I had an appointment with the head of the Chinese department to plead for her to sign off on me having completed a minor in Chinese. By all my calculations it should have worked out, but I was nervous since none of my other calculations about credit transferring had summed to the Chinese department's standards.
And again I was thwarted. I have the number of credits for Chinese, but apparently, they have a new policy this year that six credits of the minor (not including first-year Chinese) must be taken at UF. I have five. So they want me to take one more Chinese class, which I will do before I graduate but don't have the endurance for this term.
But in my Medieval Literature class later today, our teacher was talking about how he might reference books we've read earlier this semester. We should bring them to class, therefore, but no points would be deducted for not bringing our books.
"I am certainly not that kind of--" he said, pausing to find an appropriate adjective.
Draconian, I said to myself. That's the perfect word.
"--draconian taskmaster."
I grinned smugly for the rest of the lecture on Beowulf and the decline of the Anglo-Saxon expert.
That leads me to a topic that I hope will cheer me up before I start an essay for my Joyce class: reverse homonyms. Here's the idea. When you hear a word and don't know how to write it, it's a homonym (or homophone; Wikipedia confuses more than helps here, but introduces the fantastic word "homonymy"). For example, to, two, and too all have the same pronunciation. Or awl and all, rye and wry, licker and liquor. There are words that sound really, really close: eminent and imminent; our and hour.
But in rare cases, you can see a word written and don't know how to pronounce it. Read and read. (I'm about to read the book I read yesterday.) Bow and bow. Present and present. (Present your present with a bow on top and then take a bow.) These are reverse homonyms.
I thought of this idea when I encountered them in Chinese: 了 can either be le or liao. 地 can either be de or di. Some characters have four pronunciations! You just have to judge it by the context. In English, I think reverse homonyms are pretty uncommon, which makes it a challenge. Marian and I had a game coming up with reverse homonyms until I was ahead by so many she couldn't catch up.
Just last week, I realized in class that pervert is a reverse homonym. If you pervert my intended meaning, it's very different from being a pervert who has aberrant sexual practices. On a more mundane level, I also noticed from a girl's shirt that object and object is one, too.
I don't think reverse homonyms are really deep, but they can be a fun diversion. It's like a deer walking around in the woods, and his dear friends come up and are like, "What's the matter? You're just walking around doing nothing."
"Oh, no," he says. "These woods are where I would wear the fabric of nature for all four seasons if I didn't have to worry about deer life."
"Deep," his friends say. "I guess if you want to frolick in the middle of the forest, that's your deal."
"Deal. Really, though, it's important to me. You might even say it's the hart of the matter."
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
This is Why We Shun
Recently I used the word "shun" and the guy I said it to used it the next day in an unrelated context. I think "shun" has a very high niche factor, a term I just made up to describe when a word could be used more than it is and when you hear it, you feel like using it more. For example, I'm taking a class on James Joyce, and his ginormous vocabulary expands mine: I could use the word "sordid" more. I think I used it on a test Friday; I'm tempted to use it practically every day. Sordid has a high niche factor.
I remember the first time I heard someone say "shun the nonbeliever" as an aside to me disagreeing with something, and to have his friends hiss back, "shunnn." I hadn't seen Charlie the Unicorn. (The relevant part happens a third of the way through for old geezers who can't stand to watch the whole thing. You'll see what I mean.) I thought the phrase was weird and "shun" was a harsh reaction to my position. But once I caught up with the culture, I realized they were actually being friendlier than I thought by lightening the conflict with an allusion to something I should have seen. And people think allusions are only for ancient Greek mythology.
Here's a huge example of how pop culture divides geezers (and much younger) from geezers-to-be: http://www.snorgtees.com/ This website sells t-shirts for pop culture (I counted thirty three shirts inspired by media). The beauty of the digital age is that really small markets measured proportionally are large enough measured straight-on for business. Only a thousand people in the country might buy a shirt (which is less than a tenth of one percent of America's population), but it's enough for them to make a profit. Take, for instance, the blue shirt almost halfway down:
I like this shirt because, if you're under 25, I'd say, you agree that it's hilarious. The top part comes from a level in the earliest Super Mario Brothers games (early 90s), which you know because the flower is really pixelated (video game graphics weren't good back then). The flower gives your character the ability to shoot fireballs at enemies. Obviously, your video game character having firepower doesn't make his temperature increase--video game characters don't have temperature! But when you think about firepower, you have to have some heat to make that work. It's funny to apply such rigorous scientific logic to a game, like trying to explain why a dog or shoe can buy property in Monopoly.
But that's only half the joke. The caption says "this is why i'm hot." (Geezers-to-be shun capitalization in informal use.) It isn't enough to know about Super Mario Brothers, you also have to know the song "This is why I'm hot". Anyone who listens to a radio the right way has heard this song. And you need to before you keep reading. "Hot" here is a synonym for "cool": accepted, admired, successful. In the song, Mims (that's the rapper's name) cites among other things his rapping skill, his blindly loyal fans, and his shady connections to prostitutes, drugs, and cars as reasons why he's "hot."
And then we have Mario and video games. Can you see the connection? A really catchy song that made it to #1 on the Billboard chart and was played endlessly in clubs is the setup for a bad pun. I can just picture it: some geek coming out of his cave of the latest video game console and being informed about the song "This is why I'm hot." And all the geek can relate himself to is video games. "Well," he says in an atrophied voice, "I'm hot when I have firepower." He grimaces as a stand-in for a real smile at his joke.
This shirt is for the self-aware, slightly self-deprecatory person to argue in fun that you can be cool and play video games, too. But it takes so much cultural understanding to get it that old geezers wouldn't even understand there's a conflict. And it's too bad they don't, because they want to tell kids what coolness looks like (tell me again, why shouldn't people smoke?) but can't follow the arguments about it on a practical level. On a t-shirt level. And are frustrated when kids accuse them of not understanding.
And that is why we shun, that is why we shun, that is why, that is why, that is why we shun.
I remember the first time I heard someone say "shun the nonbeliever" as an aside to me disagreeing with something, and to have his friends hiss back, "shunnn." I hadn't seen Charlie the Unicorn. (The relevant part happens a third of the way through for old geezers who can't stand to watch the whole thing. You'll see what I mean.) I thought the phrase was weird and "shun" was a harsh reaction to my position. But once I caught up with the culture, I realized they were actually being friendlier than I thought by lightening the conflict with an allusion to something I should have seen. And people think allusions are only for ancient Greek mythology.
Here's a huge example of how pop culture divides geezers (and much younger) from geezers-to-be: http://www.snorgtees.com/ This website sells t-shirts for pop culture (I counted thirty three shirts inspired by media). The beauty of the digital age is that really small markets measured proportionally are large enough measured straight-on for business. Only a thousand people in the country might buy a shirt (which is less than a tenth of one percent of America's population), but it's enough for them to make a profit. Take, for instance, the blue shirt almost halfway down:
I like this shirt because, if you're under 25, I'd say, you agree that it's hilarious. The top part comes from a level in the earliest Super Mario Brothers games (early 90s), which you know because the flower is really pixelated (video game graphics weren't good back then). The flower gives your character the ability to shoot fireballs at enemies. Obviously, your video game character having firepower doesn't make his temperature increase--video game characters don't have temperature! But when you think about firepower, you have to have some heat to make that work. It's funny to apply such rigorous scientific logic to a game, like trying to explain why a dog or shoe can buy property in Monopoly.
But that's only half the joke. The caption says "this is why i'm hot." (Geezers-to-be shun capitalization in informal use.) It isn't enough to know about Super Mario Brothers, you also have to know the song "This is why I'm hot". Anyone who listens to a radio the right way has heard this song. And you need to before you keep reading. "Hot" here is a synonym for "cool": accepted, admired, successful. In the song, Mims (that's the rapper's name) cites among other things his rapping skill, his blindly loyal fans, and his shady connections to prostitutes, drugs, and cars as reasons why he's "hot."
And then we have Mario and video games. Can you see the connection? A really catchy song that made it to #1 on the Billboard chart and was played endlessly in clubs is the setup for a bad pun. I can just picture it: some geek coming out of his cave of the latest video game console and being informed about the song "This is why I'm hot." And all the geek can relate himself to is video games. "Well," he says in an atrophied voice, "I'm hot when I have firepower." He grimaces as a stand-in for a real smile at his joke.
This shirt is for the self-aware, slightly self-deprecatory person to argue in fun that you can be cool and play video games, too. But it takes so much cultural understanding to get it that old geezers wouldn't even understand there's a conflict. And it's too bad they don't, because they want to tell kids what coolness looks like (tell me again, why shouldn't people smoke?) but can't follow the arguments about it on a practical level. On a t-shirt level. And are frustrated when kids accuse them of not understanding.
And that is why we shun, that is why we shun, that is why, that is why, that is why we shun.
Friday, September 26, 2008
My Take on the Debate
It's debates like these that make me question democracy. I watched ninety minutes of our future President and some other guy, and don't know what to make of it. I was in debate all through high school and have a pretty good debate meter. I could watch the state finals match and have a solid opinion of who won and why.
But with McCain and Obama, I didn't know what was true. Voting habits, for one. McCain says Obama didn't vote for this, Obama explains why and says McCain didn't vote for that, McCain says Obama's misconstruing what the bill was about, Obama sometimes flat out says McCain has his facts wrong. They argued for at least five minutes over whether Henry Kissinger--McCain's renowned advisor--supported or didn't support talks "without preconditions."
What is a precondition? you ask. I didn't know either. To McCain, having preconditions means making a bad country tell admit it's bad before you'll meet with its leader.
Obama counters: first logically (that strategy hasn't worked with North Korea); then in a more potent way: Kissinger recently said we should meet Iran without preconditions. (Palin got tied up on this point, too, in her most recent interview.)
McCain changes things, it seems, and says that that isn't what Kissinger meant. He's known Kissinger for twenty-five years and apparently knows him well enough to rephrase him: Kissinger would never support the US President meeting a crazy foreign leader without secretaries of state first meeting.
Hold on, Obama says. That's preparation, not pre-conditions. Obama had already mentioned preparation, and while I didn't know what he meant then, it seemed reasonable to fit all your underlings meeting into that category.
But McCain disagrees and calls Obama on semantics. Obama says he's just using the terms as McCain's advisors use the terms, and that's when my buddy Jim Lehrer moves to a different question.
Fascinating interchange, but I as an above average college-educating citizen don't know where we ended! I don't want to need the pundits to have an opinion.
McCain says Obama should have visited this place in the Middle East as part of his duty on some committee. Obama says that it's a subcommittee, and that this place is so important it's taken up on a committe level. "But this is Senate insider baseball," Obama complains. Welcome to the debate. I don't think half of America could tell you how many members the Senate is composed of. Obama's annoyance at how deep he had to explain the world to us non-politicians for us to follow the argument is not because McCain pursues the trivial. We just don't know what Presidents know.
At one point in the debate Obama says he would threaten Pakistan. McCain is incredulous that he would be so open. "That's not something you say out loud." We titter nervously. It's phrased like a joke, and it does seem unusually frank for a politician to announce he would invade a country by happenstance in a debate. But how else can you talk about Pakistan? It's a foreign policy debate; how can you talk about the world with no substance? And is McCain allowed to say that there are things you aren't allowed to say? This was probably McCain's high point of the night, when his experience (he started every story with, "I've spent significant time in ...") and judgment seemed unassailable. I said to someone, "If Obama wins, he should hire McCain as his foreign policy advisor." But my impression was sullied by the finer points which went over my head.
I'm an Obama fan, of course, and couldn't resist giving the silent comeback to McCain's foreign policy stance that Obama didn't have what it took: John (as Obama called him), the world loves Obama. In China, everyone asked about O-ba-ma or Xi-la-li. You weren't even on the radar. I tried to tell them there was a second party but they hadn't even heard of you. Obama went to Germany and was so popular all you could do was say that people liked him too much. One of the leaders of UF's register-people-to-vote (for Obama) group is an Irish political science major who isn't even allowed to vote but came to America for a semester because he has a mission to convince America that the world needs Obama.
McCain could emote, Obama could think. Obama's triumph, in my opinion, came after McCain had told a sentimental story about a mother giving him her dead son's war bracelet as she implored McCain not to let his death be in vain. Obama's turn, "I've got a bracelet, too." This one was from a mother's dead son, but her command was not to let other mothers cry the same way. There are well-turned phrases on both sides, Obama's saying, and if I have to wear a cheesy bracelet to show you that I'm all in, then I'm willing to do that.
I was excited that Jim only had to push them for the first ten minutes to talk to each other, and after that couldn't get them to stop rebutting. There was clash, we would say in the debate world.
But with McCain and Obama, I didn't know what was true. Voting habits, for one. McCain says Obama didn't vote for this, Obama explains why and says McCain didn't vote for that, McCain says Obama's misconstruing what the bill was about, Obama sometimes flat out says McCain has his facts wrong. They argued for at least five minutes over whether Henry Kissinger--McCain's renowned advisor--supported or didn't support talks "without preconditions."
What is a precondition? you ask. I didn't know either. To McCain, having preconditions means making a bad country tell admit it's bad before you'll meet with its leader.
Obama counters: first logically (that strategy hasn't worked with North Korea); then in a more potent way: Kissinger recently said we should meet Iran without preconditions. (Palin got tied up on this point, too, in her most recent interview.)
McCain changes things, it seems, and says that that isn't what Kissinger meant. He's known Kissinger for twenty-five years and apparently knows him well enough to rephrase him: Kissinger would never support the US President meeting a crazy foreign leader without secretaries of state first meeting.
Hold on, Obama says. That's preparation, not pre-conditions. Obama had already mentioned preparation, and while I didn't know what he meant then, it seemed reasonable to fit all your underlings meeting into that category.
But McCain disagrees and calls Obama on semantics. Obama says he's just using the terms as McCain's advisors use the terms, and that's when my buddy Jim Lehrer moves to a different question.
Fascinating interchange, but I as an above average college-educating citizen don't know where we ended! I don't want to need the pundits to have an opinion.
McCain says Obama should have visited this place in the Middle East as part of his duty on some committee. Obama says that it's a subcommittee, and that this place is so important it's taken up on a committe level. "But this is Senate insider baseball," Obama complains. Welcome to the debate. I don't think half of America could tell you how many members the Senate is composed of. Obama's annoyance at how deep he had to explain the world to us non-politicians for us to follow the argument is not because McCain pursues the trivial. We just don't know what Presidents know.
At one point in the debate Obama says he would threaten Pakistan. McCain is incredulous that he would be so open. "That's not something you say out loud." We titter nervously. It's phrased like a joke, and it does seem unusually frank for a politician to announce he would invade a country by happenstance in a debate. But how else can you talk about Pakistan? It's a foreign policy debate; how can you talk about the world with no substance? And is McCain allowed to say that there are things you aren't allowed to say? This was probably McCain's high point of the night, when his experience (he started every story with, "I've spent significant time in ...") and judgment seemed unassailable. I said to someone, "If Obama wins, he should hire McCain as his foreign policy advisor." But my impression was sullied by the finer points which went over my head.
I'm an Obama fan, of course, and couldn't resist giving the silent comeback to McCain's foreign policy stance that Obama didn't have what it took: John (as Obama called him), the world loves Obama. In China, everyone asked about O-ba-ma or Xi-la-li. You weren't even on the radar. I tried to tell them there was a second party but they hadn't even heard of you. Obama went to Germany and was so popular all you could do was say that people liked him too much. One of the leaders of UF's register-people-to-vote (for Obama) group is an Irish political science major who isn't even allowed to vote but came to America for a semester because he has a mission to convince America that the world needs Obama.
McCain could emote, Obama could think. Obama's triumph, in my opinion, came after McCain had told a sentimental story about a mother giving him her dead son's war bracelet as she implored McCain not to let his death be in vain. Obama's turn, "I've got a bracelet, too." This one was from a mother's dead son, but her command was not to let other mothers cry the same way. There are well-turned phrases on both sides, Obama's saying, and if I have to wear a cheesy bracelet to show you that I'm all in, then I'm willing to do that.
I was excited that Jim only had to push them for the first ten minutes to talk to each other, and after that couldn't get them to stop rebutting. There was clash, we would say in the debate world.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
This is College Life
I've wanted to do this since my junior year of high school, when I took a tour of UF and saw trees that looked perfect for being a college student in. This is college: perching out over the landscape of life; absorbed in who you are more than the book that already is; climbing trees for pleasure and profit; developing a respectable elitism over those not in your branch; escaping the ground. I think if we could read in relief--seeing everything but the text--everyone would get A's.
If I climbed one of these trees, I don't think I'd be as assiduously un-self-conscious about it as this guy was. I passed by him slowly, decided to take a picture, got out my camera, set up my shot, and left, and in the whole time positioning himself, he didn't look up once.
Other parts of college life are less poetic. I'm taking Differential Equations (Diff EQ--pronounced "diff ee cue") this semester and thought I could get by without doing any of the homework problems. I can't. We had our first test last week, and since I knew our final would supercede our lowest test grade, I wasn't too worried. Let's just say it's a bad sign when you get your test back and hope it's graded out of 50 points...
What once was lost has now been found, and what was found was not lost. My hat, which I lamented the loss of a few posts ago, ended up being right under a sofa in the Hub the next morning. I've worn it doubly fervently ever since. Yesterday I ran into Ferdaouis, who mentioned my "trademark" hat. My hat the lady-slayer is back.
I found something else recently, and thankfully it hadn't been lost. I was in a hurry to go to an RUF meeting, got there a few minutes late, rushed in and had a good time. When I came out a few hours later, though, I couldn't find my keys. I checked under my chair--no luck. But it wasn't a problem. They were right where I left them: in the ignition of my car. Which was still running. Save gas. Don't be in a rush.
And on that note, I retire to my bed, which hasn't seen me in far too long.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Pushing Girls into Sprinklers, Etc.
Kim raises an interesting question: isn't it presumptuous for me to think that what I saw in my last post as a triumph of spontaneity--pushing a girl into a sprinkler--was an experience she enjoyed? Kim, I'm afraid the answer is no. You may not be aware, but girls have a special look of ecstatic outrage that is every flirtatious guy's reward. Girls from elementary school on perfect it for better mating success. The proportion of ecstasy to outrage varies by the girl. Some like the shock to be dominant, some prefer the barely-contained laughter. In any case, the look gives the same message.
The look--eyes bright and wide, mouth agape but curving toward a smile--is a rare one because it corresponds to a narrow line of thought. Angry faces, for example, are a response to the vast array of circumstances that can make someone angry: lack of sleep, late bus, bad test, etc. This look, however, only maps to one thought (personal internal rephrasing permitted): "I can't believe I'm special enough to deserve such attention!"
I have to take the time here to note that adults always peg the attention-grabbing on the boy. He--the one pulling the girls' hair or running through their jump rope game or otherwise causing a disruption--is "just trying to get attention," they say. But pay careful note: the girl's look is her acknowledgment of being singled out. The look is a heart-fluttering response to being noticed. The boy isn't trying to get attention as much as he's trying to give attention. The look is the girl's appreciation of that. It's not as simple as the lustful boys trying to corrupt the girls on the playground with their dirty tricks. It's sub-verbal communication of desire on all ends. Realizing this equalizes the situation: "it's all about attention." Duh. The teachers playing wise aren't immune from the game either if they've noticed.
But I digress. That was a lot of abstract verbs. Let's bring it back to sprinklers. You may wonder why boys are always doing such horrible things if all they want is to talk. The answer is that they don't want the situation to be unfair. A guy being sweet to a girl equals him being sweet on the girl. And he doesn't want to play his hand when he doesn't know how the girl feels in response! You can see, then, that love is only developed against the neutral backdrop of slightly mean things.
Here's an example. One year in school, a guy I'm really tempted to use his real name on but will resist and call Tyler instead knew that a girl I'll call Stephanie liked him. They had been "talking" and would go on to date. But at this point in the relationship Tyler just wanted to test the waters. It was homecoming season and practically the only thing anybody talked about was who was going with whom. Tyler, knowing this, walks up to Stephanie during the passing period and asks her a question. "Hey Steph, will you go to homecoming with me?"
Stephanie, who's ridiculously longing for Tyler, instantly agrees.
"Oh," Tyler says. "I forgot, I'm not going to homecoming."
And then he didn't.
If naivety is a good defense, Tyler's original planned called for this as a warm-up to the other girl he wanted to try it on. He was a little disappointed that Stephanie was friends with the other girl and cried to her about it. The nerve of some people.
My point is that I don't consider Tyler a completely horrible person. Mostly horrible, maybe, but he got most of the steps right. He wanted to make Stephanie feel noticed. He showed great forethought in his timing, word choice, and so on. His problem wasn't even that he wanted her to know that she would say yes, he just didn't contribute to an even distribution of knowledge. He roped her in but stayed out himself.
But as long as you're willing to engage, anything is fair: sprinklers to be pushed in, toilet paper to be lovingly wrapped around houses and cars, Facebook statuses to be updated with cryptic inside jokes. It's the still certainty that comes with a defined relationship that can capsize some people. But Kim, who could resist a face full of Florida sprinkler water? You should find a guy and try it out some time. If you want to sub-verbally communicate and all that, you know.
The look--eyes bright and wide, mouth agape but curving toward a smile--is a rare one because it corresponds to a narrow line of thought. Angry faces, for example, are a response to the vast array of circumstances that can make someone angry: lack of sleep, late bus, bad test, etc. This look, however, only maps to one thought (personal internal rephrasing permitted): "I can't believe I'm special enough to deserve such attention!"
I have to take the time here to note that adults always peg the attention-grabbing on the boy. He--the one pulling the girls' hair or running through their jump rope game or otherwise causing a disruption--is "just trying to get attention," they say. But pay careful note: the girl's look is her acknowledgment of being singled out. The look is a heart-fluttering response to being noticed. The boy isn't trying to get attention as much as he's trying to give attention. The look is the girl's appreciation of that. It's not as simple as the lustful boys trying to corrupt the girls on the playground with their dirty tricks. It's sub-verbal communication of desire on all ends. Realizing this equalizes the situation: "it's all about attention." Duh. The teachers playing wise aren't immune from the game either if they've noticed.
But I digress. That was a lot of abstract verbs. Let's bring it back to sprinklers. You may wonder why boys are always doing such horrible things if all they want is to talk. The answer is that they don't want the situation to be unfair. A guy being sweet to a girl equals him being sweet on the girl. And he doesn't want to play his hand when he doesn't know how the girl feels in response! You can see, then, that love is only developed against the neutral backdrop of slightly mean things.
Here's an example. One year in school, a guy I'm really tempted to use his real name on but will resist and call Tyler instead knew that a girl I'll call Stephanie liked him. They had been "talking" and would go on to date. But at this point in the relationship Tyler just wanted to test the waters. It was homecoming season and practically the only thing anybody talked about was who was going with whom. Tyler, knowing this, walks up to Stephanie during the passing period and asks her a question. "Hey Steph, will you go to homecoming with me?"
Stephanie, who's ridiculously longing for Tyler, instantly agrees.
"Oh," Tyler says. "I forgot, I'm not going to homecoming."
And then he didn't.
If naivety is a good defense, Tyler's original planned called for this as a warm-up to the other girl he wanted to try it on. He was a little disappointed that Stephanie was friends with the other girl and cried to her about it. The nerve of some people.
My point is that I don't consider Tyler a completely horrible person. Mostly horrible, maybe, but he got most of the steps right. He wanted to make Stephanie feel noticed. He showed great forethought in his timing, word choice, and so on. His problem wasn't even that he wanted her to know that she would say yes, he just didn't contribute to an even distribution of knowledge. He roped her in but stayed out himself.
But as long as you're willing to engage, anything is fair: sprinklers to be pushed in, toilet paper to be lovingly wrapped around houses and cars, Facebook statuses to be updated with cryptic inside jokes. It's the still certainty that comes with a defined relationship that can capsize some people. But Kim, who could resist a face full of Florida sprinkler water? You should find a guy and try it out some time. If you want to sub-verbally communicate and all that, you know.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Just a Little Spontaneity
I hastily arranged to eat lunch with some people at the Hub who were bringing a bag lunch. I was at home when the plans were made, so I said I'd have a quick lunch and then head over to hang out with them. But after I started eating I realized that if they were going to bring a lunch in a high-school throwback, it'd be fun to join them.
Four wasted Ziploc bags and a short jaunt to the Hub later, I unpacked my already partially eaten lunch:
The idea of wrapping a half-eaten sandwich amused me to no end. All the Chick-fil-A stuff in the picture is what my friends ate. So much for the picnic.
I think embracing a little spontaneity can go a long way. If your life always has to be planned out, you're not going to know how to handle it when you just can't plan it. So when you do things spontaneously it's like practicing being impulsive. Impulsiveness is a skill, of course, which sometimes you succeed at (I pushed a girl into a sprinkler last night--she loved it) and sometimes you don't (I drafted an eBay ad to sell my skin ball and donate the proceeds to charity--it's not even allowed).
But if you don't learn how to be impulsive, then when you really get seized by an impulse, like dropping two of your classes and quitting Chinese, say, then you just do it and might regret it later. So I packed a lunch to stave off withdrawing from a class today. Just wait till Wednesday comes...
Too much spontaneity can be overwhelming, of course. Like when your hat spontaneously disappears. That's right, one minute I was eating my sandwich and debating the theological implications of The Shack, the next minute I'm at Library West and my hat is nowhere to be found. I loved that hat.
Bought in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, that hat has a long history with me. It's made it through a trip with Alex, who had previously only accompanied me on hat-losing adventures. It's been to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, various parts of China, and back to America, to rave reviews. I was standing in Turlington recently when I noticed a girl staring at me. I tried to figure out how I knew her and couldn't. "Oh," she said when she saw me looking back at her. "I just liked your hat."
And now I'm pretty sure my hat has gone on to other heads. But if you find a blue derby-ish cap with a label on the inside in faded Chinese characters describing the size (56 公分) I'd be so excited I'd even think up a reward for you. I bought too many souvenirs, for example, and don't have as many friends as I do presents. I'd give you this really cool pipe I have left. It's extendable and everything. As my good friend Ron told me today, "Put that in a blog and smoke it."
Four wasted Ziploc bags and a short jaunt to the Hub later, I unpacked my already partially eaten lunch:
The idea of wrapping a half-eaten sandwich amused me to no end. All the Chick-fil-A stuff in the picture is what my friends ate. So much for the picnic.
I think embracing a little spontaneity can go a long way. If your life always has to be planned out, you're not going to know how to handle it when you just can't plan it. So when you do things spontaneously it's like practicing being impulsive. Impulsiveness is a skill, of course, which sometimes you succeed at (I pushed a girl into a sprinkler last night--she loved it) and sometimes you don't (I drafted an eBay ad to sell my skin ball and donate the proceeds to charity--it's not even allowed).
But if you don't learn how to be impulsive, then when you really get seized by an impulse, like dropping two of your classes and quitting Chinese, say, then you just do it and might regret it later. So I packed a lunch to stave off withdrawing from a class today. Just wait till Wednesday comes...
Too much spontaneity can be overwhelming, of course. Like when your hat spontaneously disappears. That's right, one minute I was eating my sandwich and debating the theological implications of The Shack, the next minute I'm at Library West and my hat is nowhere to be found. I loved that hat.
Bought in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, that hat has a long history with me. It's made it through a trip with Alex, who had previously only accompanied me on hat-losing adventures. It's been to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, various parts of China, and back to America, to rave reviews. I was standing in Turlington recently when I noticed a girl staring at me. I tried to figure out how I knew her and couldn't. "Oh," she said when she saw me looking back at her. "I just liked your hat."
And now I'm pretty sure my hat has gone on to other heads. But if you find a blue derby-ish cap with a label on the inside in faded Chinese characters describing the size (56 公分) I'd be so excited I'd even think up a reward for you. I bought too many souvenirs, for example, and don't have as many friends as I do presents. I'd give you this really cool pipe I have left. It's extendable and everything. As my good friend Ron told me today, "Put that in a blog and smoke it."
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Apple Twist Game of Life
I offered Ron an apple today and he did what I, for lack of a better term, am going to call the apple twist game. You know it. You have some girl you're interested in, and you convince the apple it's meant to be by twisting the stem off as you recite the alphabet. When the stem comes off and it happens to be on the first letter of the girl's name (or, if you're desperate, her last name, or middle name, or any of the letters in her name or that make you think of her name...) then you know it's true love.
That's kinda how my week has started, only my twisting has met with a lot of resistance. Now that I'm in Advanced Chinese, I realized that I really don't want to take Chinese any more. I started taking Chinese freshman year because I hated Spanish but thought cultured people should learn another language and study abroad. So I learned Chinese and went to China, and had crazy experiences and sucked at Chinese in decreasing amounts for seven months. And now I'm back and I can have a brief conversation with any Chinese guy I meet at the pool. I can impress my language partners because they don't know an American with as good of Chinese as mine. I can talk about Chinese culture and life.
And I'm still horrible at Chinese. Some people ask me if I want to go back, but right now when I think of going back I dread not being able to say anything. This sounds silly, and I might've said it before, but in America any word I can think of I know the word for. "Drowning"? It's "drowning." "Recoil"? It's "recoil." "Magical"? I know that one, too. Taking another year of Chinese would make a dent in what's left to cover, but not enough for me to set a goal to do it. I don't think there's anything to be gained by continuing.
I haven't done anything drastic, although Dan urged me to. I get to withdraw penalty-free from two classes every 60 credits and I'm seriously considering withdrawing from both my Chinese classes. Culture class is a waste of time, and I'm coming into language class a month behind. If anyone has any wisdom, speak now or forever hold your peace.
And with that matrimonial phrase, I return to the apple twist game. I remember when I was little I liked some girl whose name started with 'e'. My twisting skills weren't highly developed at that point, though, and the stem didn't come off when I got to 'e.' So I kept twisting, subconsciously making my fingers slip so it had an air of legitimacy when I finished the alphabet, came back to 'e', and broke the stem. "Wow," I thought. "It's meant to be." I think in some way this is a good analogy for my life right now.
Before I end this post, I wanted to mention a few housekeeping issues. First, I've decided to start labeling my posts, so when you visit the real website and not the Facebook version, you can sort all my posts by the labels. So any post where I've used a fake name you can see already catalogued with the "fake names" label. Or entries in which I talk about entries (or almost blow up my house) under "housekeeping." And so on.
Also, my blog has Gator colors now. In fact, I looked up on UF's website what the official hex codes were so I'd get the color right. Links, even to my old blog, have yet to appear in the sidebar because life is too stressful for that. Next twist, please.
That's kinda how my week has started, only my twisting has met with a lot of resistance. Now that I'm in Advanced Chinese, I realized that I really don't want to take Chinese any more. I started taking Chinese freshman year because I hated Spanish but thought cultured people should learn another language and study abroad. So I learned Chinese and went to China, and had crazy experiences and sucked at Chinese in decreasing amounts for seven months. And now I'm back and I can have a brief conversation with any Chinese guy I meet at the pool. I can impress my language partners because they don't know an American with as good of Chinese as mine. I can talk about Chinese culture and life.
And I'm still horrible at Chinese. Some people ask me if I want to go back, but right now when I think of going back I dread not being able to say anything. This sounds silly, and I might've said it before, but in America any word I can think of I know the word for. "Drowning"? It's "drowning." "Recoil"? It's "recoil." "Magical"? I know that one, too. Taking another year of Chinese would make a dent in what's left to cover, but not enough for me to set a goal to do it. I don't think there's anything to be gained by continuing.
I haven't done anything drastic, although Dan urged me to. I get to withdraw penalty-free from two classes every 60 credits and I'm seriously considering withdrawing from both my Chinese classes. Culture class is a waste of time, and I'm coming into language class a month behind. If anyone has any wisdom, speak now or forever hold your peace.
And with that matrimonial phrase, I return to the apple twist game. I remember when I was little I liked some girl whose name started with 'e'. My twisting skills weren't highly developed at that point, though, and the stem didn't come off when I got to 'e.' So I kept twisting, subconsciously making my fingers slip so it had an air of legitimacy when I finished the alphabet, came back to 'e', and broke the stem. "Wow," I thought. "It's meant to be." I think in some way this is a good analogy for my life right now.
Before I end this post, I wanted to mention a few housekeeping issues. First, I've decided to start labeling my posts, so when you visit the real website and not the Facebook version, you can sort all my posts by the labels. So any post where I've used a fake name you can see already catalogued with the "fake names" label. Or entries in which I talk about entries (or almost blow up my house) under "housekeeping." And so on.
Also, my blog has Gator colors now. In fact, I looked up on UF's website what the official hex codes were so I'd get the color right. Links, even to my old blog, have yet to appear in the sidebar because life is too stressful for that. Next twist, please.
Friday, September 19, 2008
My History with Sports
When I was little, every year Andrew and I (Melanie wasn't old enough yet) got to pick a sport to play. We could pick anything but soccer, which Mom thought was too time-consuming for a parent. So I played t-ball for three years. I wasn't very good.
Then I played ice hockey. I wasn't very good, but my coach was Wayne Gretzsky's brother.
Then I did basketball. I was so bad I didn't even make the elementary school team.
Then I did track for the rest of elementary school and both years of junior high. I wasn't very good, but not many other people wanted to run the two-mile. And the coaches knew that I'd at least show up to the track meet, so I was placed on our elementary school 4x800 relay and we set a district record despite my being the slowest. And actually, after a quick google, I found a document that shows our record is still standing:
It makes me a little sentimental to see all our old California schools--those stuck-up kids from Stockdale. And "Stine" always sounded snotty to me, like you had to say the word from your nose to get the "i" right.
My freshman year of high school I did wrestling. I wasn't very good, but not many people weighed less than 103 pounds, so my hard work had little opposition. And when there are only three kids in the district (county?) who wrestled that weight class, including yourself, it's not too hard to get second place.
For the rest of high school, I laid low and withered to a puny scraggle while I tried to get good at debate.
When I came to college, I took ballet for a year. Have you seen Step Up? Also, when the state of Florida is paying for your education, learning to dance isn't a waste of time for a juggler. But I wasn't very good.
So this year, I decided I wanted to take up a sport again. Not because I expect to be good--as you can tell, that never really deters me--but because since I'm not taking ballet, I needed something physical to do with myself. I considered racquetball, since I had about a 20 game win streak against Dan before I left for China. But in China I got sunburned and heard that I looked a lot better when I couldn't double for a ghost. I needed an outside sport.
Our whole time living in California, we got free swimming lessons every summer from someone who coached swimming full-time. That led me to believe I had good swimming form, even if I had no stamina or strength.
And hence I took up swimming. It's fantastic. Every day after class I go to the pool and wear myself out in about 40 minutes. Objectively, I suck. No question about it. Dan swam in high school and mentioned off-hand that their warm-up was a 500m. My whole workout is only a little more than that.
But I'm getting a lot better. Today I felt tired instead of just out of breath. My cardiovascular ability has finally reached a point where I'm not gasping for breath by the time I reach the other side. Now I can see that I'm just weak!
Such progress comes at a cost: I still check myself out at least three times a day in the hope that overnight I've gotten buff and tan. Hopefully, though, that tendency will fade as I actually do become buff and tan. When I get there, let me know, so I can stop posing for anything mirror-like and just walk around instead like I'm all that.
I don't have a well-defined goal for swimming, which means I could theoretically quit any day and never regret it, but for the semester or year or two it lasts I'm glad I'm doing a sport again. Any fast swimmers want to set a district relay record with me?
Then I played ice hockey. I wasn't very good, but my coach was Wayne Gretzsky's brother.
Then I did basketball. I was so bad I didn't even make the elementary school team.
Then I did track for the rest of elementary school and both years of junior high. I wasn't very good, but not many other people wanted to run the two-mile. And the coaches knew that I'd at least show up to the track meet, so I was placed on our elementary school 4x800 relay and we set a district record despite my being the slowest. And actually, after a quick google, I found a document that shows our record is still standing:
It makes me a little sentimental to see all our old California schools--those stuck-up kids from Stockdale. And "Stine" always sounded snotty to me, like you had to say the word from your nose to get the "i" right.My freshman year of high school I did wrestling. I wasn't very good, but not many people weighed less than 103 pounds, so my hard work had little opposition. And when there are only three kids in the district (county?) who wrestled that weight class, including yourself, it's not too hard to get second place.
For the rest of high school, I laid low and withered to a puny scraggle while I tried to get good at debate.
When I came to college, I took ballet for a year. Have you seen Step Up? Also, when the state of Florida is paying for your education, learning to dance isn't a waste of time for a juggler. But I wasn't very good.
So this year, I decided I wanted to take up a sport again. Not because I expect to be good--as you can tell, that never really deters me--but because since I'm not taking ballet, I needed something physical to do with myself. I considered racquetball, since I had about a 20 game win streak against Dan before I left for China. But in China I got sunburned and heard that I looked a lot better when I couldn't double for a ghost. I needed an outside sport.
Our whole time living in California, we got free swimming lessons every summer from someone who coached swimming full-time. That led me to believe I had good swimming form, even if I had no stamina or strength.
And hence I took up swimming. It's fantastic. Every day after class I go to the pool and wear myself out in about 40 minutes. Objectively, I suck. No question about it. Dan swam in high school and mentioned off-hand that their warm-up was a 500m. My whole workout is only a little more than that.
But I'm getting a lot better. Today I felt tired instead of just out of breath. My cardiovascular ability has finally reached a point where I'm not gasping for breath by the time I reach the other side. Now I can see that I'm just weak!
Such progress comes at a cost: I still check myself out at least three times a day in the hope that overnight I've gotten buff and tan. Hopefully, though, that tendency will fade as I actually do become buff and tan. When I get there, let me know, so I can stop posing for anything mirror-like and just walk around instead like I'm all that.
I don't have a well-defined goal for swimming, which means I could theoretically quit any day and never regret it, but for the semester or year or two it lasts I'm glad I'm doing a sport again. Any fast swimmers want to set a district relay record with me?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A Grocery List
In the Facebook comments to my last blog entry, Kristina challenged me to write an interesting entry about a grocery list. Actually, she was kidding, but I'm going to try anyway.
First, some advice for grocery lists:
It might be hard to see clearly. I have a difficult time uploading pictures that are left with sufficient resolution. But there are several things to notice about this list:
What you should be asking, though, is what else is important enough to invade a grocery list's domain? I'll tell you:
First, some advice for grocery lists:
- Don't make yours until you've received the care package your mom sent up with your brother that's been sitting in his dorm for a few days, because otherwise you might buy apples and then have twice as many as you need.
- Just include a line for the "Buy 1 get one Free" box at the front of Publix. It's practically irresistible. Who knew I needed graham crackers until they were there, tempting me with their bland peanut butterability. They should just call those boxes their sirens. Or, they could just install a normal siren. But that wouldn't lure me as much.
It might be hard to see clearly. I have a difficult time uploading pictures that are left with sufficient resolution. But there are several things to notice about this list:
- Shopping is not the only thing I do with my life. There are, as you might notice, other notes on the page besides the column on the upper right describing what all I need.
- Cooking is not the only thing I do with my life, either. This is the only shopping list I've made this year because half of it wasn't food items. In fact, after the candle-burning-gone-wrong incident last week, I only realized yesterday that there's still some wax left on the actual burner, and that cooking gourmet scrambled eggs wasn't going to happen until we cleaned it. Needless to say, I have yet to use the stove.
- The word "socks" is capitalized and given priority. That's because when I was in China people thought that Americans eat cheeseburgers as much as Chinese eat rice--that is, every day. So me wearing socks that went halfway up to my knees wasn't a huge misrepresentation of American fashion, though my sister disagrees:
- I use legal pads a lot. That's because spiral notebooks eat up my books and I need a divider. So this legal pad accompanies my backpack pretty faithfully.
What you should be asking, though, is what else is important enough to invade a grocery list's domain? I'll tell you:
- A rough map of Gainesville. It only has three roads on it because that's all I know of Gainesille. And that's if I have the legal pad with me. And have already gotten lost going to Target once this year because I didn't know that Archer was the road that curved off SW 13th, but have made up for it with a beautifully curving Archer on my map.
- Notes about Dubliners, James Joyce's first book.
- A quote about being a genius.
- Homework assignments for various classes in various stages of completion.
- Notes for the speech I gave at the re-entry meeting for people who studied abroad last spring.
- A critique of Buddhism's "Eightfold Path."
- A quote from my Chinese culture teacher, on how to reconcile what he says about Buddhism with the book's contradictory summary: "Maybe I am correct, because I am from China." Teachers don't use the word "maybe" in America.
- A link to http://freerice.com, a fantastic way to save the world, improve your chances of knowing what words like "macerate" mean ("to soften"), and look like you're paying attention during class.
- A girl's name from one of my classes. I write people's names on my tablet according to where they sit in reference to me. I think "Christina Iglesias" (spelling my own) sits behind and to the left of me. In some class.
- A line celebrating my mastery over Chinese culture class: "Dunhuang--I've been to the whole slide." Since all we do in that class is go through a powerpoint with no power or point and then watch more than an hour of a kungfu movie reinforcing Asian stereotypes.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Chinese Credit and Hymns
I fully understand now why UF makes you get a form signed by practically everyone before you leave to study abroad, because transferring credit is thorny once you've returned. I filled out the forms, of course, but since my program was a "UF approved" program and not a "UF" program, I had to agree to take a test to prove that I learned something while I was gone.
I took one and a half years of Chinese here, then went to China for the spring and summer semesters. In theory, I covered three semesters-worth of Chinese in the spring (for a total of three years-worth), and then was enrolled for a two-month summer session as well. Testing out of third year Chinese, as one of my Chinese friends in Chengdu put it, is just a piece of cake. (Idioms--close just doesn't cut them. Or should I say, close but no cigars.)
But then I came back, took the test, and bombed. Harder than I've bombed any test I can remember. The test I was taking was the final exam for the third year class, which is highly tailored to having been in the class. I wasn't in their class and didn't study their book, so even though I learned a lot, the Chinese I learned wasn't the Chinese they would've learned. I failed this test so bad I wasn't even phased that I had forgotten to fill out the essay portion on the back. The teacher, who's usually very stern, was really nice about my (rightful) unconfidence. "There's a speaking portion to the test, too," she said. "So even if you didn't do well on reading and writing, your interview could bump up your score."
That afternoon, I received an email from her which said, in effect, that we didn't need to bother with the interview.
Before that could happen, though, I had to turn in my test and leave. I had remained pretty composed while I was failing, but then I went outside, called my mom, and cried like I haven't since elementary school. It was so hard to go through my whole time in China knowing that my efforts might not be good enough, and then they weren't.
My situation got worse. The email that afternoon followed the brisk assessment of my test with this sentence: "The next issue is will you be able to get the credits necessary for Intermediate Chinese second semester." Let me remind you, kind reader, of what this means. I was being asked to take a second test to make sure that me being in China for more than a semester studying Chinese full time taught me enough Chinese to match being in America for a semester taking one class in Chinese.
My reaction, ironically, was rather Chinese. I felt like, while I could see how this would follow the rules to a "T", that just asking the question was demeaning and would only make me lose face. I was sure that this test would be structured exactly like the last one: highly specific with little chance to succeed. And what if I did fail? No credit for all the Chinese learning I had done. Furthermore, if I didn't take third year Chinese now (which at this point was my best option) then I couldn't be a Chinese major.
I admit, I didn't expect to even have a Chinese major when I entered college, so not graduating with one wouldn't be heartbreaking. But to go from thinking that I would just take an easy placement test and then be three classes away from fulfilling the requirements to the major all the way to the idea that it might not even be possible for me to finish the major--that's a big shift.
So I worried about my second test all weekend and tried to be reassured by my friends' well-wishing words. Then yesterday morning I took the test and did FREAKIN' AWESOME! The test wasn't the same; written passages were general, reading passages tested the most mainstream vocabulary, and I passed.
It will be slightly galling to be in the same class tomorrow with Allison, one of my friends who didn't go to China. But I clearly don't know everything they're going to learn, and it will help to be in a Chinese environment regularly.
One anecdote along with this: my friend Jenna's voicemail instructions ask you to sing her a song. I had talked with her a long time about taking this test, and after I took it, I wanted to let her know that I passed. I got a little song worked up. (I thought it was just a really short song but apparently it's only the last verse. The last line is normally "Amen.")
I took one and a half years of Chinese here, then went to China for the spring and summer semesters. In theory, I covered three semesters-worth of Chinese in the spring (for a total of three years-worth), and then was enrolled for a two-month summer session as well. Testing out of third year Chinese, as one of my Chinese friends in Chengdu put it, is just a piece of cake. (Idioms--close just doesn't cut them. Or should I say, close but no cigars.)
But then I came back, took the test, and bombed. Harder than I've bombed any test I can remember. The test I was taking was the final exam for the third year class, which is highly tailored to having been in the class. I wasn't in their class and didn't study their book, so even though I learned a lot, the Chinese I learned wasn't the Chinese they would've learned. I failed this test so bad I wasn't even phased that I had forgotten to fill out the essay portion on the back. The teacher, who's usually very stern, was really nice about my (rightful) unconfidence. "There's a speaking portion to the test, too," she said. "So even if you didn't do well on reading and writing, your interview could bump up your score."
That afternoon, I received an email from her which said, in effect, that we didn't need to bother with the interview.
Before that could happen, though, I had to turn in my test and leave. I had remained pretty composed while I was failing, but then I went outside, called my mom, and cried like I haven't since elementary school. It was so hard to go through my whole time in China knowing that my efforts might not be good enough, and then they weren't.
My situation got worse. The email that afternoon followed the brisk assessment of my test with this sentence: "The next issue is will you be able to get the credits necessary for Intermediate Chinese second semester." Let me remind you, kind reader, of what this means. I was being asked to take a second test to make sure that me being in China for more than a semester studying Chinese full time taught me enough Chinese to match being in America for a semester taking one class in Chinese.
My reaction, ironically, was rather Chinese. I felt like, while I could see how this would follow the rules to a "T", that just asking the question was demeaning and would only make me lose face. I was sure that this test would be structured exactly like the last one: highly specific with little chance to succeed. And what if I did fail? No credit for all the Chinese learning I had done. Furthermore, if I didn't take third year Chinese now (which at this point was my best option) then I couldn't be a Chinese major.
I admit, I didn't expect to even have a Chinese major when I entered college, so not graduating with one wouldn't be heartbreaking. But to go from thinking that I would just take an easy placement test and then be three classes away from fulfilling the requirements to the major all the way to the idea that it might not even be possible for me to finish the major--that's a big shift.
So I worried about my second test all weekend and tried to be reassured by my friends' well-wishing words. Then yesterday morning I took the test and did FREAKIN' AWESOME! The test wasn't the same; written passages were general, reading passages tested the most mainstream vocabulary, and I passed.
It will be slightly galling to be in the same class tomorrow with Allison, one of my friends who didn't go to China. But I clearly don't know everything they're going to learn, and it will help to be in a Chinese environment regularly.
One anecdote along with this: my friend Jenna's voicemail instructions ask you to sing her a song. I had talked with her a long time about taking this test, and after I took it, I wanted to let her know that I passed. I got a little song worked up. (I thought it was just a really short song but apparently it's only the last verse. The last line is normally "Amen.")
Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;What was interesting is that since I took my test yesterday morning and didn't find out officially that I passed until this morning, I had this song on my mind for a whole day. And I realized that even if somehow I had failed the test, my singing this song to myself all day wouldn't be a waste, because it's what God deserves even when life is going horribly. And that's how Chinese and theology mix.
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
I passed-my-Chinese-test.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Eye Color, and Geckos
Since returning from China last month, I've noticed myself paying attention to people's eye color a lot. "Wow," I find myself saying. "She has really nice green eyes." And then I'll talk to someone else and think about how blue their eyes are, or how Julie has really nice brown eyes. Even the people with uninteresting eye color (I've taken up saying that I have no eye color, so I would certainly fall into this category) get special examination from me these days.
I didn't use to be fascinated with people's eyes. But I think I have an explanation: people in America don't all have the same eye color. I never particularly noticed when I was in China that everyone's eyes were the kind of black-brown you have in mind when you're little and can't tell the difference between your mom's dark brown hair and black. But now I'm back in America and it's like people are eye candy. I mean, their eyes are candy.
I was thinking about this, or maybe I wasn't, as I drove to Bible study this evening. Then I saw there was a gecko on the hood of my car. This wasn't the first time a gecko's been all up on my hood. A few days ago I noticed one try to jump off but ran into the car again a few inches up the windshield. Then it jumped again and flew up and out of sight.
Well, I revved up as I got onto Archer and didn't see a happy end in sight for the little gecko along for the ride. "Don't jump, little buddy," I urged him.
At stoplights he roamed a little. He gradually worked his way up next to the windshield wipers, where he distracted me from the road so much that I had to totally disregard his life in order to preserve mine.
But for several minutes, he just looked into my eyes. I, of course, was too responsible to return anything but a look of surprise that he still had eyes that hadn't been run over, but it was a bonding moment. Particularly a bonding moment when I was driving at 45 and could see his reptilian flab whipping with the wind. But good ole' van der Waals forces kept his feet pasted to my window like a Jedi under Vader's deathgrip.
He should just be glad he didn't hitch a ride when I was driving to Orlando. I expect help paying for gas then. He lasted for the trip, though, and when I got out of my car before I went inside I made sure he was still there. He was, clinging now to my driver's side door. I thought it was a good moment for him and hoped I didn't decapitate his gecko head when I shut the door. I didn't, though.
The moral of this story is that if I notice your eye color, you're probably not crawling on my windshield when the car is moving.
I didn't use to be fascinated with people's eyes. But I think I have an explanation: people in America don't all have the same eye color. I never particularly noticed when I was in China that everyone's eyes were the kind of black-brown you have in mind when you're little and can't tell the difference between your mom's dark brown hair and black. But now I'm back in America and it's like people are eye candy. I mean, their eyes are candy.
I was thinking about this, or maybe I wasn't, as I drove to Bible study this evening. Then I saw there was a gecko on the hood of my car. This wasn't the first time a gecko's been all up on my hood. A few days ago I noticed one try to jump off but ran into the car again a few inches up the windshield. Then it jumped again and flew up and out of sight.
Well, I revved up as I got onto Archer and didn't see a happy end in sight for the little gecko along for the ride. "Don't jump, little buddy," I urged him.
At stoplights he roamed a little. He gradually worked his way up next to the windshield wipers, where he distracted me from the road so much that I had to totally disregard his life in order to preserve mine.
But for several minutes, he just looked into my eyes. I, of course, was too responsible to return anything but a look of surprise that he still had eyes that hadn't been run over, but it was a bonding moment. Particularly a bonding moment when I was driving at 45 and could see his reptilian flab whipping with the wind. But good ole' van der Waals forces kept his feet pasted to my window like a Jedi under Vader's deathgrip.
He should just be glad he didn't hitch a ride when I was driving to Orlando. I expect help paying for gas then. He lasted for the trip, though, and when I got out of my car before I went inside I made sure he was still there. He was, clinging now to my driver's side door. I thought it was a good moment for him and hoped I didn't decapitate his gecko head when I shut the door. I didn't, though.
The moral of this story is that if I notice your eye color, you're probably not crawling on my windshield when the car is moving.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A Series of Tubes
(For help with the title's pun, see here and here.)
Studious people at college can easily get so wrapped up in the intellectual euphoria of class that they forget they have bodies. Freshman year around Thanksgiving I talked to this girl who, in a rare moment of insight, pointed out that in college we practically never have physical contact with each other. I had to admit that she was right. In class you don't hang on people. Eating out you don't ever touch people. Idly looking at all your friends' recently updated profiles on Facebook certainly doesn't involve real bodies. If you accidentally come into contact with someone walking, you apologize for getting in their way. If you meet someone knew, your reward is a handshake. But when you're focused on class or haven't made a lot of friends, I could easily imagine people going a whole week without touching someone. (Then the girl and I dated and broke up partially because I wasn't as touchy-feely as she thought I should be.)
The less bookish students are aware of this problem. That's why they go clubbing. That's why they hook up freely. That's why they get drunk. You don't forget people have feelings and needs when you need to prop up your friend who's totally wasted and get him to a couch because he can't control his body well enough to do it himself. Me being the intellectual type, I just imagine descriptive metaphors and painful situations instead of doing it myself.
But I have a solution: tubing down the Ichetucknee river. The Ichetucknee river (colloquially pronounced "Ichnetuckee") is about 45 minutes from campus and is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy a Saturday in which Florida is not slaughtering another football team. I went with RUF, a Christian group that I've begun to get involved with, comprising about 40 people.
Tubing is fun for about 3 minutes. Then you need to find a way to make floating more fun. Guys tip the boats, girls shriek and complain. It's a great time. But what's most fun is trying to stand up on your tube. Once one person wobbles up for a few seconds, it becomes a challenge and everyone who's fun wants to try.
The thing about standing on your tube is that it's easier when you do it with others. You can get on your knees and get one foot up, and get the second up, and flail about wildly by yourself, but if you have a friend next to you doing it then when you start to fall one way, they can help you, and when they start to fall, you can brace them. All it takes is a little hand holding.
Andrew (who in the real world insists on "Smitty") and I did the brotherly duo raft. We linked together with Dan and showed RUF that mastering the inner tube is possible. Then we added people, got a square, eventually worked out a hexagon. Others were feebly trying but we absorbed their efforts and taught them how to do it right. If I hadn't been having so much fun, I think seeing a group of college students tottering on blown-up pieces of plastic and all collapsing into the water together would have looked ridiculous. But it was a totally acceptable way to get touch into life's equation.
At the end, once we had gotten about ten people all standing for a brief moment in a kinda circular shape, the challenge became getting as many people as possible onto one raft. Similar to this, but in the water:
And we used Andrew and my double tube for added stability and size. We managed four, and then tried to get five. I was in the middle straddling the two holes where people usually sit, and then people were crouched ready to stand on each side. There isn't much room for imbalance when there's so little room, and we never got it. But in the process the five of us were so close that we were practically piled on each other. And it was a great time.
So save the world, float the Ichnetuckee.
Studious people at college can easily get so wrapped up in the intellectual euphoria of class that they forget they have bodies. Freshman year around Thanksgiving I talked to this girl who, in a rare moment of insight, pointed out that in college we practically never have physical contact with each other. I had to admit that she was right. In class you don't hang on people. Eating out you don't ever touch people. Idly looking at all your friends' recently updated profiles on Facebook certainly doesn't involve real bodies. If you accidentally come into contact with someone walking, you apologize for getting in their way. If you meet someone knew, your reward is a handshake. But when you're focused on class or haven't made a lot of friends, I could easily imagine people going a whole week without touching someone. (Then the girl and I dated and broke up partially because I wasn't as touchy-feely as she thought I should be.)
The less bookish students are aware of this problem. That's why they go clubbing. That's why they hook up freely. That's why they get drunk. You don't forget people have feelings and needs when you need to prop up your friend who's totally wasted and get him to a couch because he can't control his body well enough to do it himself. Me being the intellectual type, I just imagine descriptive metaphors and painful situations instead of doing it myself.
But I have a solution: tubing down the Ichetucknee river. The Ichetucknee river (colloquially pronounced "Ichnetuckee") is about 45 minutes from campus and is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy a Saturday in which Florida is not slaughtering another football team. I went with RUF, a Christian group that I've begun to get involved with, comprising about 40 people.
Tubing is fun for about 3 minutes. Then you need to find a way to make floating more fun. Guys tip the boats, girls shriek and complain. It's a great time. But what's most fun is trying to stand up on your tube. Once one person wobbles up for a few seconds, it becomes a challenge and everyone who's fun wants to try.
The thing about standing on your tube is that it's easier when you do it with others. You can get on your knees and get one foot up, and get the second up, and flail about wildly by yourself, but if you have a friend next to you doing it then when you start to fall one way, they can help you, and when they start to fall, you can brace them. All it takes is a little hand holding.
Andrew (who in the real world insists on "Smitty") and I did the brotherly duo raft. We linked together with Dan and showed RUF that mastering the inner tube is possible. Then we added people, got a square, eventually worked out a hexagon. Others were feebly trying but we absorbed their efforts and taught them how to do it right. If I hadn't been having so much fun, I think seeing a group of college students tottering on blown-up pieces of plastic and all collapsing into the water together would have looked ridiculous. But it was a totally acceptable way to get touch into life's equation.
At the end, once we had gotten about ten people all standing for a brief moment in a kinda circular shape, the challenge became getting as many people as possible onto one raft. Similar to this, but in the water:
And we used Andrew and my double tube for added stability and size. We managed four, and then tried to get five. I was in the middle straddling the two holes where people usually sit, and then people were crouched ready to stand on each side. There isn't much room for imbalance when there's so little room, and we never got it. But in the process the five of us were so close that we were practically piled on each other. And it was a great time.
So save the world, float the Ichnetuckee.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Fall Cleaning, Part 1 and 2
This story has two parts. First, Dan and I decided to clean. Then, we decided to clean some more. Read further and you'll see what I mean.
Dan and I have a problem saying no to things. Over the course of the two years we've been roommates, we've acquired lots of stuff that we don't use.
Like pots:
Keep in mind, there are only two of us. This picture isn't a close-up because we wanted to focus on the counter full of pots, it's because that's how far you can back up in our kitchen.
So Dan and I toss things out with abandon (literally) into a to-Goodwill box or two. Exotic spices, years-old food coloring, insect repellant. "Have you ever used this?" I asked Dan about a pound of sea salt he was storing on the top shelf.
"No, but I will. Really."
"Good, because otherwise we should just throw it out now."
We moved things that we wanted to keep but wouldn't use (like a salt and pepper shaker set from Dan's deceased grandmother) to the private clutter of our room. For example, out of the twenty plus knives we had piled up at one point, only five made the cut. But Dan and I both couldn't part from our knife sets complete with the block of wood you stick the knives into.
Eventually we finished throwing things out and I left for the evening. While I was gone, I got a text. "You might want the bug spray after all..." it said ominously. What did that mean? Was there a colony of ants in an undusted corner? But then I got home and saw that Dan had taken the idea of use-it-or-you-lose-it seriously:
So Dan and I camped out in the tent two nights ago.
And so the first cleaning was finished, and part two begins. I'll start with the "after" picture so you don't worry that our house burned down. We're trying to look penitent but have way too much adrenaline from not being dead:
But then Dan and I were talking last night about how when you feel in a rush all the time, watching a flame is good for tranquility. Dan took a pan lid from the to-Goodwill pile, found the birthday candles we had thrown away, and we discovered the joy of fire. For several candles-worth.
Then we realized that all the olive oil we were donating to Goodwill would be a good addition. We were disappointed that no matter how we swished the various oils around, they didn't light on fire. "I thought oil was flammable," Dan mused to himself as we moved on to the lighter fluid I usually reserve for my juggling torches.
The lighter fluid gave a nice effect because it sat on the top and gave a small lake of fire:
The problem was that the lighter fluid diluted the mixture so much that the wax wouldn't congeal again. The solution, of course, was to transfer our concoction to a to-Goodwill pot and heat it up. All the excess would boil off, and we'd have a wax factory on our hands.
When it started smoking, I guessed that something was wrong. "Dan, we should turn the stove off. I don't know why it would smoke like that." We decided I was overreacting and I just moved to turn the heat down.
Then either I jostled the pot or the heat finally got to the solution, because it erupted in flames. When I say flames I don't mean baby coming-out-of-a-lid flames. These flames were at least a foot high and had smoke pouring through the house like they couldn't advertise our disaster fast enough.
This did not help our tranquility. I suggested suffocating the fire with a lid, but we rushed it and only covered half the fire. Dan took out the fire extinguisher.
"Dan, that's a bad idea. It's going to blow everything away!"
But in the heat of the moment, we canned my "use a lid" idea and Dan just opened fire with the fire extinguisher. Flaming oily wax splattered all over the walls that had just been repainted this summer, leaving half the mix still in the pan. I used the lid again, contained the fire, and brought the pan outside, where it suffocated in peace away from our house. And so we decided to do some fall cleaning, again:
The picture is foggy from the smoke. Don't play with matches, kids.
Dan and I have a problem saying no to things. Over the course of the two years we've been roommates, we've acquired lots of stuff that we don't use.
Like pots:
Keep in mind, there are only two of us. This picture isn't a close-up because we wanted to focus on the counter full of pots, it's because that's how far you can back up in our kitchen.
So Dan and I toss things out with abandon (literally) into a to-Goodwill box or two. Exotic spices, years-old food coloring, insect repellant. "Have you ever used this?" I asked Dan about a pound of sea salt he was storing on the top shelf.
"No, but I will. Really."
"Good, because otherwise we should just throw it out now."
We moved things that we wanted to keep but wouldn't use (like a salt and pepper shaker set from Dan's deceased grandmother) to the private clutter of our room. For example, out of the twenty plus knives we had piled up at one point, only five made the cut. But Dan and I both couldn't part from our knife sets complete with the block of wood you stick the knives into.
Eventually we finished throwing things out and I left for the evening. While I was gone, I got a text. "You might want the bug spray after all..." it said ominously. What did that mean? Was there a colony of ants in an undusted corner? But then I got home and saw that Dan had taken the idea of use-it-or-you-lose-it seriously:
So Dan and I camped out in the tent two nights ago.
And so the first cleaning was finished, and part two begins. I'll start with the "after" picture so you don't worry that our house burned down. We're trying to look penitent but have way too much adrenaline from not being dead:
But then Dan and I were talking last night about how when you feel in a rush all the time, watching a flame is good for tranquility. Dan took a pan lid from the to-Goodwill pile, found the birthday candles we had thrown away, and we discovered the joy of fire. For several candles-worth.
Then we realized that all the olive oil we were donating to Goodwill would be a good addition. We were disappointed that no matter how we swished the various oils around, they didn't light on fire. "I thought oil was flammable," Dan mused to himself as we moved on to the lighter fluid I usually reserve for my juggling torches.
The lighter fluid gave a nice effect because it sat on the top and gave a small lake of fire:
The problem was that the lighter fluid diluted the mixture so much that the wax wouldn't congeal again. The solution, of course, was to transfer our concoction to a to-Goodwill pot and heat it up. All the excess would boil off, and we'd have a wax factory on our hands.
When it started smoking, I guessed that something was wrong. "Dan, we should turn the stove off. I don't know why it would smoke like that." We decided I was overreacting and I just moved to turn the heat down.
Then either I jostled the pot or the heat finally got to the solution, because it erupted in flames. When I say flames I don't mean baby coming-out-of-a-lid flames. These flames were at least a foot high and had smoke pouring through the house like they couldn't advertise our disaster fast enough.
This did not help our tranquility. I suggested suffocating the fire with a lid, but we rushed it and only covered half the fire. Dan took out the fire extinguisher.
"Dan, that's a bad idea. It's going to blow everything away!"
But in the heat of the moment, we canned my "use a lid" idea and Dan just opened fire with the fire extinguisher. Flaming oily wax splattered all over the walls that had just been repainted this summer, leaving half the mix still in the pan. I used the lid again, contained the fire, and brought the pan outside, where it suffocated in peace away from our house. And so we decided to do some fall cleaning, again:
The picture is foggy from the smoke. Don't play with matches, kids.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Assumptions
I think intelligence lies in being able to change your assumptions. Assumptions are generalities, of course, so I'm aware that what I'm saying isn't true in every case. That's what going to college is good for. So in honor of the beginning of school, I have four assumptions I've been learning about. I'll start with the most controversial:
1) Assume that senior girls are taken. I'm up to an age where it's worth looking at a girl's left hand to determine her stage of life. This summer at least ten couples I know got engaged. And now every senior girl worth her salt wants to get married and is in a relationship desperately pursuing that. I know, Alice is a senior and she's single. But I strongly suspect she's not worth her salt, either. (There's my first case of changing somebody's name. I should have a career in espionage if blogging doesn't work out.)
This is a difficult assumption for me to work into, because in the Christian scene, girls are single by default. They're all too frosty for the uncertainty of relationships. But the cool ones are single, too, because Christian guys haven't had practice wooing girls.
So now there's a tendency to continue that thinking. But senior girls are the most likely ones to have a long-distance relationship with some guy who's graduated and is just waiting to propose. Long-distance relationship for freshman can practically be discarded. Unless they've braved a summer together in high school, I haven't known a couple to survive the end of the year. Senior girls' dating lives are much more opaque. The helpful "relationship status" on Facebook is too crude for their maturity, and that's a good reason to assume that seniors are taken.
2) Americans haven't been to Kazakhstan. I saw a kid the other day wearing a shirt with the border of Kazakhstan, the country's name, and some quote from Borat. It took me longer to process the fact that most people who have seen Borat don't know Kazakhstan is a real country than to think that this guy had probably gotten it as a souvenir. After all, I'm wearing my Naxi t-shirt today which features the last living pictographic language in the world, because I've been to a place with lots of Naxi people. I almost asked him when he went to Kazakhstan, but then I caught myself.
3) Chinese teachers who speak really good English don't have American values. Today in my horribly boring "Chinese culture" class when we weren't watching a movie about China which featured several places I've personally been to, we had to do an exercise in interpreting Confucian sayings. Every group was supposed to pick a proverb from the book that no one's actually read and explain it to the class.
One group's proverb was "The gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action. "Their spokesperson summarized it well for modern-day kids: "You gotta walk the walk," he said. "Can't just talk the talk."
Our teacher listened to this and thought that the group was saying that talking was a deficit. "Well, that's not quite right. Girls talk a lot," he said. "Growing up, girls talk to their mothers more than boys do, right? But they can still know things sometimes."
I realized that he was trying to defend women's rights. To him as a Chinese man, women obviously talk a lot, but he was being magnimous by saying that this didn't necessarily disqualify women from being wise.
All the American girls in the class heard him and thought he was the one being sexist. "No," one girl said out loud when he rhetorically asked if little girls learn to talk to their mothers. Because as Americans, our idea of equality is that women should act just like men do, and our teacher's saying that girls talk more denies that.
4) Oil is flammable even if a match doesn't ignite it. But that's just a teaser for my next post...
1) Assume that senior girls are taken. I'm up to an age where it's worth looking at a girl's left hand to determine her stage of life. This summer at least ten couples I know got engaged. And now every senior girl worth her salt wants to get married and is in a relationship desperately pursuing that. I know, Alice is a senior and she's single. But I strongly suspect she's not worth her salt, either. (There's my first case of changing somebody's name. I should have a career in espionage if blogging doesn't work out.)
This is a difficult assumption for me to work into, because in the Christian scene, girls are single by default. They're all too frosty for the uncertainty of relationships. But the cool ones are single, too, because Christian guys haven't had practice wooing girls.
So now there's a tendency to continue that thinking. But senior girls are the most likely ones to have a long-distance relationship with some guy who's graduated and is just waiting to propose. Long-distance relationship for freshman can practically be discarded. Unless they've braved a summer together in high school, I haven't known a couple to survive the end of the year. Senior girls' dating lives are much more opaque. The helpful "relationship status" on Facebook is too crude for their maturity, and that's a good reason to assume that seniors are taken.
2) Americans haven't been to Kazakhstan. I saw a kid the other day wearing a shirt with the border of Kazakhstan, the country's name, and some quote from Borat. It took me longer to process the fact that most people who have seen Borat don't know Kazakhstan is a real country than to think that this guy had probably gotten it as a souvenir. After all, I'm wearing my Naxi t-shirt today which features the last living pictographic language in the world, because I've been to a place with lots of Naxi people. I almost asked him when he went to Kazakhstan, but then I caught myself.
3) Chinese teachers who speak really good English don't have American values. Today in my horribly boring "Chinese culture" class when we weren't watching a movie about China which featured several places I've personally been to, we had to do an exercise in interpreting Confucian sayings. Every group was supposed to pick a proverb from the book that no one's actually read and explain it to the class.
One group's proverb was "The gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action. "Their spokesperson summarized it well for modern-day kids: "You gotta walk the walk," he said. "Can't just talk the talk."
Our teacher listened to this and thought that the group was saying that talking was a deficit. "Well, that's not quite right. Girls talk a lot," he said. "Growing up, girls talk to their mothers more than boys do, right? But they can still know things sometimes."
I realized that he was trying to defend women's rights. To him as a Chinese man, women obviously talk a lot, but he was being magnimous by saying that this didn't necessarily disqualify women from being wise.
All the American girls in the class heard him and thought he was the one being sexist. "No," one girl said out loud when he rhetorically asked if little girls learn to talk to their mothers. Because as Americans, our idea of equality is that women should act just like men do, and our teacher's saying that girls talk more denies that.
4) Oil is flammable even if a match doesn't ignite it. But that's just a teaser for my next post...
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Your Browsing Experience
Every blog should take into account its audience. For example, I recently learned that when you "import" a blog into Facebook, the only clue that the note you're reading isn't a random note is a small link at the bottom that says, "View original post." So I think I'm just going to have to include the word BLOG in my first several posts, and many links to my blog (s).
But there's a fundamentally different problem I have to deal with, and that's the "old geezer" and "geezer-to-be" schism. I'm realizing that normal blogs, which geezers-to-be feel are an extension of the self (remember Xanga?), are not as intuitive for old geezers.
I have some theories about this. "Old" is when you're old enough that you think you shouldn't have to learn any more, and for anyone who turned old before the Internet came around, there's limited progress that can be made. Not because once you turn 65 or 70 or 90 that your brain stops working, but because you think all this stuff that you didn't need before you shouldn't need now. Old geezers don't want progress.
I'm sure I'll be the same way eventually. I'll have just retired from Supreme Court-hood and will say to all the young whippersnappers around me. "Automatic altitude adjustment on my flying car? But there are so many options to it... Do I want 'Wind Optimization'? And 'Nature Preservation'? Or maybe just 'Fuel Efficiency.' I just want to fly! You know, back in my day, we didn't have to make all these choices. There was manual and automatic, sure, and then hybrid, but nothing complicated like this..."
But I should bring up some examples, because I'm pretty sure we geezers-to-be don't understand the depth of old geezers' inability to use technology.
My mom had a conversation with my sister that brought it to my attention after my first post. "'Can you believe it?' she joked with Melanie. 'Will actually expects people to listen to a song on Youtube and read his version of the lyrics. At the same time.'"
I had hoped that everyone would understand tabbed browsing, so in one tab you're waiting for the New York Times to load and in another tab you're cruising Facebook to talk to friends you're friends with. But I hadn't considered that using two tabs at once could overwhelm someone. If it's just a problem of unfamiliarity, then all I have to say is that if you click on a link while you're holding "Ctrl" then the page will open in a new tab. But if it's a problem with capacity, then I have no solution.
If all you want to manage is one thing at a time, your browsing experience is so much different than mine. I feel lonely if I only have one tab up. My homepage used to start with four websites (accomplished by using the "|" sign between addresses in Firefox's homepage options). I routinely IM several people at a time while writing on people's wall, scrolling through the news, and reading the latest on a few blogs. With a Wikipedia tab up for convenience if I need to look something up.
Or look at my little joke about links at the top of this post. The savvy reader would see the words "many links to my blog," see that there were many links, and would assume (correctly) that they all linked to my blog. That's a joke, see, because all those links are redundant. It's also funny because so many links look like advertising, but it's useless to advertise your own website on your website. And if the savvy readers weren't sure, they would move the mouse over the links, notice that in the bottom of the browser they all pointed to the same website, and would also get the joke. And even if they didn't do that, they would hold Ctrl and open each one in a new tab, and then see that the tabs were all the same page.
But the old geezer, being adventurous enough to trek beyond the safety of one page, would click on the first link, be directed to the same page, and then be confused why it didn't work. After a few attempts, they would frustratingly be defeated until they got to this paragraph and lamented being old.
And all I can think of right now is that when I was in China, I learned the word for "generation gap." But I never learned how to say "exacerbated by technology." Maybe I should pull up another tab and google the translation.
But there's a fundamentally different problem I have to deal with, and that's the "old geezer" and "geezer-to-be" schism. I'm realizing that normal blogs, which geezers-to-be feel are an extension of the self (remember Xanga?), are not as intuitive for old geezers.
I have some theories about this. "Old" is when you're old enough that you think you shouldn't have to learn any more, and for anyone who turned old before the Internet came around, there's limited progress that can be made. Not because once you turn 65 or 70 or 90 that your brain stops working, but because you think all this stuff that you didn't need before you shouldn't need now. Old geezers don't want progress.
I'm sure I'll be the same way eventually. I'll have just retired from Supreme Court-hood and will say to all the young whippersnappers around me. "Automatic altitude adjustment on my flying car? But there are so many options to it... Do I want 'Wind Optimization'? And 'Nature Preservation'? Or maybe just 'Fuel Efficiency.' I just want to fly! You know, back in my day, we didn't have to make all these choices. There was manual and automatic, sure, and then hybrid, but nothing complicated like this..."
But I should bring up some examples, because I'm pretty sure we geezers-to-be don't understand the depth of old geezers' inability to use technology.
My mom had a conversation with my sister that brought it to my attention after my first post. "'Can you believe it?' she joked with Melanie. 'Will actually expects people to listen to a song on Youtube and read his version of the lyrics. At the same time.'"
I had hoped that everyone would understand tabbed browsing, so in one tab you're waiting for the New York Times to load and in another tab you're cruising Facebook to talk to friends you're friends with. But I hadn't considered that using two tabs at once could overwhelm someone. If it's just a problem of unfamiliarity, then all I have to say is that if you click on a link while you're holding "Ctrl" then the page will open in a new tab. But if it's a problem with capacity, then I have no solution.
If all you want to manage is one thing at a time, your browsing experience is so much different than mine. I feel lonely if I only have one tab up. My homepage used to start with four websites (accomplished by using the "|" sign between addresses in Firefox's homepage options). I routinely IM several people at a time while writing on people's wall, scrolling through the news, and reading the latest on a few blogs. With a Wikipedia tab up for convenience if I need to look something up.
Or look at my little joke about links at the top of this post. The savvy reader would see the words "many links to my blog," see that there were many links, and would assume (correctly) that they all linked to my blog. That's a joke, see, because all those links are redundant. It's also funny because so many links look like advertising, but it's useless to advertise your own website on your website. And if the savvy readers weren't sure, they would move the mouse over the links, notice that in the bottom of the browser they all pointed to the same website, and would also get the joke. And even if they didn't do that, they would hold Ctrl and open each one in a new tab, and then see that the tabs were all the same page.
But the old geezer, being adventurous enough to trek beyond the safety of one page, would click on the first link, be directed to the same page, and then be confused why it didn't work. After a few attempts, they would frustratingly be defeated until they got to this paragraph and lamented being old.
And all I can think of right now is that when I was in China, I learned the word for "generation gap." But I never learned how to say "exacerbated by technology." Maybe I should pull up another tab and google the translation.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Here's the Kick Off
Let's face it. I'm back from China and my mom and at least two other people have said that I should keep blogging. I did have a fantastically well-received blog (for a day at least), but I think it's more that blogging is just a hard habit to break. I still go through the day storing up anecdotes but don't have any release for them.
Nevertheless, there are some changes from my blog about being in China. The most notable from my side is that I will be able to actually visit my own blog. Something about America and freedom of expression. Other than that, though, is the fact that people in America speak English. And if I write about them, they can read it. So I have to be careful not to make knowing me a liability. (If I had a problem learning people's names before, I predict it's going to get worse, because now I'm going to be making up a lot of names.)
This blog, to be updated roughly every other day, is geared toward everyone. For convenience, I divide that into "old geezers" and "geezers-to-be." As a college student, I am a geezer-to-be, and if you haven't even heard of Numa Numa then you're an old geezer.
For us geezers-to-be, I will include pop culture references. But for the old geezers, I'll try to explain them. Did you catch the Relient K allusion? Not if you're not a real fan. (Alternate lyrics to Kick Off provided here:
Here's the kick off
Hope you're not sick of
Will's blogging way
Or all the posts he made
Cuz then you'll wanna click a different page!
(duhn duhn duhn dun, dun, boww)
I encourage you to sing along while listening to the YouTube'd version.)
Other housekeeping matters: I intend to import these blog entries as Facebook notes. When I do that, I won't know how many people read my blog because Facebook won't tell me how many people are just reading it on their site. But why have a smaller audience just so I can count the smallness? Comment to let me know you're there, because it makes me feel happy. And otherwise it's practically eavesdropping, and that's not polite. I'm willing to comment now, too. I don't know why I thought the narrator should be so haughty in my last blog.
I'll link to other people's blogs, and make it look less ugly. But not tonight. Right now I have some math proofs to do.
This is college life. Go Gators! And get excited, because Will has a blog.
Nevertheless, there are some changes from my blog about being in China. The most notable from my side is that I will be able to actually visit my own blog. Something about America and freedom of expression. Other than that, though, is the fact that people in America speak English. And if I write about them, they can read it. So I have to be careful not to make knowing me a liability. (If I had a problem learning people's names before, I predict it's going to get worse, because now I'm going to be making up a lot of names.)
This blog, to be updated roughly every other day, is geared toward everyone. For convenience, I divide that into "old geezers" and "geezers-to-be." As a college student, I am a geezer-to-be, and if you haven't even heard of Numa Numa then you're an old geezer.
For us geezers-to-be, I will include pop culture references. But for the old geezers, I'll try to explain them. Did you catch the Relient K allusion? Not if you're not a real fan. (Alternate lyrics to Kick Off provided here:
Here's the kick off
Hope you're not sick of
Will's blogging way
Or all the posts he made
Cuz then you'll wanna click a different page!
(duhn duhn duhn dun, dun, boww)
I encourage you to sing along while listening to the YouTube'd version.)
Other housekeeping matters: I intend to import these blog entries as Facebook notes. When I do that, I won't know how many people read my blog because Facebook won't tell me how many people are just reading it on their site. But why have a smaller audience just so I can count the smallness? Comment to let me know you're there, because it makes me feel happy. And otherwise it's practically eavesdropping, and that's not polite. I'm willing to comment now, too. I don't know why I thought the narrator should be so haughty in my last blog.
I'll link to other people's blogs, and make it look less ugly. But not tonight. Right now I have some math proofs to do.
This is college life. Go Gators! And get excited, because Will has a blog.
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