things are cool

On gratitude

2011-12-20T00:23:00.000-08:00

A talk I wrote a few years ago that I just found. I rather liked it.

Topic

In keeping with today’s topic and the theme of the season, I will speak about gratitude. I pray for the spirit to help guide my remarks and also to help you not get bored.

Ten Lepers

I want to start by jumping in to the story of the ten lepers. Jesus enters into a small village, runs into ten lepers, and heals all ten. Only one thanks Jesus. The Savior responds: “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?”

This passage from the New Testament is probably the most quoted gratitude scripture. But why is it important? More specifically, why is it important that we understand the reaction of Jesus to the other “nine?” After all, this is the same Jesus that preached: “do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.”

Why did the same Jesus who refused to condemn the woman in adultery, in this case take pains to point out the ingratitude of the nine lepers? Did Jesus need the public recognition? Was he concerned about their private contrition? Did he want to point out that ingratitude was a sin in and of itself? More broadly speaking, why did Jesus emphasize the importance of gratitude? Why does God command us to be grateful?

Scriptural Basis

Book of Mormon and modern prophets also teach this commandment to be grateful.

Alma asks us to “… live in thanksgiving daily.”

The Lord through Joseph Smith asks us to do “…all things with prayer and thanksgiving….”

Also in the D&C, we learn that “…in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.”

The Lord makes the importance of gratitude clear. But why? Nephi teaches us that “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world….” What, then, is the key to understanding how gratitude helps us?

Definition

To take a step back, in terms of our daily experience, what is gratitude? Or, rather, when do we feel gratitude? I believe that we are likely to experience gratitude when we receive something that:
(1)we value
(2)is costly to the person who gives the gift
(3)is given with good intentions (for example, not predicated on reciprocity), and
(4)is given freely rather than out of a role-based obligation

If you apply this framework to the scriptures then the commandment to be grateful is really just an invitation:
(1)to value what God values,
(2)to “spend” or sacrifice what God spends and sacrifices,
(3)to develop God’s “good” intent (in other words, develop charity) and,
(4)to change our natures

Apply to Scriptures

The scriptures, which before seemed so strict and almost militant in commanding us to confess the hand of God in all things, take on new meaning. Let’s take three examples.

In the D&C we read that “… he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.” This is entirely logical. If we “receive all things with thankfulness” we will value those things that God values and in all situations strive to act as God would. If we do this, the Lord has promised that we will be joint heirs in his kingdom.

For another example, consider the Lord’s call to build a temple in D&C 97. Notice how the Lord explains what purpose a temple will serve in establishing Zion. [The temple is]:

13 … a place of thanksgiving for all saints, and … a place of instruction for all those who are called to the work of the ministry …;
14 That they may be perfected in the understanding of their ministry, in theory, in principle, and in doctrine, in all things pertaining to the kingdom of God on the earth….

You can interpret this explanation in a few ways. One way is that a temple has several purposes, one of which is as a place to give thanks. Another way is that a temple has a singular purpose—the salvation of Zion. Giving thanks, receiving instruction, and perfecting our understanding are all ways expressing this same purpose. Regardless of how you read the verse, how often do we explain the purpose of the temple as a place to give thanks?

If, however, we interpret God’s command to “give thanks in all things” as synonymous with the Savior’s invitation “to be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” then the role of the temple as a place of thanksgiving becomes clear. In the temple we learn about pre-mortal life, the creation, the fall, the resurrection, and the atonement. We learn about the nature of God and we make covenants to change our nature to become like His. We commit to sacrifice what he sacrificed (His everything), and learn to be obedient because of our love for Him. In short, we begin to value what he values, we better appreciate the cost of his sacrifice, and we learn of the benevolent intentions of our Father and our Savior.

Joseph Smith taught “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.” Combining these ideas, I think the Lord is telling us that it is in giving thanks that we truly come to understand ourselves.

For another example, consider Laman and Lemuel. According to our framework, when you give thanks for something you first learn how God would view that thing and then strive to view it in the same way. Murmuring is the opposite of giving thanks--you persist in your own view and refuse to find out the will of God.

The Book of Mormon describes the exhortations given to Laman and Lemuel as “… hard to be understood, save a man should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought.”

Later, Nephi writes “And thus Laman and Lemuel, … did murmur … because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them” (1 Ne. 2:12; see also Mosiah 10:14).

Laman and Lemuel became rebels instead of leaders because of their failure to understand either the character or the purposes of God. They did not understand, at least in part, because they were ungrateful.

Practical Application

Understanding gratitude as an invitation to become like God is certainly an interesting exercise. To some extent, this definition is self-serving. I was assigned to speak on gratitude and somehow found a way to conflate almost every other major gospel principle into it. But how will applying this framework help us to live the gospel? What practical application does it have? What does it change? Two examples I can think of.

First, it can change how we “count our blessings.” Personally, when I view giving thanks as a way to investigate the nature of God, the quantitative element in gratitude begins to subside. Counting or list making becomes less important. Motivation and consistency become more important. The Book of Mormon is a blessing. Check. I am thankful for the Book of Mormon. I prayed as much this morning. I express my gratitude by reading and applying the teachings of the Book of Mormon to become like God? Work in progress.

I am striving to replace the quantitative “count your blessings” model of gratitude with what Neal A Maxwell describes as “inventorying your insights.” If blessings are isolated data points then insights are the trends and messages those data convey. Am I “giving thanks” without becoming more like God? Where are the data points clustered? In the last ten years, when have I been the most blessed? What was I doing then? What can I change?

Henry B Eyring has his own method to count blessings--every day he writes a short journal entry responding to the question “How has the Lord blessed me today.” It is an excellent technique and I am not one to criticize it. But perhaps another way to phrase that question would be “How have I used my blessings to become more like God today?”

Second, it can change how we pray.

In D&C 46 the Lord through Joseph Smith says “…ye must give thanks unto God in the Spirit for whatsoever blessing ye are blessed with.” Notice the phrase “in the Spirit.”

Next, in John, the Lord says: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. Our wills and desires are more than just what we want, they also include what we value. Just like I can ask amiss, I can give thanks incorrectly. I am often too thankful--both in words and in action--for a job, an education, friends, a car, and an apartment. Are those the things God values most in my life?

In light of these scriptures and this framework, I can better understand that giving thanks is not merely a precursor to the main work of prayer--asking for forgiveness or pleading for blessings--but it is an essential method of communicating to my Father in Heaven that our wills truly are converging.

Conclusion

To summarize, gratitude is:
(1)to value what God values,
(2)to “spend” or sacrifice what God spends and sacrifices,
(3)to develop charity and,
(4)to change our natures

If we revisit the ten Lepers, this context can change our view of Christ’s reaction. With His ministry perhaps largely completed, ten lepers showed faith by lifting up their voices and saying “Master, have mercy on us.” He blessed all ten lepers with healing and a confirmation of their faith. Only one demonstrated that his faith was enduring, that he recognized the source of his blessing, and that he sought truly to become like God.

In this light, Christ’s rejoinder “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?” is not accusatory at all. Rather, perhaps the tone of the Savior’s response is similar to the Lord of vineyard in the allegory of the wild olive tree. After working fruitlessly for many, many seasons the Lord of the vineyard wept and asked his servant: “What more could I have done for my vineyard?”

I pray that we all, myself included, take advantage of our opportunities to give thanks to God and in doing so, become more like him. JC. Amen.

sleepy

2011-08-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

It's early, he murmured, and by this he meant, as became immediately apparent, that he still had time to punish himself for his frivolity in having exchanged obligation for devotion, the authentic for the false, the enduring for the transient.

That's from Jose Saramago, a Portugese Nobel laureate from a few years ago. Sadly, despite good intentions, I spent an evening exchanging the authentic for the false--i.e., I caught up on some TV instead of working on my model as I was supposed to.

I wanted to log on somewhere and leave some sort of cutting remark--the online equivalent of opening up a window and shouting at the world. But when everyone from my mom to my future employer has little bots scurrying about the web gathering bits and bytes, a random internet scream seems less relieving than it used to.

Instead, a quote, a musing, and off to bed. To bed I said. Did you know that Dr. Seuss is not pronounced the way we grew up pronouncing it? The correct pronunciation rhymes with voice, not loose. The more you know.... (Also, four periods is the proper way to shorten a sentence with an elipsis while at the same time ending a thought). However, I wonder if putting punctuation outside of "quotation marks", such as the example I just made, applies to thoughts in parens. The fads of punctuation seem quite ephemeral. But I should at least consistently apply that fad. Hopefully I will in the future. And yes, I mean I definitely will do so in a hopeful way, not that I may possibly do so in an adjective-less manner.

I am quite pleased with myself, despite the unbalanced parallelism that I began that last paragraph with. I am not supposed to end with a with, but it sounded more natural than "despite the unbalanced parallelsim with which I began that last paragraph". Perhaps the awkwardness of both constructions indicates that I need to shake things up a bit. "Despite beginning the last paragraph with an unbalanced parallel structure, I am quite please with myself" seems like a better option, but one that clearly shows I rewrote it three times. I guess that is the paradox--writing that looks effortless comes out after the 11th or 12th draft, while effortless writing looks like the 11th or 12th draft of a tortured legal contract. Anything in between is sad. It's sad because a whole generation of know-it-all whipper snappers have tried to emulate skilled writers like Wallace or Eggers and move in and out of different layers of the text, but fail to highlight anything new or different. Instead, they are stuck in endless, selfish recursion.

SF Timelapse

2011-08-04T14:15:00.001-07:00

Rando Timelapse

2011-08-04T14:11:00.001-07:00

LA Timelapse

2011-08-04T14:09:00.001-07:00

Good Content

2011-07-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

When I am running, cleaning, or driving I often listen to talks and speeches of various sorts to keep me occupied and, hopefully, to make me a little smarter. This post is really just rewording an email I sent to a friend telling him that I uploaded some files that we had talked about.

The Moth: website, podcast link; zipped full archive here; 10-20 minute stories told live by “professional” story-tellers (everyone from academics to comedians).
SALT: website, podcast link; archive from podcast link, or zipped partial archive here; 60-90 minute speeches that fit in with the title “Seminars About Long-term Thinking”, with long-term meaning the next 10,000 years.
On the Media: website, podcast link; archive from podcast link; 50 minute meta-news--news about the news including media, media coverage, media bias, conflicts of interest, etc.
Maxwell: from lds and byu speeches; (almost) all spoken and written talks zipped here.
Eyring: from lds and byu speeches; (almost) all spoken and written talks zipped here.
Mormon Stories: website, podcast link; selected episodes here; hundreds of interviews with Mormons of all stripes, some pushing their own agenda and biases a lot more forcefully than others, lots of chaff but some grain.

EDIT: Updated the links so they aren't broken. Files uploading overnight, may be a while until they are all online.

Mesmerizing

2011-07-05T11:02:00.001-07:00

Not on the promotional site

2011-06-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

They won't tell you that having a mask that keeps positive pressure on your mouth all night long can, in effect, pressurize your digestive tract. Yeah, that's right, I swallow air, and because the pressure is constant for hours, I wake up with a huge belly full of inflated guts. Sort of funny, sort of uncomfortable.

They are going Mach 11...

2011-06-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

...according to Wired.

The Believer - Interview with Jonathan Haidt

2011-06-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

So I think moral judgment is ubiquitous. Not as ubiquitous as aesthetic judgments. As we walk around the world we see many beautiful and ugly things. But we don’t deliberate about them. We just see things as beautiful or ugly. My claim is that moral judgment is very much like aesthetic judgment. In fact, whenever I’m talking with philosophers who are trying to get me to clarify what I’m saying, if I ever feel confused, I just return to aesthetic judgment, and that saves me. I think whatever is true of aesthetic judgment is true of moral judgment, except that in our moral lives we do need to justify, whereas we don’t generally ask others for justifications of aesthetic judgments.

The Believer - Interview with Jonathan Haidt

The baby bullet

2011-05-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

2011-05-23T16:26:00.001-07:00

2011-05-19T17:53:00.001-07:00

Can't nobody hold me down...

2011-05-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Even though eight people sent me emails yesterday, just to clutter up my email inbox. I still rule.

Inbox Zero

2011-05-17T17:21:00.001-07:00

I love these texts from the stanford emergency system

2011-05-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

From the Stanford Police:

On Saturday, May 14 at 7:17pm, shots were fired in the Lagunita parking lot. No one was injured. Police currently have possible suspects detained. An outstanding suspect is described as being a black male, 18-20 years of age, with a slender build and long dreadlocks, possibly armed with a silver hand gun.
The motivation for the shooting is unknown at this time.

As of 8:25pm, police are still investigating the matter and consider it to be active. The Stanford Community is urged to take precautions when walking on campus.

When did keith start filming bears?

2011-05-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

I swear Keith looks the same as this documentary film maker, Chris Morgan. His blog here. He narrated a Nature documentary on bears.

Keith

Chris Morgan

100x funnier in german

2011-05-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

See.

Werner Herzog

2011-05-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

He's great. Some excerpts from this:

A journalist writing on the Internet when I did the film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and David Lynch was the executive producer. And it said, beautifully, 'The potentially insane David Lynch is finally teaming up with the certified insane Werner Herzog.'

The last half century, almost every single important cultural trend and technological trend originated from California—like computers, like the free-speech movement, like accepting gay and lesbian people as an integral part of society...on and on and on. Los Angeles, he likes to tell people, is the only city in America with any real substance.

Sign painters in nyc

2011-05-01T00:35:00.001-07:00

Somehow, I think this is filmed in Mar Vista

2011-05-01T00:29:00.001-07:00

Obama @ correspondents dinner

2011-04-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

Funny points:

- Obama birth video @ 3:00
- remark @ 4:07
- matt damon @ 6:02
- npr @ 7:02
- paul ryan @ 7:47
- mitt romney @ 9:15
- donald trump @ 9:40

I like finding sub-sub-themes on youtube, like apple store music vids

2011-04-20T01:19:00.000-07:00

The one I found first.

Then I found these:

Some movies that look sweet

2011-04-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

A guy sues the devil for $8 trillion and he shows up.

We find another earth.

Tree of life.

Super long, but very interesting

2011-04-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

He is basically describing me:

"High levels of triglycerides indicate a high level of 'bad' LDLs [as opposed to neutral LDLs and good HDLs] is a strong predictor of heart disease." I am going to have a heart attack.

Also this video

2011-04-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to friend Liam for the link. It's ironic, I think, but I like it still. Bought the song.

T-rex is also good-ish.

Apple store couldn't handle his pretty boy swag...

2011-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mesmerizing

2011-04-13T14:34:00.001-07:00

Every unicode character in every language, roughly 1000 characters per minute, or 5 characters for every 3 seconds.

Guatemala looks to be a dangerous place

2011-04-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

New Yorker article here.

Rodrigo Rosenberg knew that he was about to die. It wasn’t because he was approaching old age—he was only forty-eight. Nor had he been diagnosed with a fatal illness; an avid bike rider, he was in perfect health. Rather, Rosenberg, a highly respected corporate attorney in Guatemala, was certain that he was going to be assassinated.

Origin of the video:

Earlier that Monday, Rosenberg’s funeral had been held, at the same cemetery where Marjorie was buried. Colom was in a meeting when he was interrupted by Gustavo Alejos, his private secretary. Alejos had received a call from a friend alerting him that something surreal had just happened at the funeral—something with implications for the entire government. Alejos called his cousin, a government minister who had been one of Rosenberg’s closest friends. The cousin, who had attended the ceremony, reported that Eduardo Rosenberg had given a eulogy and played a recording of “El Salvador Blues,” by Santana. Then Luis Mendizábal had stood up and addressed the hundreds of mourners: “Everybody here loved Rodrigo Rosenberg, and all of you are wondering why someone like Rodrigo, who couldn’t hurt anyone, was killed.” He paused, then said, “Well, Rodrigo left me with the answer.” He explained that Rosenberg had given him a video, with instructions to release it only if he was murdered. Mendizábal offered a CD to anyone who was interested.

Read the article, it is even crazier than you think.

I would rock out to this

2011-04-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

parody of:

and I know, this is all old news, so what....

On a whim, I decided to take flying lessons

2011-03-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Bathing with a horse, I want to see this movie

2011-03-21T08:25:00.001-07:00

OCD cookies

2011-03-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

I completely copied Ikea's cookbook, but I made some good cookies. I put in some vanilla pudding mix to stir things up.

Apparently, Amazon doesn't carry church materials

2011-03-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Speak up!

2011-03-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, how to write a thesis like shy ronnie.

How to write a thesis like a boss

2011-03-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

First off, you need to wear some preppy brown shoes like a boss.

Then, read the WSJ like a boss.

Next, go out to breakfast like a boss and have pancakes, eggs, and diet coke like a boss.

Then, when the table next to you is trying to figure out who plays Jack on 30 Rock, you interrupt them like a boss and say: No, not Emilio Estevez, Alec Baldwin.

Make sure you do your commute like a boss--ie, leave the house to go out to eat, and then come back to your living room to work.

Now, I am blogging like a boss, as a close substitute for talking over the water cooler like a boss.

Then pour a tall glass of caffeine free diet coke like a boss who's aware of his caffeine problem, and start your day.

Finally, be bossy.

Second Wind

2011-03-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Weekend was productive and I made a lot of progress on my thesis. I am almost excited about working on it this week. I think the big change was that I contacted a number of lawyers and investors who work in the area I am researching and I am talking to them about the tentative conclusions of my work. They actually get it, and care.

Ha

2011-03-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Don't mess with Libyans

2011-03-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

I love this guy

2011-03-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

Found him off of this:

Documentary

2011-03-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

Did I ever tell my loyal readership about the mini-documentary I was in last year? Friend of the blog, Jenni, made it. Called Night Awake. (Password to view it is title of the film: nightawake.) It made it into the Big Sky Film Festival in Montana.

I have taken to staying in bed until my house warms up

2011-03-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

Well also because I hate coming out of my bedroom and facing the damage I did the night before. Remind me to never work from home for an extended period.

Gloomy day today. This was what our winter "snow storm" looked like last weekend--when all the weather guys said we would get snow in the bay area. Instead, I got Microsoft Generic Screensaver weather. But this is one of my regular running routes, quite like it.

An event that my little dress / tie company went to...

2011-03-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

The Hill-Side S/S '11 Preview from The Hill-Side on Vimeo.

I need to find my happy place--here it is.....

2011-02-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

I think the marginal increase to my happiness from each animal would be:

hound dog: 37%
orangutan: 52%
orangutan (w/ life preserver): an additional 7%
african elephant: 83%

Of course happiness scales geometrically with all these different animal interactions (add in some nth dimensional matrices), so take the natural log of both axes, run some greeks, and I am approximately 16,000% happier with a margin of error of Texas.

Also, I just ate an entire box of cereal for dinner.

This is how working felt today....

2011-02-28T22:06:00.001-08:00

Fog

2011-02-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

Fog is what I feel like I am in--I am sure five donuts and a double double for lunch have something to do with it. I tend to eat poorly when I am working hard. I guess I have a finite amount of will power and I can only use it for certain things. I think I read that somewhere.

All I really wanted to do is to get my fingers moving, to see if I can start writing here and carry over to my thesis. I also have a post that I was working on that compared my ipad to a girlfriend--in that I grope around underneath the covers in the dark looking for her when I wake up each morning. Just kidding--I almost never wake up in the dark.

It's Time For A Puppy Break

2011-02-24T11:30:00.001-08:00

Now back to work.

Really though...

2011-02-23T15:36:00.000-08:00

I guess I just need advice from some of my female readers. Or male readers. I got dressed to go out this morning and apparently I was just a little bit perky. What do you do about this? Just roll with it? Do I get a training bro?

I am really going to use these breakup lines next time...

2011-02-22T12:44:00.001-08:00

Makes me almost want to have a kid...

2011-02-22T08:41:00.000-08:00

But then I remember that I don't sign or play the guitar. Then my kid would just parrot what I do--which is make cynical remarks. Man, annoying. I am sticking with my plan to get a Roomba.

Also love hot chip's vid

2011-02-21T14:45:00.001-08:00

Here

Love Ratatat...

2011-02-21T14:41:00.001-08:00

... Although I don't own anything Prada, still a neat campaign.

New Awkward Research

2011-02-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

I picked up some new tips on how to make situations awkward. So there are three types of relationships:

- dominance, ie, boss--employee
- communality, ie, we're all buds here
- reciprocity, ie, the back-scratching cliche

So, what makes situations awkward is where you use a set of terms appropriate for one type of relationship in a different type of relationship. Acting extra-dominant as a house-guest at a dinner party would just be sort of a dick move. But offering to pay for dinner as a sign of appreciation at that same dinner party--that seems perfect.

Btw, I am going to use "would you like to see my etchings" much more frequently.

Sundays

2011-02-20T15:36:00.000-08:00

Sundays are good because I feel less guilty that I am not working on my thesis. Made some Indian food, including chapatis, 30 minutes of meditation on my rug, a pot of mint tea, and settling down with a copy of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." Color me full of new-age BS, but I just feel that I needed to spend some time working on my heart chakra....

Best Chat of the Day

2011-02-18T15:38:00.000-08:00

Ben: well, ...I do like the blog!

me: well, i am flattered that you like my self-centered half-assed attempts at wit of a blog.

Ben: Karl, if I didn't like self-centered half-assed attempts at wit, we wouldn't be friends. that's what I like the most about myself, after all

me: i miss you beng. you bring out the best in me, ie, what most other people consider the worst.

I love the onion -- "news without mercy"

2011-02-18T15:24:00.000-08:00

Keep your kids away from 'toping:

Report Finds Troubling Rise In Teen Uranium Enrichment

Snowlocaust:

Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation's Idiots

Teenage white girl to be tried as black adult male:

Judge Rules White Girl Will Be Tried As Black Adult

Democrats support Palin out of morbid curiosity:

Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin

And my all-time absolute favorite:

In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

My napping house--where everyone is terrified and exhausted

2011-02-17T21:25:00.000-08:00

Man, I don't know how to express how difficult sleeping is for me. Even when I do get to sleep (like I did just now for a short nap), I have such vivid dreams that I have no idea where reality is. It is only a slight overstatement to say that every time I fall asleep I feel like I am about to be incepted by Leo DiCaprio. I have dreams within dreams and no idea which level is reality.

For example, I dreamed that I was taking a nap in the basement of our old midvale house, but was woken up because I found rings and babies. Then Hester comes into the room I am sleeping in to speak with an airline agent who is in my room making travel plans. Then I keep saying, like this kid, "Is this reality now?"

But next, we are upstairs in a living room next to a fire and we are singing Christmas carols. Except instead of Christmas carols we sing several versas of Eternal Flame. Where did that come from? Then I keep shifting like I am dreaming about singing bangles when I am actually down in the basement, but both of those scenarios are untrue.

Anyway, I am already losing all the detail of the dream. But this stuff is exhausting. And the Bangles? Really? Who is in my head designing an incepted universe where the Bangles are sung religiously at christmas? I am scared to sleep.

Time for a break

2011-02-17T15:53:00.000-08:00

Come down out of the library and get a break from my computer and writing and caffeine free diet pepsi by sitting on a cold bench, blogging, and drinking diet coke. The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same. I think that quote must be screwed up somewhere.

Also, I don't know if you guys are current on the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (which is completely thrown out in writing this blog):

Names ending with an “eez” sound
Names like Xerxes or Euripides now form the possessive in the usual way—with an apostrophe s. (When these forms are spoken, however, the additional s is generally not pronounced.) 7.18

So I guess we now write Jesus's instead of Jesus'. Seems like an awfully cheeky thing for a language to do--making Jesus possessive. I don't trust those Chicagoans--look what kind of TV they make: http://facesofthelastseasonofoprah.tumblr.com/

Up at 9 AM!

2011-02-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

As sad as that sounds, it is a significant accomplishment for me. Granted, I am usually up "working" until 2 AM, but I am usually an 1130 kind of guy. Oh yeah, and "working" means researching some topic that I am not supposed to--last night it was origins of several Chinese characters.

But I am up at 9, met with missionaries at my house. I could have played both sides of the appointment line by line before they even showed up. Why am I so cynical? But, yeah, two Utah boys getting to know me cycled through all of the questions. I didn't make it easy on them--I made sure that they led the conversation. When I was finished with one question I would just look at them, waiting for them to make the next move. There would be an awkward 3 second silence and then another softball.

Both of them had the missionary cadence down. "And (neutral tone) I (neutral tone) know (slow rising tone and then pause) that (neutral tone) Joseph (neutral) Smith (slow rising tone and then pause).... It's mildly interesting that somehow the MTC inculcates this testimony tone into almost every missionary. da da DUM pause da da DUM. What is that? Anapestic I think.

Most insulting, they didn't appreciate my humor--when they asked me who should give the prayer I told them to rock-paper-scissor that decision. Kind of a blank stare and then one volunteered.

Anyway, I am in the library with 5 cans of caffeine free diet pepsi ready to knock some work out.

How Bad Is It?

2011-02-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

Well, bad enough that I have had this song on repeat as I have been writing for the past few hours.

I'm not proud of it. And I am going to have to go back through and edit so much on what I have written--I am throwing in some very sarcastic barbs about Chinese Ministry of Finance officials and People's Bank of China circulars. Burn.

You remember my big shopping trip?

2011-02-16T20:03:00.000-08:00

Turns out I didn't need to stock up on all of those things. For about the past year, most of my day-to-day interaction with real live people takes place at stores. I was feeling lonely (roommate is traveling for three weeks) so I went to Whole Foods to buy dinner. I gave $4 to a homeless man in the parking lot and $1 to a guy at the cashier who didn't have enough. Please, I tell them, please, I will pay you to talk to me.

Bieb Fiev

2011-02-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

Well, about 24 hours have past and I can say that my house is much much cleaner, but my thesis has made no progress while I have been busy tidying things up. Of course, I decided to do some cleaning of my house the day before the maid comes.

Also, I have been obsessed with the Bieb ever since I saw his new movie, which was a lot of fun.

His movie trailer:

64 Liters

2011-02-15T20:26:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, I have been farting around with my thesis for a long time. There are just so many loose ends that I don't want to tie up because it is boring and tedious and hard. But I am newly recommitted.

I keep trying these very sensible approaches to getting my work done--scheduling, setting aside time each day, making very reasonable goals. So instead, I think I will do what I do best--and just go way overboard.

Now that I look back on the last ten years--a lot of the stuff I got done at college and at work involved prolonged suffering. So I went out and bought 64 liters of Diet Coke and decided that I will basically do nothing but work until I collapse into a immune-compromised heap sometime around Monday. No real deadline, just want to get this done and will give it the big push.

Speaking of hearkening back to yesteryear, do you remember the good old days of blogging? Back when basically no one did anything remotely like blogging. Instead, a bunch of pubescent girls and concave-chested teen boys vomited their thoughts and feelings online into an unreadable mess of teen angst? Yeah, I am going to channel that. I am reclaiming this blog for what it should be--stream of consciousness update on my never-ending misery and self-torture that is my thesis.

My supply--when this runs out, I better be done:

Mustache Bugars

2011-01-23T23:55:00.000-08:00

I have a cold and I am seriously considering shaving my moustache. It's impossible to blow your nose and not have it end up in bugar-cicles on your face.

I used some of my airline miles the other day to subscribe to the WSJ. I was reading some debate on climate change in one section. (Here and here) By the way, an interesting note about www.wsj.com. If you navigate through their site, some stories are locked. But if you find a story you like and then search for the exact title through google.com (a copy paste job) then you will be linked to the story that is unprotected. It turns out they are try to game readers--letting people coming off google read it for free, but people coming through their site have to pay.

Sprawled out on the floor was another section talking about some terribly lame sounding move Bank of America made to try and eek more out of its crappy investment in the subprime boom.

The back and forth rambling of the debate on climate change was only mildly interesting--both sides throwing up strawman arguments trying to capture the moral high ground. But one hypothetical caught my eye. In response to a critique of valuing the output of a human life in the developed verses the developing world, one guy asked: "Do we really value all human life the same? If so, then we should build all our new hospitals in the developing world."

Nothing gets me going like cynicism in print--particularly cynicism in a conservative paper with the picture of a fat, jowly banker from BoA trying to squeeze blood from their rock of bad loans.

But the real questions I thought was this: what if your salary is an index of how morally reprehensible your job is? Just for a thought experiment, say it's true. Some things start to make sense. Teachers are paid very little because it is pretty easy to defend the profession. Yeah, rising generation..., so important..., vital to our national character..., etc. But when you are at a dinner party, you feel pretty good when you can say you teach little boys and girls how to read Dr. Seuss books or how to do differential equations.

Manual labor--that's low paid because it is so defendable. I moved those rocks because they were in the way and so you owe me some money.

But bankers, they have a crap job these days--money is imaginary, so no real work is ever really done. In fact, it's such a morally repugnant job that it has to be split up into various silos so that it is hard for the people who truly understand what the system is doing to ever do anything about it.

In a sense, we, as a society, are paying those bankers hush money. Those bankers are doing what we want--build me new ipods rather than building poor people a hospital. We pay smart men and women to convince us of the necessity of using resources to create luxuries for ourselves rather than utilities for others.

You have to quiet all those inner voices that try to say that it's a matter of economics or the law of the natural harvest, or whatever it is that you have come to embrace as an excuse to avoid doing more self-less good things. I am not trying to get you to change your point of view, just maybe see the world more cynically for a bit. Maybe we just can't handle the truth.

Christmas

2010-12-27T23:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is about, but i like it

2010-12-16T11:38:00.001-08:00

All it takes is 15' of velcro

2010-12-07T00:43:00.000-08:00

First off, let's just remember this is a judgement free zone. This week, I had another hard drive failure. Brings my life total to four (hard drive) failures. Non-HD failures are strictly for my therapist Ron. Although, I imagine I should probably show him a picture of this OCD creation.

This is really the culmination of collecting computer parts since 2003. Those HD failures were more like HD corruptions--once I took them out of whatever computer they failed on and wiped them clean, they still worked. But I usually had a newer, bigger HD installed.

So yeah, six HDs, four ipods, two camera chargers, two card readers, two powered USB hubs, one old laptop, and one garmin watch. The back of that board is mess of cables. The hanger on top is so that it can hang in my closet--no other space.

But I am quite proud of my little hack. The laptop was basically broken, so I wiped it and installed Linux. The keyboard is broken so there is only input via the one working USB port. So to get around that, I disabled the 'close on shutting lid' setting and installed a remote desktop control app. The goal is to just stick it in the closet and control it via my mac.

All the other HDs are networked together to show up as a giant network attached storage thing via my wireless network. when I do need to sync, i just plug my laptop into one USB cable and it should sync all the ipods, watches, and cards.

Craving

2010-11-29T00:19:00.000-08:00

I woke up from my long after-church nap and all I wanted was some beef-noodle soup like I had in Taiwan on rainy days. Five hours later, after dirtying the entire kitchen, voila!

PS, I also made these:

I Call It Solid Chocolate Nut Banana Apple Loaf

2010-11-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

made some banana bread, grandpa kerksiek style: didn't have enough bananas, used plantains; not enough butter, used applesauce; started baking for 7 minutes but forgot the eggs, so pulled out pans, threw everything back in the bowl, added eggs, mixed thoroughly, sprayed a new layer of pam over the crusty pans--voila! should be good.

The software our ancestors use (mirrors to eternity)

2010-11-20T00:40:00.000-08:00

Anyway, my new web cam is actually a document camera, sort of a cheap one. It is supposed to take good macro shots, and I think it is pretty respectable. I found that I write a lot of notes on scraps of paper or in books or on receipts. One way to manage all of that is to just take a picture of the note, drag it into Evernote, and, voila, I have organized that thing and can use computars to finish up the task.

Timelapse

2010-11-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

It's my new thing. Here is one I tried to hack together with a point and shoot:

But here is one that sort of inspired me even to try:

Just have to remember Ira's advice:

One of the cooler docs I have seen lately...

2010-11-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

Your braces...What about them.... I'm all about them...

2010-11-04T00:48:00.000-07:00

Close, but not quite

2010-11-02T03:07:00.000-07:00

My Thesis Hideaway

2010-10-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Random Magazine

2010-10-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

I was at Barnes and Noble, or some other nameless mega-chain big-box soulless struggling retailer, and looking for Wallpaper. No luck. So I picked up a random magazine called Dansk that looked like it was weird and printed on thick glossy paper. The magazine bills itself as the worlds most independent fashion magazine--which is I guess the sort of claim that you make when no one will read you at all.

But what I found inside was--how to describe it?--I guess it was fun. In the editorial to this quarter's issue, a chatty gay fashionisto (male fashionista?) introduces you to a magazine that he appears to write as an inside joke for his friends. It's as if Dave Eggers were covering the fashion beat, but only so he could attend outrageous parties. Anyway, I thought I would include the editorial of my new friend Uffe Buchard. Besides his great name, I think he actually makes a cogent argument that a lot of fashion is just faddish and boring. (Although he editorial gravitas it is undercut by a model on the next paige with sea-green crimped hair.)

* * *

Mr Boss Speaks

So, what's new? Who's the new model? The new designer? Any hot new photographers? Is mustard the new colour? I hate it, but it's the new thing, you know. Can we shut up for a second and pause please? Sorry, but this constant obsession with The New can get a bit much, even for those of us who've been fully and willingly submerged in fashion for years. It's not the fact that fashion's entire being is centered on the new that has suddenly stabbed me in the back -- on the contrary, that's the element of fashion which continues to make the industry irrestible. It's just that this constant and uncritical pursuit of the new is so damn wrong for this moment in time. Or perhaps we've just grown wiser? Might that be the case...? Perhaps this new sentiment has to do with experince -- and something as awful, boring, and lacking in adventure as the word 'sensible.' Is it even possible for sensible to be a buzzword?

Because, let's face it, how many new so-called "amaaaazing" models (they're Meisel's new darlings, you know) have we not been force-fed? And it's usually not a pleasant experience. Besides, what can one ask of a 15-year old Russian virgin when one doesn't exactly hold a degree in teen education? How many times haven't we praised a new designer on the sole basis of one measly so-so amazing collection, knowing full well that the difficulty lies in creating a style you can build upon and make coherent, season after season? How many times have we said no to experienced photographers because the fresh new names more alluring and promised us the world? ONly it just so happens they can't seem to work from a brief... And hey, weren't they meant to actually send you the images as well? And what about mustard yellow? Come on. That colour has never looked good on anyone.

Has it suddenly become hip to be honest and critical, to take responsibility and to be well-behaved? Has being a grown-up perhaps become modern? The imminent future will show whether this new awareness is but another fad. But something tells me that these things are actually happening on a larger scale. The lifestyle we currently aspire towards is completely different than the one we sought after two years ago. My editorial team and I are suddenly more interested in an ascetic sort of life, where everything isn't about more, more, more but rather about the undiluted essence of life. A life where Puritanism is a new religion. A life that's about living a more pure and honest version of life. We forsake bullshit, extreme youth worshipping, and uncritical celebration of newness for a life governed by modesty in all its shapes and forms.

As a mega-consumer and communicator of The New in fashion you want to ask the following relevant question: how can you be so engulfed and interested in all that's new and yet feel distanced from it at the same time? Can the two even coexist? Fashion is driven by waves of new, and thus it has probably already--and probably unconsciously and within its usual superficial interpretation of things--made up its mind. Look at the older and more rounded models on the runways. Look at grown-up collections such as Celeine, Chloe, and Stella McCartney. Pay attention to the way they subtract rather than add and how mountains of irrelevant newness have been replaced by quality and style. There's a sense of peace in fashion now. A new direction which has already taken root in our minds and in a new and exciting chapter of fashion, all in the name of modesty.

Fifth Time

2010-10-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth time in the past week or so that I have started up blogger and wrote several false-start sentences. I usually type for about 10 minutes and then delete everything I wrote. No one is the wiser.

I can give everyone an update though. Key things that have happened in the last week:

-- The TV is still, annoyingly, in double letter box picture viewing mode. So the 35 inch TV is really kind of about 20-something inches.

-- The hose on my CPAP machine ripped, so I have switched to nose strips until a replacement arrives.

-- Speaking of my CPAP machine, I have not been using distilled water in the humidifier and so mineral deposits are building in one of the units.

-- The various books that I ordered from Amazon arrived on time and exactly as their 12 followup emails predicted.

-- I finally got around to taking off a lot of the films that were in my Netflix queue. I mean, sure, I wanted to watch Tokyo Gore Police but I just never got around to it.

-- I bought a typewriter.

-- I ripped two pages out of two different magazines at the hair salon, but I will probably never track down the items in the pictures that I thought I for sure needed.

-- I switched off all the lights in my house except for the overhead spot lamp at the table, to increase the dramatic mood in my living room.

-- I still favor graph paper over regular lined paper.

-- I brewed a pot of mint tea last night. It was OK.

-- I find Eurasian Crossroads to be a very informative history of Central Asia from pre-history to modern times.

-- (An aside, the Silk Road, it turns out, was much less a precise route and more realistically a vast network of commercial exchange linking India with Mongolia and China with Europe.)

-- I had pizza tonight even though I am lactose intolerant and will probably regret it at four tomorrow morning.

-- Even though I own two books by John Hodgeman, and may be imitating his style in this post to some degree, I rarely laugh when I read them. In fact, I can't really stand reading them.

-- I will probably finish this post soon and then read in bed for a while.

Stand Up Economist

2010-10-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is probably my favor stand up comedian ever:

Some new stuff:

Bacon

2010-10-05T13:47:00.001-07:00

Ward Campout

2010-10-05T00:15:00.000-07:00

I have lived in one place too long. After two years of ducking and diving, the powers that be finally figured out the only way for me to attend a church event for which I am clearly too cool is to assign me to run part of it. So with my friend Chris we recreated this TED talk with with 16 groups in 4 sessions at a ward campout. It was actually sort of fun and there is a site that basically does everything for you.

Chris, with our winning tower. (Don't let the good ole Idaho boy outfit fool you, when you are stopped at Immigration because real-time computerized micro-facial analysis tells the dull TSA-er behind the counter that you are lying to him, that will be his technology.)

Stuttering

2010-10-02T00:22:00.000-07:00

As a child, I stammered quite a bit when I spoke. Jacob, bless his little heart, would always remind me of that. I still stutter if I get particularly excited or engaged in a topic. Anyway, just a way of introducing some Oscar bait that looks good.

Wake Up -- John Legend & Roots

2010-09-27T21:12:00.001-07:00

Oliver Stone on Autopilot

2010-09-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Saw the remake of Wall Street (trailer) the other weekend. Oliver Stone is just re-making caricatures of his old movies. The original nailed both the zeitgeist of the late 80s and the mechanics of how people actually made money. The remake is a boring sort of drama that just happens to be loosely tied to a series of financial events that are in themselves only partially based on a number of conflated financial excesses. Everything is sloppy and pretty boring. They make Fed meetings look like something out of the Godfather and crazy old men are whistling like birds. Just sort of weird.

But, you know man, like, whatever, you know? My favorite line is the line from JP Morgan / Goldman CEO to Shia LeBeouf, after he has flown on a helicopter to upstate New York to meet his boss and race motorcycles on an old country road: "Look, there is no emotion in the mentor-mentee relationship!." I've taken to screaming that at my roommate whenever I see him.

Did you know that last post was my 444th post?

2010-09-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Sweet, I know.

This video is quite cliche, but it's pop, and it's Nelly, and it's *ugghh,* *uggghhhh,* *uggghhhh*.

The Education Con Game

2010-09-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

Maybe it is just time for me to leave school, but this is how my school seems to be engaged in an elaborate con game. The only reason that it doesn't violate ethical standards is because the con is so transparent. This game is a con in the original sense--establish and maintain confidence in the institution.

The con isn't one-sided though. Really, it's more of a mutual exploitation at all levels--undergrads, grads, researchers, professors, and headliners. The deal is you get access to the elite school brand to splash around your resume, your conference, your paper, your business card. The elite brand will make some pretty rigorous demands of you, but it won't demand as much as outsiders think. In general, it is a very easy life. You live in great housing with outstanding facilities with your friends that the administration has already certified with a base level of ~~intelligence~~ ability to jump through academic hoops.

The administration is sitting on billions in an endowment that is kept away from the tax man and chooses which slightly used buildings to demolish in order to make way for a new gleaming glass and steel altars to the modern education gods. Undergrads spend their lunches and dinners enthralled by conversations about how busy everyone is. Non-PhD grads are the cash cows--two years, get them in and out, let undergrads take their classes to feel special, include a high proportion of foreigners who you can totally stiff on financial aid. Don't worry, their governments are probably funding them anyway and they will splash that elite brand all over the world for you.

Professional schools are basically in a game of roulette--screen for well connected people, let them group together under the elite brand, and eventually some will rise to the top. Then hit those CEOs for another $400MM business school addition. Basically, they are the vanity license plates of the billionaire crowd. If they don't have money, then at least provide a revolving door back to Washington or Wall St. Even treasury secretaries need to have a believable stamp on their resume to justify the time they are taking off.

PhD students fall into two camps--humanities and sciences. Humanities, generally, get screwed. They will throw you $20k a year to live on, maybe. Suffer through 7 years here and then go teach at a community college in Ohio. Sciences have it better, sort of. Headliner professors (the ones with Nobel potential) try to construct a profitable little fiefdom--try to lure a lot of smart people who come with outside funding. Accept some people you will have to fund, but don't let them graduate too quickly. You will get a lot more bang for your buck out of an 8th year PhD student than a 2nd year n00b. Hire a lab manager to oversee all of your minions. But your own mini brand on grant proposals--your research days are over, your job is to make it rain $100 bills and play golf on conferences.

But the administration does such a good job branding, that applicants at every level fall all over themselves to be cannon fodder for the self-preserving system. Really, it seems sort of ridiculous. Education prices have outpaced inflation by almost double for more than twenty years.

But here I am attending a school propped up by federal research money, seated on a tax-free perpetual endowment, that charges me fees that need to be paid for with unbankruptable debt that is also backstopped by the federal government. That's all fine. My job is to go around and exploit my affiliation with this school to the greatest extent possible. Hey everyone, haven't you seen the marketing? I went to awesome, therefore I am awesome.

I Want to See More Videos Like This

2010-09-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

An Incomplete Defense of Real Books

2010-09-23T00:48:00.000-07:00

Like every other quarter, I placed a huge order for some books on Amazon. I could just borrow most of the books (they are on reserve, sometimes online, and sometimes available on the Kindle). But there are still some reasons I like physical books:

Cheap -- you can pick up almost any classic novel online for less than a dollar. If you wait, you can purchase most books for less than $10.
Durable -- I wouldn't take my iPad to the beach or in the bathtub or throw it in my gym bag
Long-lived -- how many computer files from the 1980s do you have? As the geeks over at slashdot point out, storing digital data for the long-term is almost impossible.
Purchase once -- how many times have baby boomers purchased The Beatles? Vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, mp3 track? Somehow, I don't think any company will be particularly keen to let you upgrade to a new format for free.

Some other things that I like about the physicality of books:

They are their own reminders -- one of the things I find hardest about e-books is remembering what it is I want to read. A book by my bedside, however, functions as its own reminder.
Notes in margins -- better, by far, than any other highlighting system on e-books.
Speed of reading -- when I am really trying to digest a book fast, I keep a book mark in the end notes, a book mark in the table of contents, dash through page after page, and will sometimes read in multiple different places at once.
You can judge a book by its cover.
You can make a library -- 20 feet of books is impressive (I've read all of those!) in a way that 20 gigs of books is not (I downloaded all of those because they were free and I thought, yeah, maybe I will be on a flight or something and have my iPad and can read the Count of Monte Cristo. I will download it just in case.)

Anyway, some new purchases that I am excited to start:

Understanding the Book of Mormon -- got a decent NYTimes review, but can't find it right now

Never Let Me Go -- Trailer here.

The Guns of August

All Creatures Great and Small

An Intimate History of Killing

Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang

The Collapse of the Soviet Military

Sheet, you never had a chance

2010-09-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

That will teach you to be loose fitting--put safety pins and home depot twine all up in your grill!

Hat tip to the trademark Bolander bed. 2 sheets of plywood, 1 2x4 and a box of drywall screws--kings don't sleep better.

Things Organized Neatly

2010-09-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

This site speaks to me.

Journal? Check. Obsessively sharpen all the pencils in my drawer? Check. Hold my favorite rock? Check. Erasers in triplicate? Check. Wipe my sweaty brow with a rag? Check. Organize everything and take a picture of it before you do it? Check.

Too Little, Too Late

2010-09-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

Enjoyed recently:

Blogging

2010-09-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

I remember getting a lot of satisfaction from blogging in the early days. Now not so much. I wonder what changed? People with an online presence were cool. Now, if you are a twenty-something and don't have a facebook page, you are cool. Chatting was cool, now it's passe. Texting was neat, now its an annoyance.

I tried my own little rebellion this summer--I packed up every piece of clothing except two pairs of khaki pants, two pairs of khaki shorts, 3 short sleeve button up white shirts, and 1 long sleeve button up white shirts, 1 tie, 1 pair of blue sneakers, 1 belt, 4 pairs of underwear, and some socks. I never had to decide what to wear. Even to church, I just cinched a tie around my neck. I think I told 1 or 2 people about it, but most never noticed, or if they did notice, they never commented. I wore the same thing for about two months.

I read this entire blog today...

2010-08-31T05:06:00.001-07:00

...it really speaks to my OCD.

Project

2010-08-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

I spent two days making cabinets for the dishwasher and washer in the new place I am moving into. I was actually a little embarrassed of how I ended up hacking it together--but it was the best I could do with drywall screws, a skillsaw, and $100 work of particle board from home depot.

Reality

2010-08-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

I have determined that all books, all of the internet, every movie you have watched, every story you have ever heard, all information you have ever come across anywhere is just one of these three narratives:

1. You think X is true, but in fact, X is much more complicated than you realize.
2. You think X is true, and, in fact, you are right, but I will take a while to say that.
3. You think X is true, but in fact, X is much simpler than that.

Those are the DNA base-pairs of anything you have ever written or read. Yeah, it might be so general as to be completely useless, but it doesn't change how utterly depressing it is to me.

Maybe I am just burned out on science or academia or literature or non-fiction, but all of these fields just seem to be a more nuanced version of the childhood "watch me snapping my fingers on my left hand while I try to smack you on the side of the face with my right hand"game. In history, you just have to cite all the other finger snappers, in science you need concrete data on the finger snappers, in business you trade on finger snapping sentiment, and in art, the worst offender, you dispense with the finger snapping all together and just alternate slapping the person on each side of the head.

After all this, just stand back and ask the person you have just hit in the face: "Can you see it now? Interesting, right?"

Nirvana Jackson Mashup

2010-08-17T12:25:00.001-07:00

Easy Does It

2010-08-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have been absent the world of blogging for a while. Life got busy, I got bored, etc. Life, however, is the same. I still read a lot--8 or 9 books at the same time, as well as www.kottke.org and classic.abnormalreturns.com every day. I bought some canvases and acryllic paints to mess around with and sometimes paint for 20-30 minutes a few times during the week. I run still. I tried to take up calligraphy. I wear the same thing almost every day of the week. I take naps in my office in the afternoon. I clean, re-clean, and reorganize often. I shake a lot and I don't know why, but I have for years now. I grew a long beard, but then trimmed it yesterday. Phew, got over the return post....

Thought I would share a tender mercy with you, from Safeway

2010-05-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

New Lows

2010-05-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

This morning I was in my underwear on my hands and knees scrubbing out dried whip cream footprints out of my carpet. Apparently I got up in the middle of the night and had a piece of pie. Then I got up a second time, stepped on the plate, and left little whip cream footprints out to the bathroom.

I think I am going to start doing what the Memento guy did--tattoo any instructions to myself on my chest. One his tattoos, which flashes only a moment, says "don't trust your weaknesses." True enough. I need to have the phrase "go back to bed" on my chest. But somehow that doesn't have the same ring as "find him and kill him." The film seems sort of 50/50 for usable tattooed advice. But everything turns out well for him in the end. Right?

Why Is My Bag So Heavy?

2010-04-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Some days the obsessive compulsive side of me wins. Some of the more ridiculous things I found while meticulously cataloguing the contents of my bag:

1 voice recorder (do I ever use that?)
1 expired diplomatic passport (can't quite bring myself to chuck it yet)
2 old college IDs (hang onto that Spring 2000 Pomona ID, never know when it will come in handy)
2 16 meg SD cards (can fit 3 pics each)
3 tire adapting valves for my bike
4 tubes of used lip balm
5 pairs of earphones
100 sheets of graph paper (have to be exact!)

And to contain it all:

1 wallet
1 airplane overnight kit bag
1 computer sleeve
1 mini folio
2 pencil cases
3 makeup bags
4 folders
228 Gigs of memory spread across ~12 devices

I don't know if I could even make the 100 Things Challenge just with what I have on my person and in my bag.

Nice Flimming

2010-04-26T17:16:00.001-07:00