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.
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