love is complementary.

Interestingly enough, Perry used to be on a Christian label. In the church there's a split between views of gender relations called "complementarianism" and "egalitarianism." The first is more traditional and sees men and women as two halves of a puzzle, each with respective roles and responsibilities. The second thinks of men and women as being faded pages which, when laid on top of each other, gives greater clarity than each individually. Thus, under complementarianism, women might take care of the kids, and under egalitarianism, women might be pastors. Apparently Katy Perry is a complementarian.

My only question is, after listening to the very liberal "I Kissed a Girl", it seems Katy Perry can't decide between being shocking and being conservative. Has she found true womanhood?

Summarizing Myself

Despite de-summer-izing myself recently, summarizing myself was long overdue. Facebook lets people casts themselves however they want to in an "About Me" section.

Some people say it simply. Andrew Schatz used to have, "I'm a licensed Platinum Member of the Republican Party. I even have a card, my member number is 559629888-S892." One of the best About Me's I've read.

Jessica's is pretty good, too, but a different style. "I love my people. I love. a lot. Im happy and bubbly and kind of really ridiculous.

I'm a ball of energy. I dance in my underwear and love to sing at the top of my lungs. I drive with all the windows down and the radio all the way up. Im a hopeless romantic. I curl up and just read for fun. I take pride in being a professional partier. I eat crackers in bed and dance till I drop. I like being myself, being stupid and honest and real."

Mine has been out of date, however. Check out my old About Me:

I wrote a first draft of this paragraph. I used to dislike eating fish. I have generally poor taste in girls, am often tempted to provoke people because society covers up who we are, am working on not sounding arrogant, do my best thinking in the shower, would analyze your socks off if you'd enjoy it, am an aspiring writer (if i will become one), am unsure how to judge the flexibility of my ambitions, am dazzled by wit, and spend hours a week learning Chinese without knowing why. I love God, enjoy summarizing myself because it is inexhaustible, and am romantic about the idea of being romantic.

I read that and barely recognize myself in it. I was so aggressively difficult. Wanna judge me? Bring it! I challenge you to say I'm doing life the wrong way. I can face me, why can't you? I can confess myself tenderly but honestly. Criticism? I already know it.

Now I look at my About Me and it feels foreign. I guess those things are true of me, but I would never summarize myself like that. Except I did. A year ago I considered my change in how much I like fish to be important, somehow, to who I was. I don't study Chinese any more. I'm still not sure why I did. And what was all that about my taste in girls for? I can't believe I needed to say that.

I know why people include random things. Partially, I think, it's a cultural incline toward post-modernism, which is incredulity toward grand narratives. People don't really think there is a theme to their life. But to the extent that they do, random facts juxtaposed with core values (did you notice how I slipped in the phrase about believing in God?) questions the reader's ability to distinguish important from insignificant. And if you think it's stupid that I like The Office and admirable that I donate 90% of my income to the poor, then you should be wary of weighting the first little and the second a lot. For all you know, watching The Office determines my value as much as donating all I own to the poor. Don't judge me, the About Me says.

Anyway, I had to compose a more up-to-date About Me. Wouldn't want the Internet falling behind in knowing me. But it's difficult to get the right tone. Too pedantic, too narrow, too effervescent, too depressed. My old one at least captured my life pretty well. But in the two or three days I thought about it, this is what I came up with.

I really like About Me-ing because for a writer a definition is a creation, and I am always being made new. I like neologisms (the awkwardly new), kids (the newly awkward), and applesauce in blue Gator Dining bowls. It's tasty. I lived in China for seven months but am still American. I hear I'm more mellow than I was in high school, which makes me nervous. I don't want to be a squash. Recently I've regressed some, I think, like a golf swing gets worse before it gets better. I look forward to heaven because then it's all better. I try. I try.

It's not very good. That's okay, though. People don't friend me for my About Me.

Eat Cats! with Litotes

In Turlington today a woman dressed as a chicken passed out vegetarianism propaganda.


We must infer that the "me" of her sign refers to the general population of chickens, not to the woman in the costume herself. Apparently the woman considers herself similar enough in nature to chickens to imply that eating one is linguistically equivalent to eating a person. Who's "me"? We're all "me"! Only this "me" knows how to read and write and stand in Turlington because the "me"s who walk by are the ones with power to change circumstances and the "me"s that go cluck cluck aren't capable of embracing any kind of ideology.

I haven't taken any literary theory courses, but I think that's deconstruction: using the "text" to show how the text undermines itself. The woman wears a costume for solidarity but in doing so necessarily shows disparity.

Well, the chicken let me take her picture, so I felt obligated to take the card she handed out. On the front, there was a cat's cute head facing a pig's cute head. In large letters, the postcard questioned, "Which do you pet? Which do you eat? Why?"

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by. See, I think propaganda relies on politeness. Hear an entire argument before you respond, politeness requests, and then don't be nit-picky if you must criticize it. The problem is that propaganda tiptoes and politeness only tackles runaways. I pet cats and eat pigs because society has conditioned me that way? Because cats catch mice and pigs don't? Because pig fur is coarse? Because I don't like snorting or mud? Because there's more edible meat per pound on a pig than on a cat?

Politeness, if I had taken that road, would absorb the intended effect of the argument: we are inconsistent with which animals we decide to eat. We should be consistent.

But you have to go further than that to find the meaning. Consistency isn't inherently good! In between the flier's conclusion and the flier's logic is a gap. The implication is that we shouldn't eat pigs because we don't eat cats, but one could just as logically reply, "You're right. I should add cats to my diet."

In literature, there's a technique called litotes that has the same gap between what it says and what it means. "Litotes" (pronounced lye-toh-teez, with the emphasis on the first or second syllable) sounds like a kind of legume to me, to be served with lentils, cous-cous, and cats, but in fact it's a name for understatement. More specifically, "understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary." For example, you see Florida demolish the Citadel in football last Saturday 70-19, and you say, "Not bad." That's litotes.

In Anglo-Saxon poetry this rhetorical device was "not uncommon" (to quote from my translated copy of Beowulf--I hope the translator consciously used litotes to describe litotes). One king in Beowulf was found as a baby abandoned at sea, and when he died years later they set his body off to sea, loaded in a boat with all their tribe's treasures.

With no fewer gifts did they furnish him there,
the wealth of nations, than those did who
at his beginning first sent him forth
alone over the waves while still a small child.

Logically, this is a tautology. "His gifts were greater than or equal to the gifts he had at the beginning--that is, none." Duh! The use of litotes adds an element of irony, which is the knowing distance between what is meant and what is said.

What I find fascinating about the Eat Cats card and the Anglo-Saxon use of litotes is that in order to understand what is meant, you have to already know what is meant. In another situation, the statements could have the opposite meaning. In South China, for example, they eat cats and dogs, so if I got the flier from them, I'd think they were trying to win me over. The dead man's treasures are a harder example, but if I didn't understand the poet was doing it on purpose, I might think it was just a stupid line to fill up space.

What are we reading when we come across phrases like these? Devoid of content, these strategies, I think, give us a chance to practice the point of view of the author. We have to think like a vegetarian to read arguments about why we should think like a vegetarian. It's enticing. Next thing you know, I'll be out in Turlington dressed as a chicken myself.

Toward a More Perfect Score

The LSAT is two Saturdays from today; I'm in high gear preparing for it. I'm excited to take the LSAT for the same reason that I'm nervous: since it tests fairly inflexible skills (you can't learn to reason in a day), the LSAT will test my aptitude more than my achievement. If I score well, it'll be extremely gratifying; if not, I'm just not the person I thought I was. How's that for a reality check.

What's fun, though, is that even though I'm studying, I'm not really studying. It's like I've made a juggling routine, the tricks of which I can all do individually, and just need some practice before I can do the routine flawlessly, too. That's fun because I'm practicing the nuances as much as I am the big picture.

The LSAT testing conditions are very strict, you see. In fact, I think I need to fax them Monday to say the name on my government-issued ID is William I Penman instead of Will I Penman. They wouldn't let me in otherwise, I don't think. Taking the LSAT will be like going to camp, only in the winter and with one bathroom break. There's a checklist I received by email:

Test takers are allowed to bring into the test center only a clear plastic ziplock bag containing the following items: #2 or HB pencils, LSAT Admission Ticket stub, valid ID, wallet, keys, medical and hygiene products, highlighter, erasers, pencil sharpener, a beverage in plastic container or juice box, and a snack (for break only).

I can't wait to pack my clear plastic ziplock bag (maximum size, as the extended rules say, of one gallon/3.79 liter).

To get in the zone, I've scanned a sample answer sheet so I can get used to the layout of the scantron page. And, of course, I've been using pencils. I don't want to get to the day of the LSAT and be flustered by good ol' #2.

I hit a snag, actually, when it became apparent that America does not sell pencil sharpeners. I was halfway through my week, felt stressed out, and needed to just do some practice sections. My pencils, however, were all blunted beyond acceptable multiple-choice-ability. I searched our house--no pencil sharpener. I walked over to a bookstore--no pencil sharpener. I walked further, to another store--no pencil sharpeners. They had pencils, but no pencil sharpeners. Mechanical pencils, may I remind you, were out.

At this point I was wishing I was just taking the LSAT in China, because in China they know how to sell pencil sharpeners. For cheap, too. There was a store right down my street, and I could've bought ten of them, with ten different designs. And they all would've broken after one use, probably.

I eventually cut my losses and used (gasp) the pen I had in my pocket the whole time. My fight to study for the LSAT was not over, though. Confident that the overpriced UF bookstore in the student union had Gator-ified pencil sharpeners, I made it to the union a few days later (after asking all my friends if they had a pencil sharpener I could have and being told that no one in America ever needs a pencil sharpener) and bought one. For $4. They had an 89 cent version, but the expensive kind had a "high quality carbon steel blade." It's like Excalibur. I will vanquish the LSAT. And, it has a second hole in case I need to sharpen crayons. In case there's a surprise drawing section after the logic games.

To complete my LSAT paraphanelia, I dropped by Walmart today to buy an analog (non-digital) watch. I tested all the watches in the $9-12 range for ease of time adjustment. As long as it can go from 12:00-12:35, the watch can serve all my purposes. It's a good thing my standards are so low, because the watch I bought is pretty ghetto. I ripped off the band because I don't actually want to use it as a watch, and the metal came apart no problem. The watch itself aspires to telling the date but is unmoveable from the 16th and tells the days of the week in Spanish.

But now I have my watch and pencils. All I have left to do is be me. And not forget to bring my bilingual timepiece.

The Unspellable Word

When I was in China, I thought it was so limiting to use characters (where each character codes for a syllable) instead of an alphabet. How could they invent new words with a fixed and already assigned number of words? But now I can't speak with complete disdain; I've found a new word that's unspellable. I don't mean appropriating a word from an African language with clicks, which we obviously can't pronounce, and thus can't spell. I mean a word whose pronunciation is so common you wouldn't even think about how unusual the unspellable word really is. In fact, it's half a word.

"What's up?"

"The usual."

But speaking with complete words gets boring sometimes and we leave off the end sometimes. Instead of "whatever" girls say "whatev." One girl in my English class actually asked a guy, "So what are you doing over Christmas vaycay?" The stress was on the first syllable. "Vacation," she clarified. So it shouldn't be strange that we do the same thing with the word "usual."

"What's up?"

"The "--us? youj? yuj? uzh? us(ual)? There's no way to spell the first half of "usual"! We don't have a good way to spell it in any case. "Vision" writes the sound as "si." It's "uge" in "luge" (but not "uge" as in "huge"!). It's "s" in "treasure," "z" in "azure," and "g" in "rouge."

My favorite is taking the Chinese pair "zh" and making "uzh." What's ironic about that is that Chinese doesn't have this sound. My Chinese teacher in Chengdu spoke great English but never mastered "usually." "Youyou-ly," she would say as an approximation.

To solve the problem of the unspellable word, I called Marian, my go-to person for all the linguistics questions I have. "Oh," she said. "The voiced postalveolar fricative. That is an interesting problem." The symbol, as it turns out, is ʒ (which is itself spelled "ezh"). If I hadn't pulled up the Wikipedia page, though, for the "voiced postalveolar fricative", I wouldn't have been able to copy-and-paste the character in. I can't type "ʒ." It does look like a 3, but u3 looks like an energy drink or Bono's upgrade, so I can't forsee people writing "the u3." If it happens, though, I called it.

In the meantime, we have an unspellable word.

The Penman Hummus Theorem

You can learn a lot about people from what they emphasize in life. If life was everlasting, emphasis wouldn't mean anything, since all proportions are equal when the denominator is infinity. But luckily I'm going to die, and you can know me by what I do. In other words, I only have so many entries I can write, and this one is about the Penman Hummus Theorem.

I wanted to give this blog some time, let readers accumulate, before I unleashed the idea. Didn't want to start logging in the forest of life if no one's there to hear the sound of the trees falling. But I'll graduate in a few semesters and Wikipedia doesn't know I exist. Infamy, here I come:

The Penman Hummus Theorem: The best single indicator of the degree to which an American is Democrat or Republican is the degree to which that person likes or dislikes hummus.

Let me give an example before I rigorously defend the theorem. I was raised in a conservative home notably lacking hummus. When I turned eighteen and registered to vote, I think I put Republican. But this spring and summer, during the excitement of the Democratic primaries, I studied abroad in China. I had one friend there, a British girl (thus outside the theorem's scope), who was adamant about the wonders of hummus. I tried it, swallowing a huge piece of bread tipped with hummus, and was stoically unconvinced.

Like things usually happen once hummus gets involved, though, events were transpiring beyond my knowledge. I relied on the New York Times for my news--liberal. I read Dreams from My Father--fantastic. And when we couldn't take Chinese food any more, we went to the Turkish restaurant to eat overpriced hummus.

Now I enjoyed hummus on limited occasions. That is, I voted Obama for president and Republican for everything else. Everyone I know is the same. My roommate, a closet Democrat, likes hummus only when he's eating by himself. Matches aren't often so specific. Rank yourself 1 to 10 on how liberal you are and 1 to 10 on how much you like hummus and the numbers are freakishly united. No formal studies have been conducted--yet--but I've tried to ask lots of different kinds of people--friends, enemies, girls, my black friend--and almost all of their answers bolsters the results. R² is better than any other factor I know of.

Well, even if there is a correlation, you argue, it could probably be explained in terms of geography. But they call California a blue state for a reason--they gobble the stuff over there. The Penman Hummus Theorem is a better predictor than red or blue state statistics would be. Florida is a swing state, but if I want to know who you supported, I wouldn't look to your age, or your gender, or your race, or your height. I'd ask if you like hummus.

I have my theories about what causation underlies the Penman Hummus Theorem's correlation. Republicans don't like foreigners or their food. Hummus is mashed-up babies, and Democrats like abortion. In the movie Aladdin, when they're escaping the Cave of Wonders, the lava shoots up to form the word "hummus" (subconsciously linking the ill-effects of estate tax on the government to a food--those cunning liberal Disney animators who want to limit Republican taste).

But I don't have to be right about why the Penman Hummus Theorem is true. It's enough to have contributed one theorem to the repository of human knowledge (and if it were to show up on Wikipedia, I would humbly bear the fame). I can die now, happy and hummus-ed.

A Moral Dilemma

I went to go see The Dark Knight at the student union Friday. Every week they have showings of recently out-of-theaters movies which are mostly attended by foreign students who probably don't understand them very much. (For example, I saw Tropic Thunder a week or two ago, and there is no way a non-native speaker would understand the bare outlines of the plot: that actors were trying to make a movie but it became real and they had to become the mature band of brothers they were pathetically acting.)

Well, the last showing was at 11:30. I couldn't get there until 11, and when I did the bulging, informal line wrapped to the end of the hall and was starting to snake its way back. A line heading two ways with no physical marker distinguishing them is like marriage: as soon as the doors are opened, the two become one and what looked like a civilized arrangement becomes unfairly entangled.

Knowing all the people I do, though, on my way to the turgid back of the line I saw a friend. A back-up friend, anyway. One of those friends who you're friends with when you don't have any real friends. The feeling is mutual, I'm sure. No offense, Lauren.

I stopped for a friendly hello and we chatted for a few minutes while we both knew I was analyzing the line situation. I finally confessed I was thinking of just standing there and being a tag-along, which Lauren encouraged me to do. But the moral determinants of my decision were too great to avoid thought. Lauren didn't believe it could possibly take me longer than ten seconds to decide.

"It's an easy decision," she said. "Either you do... or you don't."

"Either you go to war, or you don't. Either you marry somebody, or you don't," I retorted. "Easy." I'm taking the LSAT in three weeks and will be more pleasant once I don't impose logic on my relationships.

But now I feel like I need to explain why it was such a difficult decision, with lots of ellipses to show how long I thought about it.

Why not be Lauren's friend for the night? I asked myself. Well, since there are a limited number of seats, by taking one of them I'm effectively taking one away from someone else... but since the end of the line is screwy, the seat that I would take might just as well be taken by the last guy to start standing in line...

of course, other people cutting doesn't justify me cutting, but it certainly cuts back on the harms involved: if half the people in line didn't start at the back, then there's only a one-in-two chance that the guy I'd be taking a seat from would deserve it more than me...

and if he didn't deserve it more than me, then it comes down to connections and me having friends in line ahead of him...

on the other hand, all the foreign students probably don't know how this works and will stand in line because they don't have friends they can stand in line with...

but maybe that's the cost of being a foreigner, since I'd expect something like that to happen if I were in China...

but maybe I would count that kind of injustice as something contemptible about China...

but life isn't fair...

but that's a stupid justification...

well even if the guy I'm cutting out did start at the back, the only reason I think it's wrong for him not to get the seat is because he was expecting it, but with a crowd of 300+, no one's expectations would be disappointed because no one could accurately tell if they'd get in...

plus, I had planned to join my brother and his friends, and would have felt no qualms about jumping in line with them since I had asked them to save me a spot...

but since I didn't plan on seeing Lauren and her friends, maybe that doesn't count...

but I was planning on going...

but planning can only carry you so far in deserving a space...

but maybe desire can carry you the rest? I was in China when it came out, after all, and didn't have access to it...

well, it's certainly something I could do, since I've been standing with Lauren for almost half an hour now, and no one knows or cares that I didn't come with her...

And so I end right where I started: with the ability to get it, and a lack of wisdom about doing it. I decided that the decision wasn't clear-cut, and that the part about joining my brother and his friends convinced me that it's not always required to start at the back.

So Lauren introduced me to all of her friends, and we waited another few minutes, and then we went in and saw The Dark Knight. I didn't like it. But I did have my own soul-searching moment getting in, so that made it worth it. Or did it...

Victoria's Secret

I was lost looking for Borders the other day. I had gone online, found the store closest to me, read the vague directions ("just off 75 by the Oaks Mall"), found the Oaks Mall, circumnavigated the mall by car, walked inside hoping it was there, and headed toward Waldenbooks instead when I saw it wasn't. Waldenbooks ended up not being what I needed, but to get there I had to pass by what seemed like the largest Victoria's Secret in America. I'm talking a twenty second walk for one side, even if you don't slow down to see--for curiosity's sake--what's offered through the invitingly large doors. The store's strategically located on a corner in the mall, so to get to Waldenbooks I had to walk another twenty seconds to traverse the other side.

I surmised that we have such a large Victoria's Secret to accomodate the nation's #1 party school. And then thought about how I'm probably anomalous for using "surmise" in the same sentence as "Victoria's Secret."

Well, as I was lightly examining the construction of the underthings on display, I realized what was attractive wasn't the underwear; it was the models. I mean, you walk by a leather jacket and you think, "Wow, what a sweet leather jacket." Doesn't matter who wears it, the jacket looks nice. But if you aren't Victoria, your secret is probably not best hidden by her products. I admit, Victoria looks pretty good in plastic.

Going to China teaches you things, though. I just gave a presentation last night to some kids about studying abroad, and was explaining that when Chinese people travel, they don't settle for a suitcase. Most of them, I think, don't have suitcases. Instead they use burlap sacks stuffed with food, provisions, a tent, family members, Communist pamphlets--you can fit everything in one of these sacks.

Well, when I was in Xinjiang sightseeing I saw a woman waiting at the bus stop with several bags by her. But what caught my interest wasn't her prodigious packing skills, it was the rest of her cargo:


That's right. It's Victoria's secret, cloned, bisected, sliced into thin strips, and tied together. Made in China! And I thought "Victoria" was an English name.

Needless to say, this revolutionized the way I view women. As I was walking past Victoria's Secret in the Oaks Mall, trying not to lust from the lingerie and succeeding surprisingly well, I thought wistfully to myself, "It's just not the same when you've seen the mannequins naked."

Kill Your Darlings

In fiction writing classes, critiquing stories means giving people the hard truth about what works and what doesn't. "Rules" don't work very well for fiction. There's the "gosling rule," which says that the first person you meet in a story should be the main character. But some really good stories don't follow that; the gosling rule just happens to work well most of the time. That's the tricky part about writing fiction: finding what works.

The author usually isn't very good at determining what works. In fact, sometimes a particular paragraph or phrase or idea seems brilliant and necessary--but it doesn't work in the story. I've had an idea for a story that's evolved so that when I start writing the story the inspirational idea is a clunky addition. If I force it in, someone needs to tell me to take it out.

Those are the changes that are the hardest to make. "Kill your darlings," they say. It's painful, but your story is much better for it.

Well, when I drafted a script for the Crest commercial Ben and I made, the slogan was "People buying Crest is not like Crest." Toothpaste comes out a tube and won't go back in. People buying toothpaste, on the other hand, are free to return it. So I had in mind juxtaposing shots of a guy trying to make toothpaste go back in the tube with the shots about the craziness of the video. But that made the video even more difficult to understand, because you had to infer what about people buying Crest was not like Crest and how that mattered. We filmed it, strung all the scenes together, and it didn't work.

Ben broke the news to me that we had to change it. And so we killed my darling toothpaste squeezing scene and the commercial was better for it.

But I still like the scene so much that I'm resurrecting it so everyone can enjoy Dan making a mess on Julie Vaiarella's table. AGHHH!

Tied for First

Several entries ago I posted the commercial Ben Rush and I made for the Jungle Smash video contest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9pcjYiN3fw

Our video sets up an elaborate, ridiculous situation about people buying toothpaste and then contrasts it with the serenity of actually using toothpaste. I thought it was a pretty good commercial. It was at least good enough to be criticized in the comments for the contest.

Well, the winner was supposed to be announced November 3rd. November 3rd came and went with no update from the creator. Then a few more days went by. People began asking in the comments whether the contest was still happening or not. No response.

I thought the contest must have been a scam after all. Ben and I spent so much time and effort making our Crest commercial and then it was for a contest that wasn't even going to be judged. (I was crestfallen, perhaps.) I emailed the guys from the blog I heard about the contest from and they said they'd pass it on to him.

And then, late last week, our video appeared with a few others as a finalist, with the winner to be announced in two days. Four days went by, and then I got an email saying Ben and I had tied for first. Where do we live so he can mail us a check?

Wahoo!!! Ben and I allotted 80% of our $1000 prize to ourselves--it's like a part-time job that I don't have!--and the rest to our amazing actors. I thought it would be a nice touch to give everyone a celebratory tube of Crest in a gift bag, but then I remembered I can't even wrap presents very well, let alone give a pretty token of our appreciation.

Our video starts with a guy buying some toothpaste so he can enter a contest, and when he sees someone else at the store he somehow gets in mind that if both their videos are good, they could each get half of the prize money. And then in real life the prize is split and we get half the original prize. Correlation or causation? I think Ben and I have a future making commercials together if we can dictate people's responses that closely. We'd be the new wave of marketing: like hiring a Jedi to advertise your product. A Jedi that makes a sweet buck for his work. And one who actually brushes with Colgate.

Wahoo!

Education and Racquetball

A friend I'll call Sarah and I like to play racquetball together. Sarah isn't very good at sports and has in mind that I'll teach her how to play. We've worked our way into a rhythm of hitting the ball around a bit and then playing a few games. Yesterday Sarah got frustrated because she couldn't return my serves and declared I wasn't doing a good job teaching. I was certainly able to admit that could be true, but I didn't know what to replace it with. Sarah didn't have good form hitting the ball, didn't have good timing, didn't use the back wall effectively. She knew it, too, but couldn't fix it.

I thought about our lesson the rest of the day and realized that there were several factors contributing to my ineffective teaching.

First, I don't know how to correct the bad habits Sarah can't correct. Simply put, she hits like a girl: her arm moves like a shaken hose, only having force at the tip. I noticed that was different from the way I hit, but we haven't made much progress getting her to be less noodly hitting the ball.

Second, I learned racquetball on my own, so I have no authority in telling people what's good and what's bad. In juggling, for example, if you can do a pattern, you must know how to do it. Racquetball takes two people, though, and just because I frequently beat Dan doesn't mean I actually know what I'm doing. I feel bad telling Sarah she's doing something wrong when I might be doing something wrong, too, and just not know it.

I mention this only because it made me think about a theory of education. I think education is naturally like this picture:


The dark red is your knowledge area, and the light red is your ability to communicate it. The most basic parts can be communicated easily: there probably isn't a lot of difference in the way I explain the rules of racquetball and the way an expert would. His dark red square would be five times the size of mine, but my light red is almost as dense as his would be at the middle. The closer you get to the limits of your ability, the less able you are to explain what you're doing. I can barely juggle seven balls, so if I saw someone struggling, I'd just be able to root them on. What's wrong with their pattern? They're not doing it right, I guess. I don't know. Why can't Dan beat me in racquetball? I don't know, I'm just a little bit better than he is.

If someone teaches you something, you have an additional layer of knowledge: you remember how you learned it.


Now your light red has paths so that if you barely understand something, you can still explain it to others parroting the way you learned it. I'm not great at differential equations, but I can still talk people through my notes.

And so, since I never learned how to play racquetball and didn't have to fix the same problems, my light red area is pretty thin. Now to just convince Sarah it's not my fault I can't teach her, it's just that I don't have a lot of light red...

De-summer-izing Myself

Florida doesn't have seasons. It has "hurricane season" and "Christmas season" but there's only so much fall and winter you can impose on a place which is called the "Sunshine State." We've given up on fall, but I have a pet theory about Gainesville's winter: we get two weeks of winter spread over "winter" in 2-3 day spurts. That's important, because if you're slow to warm up to the cold, it'll be over by the time you're wearing your coat. People don't really have more than one coat here.

Now that it's past Halloween, I've transitioned to wearing pants. I have two pairs of jeans, and that should last me the month or so in between trips to a washing machine. But now I have to re-calculate.

Look at these rails:


Pretty sweet, you say. I'd like that yellow for my pants, you say. Been there, brushed against that:


I vigorously scrubbed, but I'm not sure if the paint will come off. Don't you have to put signs up in America when there's wet paint?

I also have to improvise when it comes to wearing more than a t-shirt. I've recently gone for the t-shirt scarf look, which I'm not sure is just native to people who've never needed to use a scarf or if this has always existed and we just never progress past it here:


In China I heard the phrase "a scarf is half a sweater." I think it's supposed to be a cute thing to say when your family is cold and all you have is a lousy sweater, but coming out of Gainesville's mini-winters, it's too warm for a real sweater and too cold for nothing. Hence my chic fake Burberry. And that's how I dress in between the rainy season and the not-as-rainy season.

A China Moment

I picked a winner in this year's election. Go Obama! Now we can go back to having only opinions that don't really matter. All this individual equality thing was going to my head. I'm not experienced and wise; who cares what I say? Now no one does, again.

I've been stressed out the last few days. I'm not sure why, really. Taking 12 credits isn't conducive to stress. But I've been on hold for a lot of things, and that's taken a toll on me: the election; the Crest contest; a date; another contest; the impending LSAT. This morning I couldn't make myself do any work, so I decided to go mail my friend's book back to him. In the summer I traveled to a remote part of China with my friend Alex, and then when he had to leave I went to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by myself. He had a phrase book (which ended up being useless) which he lent to me on the condition I return it to him when we both got back to America.

Today was the day, then, but in my fragile state the best I could do was go to the store on campus, Do it Reitz (a pun on the name of the student union), and have them tell me what kind of packaging and postage I needed.

While I was there, I had a China moment. It started lightly: I felt like I was barely keeping my head above the water of life. I mailed more things in China than I have in America, so it was also understandable that I wasn't confident in the store. They type the label up for you, so I recited Alex's address to her. Then she asked for a phone number. "What?" I asked, and was reminded of how I was much better at Chinese when I knew what question was coming next. Apparently that's true for me in English, too. "A phone number," she said.

I don't have Alex's phone number memorized, so I wanted to tell her that I didn't have one. For about a second, though, all I could think of was an answer in Chinese: "没有。" I stuttered, knowing that wasn't right.

That's a pretty good China moment. I don't often have the urge to reply to people in Chinese. But it consummated itself a minute later.

"That'll be $12," the girl said. Mind you, the book I was sending is post-card size with fewer than 50 pages.

"That seems pretty high," I ventured.

"Well, we're a private business, so we're not allowed to compete with government prices," she said--or something like that. She spoke in English, obviously, but I didn't really understand what she meant. I only understood the general idea: she wanted $12 from me. I thought about leaving and going to the post office on the other side of campus, but rejected that because I didn't have the stamina for it at that moment.

In China, I was glad to be a rich American, because it meant I didn't have to sweat the small stuff. If I got ripped off a few kuai my budget wasn't off-kilter. Of course, the longer I was there the more I became able to live like a Chinese person would, and the less my spending would be out of the ordinary. But while I got adjusted I explicitly allowed for what I termed my "foreigner tax." That is, if I were Chinese, I'd know not to buy that brand because it sucks and I wouldn't have just wasted three dollars.

Anyway, the girl at the counter told me I'd have to pay a ridiculous amount to send Alex my package, and I knew vaguely that it was way too high. And as I brought out my debit card to pay for it, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty high foreigner tax."

But then I remembered I'm not a foreigner here.

A Culinary Adventure

One of my friends, Mike Braverman, enjoys cooking. He does life slowly, and I think that's why. I have no patience for cooking, but that's why people have friends. I screw up Mike's dinners and he teaches me that speed doesn't equal quality.

So a few nights ago we decided to make dinner together. Dan joined along, so the three of us trekked to Publix to select food there. Mike had a plan. "A meal has meat, a vegetable, and a starch," he said. Dan thought anything that wasn't steak wasn't real meat, but I convinced him legitimate meals could be made with chicken. I don't love squash, but after living in China, can eat anything I need to and didn't protest that being our vegetable. French bread topped off the meal. We needed to use spaghetti sauce. Dan and I didn't know if we had spaghetti sauce. I forgot to add that this is the first time we've cooked this school year. I make sandwiches, and Dan's used his George Foreman once or twice, but the stove has basically been out of commission. Maybe that's why I feel comfortable playing music from my laptop there when I'm cleaning:


But no more using the stove as a table. I flattened the chicken with a brick, Dan sliced the squash, and Mike set up an elaborate process to make garlic bread.

Looking back, I think I get frustrated when I don't have proper equipment. We realized that Dan and I do not have a spatula. To Mike's great amazement, though, we do have a garlic press (left over from the great fall purge):


And then we didn't have any serrated knives. After trying to slice the bread, I got too aggravated and we ended up ripping off pieces.

The meal tasted okay. The squash was a little soggy, the bread had too strong of a flavor, and the chicken tasted average--no offense to Mike's cooking experience. I expected that since we were doing things ourselves it'd be really cheap, but it wasn't. I have to say, I'm not inspired to cook more now. In fact, now that I've seen the limitations of our utensils, I feel less inclined to spend time doing something I'm not good at. Maybe I could find a girl to give me lessons.

Does anyone want to get me a spatula for Christmas? Then I could make omelets. I already have a dozen eggs in my refrigerator that I haven't touched from the first week of school, so I'm all set there. Then I'll practically be a chef. After all, I do have a garlic press.

To the Masses: about "Epic"

My post is going to be short since I'm at home this weekend and blogging isn't high on my list of priorities compared to watching UF cream Georgia, seeing Melanie do really well in her marching competition (well, seeing the band do well anyway; it's hard to tell who's who among 300 kids in the same outfit), and talking to all my family. Plus, tonight's daylight savings, so I'm losing an hour doing this. It's an epic night.

I try to be open to new uses of good words, but I admit it's a struggle. "Epic" was a good word. Lord of the Rings, Virgil's Aeneid, Paradise Lost--great epics. And when you know what an epic is, then it makes sense to apply the word to, say, a literary work or a movie, or even an effort. "He's writing an epic poem." Cool. I'm okay with the adjectival use.

Then you figure, well, if "epic" describes an effort that will be remembered for all history and takes place across generations, that you should use it to mean a situation that you think is cool. "That was an epic pass from Tebow." Mm, I resist.

Here's why I resist: I'm not against language changing for new meanings, but I do resist changes that are a crutch for those with small vocabularies. Using "epic" trivially conflates its meaning and forces it to be just another way to say "good." I don't have a voluminous vocabulary, but I don't think it's hard to be more specific than "good." And if you have to make up words so it doesn't look like you have dull-witted, repetitive ideas, then I think you're wasting you're time because people will eventually notice. Ooh! Epic burn.

But it gets worse. Give the masses an inch, and each person pulls for a mile. (That makes for a lot of miles, distributed over everyone.) "Epic" is now acquiring a colloquial adverbial sense. Yes, I hate to break it to you, but I have heard, in real conversation, "That was epic cool." At least the masses discard all semblance of grammaticality and skip "epically cool."

"Epic" in this sense means "really." "He's really ticked off" becomes, "He was, like, epic pissed off." So, for anyone who likes to use the words "good" and "really," but not really, then "epic" is the word for you. It's epic good, dawg. Can't we all talk like this instead of like this?

The Crest Commercial

At the beginning of October I heard about this video contest. This business guy named James Altucher wants to see if normal people can make commercials that are as good as ones made by professionals who make a ton of money. So he picked a random brand--Crest--and said, Go make a commercial, and the best one wins $2000. That's a big enough incentive for me to try it. Being an English major, inspiration hit me that night and I jotted down the elements to a script. I'm no good with a camera, but my friend Ben Rush is, and joined forces. I had the vision, he had the skills. I think the skills are more evident than the vision, but Altucher is a nationally ranked chess master and hopefully won't be confused by our abstract message.

I now present, after weeks of hard work, "My Share of the Prize."



I'm really happy with the way it turned out, but Ben and I have been involved in it for so long that we can't tell if it's any good at this point, so if you don't hate it, let us know by commenting on YouTube. The winner will be announced November 3rd, so if I seem on pins and needles until then, I'm just waiting to see if my fate is in writing commercials.

Why I Voted for Obama

Deciding breeds rationalization. I initially favored Hillary over Obama, but was impressed that he won. When I read his book, I decided that he understood America better than McCain did. He wrote his own book, see. On the other hand, from what I understand, McCain was written by his book (which made me want to read it, but not vote for him). As an English major, I value the ability to encapsulate America in words. From Indonesia to America to the black movement to Columbia University to Chicago's poor to Harvard Law. Spending several years as a community organizer convincing people that their landlord really will give them a new heater if they all work together gives a man a kind of experience that isn't reflected in military warfare and years in Washington.

I have other reasons now, too. I've rationalized quite well my decision. I shudder at Palin's make-believe, playing-house approach to life in which sincerity equals rationality. I can imagine her talking to her dolls in much the same way she conducts interviews: "Oh, my $150,000 suit? Thank you, I like it, too. It's not really excessive, you know, since I'll be campaigning all over the country. A girl's gotta have clothes to wear, don't you agree Mr. Teddy? It's not like I could walk out there in my normal-person clothes! That would be ridiculous."

I've even developed a distaste for McCain, who as my friend Mike says, seems like a "cantankerous, stubborn old guy." I predict that if McCain wins, we'll all start using the word "doddering."

But I'm voting for Obama still, and not just against McCain. I lean Republican economically, because I think I can manage my money better than anyone else, but there are things that I can't do individually (ensure health care for everyone; wean car makers off a dependency for oil; restore a responsibly distributed military; etc.) and when I see someone who looks capable (Obama) asking to be in charge, I'll let him.

It's strange how much support he has in other countries, too. I don't trust the Chinese view of anything outside one person's experience, but this whole spring and summer it was only O-ba-ma and Xi-la-li. I tried to explain that there was another party, but they didn't get it. (It might also have been because I couldn't say "government", "party", or "McCain" in Chinese.) Obama went to Germany and wowed a crowd of 10,000.

Most striking to me is this one Obama supporter I met at here at UF at the beginning of the semester. He was pitching Obama to me, and I asked him about his accent. "Oh yah," he said. "I'm from Ialand." Ireland? Then he can't actually vote, right? "Yah," he assented. "Boot this is the most important election of our lives." It turns out he is a poli-sci major who came to America to work for the Obama campaign for a semester unpaid. He's not American, see, so he's not allowed to be paid.

The world loves Obama, and while I'm voting and "the world" isn't (couldn't declare an address, I'd imagine), it's still striking to imagine that we could be really proud of our next president. I'm not a Bush hater, but I'm sad that our figurehead acts like a bobblehead.

You notice, of course, that the one piece of Obama's mind conspicuously absent from his book (the first one, right out of law school) is his ambition. He's America's Ender (pun unavoidable).

I voted for Obama for President because I won't be able to vote for him when he becomes emperor. I'm pretty happy with that line, myself.

I already arranged to have my vote cancel Elizabeth LaBoone's. So if I can keep her from voting, Obama should have it in the bag. November 4th, baby...

Debating and not

Last night I went to a debate Accent put on over the origins of the universe. About 1000 people came, I think. Most of the time debates like this are like football games: no one is going to think less of themselves if their school loses, but you sure will think more of yourself if your school wins. At the beginning, the Christian debater, Dr. Jacoby, asked the audience how many were open to the idea that God could have created the universe. About half raised their hands. I thought he made a good move by establishing that about half the audience were lying to themselves, because then he knew where to go with his presentation. You don't go to a debate to decide, you go because you want to hear your thoughts amplified smartly.

Dr. Jacoby did a good job amplifying my thoughts. Why do people think that evolution and the Bible are at odds with each other? Well, Dr. Jacoby was trained as a historian, so he gave us a very interesting historical answer: apparently the dominant thought was a long-earth theory, and after Darwin published his answer many Christians were in agreement with it, until one of Darwin's proponents aggressively came after people as if it were a choice. Ever since, people have had to choose between God and evolution. After that five minute historical overview, he spent the rest of his time talking about how evolution was unlikely without a God.

The other guy, Dr. Shermer, did a really good job amplifying Alex's thoughts: you can't prove God doesn't exist, but you can keep pushing him back. Why do planets orbit in a plane? God. Until you figure out the math behind it, and then God has to be crammed into the next smallest unsolvable problem. You can claim Christianity and evolution can coexist, but if the mechanism for the origins of life can be explained by repeated observation (that is, science), what does "God" even mean?

Dr. Jacoby framed the debate well by saying (in different words), "How the world came to be is important, but not really." Religion doesn't exist to compete with science; it competes for our souls.

Then they had a question-answer time. I lined up and listened to ridiculously stubborn questioners press their enemy for answers: "But if life can't come from nothing, then where did that first cell come from? Huh? Huh? Where did life come from, then?" And so on.

I had a reasonable question. One other person had a good question, too. There weren't any good questions to ask the athiest; we've had our whole lives acclimating to that mentality. The one guy's question had to do with the theological implications of evolution: doesn't evolution mean that things died, and that in the time of Eden (whatever that means) the world wasn't perfect?

Dr. Jacoby said that sin results in spiritual death, and that physical death isn't that big of a deal. In a way, I can see what he means: just eating breaks down plant life. However, God killing the lamb to cover Adam and Eve's sin wasn't new just because it was killing. It was new because the lamb died. To me, the problem is still unresolved.

My question was similar in spirit. I wrote it down so I wouldn't fumble at the mic, so I can quote exactly: "The Biblical account of creation details six days of God working and one day of his rest, and that's the foundation for the Israelites observing the Sabbath. So whether we interpret the days of creation literally as days or figuratively as eons, the process according to the Bible is finished. But as soon as we accept any level of evolution, species are no longer static. If God used evolution until now he still is today. Are we in Day 6 of creation?"

Dr. Jacoby answered unsatisfactorily by saying that if God doing anything is him creating, then obviously he's still creating. (But I wasn't calling anything God does "creating"; I was talking about species of animals.)

I do want to say that the part I remember most about the entire evening was the girl in front of me. I actually didn't deserve to ask my question. Time was running out and the moderator said there was time left for three more questions. I was the fourth one, and lightly pressed the usher guarding our mic to extend it one, which he said was out of his power. But then the girl in front of me, who I had talked to a little bit ("There haven't even been any girls!" she said when it looked hopeless for us. "Yeah, I think they should just move you to the front," I agreed.), turned around and asked what my question was. I gave her the gist of it, she thought for a second, and then she declared, "Your question is better than mine" and walked away to my faint protest.

And I remember her kindness more than I do the athiest's jabs at Bush or the Christian's facts and dates. Who knew that the best part of the debate for me was the part furthest from debating?

Phrasal Verbs are Low-Class

What is a word? Normally, it's easy to tell because we separate them by spaces. There were eleven words in my last sentence. But we also have the idea that if something is a word, you should be able to look up what it means in a dictionary. So what about "to look up"? It's one unit of meaning: here "up" doesn't indicate the direction opposite to down; it is a preposition you add which changes the meaning of the verb. You have to look at the phrase as a whole. "To look up" is a phrasal verb.

Phrasal verbs get pretty tricky in English because they often have multiple meanings. For example, "to hold up" means either "to delay" or "to rob." (Jokes follow easily: "Sorry I didn't call you back until now. David held me up." "I didn't know he had a gun.")

I've compiled a list of all the phrasal verbs I can think of that come from "to put." I lifted two or three from here, but my list is more complete. Check it out:

put
	aside	to save: "Ever since they got married, they put aside half their income every paycheck and now they're millionaires."
	at	to estimate: "I put the painting's value at about six dollars."
	away	to incarcerate: "After he murdered that girl a few years ago, he was put away for life."
		to tidy: "Put away all your toys once James leaves."
	back	to delay: "If the construction guys don't finish today, it'll put us back a whole week."
		to spend: "Filling up my tank put me back over a hundred dollars."
		to return: "When you're done borrowing my computer, could you put it back where it was before?"
	back together	to repair: "Dad's going to be home in five minutes and I don't know how to put the TV back together."
	behind	to forgive: "Even though you ate my last Oreo, I'm willing to put it behind us."
	down	to criticize: "Why do you put me down all the time?"
		to commit: "Put me down for a batch of cookies."
	forward	to suggest: "I put forward the idea that we should market to the elderly, but it didn't go over well."
	in	to submit: "I put in for reinstatement yesterday."
		to expend: "But I've already put in fifty hours of community service!"
	off	to tarry: "I've put off doing the dishes for so long they're starting to grow moldy."
		to be offended: "I was really put off by his comment about my weight."
	on	to deceive: "Front row tickets to Anberlin? Are you putting me on?"
		to blame: "You're the one who said we should try the gallon challenge. If you feel sick, don't put that on me."
		to perform: "Tomorrow I'll be putting on a magic show in my living room."
		to organize: "Madame Fleury is the one putting on the event, so ask her if you can bring guests.
	out	to extinguish: "Put out the fire now!"
		to give sexual favors: "I like going on dates with her because I know she'll put out."
	through	to connect: "Please put me through to the principal."
		to pass: "He was failing, but I put him through to the fifth grade anyway."
		to make suffer: "We're breaking up because I couldn't put her through a long distance relationship."
	together	to assemble: "I put together this report like you asked me to, Sir."
	toward	to contribute: "We each put $75 a week from our jobs toward a nice car."
	up	to score: "In the basketball game last night, Wilkins put up seventeen points."
		to house: "Maybe Jenny could put you up for the night."
		to post: "I put up fliers, but no one's found Fluffy!"
	up to	to convince: "Did your brother put you up to this? I can't imagine you'd steal on your own."
	up with	to endure: "I put up with your shenanigans every day."

That's 32 meanings of "put + preposition." I even left out uses in which the preposition is used as a preposition, like putting clothes on. But notice that these meanings are defined differently than usual: they are exact synonyms. Substitute any phrasal verb with my definition and there's no denotative difference. (The only exception is "to put back" which I glossed as "to spend," but compare "I spent ten dollars on a meal" and "Buying the meal put me back ten dollars.")

Since phrasal verbs have exact synonyms you never need to use them. In contrast, most words have a niche. I use the word "hover" because I don't want to say "to hang fluttering in the air or on the wing" every time I want to talk about a helicopter. But in America culture, where there is similitude, there is ordering. "Big" and "enormous" mean the same thing, but "enormous" is considered a more educated word. Each phrasal verb is exactly equivalent to another verb, but since the phrasal verb is simpler, it is considered casual, informal, and lower-class. Just think about it. Presidential candidates these days try to relate to the average Joe--explicitly--so think of their aides instead. Can you imagine a McCain aide letting out a press release to say Senator McCain was "put up to" selecting Palin as his running mate? Of course not. Phrasal verbs aren't dignified.

I phrase my verbs sometimes to give this blog a conversational tenor, so don't think it's me being picky. I'm just suggesting that parents teach their kids how to use silverware and how not to use phrasal verbs so when they're on a date with the President's daughter they won't be embarrassed.

The Three-Day Weekend

Sometimes people blame time for the amount of things they get done. "If I had more time, I'd be way more productive." Three-day weekends exist to show that, for the most part, this is a lie.

On three-day weekends, you have more time and do less. I'm fairly regimented in my approach to the week: Monday through Friday I have class and take of homework, Saturday I rest, and Sunday I go to church, hang out with people, and get a good start to my upcoming week. But when we have Friday off, I'm confused. Is Friday a work day or a play day? If it's a play day, then is Saturday still a day of rest or can that take the load for some of the homework that I need to get done? And even if I count Friday as a half-work day, then I probably won't feel very rested by the end of the weekend.

Here's how it's playing out now. This weekend is UF's homecoming, so we didn't have class today. I woke up around 10:30, had breakfast by 11, and got some things done by the time I was ready for lunch. By "things", I mean clearing my inbox (since I use Gmail, I can "archive" emails so they still exist but aren't in my face all the time, leaving my inbox with messages that I still want to respond to) and replying to a Facebook message. I read about ten pages of my assignment for Medieval Lit and felt accomplished because the story is in English that's really similar to modern-day language, so it won't be hard to read when I do commit time to it.

And that's it. I couldn't be bothered to make lunch, so I walked to Papa John's for pizza and accidentally saw five minutes of the homecoming parade. I played racquetball with Dan. And then my fun began and I went to a guy's house for dinner, then to somebody's birthday party.

So now I'm unsure where I stand with my workload. By the time I decide that I should stop trying to work and just relax instead, the weekend will be over and I'll have to lurch back into school mode.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not advocating that we have class to avoid this problem. I'm more lamenting the presence of transaction costs in vacation time. I hope that's the right word. I mean that students can't fully enjoy the time because, in its novelty, vacation time is wastefully allocated.

Not every break is this way. I measure time by weeks because my schedule repeats weekly. When spring break comes and we have a whole week off, it's easy to adjust to because there's one whole week which you can wipe off the map. With only one day, though, the week's rhythm is thrown off. For example, I realistically am too busy Friday and Saturday night to have time to blog, but I like to post a new entry at least every two days, so Friday afternoon when I have some free time I'll blog, or something. But today I let my time slip away because when you don't have class you assume the day will last forever, and now it's 3 am and I'm tired.

But it's a three-day weekend!!

Hardcore Blogging Skills

Imagine you're in the woods putting the finishing touches on a passionate picture of Nature in All Her Glory, when you hear your brother call from the house. "Jean-Claude!" he says, since artists need artistic names. You don't reply because you're contemplating the effects of that crinkled leaf in the lower left corner of the canvas on the human condition, but he repeats, "Jean-Claude!"

"What?" you shout shortly, sending flocks of nature-filled birds scattering.

"There's this guy just in town today who's looking for paintings!"

"The legendary art critic Tomas Refian?" you ask, since every artist knows his art critics.

"I don't know," your brother says, "but he has a nice blue suit on."

You snatch up your supplies, blow on the paint to make it dry faster, and run to meet fame himself in a blue suit.

I feel kinda like that, except the only woods near UF have signs for the girls that say "Don't go in at night or you'll be raped" in more polite language, and I don't paint masterpieces in them day or night. Rather, I heard about a blogging scholarship today and I'm checking myself out for the man in the blue suit.

"Do you maintain a weblog and attend college?" the website queries. Why, yes, I do. "Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs?" Hey! Over here! Judge me! The deadline to enter is the end of the month, and I'm scrambling to make my blog presentable to the ten-grand-giving powers that be.

I took the first step and bought a domain name for myself. (A domain name, if the old geezers don't know, is something so complicated we just buy one for ourselves instead of using others'.) That's right, you can now read this blog at www.willgoestocollege.com without a trace of Google in the address. Don't think I'm too hardcore; I paid $2.50 more so Google could give me the convenience and Googly austerity of a Google-bought domain name. I was even logged in to GoDaddy.com with my selection checked, with another tab detailing how to link Google's hosting to a domain name bought through GoDaddy, and I chickened out.

I'm not just making urgent cosmetic changes, I've started the blog death march of explaining everything I've ever said on my blog. Someone who makes a joke and then explains it isn't a comedian; he's a bore. But still: old geezers? That's just a joke, see! I use it as a conscious stereotype. And my parenthetical explanation of a domain name? That was a joke, too! I linked to the Wikipedia page, see, which gives about as good an explanation of a domain name as you can get, but then I also linked to the defining document--which is incomprehendible, and that's a joke, see, because in a way the words were correct, but not in the way old geezers would take it to mean, so for those in the know who clicked on the links, it's a funny way to defend the statement I made about the sil--

And the subtitle of my blog? Facebook readers won't know, of course, but my blog's title is "Will goes to College" followed by "Your mom goes to college." What's that about, right? No, see, that makes sense, too, if you think about it! There's this movie Napoleon Dynamite, 'kay?, and if you haven't heard of it that's okay because I like explaining culture to people and Napoleon Dynamite is definitely culture. In the movie, Deb is going door-to-door selling boondoggle key chains ("a must-have for this season's fasion") to raise money for college. Napoleon says he doesn't want any and from the background Kip, Napoleon's brother, shouts, "Your mom goes to college." And you think to yourself, "That doesn't mean anything and probably isn't true," but Deb is mortified that her already embarrassing endeavor has been mocked. See, because "your mom goes to college" is a retort, only no one is sure why. And that fits perfectly with this blog, because you read the title "Will goes to College" and you're like, "So what?" And then BAM! you see the subtitle and you're chastised. So, like, my blog is probably insignificant, but at least I know it and when you make fun of yourself first then no one else can, really. And I talk about culture pretty often, and it's a popular line from a movie, so it all fits together. Get it?

And did you see the crinkled leaf in the lower left-hand corner and how it symbolizes love and justice and all that's good about paintings? No, but really, you should look at my crinkled leaf. It isn't half-bad, I suggest.

Ambidexterity

Jugglers place a high amount of emphasis on ambidextrous juggling. Asymmetrical patterns, say 3 balls in one hand, are fine, but only if you're able to juggle them on both sides. This is a strange idea in a way: if you have 3 balls, you can only do 3 in one hand from your left hand and your right hand at the same time. In fact, if you saw a guy performing, you wouldn't know if he could juggle an asymmetrical pattern both ways unless he emphasized that he could.

Our focus on ambidexterity (in the limited juggling sense of the word) results in a very balanced mix of valuing what a juggler can do and what he does do. If you can only do a 5-club half-shower to the left, there's no shame in performing it. And yet, if you could do it to the right, even if you don't put it into your routine, it'd be better. Ambidexterity would open up more possibilities for you.

I've carried that mentality into other parts of life, too. It bothers me that I can't comfortably eat a meal with the fork in my left hand. That reminds me of how in China everyone can use chopsticks with both hands, and they sometimes have a different grip depending on the hand. One night my Chinese mom and dad had a whole discussion about what each grip meant and when it was best to use their left hand to eat.

I tried to learn to write with my left hand, but it's hard. Andrew is left-handed, but since we grew up using the computer mouse on the right side, he can do both equally. Academically, too, I shy from specialization because I don't want to develop one skill at the expense of another. I make sure my foot imprints on my flip-flops match. I knew a guy who played tennis seriously, and his right forearm was muscular and his left was normal: disgusting.

Here is my picture of success in life:


That's right. Left hand brushes at night, right hand brushes in the morning. A perfectly symmetrical toothbrush when it's worn.

The LSAT and Limits of the Law

Senior year of high school, if I remember right (and if I don't then it was junior year), I thought that it would be nice to be Supreme Court Justice when I grew up. And, knowing practically nothing about what that meant, I decided the best way to give myself a shot when the time came was to read Supreme Court decisions, so every day for a month or two I read a Supreme Court case opinion to become Supreme Court-worthy. We'll see if it paid off, I guess, because I signed up to take the LSAT this December.

The LSAT stands for the Law School Admission Test. It's graded from 120 to 180 and is normalized, so a 150 is the 50th percentile. Before I learned that it was a multiple choice logic test, I thought that you had to know legal concepts to do well--hence my reading strategy. I had just read things that talked about studying for the LSAT, and thought to myself that it must involve law, because who can study for a logic test? Either you think logically or you don't. That'll make a delicious story if I become Supreme Court Justice.

Multiple choice is a different story. I downloaded an old LSAT off of the website and took it over the next several nights. I didn't time myself, but that seemed like something you could improve on. Then I scored my practice test and saw that I had gotten a 171. 172 is the 99% percentile. Three quarters of Harvard law students score under a 175. I figure if I get a 180 I'll be safe. I'm willing to accept a 179 and maybe even a 178.

I know, out of the 120,000 people who take the test per year, 8-18 get a perfect 180. But I'm just putting it out there because everyone's expectations for tests are different, and once you know how someone wants to do, then you can encourage him well and be proud of him when he finishes. So be my parents until the end of the year and root me on even if I'm the slow kid who tries his best to win the race.

When I signed up online, I glanced over the fine print for the admission ticket. Right after "I certify that I am the examinee whose name appears on this ticket" there's this curious phrase: "I plan to take the LSAT for the sole purpose of being considered for admission to law school." I'm surprised that the council that tests potential lawyers would write such an ugly clause. Sole purpose? As if we college students knew why we did things. And as if, if we did know, we'd only have one reason. I'm taking the test because I might want to be considered for admission to law school. I'm taking the test because I have $123 to blow. I'm taking the test because I want to see if I'm awesome. I'm taking the test to see if I could have a part-time job teaching a prep-class for Kaplan. I'm taking the test for God, gold, and glory.

I'm taking the test for whatever reason I want to, and their disclaimer encroaches on my motives because they don't know how to specify what they want to prohibit. Restricting my purposes is only to preempt whatever action they don't want me to do. Honestly, I don't know what they're worried about. Taking the test with the intent to memorize questions and sell them to others? That's already covered in another clause. They would really be better off saying, "Don't take the test if you plan on doing something that isn't allowed with it afterward." It's clear and makes sense. The way it's phrased now, though, implies that something about my wanting to score well on a test for test's sake is wrong.

They're just fearful and are trying to protect themselves at my expense. Where's the balance? Ask me after December 5th and I might be qualified to train to give you an answer.

Speed Dating

Next time I play "Never have I Ever" I'll have one more weak spot. When I went to RUF's fall conference this weekend, I didn't expect the schedule for the first evening to include speed dating. Listening to a pastor's message, singing Christian songs, waking up groggy because we went to bed too late--those were things I was prepared for. About 10:30pm, though, one or two hundred chairs were set up in long rows facing each other, each with a girl sitting ill-at-ease, waiting. It looked like a human Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (from both sides, I'm sure).

There were strict rules: guys had to ask the first question, and it couldn't be about our schools (we had several Florida schools attending), majors, hometowns, name, or sports. After two minutes, all the guys would shift down a seat and we'd begin afresh.

It was nice that everyone was eligible: Christian, my age, same state. Well, almost everyone was eligible. A few sentences into my conversation with one girl I notice that the guy to my right has edged his seat close to his girl and has his hands on her thighs, talking to her in an indistinct love-mumble. "I don't think we've made it that far in two minutes," I deadpan to the girl I'm speed dating. The guy next to me is quick to clarify that this girl is actually his real girlfriend.

The beginning of each date was the most difficult in some ways. The guy had the responsibility for the conversation, and I felt bad asking the same litany of questions to each girl, so I tried to let something spring up naturally when I introduced myself. Sometimes girls' names were difficult to pronounce, or they had on nice jewelry, or they were right in front of the fan. Then I could blab about "Penman" being easy to pronounce but difficult for people to spell (an extra 'n' looks so much more regal, doesn't it?), or how last Valentine's Day I was in China and didn't even realize people in America were giving each other presents, or how it was hard to hear in the room with everyone else talking.

With most people, though, I had to go for a random question. I tried, "What's your favorite band?" a few times, but since I'm clueless with music I couldn't lead the conversation very far. I got confused when I got to the end of the row and ended up sitting next to Dan, so I asked one girl what his first question had been to her. "'How many kids do you want to have?'" she recalled. I guess that's one way to speed date.

What surprised me was that, with some people, two minutes was too long. As the guy, I tried to lead the conversation, but there would come a point where I had to pause for a second so the girl could reply. That was the critical second. For some conversationally-adept girls, that pause never came, but if conversation didn't flow perfectly there would happen the most important second of our two-minute relationship. And some of my relationships didn't survive... such is life.

I find it interesting that in some cases, you only need two minutes. Obviously it's a sufficient test of compatibility (one girl I thought my speed date went well with ended up not having anything to say when I talked to her later), but it is a helpful test for incompatibility. I used to think that everything would be a lot easier if marriages were just arranged, and to a large extent I think relationships are dependent on willingness, but there's still a significant chunk that comes from personality. I didn't find two-minute true love, but I gave it a shot. I'm working on being desirable.

When it doubt, though, just balance a table on your chin to show your manliness. Where was speed dating, round two?