Why did I join the facebook? (For a quick definition of facebook: it’s like an interactive yearbook spanning your high school and college careers). Anyhow, the above question sprang into my mind today as I looked at my “confirm friends” page and realized that the two people listed on it are not people I would call friends and are either (a) insecure folk who simply are trying to increase the number of people listed under their “is friends with” column; or are (b) random celebrities listed by people too bored to do something constructive and original with their spare time. I joined facebook because everyone else did, I admit it. Sometimes I wish there were bandwagons for reading good books or learning to paint or something. Just think of the thousands of hours wasted by people clicking around on facebook when they could have been learning something. People are crazy.
I classified this post as “media,” meaning I will go on to talk about other ways I have been spending my media time lately. Here is a crazy-amazing list of songs and albums you should listen to.
William Ackerman - Returning
Great solid mellow guitar album. The way he uses the guitar reminds me of the way George Winston uses the piano - he lets the instrument speak out with its full range of voices.
Train - Drops of Jupiter - Mississippi
An unexpectedly un-poppy gem on an otherwise mediocre album. Flows just like the river of its namesake.
Guster - Keep It Together - Come Downstairs and Say Hello
‘Dorothy moves to click her ruby shoes/Right in tune with dark side of the moon’ - songs just don’t begin much better. Listen for it to turn into a building ethereal Coldplay-esque anthem later in the song; perfect.
Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album - Why You’d Want to Live Here
Death Cab sings about weather a lot: here, that certainly works for him. His lyrics paint the gritty LA just as well as the music grinds out the sounds of a city.
Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek - Speak for Yourself
Best electronic effect of the past … 3 years. Essentially, she’s layering her vocal tracks and sustaining them to make them sound like an organ. Unreal good.
Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American - Get It Faster
Creepiest beginning to a rock song I have ever heard. Listen to the way the guitars switch at split second intervals from distorted to clean and back beginning at 2:26 - fun to listen to.
Maybe I will write these “media” posts more often. There are movies, music, and books all the time.
I am unsure how much more of this I can take: dial-up internet is the worst thing to happen to this decade, and I am stuck on what seems to be the last copper-line connection to the internet out of anyone I know. I recently read that over one half of the people who use the internet are not using dial-up. And don’t get me wrong - the internet is something I rely on to do my job - I’m not complaining because I can’t watch streaming video on MTV’s website when I spend hours mindlessly surfing. In fact, dial-up works quite well for the surfing I do - generally reading longer articles, allowing things to load in the background.
It’s when I try to be productive that I get eff’ed.
The size of files I am shuffling around for work drive me absolutely batty. In the middle of some pieces of work, I’ve actually considered driving 20 minutes to the University just so I could do what I had to do and be done with it. You know things are bad when, no matter how long you stare at the blue horizontal progress bar, it never progresses towards 100%. You just have to walk away and let the files molasses’ize their way through the Cu world of 19th century communication.
I know one man who has survived on dial-up: Justin. And talk about survive: he administers an entire online business via this dial-up connection. I have frequently hypothesized that his access to a dedicated T1 line is the only thing that keeps him sane.
So, what is your current online experience? And what was it like to make the switch to high speed?
Oh, indeed firsts are what make our lives. Nobody really remembers the second man who walked on the moon or the second place in elections. Who wants to be Vice President, or get the silver medal? Lance Armstrong isn’t saying “I’m going to get second in my last Tour de France.”
Anyhow, that’s why I decided to sketch a couple of the firsts in my life.
Last year. My birthday. My first real stadium concert. I had been to Switchfoot at the Quest before, but this was t he first real one. I was embarassingly old for this to be my first time, but so it went. I sang my lungs out to Dashboard Confessional at the Target Center, learned how to push my way up through the crowds, and how to combat mosh pits. It was the best thirty dollars I ever spent, and the first time I ever got soaked by Ticketmaster fees.
Three weeks ago. Westbound I94. I’m grooving out to a song in the passenger seat and up pulls a gray 2004 Mustang Cobra convertible, and this black guy in sunglasses looks over, one hand on his steering wheel, big grin on his face, and gives me the “that’s right” nod. He hits the accelerator and is gone. And that’s the first time I got props from a black guy: awesome.
9th (?) grade. Trip to Chicago. First time I bought and wore cologne. Gap had a fragrance at the time that came in this cubic bottle: smelled nice, and had a reasonable price tag for a little unemployed kid. I grabbed it during a frenzy of packing the day before we left on the coach bus. See, there was a girl in that trip that I had a big crush on. There was going to be a dance. Ever the reasonable person, I never thought about how to make decent conversation with her, simply that I had better smell decent if I was ever going to be close to her. The dance never really occurred the way I thought it would. Sweet smelling yet nerveless, I never got the chance to talk with her, much less dance. There was one deadly strike against me: she knew I liked her. So we come to my first rejection; I asked her if she wanted to “do something sometime.” The answer was “no, thanks.”
A recent first. “Cooked” dinner for a girl for the first time. The girl’s name is Mykala. Yes, she did a lot of the work - we were in her kitchen and I needed to find my way about. Soon, I will cook a meal for her without assistance - this will be glorious. As for the meal, we made salmon with a potato chip sort of crusting, risoto, and green beans. Cooking went off without a hitch (unless you count the recipe that we, err Mykala, made up for green beans, involving margarine and salt … turned out well, thank you).
I’m going for my first “cooked a good meal without her having to do any work” next.
In the gym at 5:30am before work, I had a flashback to a decade ago in my life. Our fourth grade teacher’s name was Mr. Bowman. He was a tall man but, looking back, it seems he was prematurely aged by the Vietnam War, he walked with the posture of someone who can stand just fine but has been worn down by trauma. It was obvious, though, that his dry yet hilarious sense of humor preceded the war he experienced, and he connected with us in a more mature way than many of my high school teachers.
Mr. Bowman was the first person to teach my about photography, bringing a camera to school one day and showing us we could freeze motion if the shutter was fast enough and the ISO was right. He taught us how straight lines could curve, the importance of art in our lives, and that a good dose of fresh air was more important than another 15 minutes of studying. He let us work at our own pace, putting up on the board what needed to be done for the day, and letting us get to it at our own cadence.
I did a double take, seeing him walking around Lifetime Fitness that early morning. Indeed, when I looked up again he was gone, vanished in the same way a memory fleets from the conscious mind. I looked around a bit more and saw him once more and half-entertained going to re-introduce myself. I am, though, a shy sort, but I know what I would say if I had talked to him before he blended back into the recesses: “Thank you for shaping who I am, and giving me a vision of who I want to be.”
A bit over a week ago, I intentionally skipped my first workout in 4 years. There were a couple of times during that time when I was forced to not work out - I had my wisdom teeth out once, went on two trips, but that accounted for few and far between misses of my every-other-day schedule. In fact, I do not think I missed one workout in the past 18 months. Don’t mistake that statement as laced with any notes of pride - I learned hard lessons throughout that time, hurt people, alienated others, and battled in general to balance all parts of my life. My brain was in such a rut that it thought there would be some collapse if it didn’t get a a bi-daily endorphine rush associated with 1.5-2 hours of intense weightlifting.
This recent step of missing a day was meant to show me that my body wouldn’t end if I did miss one day. The physical effects I experienced were interesting: my appetite decreased less than anticipated, while I had an unanticipated increase in nervous energy. I think when the time does come to make an unplanned change to my workout schedule (eg: something comes up that is obviously more important than working out), I will have to try to mentally steel myself to these effects.
Maybe you’ve been addicted to something, this is a first for me. Just as the smoker who asks “how is this hurting me right now,” I spent many months growing in my understanding of why having one’s priorities straight is important. Not that I am entirely there, but I feel like I am moving in the right direction.
Unfortunately, the physical effects of working out are rather positive, it’s the social ones that can be subtly damaging; can cause you to wake up one morning and realize your once firm foundations of loved ones have been eroded by your absence and over scheduling.
So no, this is not some paradigm shift where I begin eating McDonald’s everyday and not moving from my chair. Just as the damage is subtle, so is the fix. There will be, for that reason, more posts on the topic.
My advice to anyone who is addicted? Just don’t do it. Take all the energy you devote to feeding your addiction and channel it into turning things around. You didn’t take no for an answer when you were addicted, don’t take no for an answer when you are quitting.
You may or may not remember that one person in high school who was so involved with a single topic that any social interaction was painfully difficult. So it is with one person I know, who is in fact not in high school, but is St. Thomas’ chemistry stockroom manager. Problem is, she is not just antisocial, but extraordinarily passive aggressive. Her ability to wilt a freshman chemistry student after they request a reflux condenser without knowing the joint size is only rivalled by her ability to aggravate someone who knows what they want but is cut off by her ridiculous superiority complex.
Research, Day 2:
I walk up to the stockroom counter and ask, “Can I have one of those metal stirring rods?” I’m met with the immediate retort, “They’re called magnetic stir bars and you have to check them out.”
Research, Day 8:
I’m second in line and watch as a senior tries to obtain some water hoses.
Senior: “Can I get some water hoses?”
Melva Cain: “There is no such thing as a water hose.”
S: “Ok, the yellow rubber hoses?” MC: “You mean the nitrile hose?”
S: “Yes, that.” MC: “Oh, well someone waltzed out of here with those boxes earlier, didn’t you look for them?”
S: “I thought they returned them …” MC: “…”
S: “So, I mean, all I have to do is hook up some hose to run water through.” MC: (Gets a box on the floor) “So this will work?”
S: “Yeah … thanks.”
Me: ?!
Research, Day 12:
Me: “Can I have a magnetic stir bar about so long?” MC: “You mean the one inch stir bar, that’s what you mean, right?”
Research, Day 14:
Me: “Can I get an eighth inch magnetic stir bar?” MC: “Those don’t exist, here’s a one quarter inch one.”
Somewhere between those dates, our lab manager (not to be confused with Melva, who is the stockroom manager) came to talk to the professor who is leading the research,
Nate: “Uh, Melva says she won’t buy any more ethanol.”
Doc: “What?”
N: “Yeah, she says we’re using too much and we can’t afford it, which is completely untrue.”
D: sigh
So continues the saga with Citizen Cain, stockroom manager sitting atop some well organized yet impossible to gain access to heap of chemicals and equipment.