Poetry won’t do it. Pages and pages can’t describe it. I’m even nearly numb to music right now. Originally, I was going to cover the facebook craze currently sweeping St. Thomas - we just got it yesterday. That does not seem important now. This is much more real life than any sort of online social networking, and really more real than most of the things that have been happening to me as of late.
It’s about relationships. It’s wondering if uncertainty is real, and whether reality is being ignored. Have I lost touch with the realistic? Am I supposed to have answers? Should I even have questions of this sort of depth? What I mean is, what issues are we even caught up in? Compatibility? College social life? Is not knowing what to do a sign that we should do something out of routine, or a signal that the fork in the road hasn’t truly been reached?
Sometimes, I am searching for a line. A line that marks one side “you really don’t have to worry about that right now, it hasn’t been that long,” and the other “danger alert, pull it together.” Of course, it’s never that clear. But why don’t I have a better picture? What don’t I get it? I don’t want to be too different to be together. Maybe I sound stupidly sophomoric in saying that.
Yeah, we’re trying to decide what to do. Because, to tough out something we don’t entirely understand is to make an investment in the unknown. This investment can be painful and wrenching - I don’t want it to end up being unnecessary. I’ve come to see something though, something Mykala unknowingly helped show me, something I will not forget: it will all be ok. It’s anything but apathy: it’s embracing the life we all are presented with, and enjoying the ride in all its ups and downs. So yes, it will all be ok.
Sometimes, collegiate level labs do not work. In some ways, this can be funny, and in others, not quite funny. Simply put, you do not get the results you needed, wanted, or hoped for, and therefore you lose some credit for doing the lab. In fact, at the Universtiy of Minnesota (and probably most places), the TA’s are given a range of acceptable lab result values that will result in full credit. If the numbers are outside of this range, you do not get full credit. Some way to review the “scientific method.” They encourage us to use scientific reasoning and ignore “right and wrong” while we grapple with finding a solution, and then turn around and grade result accuracy. I have yet to see if this applies to my Animal Behavior lab, in which we visited the zoo and observed Japanese snow monkeys. We accessed primary source literature (a lot of Japanese people study the Japanese snow monkeys, believe it or not), formulated a partial ethogram, and then promptly watched our experiment crash and burn.
You see, while Macaque fuscata are called snow monkeys, they do not love cold weather. Thus, during the course of our observation of their behavior, they were mostly concealed in their heated feeding den.
Woo.
Reviewing the pages of timestamped graph paper is an exercise in futility - there is no appreciable amount of data. No data, no trends. No trends, no conclusion. No conclusion, no point. Yes, we sat there for 70+ minutes, and gathered three data points. Three. The resulting bar graph is yet another piece of pointlessness - three categories total, zero data for two of them and three hard earned points for the other. What a conclusive trend. Soon, we will see if this astoundingly small amount of data is enough to merit credit for a 300 level Biology lab.
Mark my words. I will tell you one more time - mark my words, this is what will be coming out so very soon I can taste it. Now, I have heard no industry rumblings about this idea, but one thing I have been inspired by was a wonderfully funny Do-It-Yourself Oakley Thump using the iPod Shuffle. Consider this, the iPod Shuffle is unbelievably small and light (and yes, it is just a glorified USB flash drive … but stay with me here), so this allows it to be used in ways music players have not been used before. People need to think outside of their “box” here (to borrow a corporate clichÉ). You see, the music player no longer has to hook to your headphones via a long, cumbersome cable that twists and turns its way up through every piece of clothing you are wearing - no, the music player can be your headphones now. Before we get to that, I must share my favorite two comments from that DIY Oakley thread I mentioned above.
1.) Posted Jan 19, 2005, 12:51 AMET by Kapila Wimalaratne
If the Oakley Thump had been done in collaboration with Apple, those things would have come out with a GB of storage and support for Audible books.
Then I would have bought a pair.
Oh well.
2.) Posted Jan 19, 2005, 2:19 AMET by jjvw
This might be unfair and offensive, but does Oakley’s customer base listen to audio books while acting all X-treme(!!!) and stuff?
“Shreddin’ it up to Jane Austin, good sir?”
“Why yes, yes I am.”
“Lovely”
Now, are you ready to hear the idea? It is so simple you’ll kick yourself and swear you’ve seen it somewhere before. Which you might have. I don’t know, I am not you. Regardless, incorporate the iPod shuffle into a pair of headphones. Yes.
Imagine it, 120 songs (by Apple’s count, which is usually inflated by 10-15%), sitting on your head. Want to change a track? Simply reach your hand up and punch a button. I envision a glorified bracket that the iPod would be pushed down into, base first, and then would swing-click into place. This way, it would be simple to take the headphones off your head, hinge-out the iPod, and quickly turn it off. The necessary wires would be contained within the headphone’s frame, connected to the shuffle by a little plug with enough play to let the shuffle swing from remove mode to clicked in ready to rock mode. Note the graphic, showing my Sennheiser HD212 headphones (which I absolutely love … great bass and wonderful clarity considering the price point) … if they made a pair of Senn’s that did what I am talking about and sounded the way the HD212’s do, I’d snap them up in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you? Wire-free music on your head, no worries, no nothing in your way? Perfect for every sport (except extreme water polo, etc.), and up to whatever you want to do.
The problem is this: I keep hoping that if I grow out my hair a little longer, something will happen that will give it some style until I cut it off for spring and summer, as I love to have short hair during the summer weather. In the meantime, I am losing hope for my hair. It is most certainly not “feathered and dangerous” as in Dodgeball … heck it looks like a bird’s nest on top of my head (part of the reason for cutting it before the spring nesting season). So, here I am, trying to decide what to do when it looks a bit like Mel Gibson’s hair back in the day - not quite as long, but it certainly has the weird out of controlness behind the ears. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not saying I look like Mel Gibson - because that’s weird and not what I am striving for.
80’s-popular was precisely not what I had in mind, either. So, the conundrum continues - to grow or cut. Spring approaches, and yet my hair will be long again by the time I get a chance to enjoy any warm outdoor weather. Because of this, it would make the most sense for me to continue dead-cell length build-up on the top of my head until the weather begins to get warm (late March). My current plan (liable to change soon) is to grow for longer (as in more time and more length), and to see what happens. Who knows, perhaps one day I will wake up to a real hair style - but the chances of that are about as good as me and a dog in a three legged race against the US Olympic track team.
