How We Rolled

Listing in the Open Seas

2009-03-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

1. Here's a rundown of what I'm doing at the cyclotron these days.

Designing clamp things to fit around one inch diameter acrylic light pipes and hold photomultiplier tubes
Tooling around on the lathe, trying my hardest not to break anything (including myself)
Making clamps out of rigid, tooling rubber (I got the really strong stuff, baby) for the purpose of holding thin, fragile objects (plastic scintillator with a bundle of optical fibers) that need to be optically cemented (clear glue!) together.
Searching the planet for germanium microfoils that are appropriate for use as a target in a nuclear beam experiment

2. I have to do a research paper for a class I'm taking. The paper is on experimental evidence for asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). That's a lot to swallow right there. Protons and neutrons and other hadrons are made up of quarks (carrying "color charge") which interact with each other by exchanging a boson called a gluon. In this way, as a theory, QCD is completely analogous with quantum electrodynamics (QED) in the sense that particles with electric charge interact with each other via a field of photons. The difference is in how the strength of the coupling between particles varies with distance. The strength of electric charge dies off as you get further away, it is inversely proportional to the distance. Whereas the strength of the color charge only gets stronger as you try to separate quarks. This leads to confinement, which is the principle that quarks cannot be found to exist unbounded by another quark or group of quarks. In fact, when you pull quarks apart, new quarks appear out of the field of gluons and bind themselves to the pulled apart quarks to form new hadrons, which are seen in particle physics experiments as jets. Asymptotic freedom comes hand in hand with the idea of confinement. In the bound state, the quarks are free to move about as they damn well please because the strength of their interaction is so weak.

3. I really enjoyed watching the World Baseball Classic this year. The US performance was pretty disappointing, but seeing how fans in other cultures make a celebration out of attending each game is very interesting. The Classic is definitely a great teaser for a summer full of MLB action. Too bad the next one won't be until 2013.

Frivolous Chain Letters

2009-03-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Friend of mine posted this as a facebook note. Presumably it had been sent to him like any manner of creepo chain emails, the ones that are written in a melange of wonderful and bright colors, as plentiful as the stars in the night sky. They are often prosaic, in a profoundly distasteful and amateurish way which hearkens you all the way back to a simpler time.

I have to admit it. The Pseudo-liberals were right.

They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation's Hope would deteriorate,
and sure enough there has been a 20 point drop in the Consumer Confidence
Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the
Bush administration.

They told me if I voted for McCain, the US would become more deeply
embroiled in the Middle East, and sure enough tens of thousands of
additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan.

They told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and
sure enough unemployment is approaching 8.8% and the new stimulus packages

implemented recently have sent the stock market lower than at any time
since 9-11

They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "crooks" in high
ranking positions in Federal government and sure enough, several recent
cabinet nominees and Senate appointments revealed resumes of bribery and
tax fraud.

Well I ignored my Democrat friends in November and voted for McCain. And
they were right... all of their predictions have come true.

But seriously, who was this written by? Perhaps it was the same guy that wrote the "Footprints" poem. When you get to the end, you half-expect to look back upon your life and realize that John McCain was carrying you all the way through the hard times of economic recession and crooked federal government. Maybe you were on his back, or he was cradling you in his rugged and manly arms. Ah, but what a dramatic and unexpected twist at the end! Truly, the writer of this is a master in the craft of wit, not unlike O. Henry methinks.

Find the Words I Made Up!

2009-03-10T10:41:00.001-07:00

It has been over two years since the last time I went to the eye doctor. I went last week, but since I had put off going, the cornea in my right eye is so deformed that presently the doctor can't prescribe a new pair of contacts for me. Since my vision is so bad, I have to wear hard contacts, and one of the consequences of that is when the contact gets old and degrades a bit and becomes warped and causes the cornea to take that warped shape in kind. Fortunately, the cornea is a tough little piece of tissue and can heal itself pretty fast. So for the time being I'm wearing a soft contact (which doesn't correct my vision maximally but does an alright job) in my warped right eye and my regular hard contact in the left. This makes for a fun adventure of remembering what solution goes with which contact every morning. At any rate, you'd think that I'd be more cognizant and responsible about all things vision related. I have had to wear a pair of some kind of perscripted, vision correcting lenses since the second grade. That just means that I've accumulated more than my fair share of fine pieces of nerd gogglery.

Sports were a big part of growing up, as it is for a lot of people. So, when I got that first pair of glasses, my parents also purchased a pair of fine Rec Specs for me. This conjures up images of such 80's immortals as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Eric Dickerson, Chris Sabo, Horace Grant, and Kurt Rambis. Without doing any further research, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no one ever gave 6-time Pro Bowl running back, Eric Dickerson any crap for looking so goofy. Unfortunately, no one ever extends that type of respect to a chunky, little half-filipino kid such as myself. Not too many sixth graders get the privilege to play basketball in a uniform seemingly cut from a cheap, maroon leisure suit, but that's precisely what playing CYO basketball for the prestigious Incarnate Word Academy Warriors was like. This uniform and Rec Specs makes for an extraordinarily unfortunate combination. But now I think I finally understand why the coach in junior high would encourage me to cover my man like a "cheap leisure suit." (This is in contrast to his other catchphrase where he'd let me know that I had been "faked out of my lingerie.") For all that Rec Specs do to improve your vision, I actually must admit that they didn't do anything for my game. I had the CYO game of my life in the fifth grade when I played sans visio correctio (read: blind, like looking at an impressionist painting from way up close). I was having an incredibly bad morning the day of the game. I had lost the Rec Specs and was fresh out of deodorant, so, being the incredibly intelligent young man that I was, I wore a lot of cheap cologne to the game. In fact, upping my noxious effluence factor may have been part of the reason that I was getting good looks at the basket that game, ironically. But shooting blind, I had the highest scoring day of my CYO career. This was when I learned that looking good and smelling good are paramount in the pursuit of playing good. May that be a lesson for all of you in the future. (As an aside, LeBron James admitted in an SI article recently that up until this past off-season when he had eye surgery to correct his vision problem, everything on the court was kind of a blur to him. Also, while in school, he would have to sit in the front of the class to see the blackboard; always eschewing goofy eyewear in order to look his best at all times, on and off the court.)

Novena of Grace

2009-03-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

I received an email the other day from the good people that handle alumni affairs at my high school, St. Ignatius, inviting me to participate in the nine day Novena of Grace, which are prayers for the intercession of St. Francis Xavier. The email contained a link to a site run by Irish Jesuits, whereby one can participate in these daily prayers from the convenience of one's home Internet device. The site exhorts individuals to contemplate on the life of Xavier before beginning the Novena, but I failed to see a link to any history of his life. So I did some investigative work on my own and found this interesting essay on The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier.

The gist is that apparently, the canonization of Xavier is controversial in the eyes of some and is something of a favorite for Protestants making the case against the "spurious miracles of Pagans and Papists." For example, Xavier is credited for having the gift of tongues, but in his own personal journal, Xavier frequently writes of his troubles in learning new languages. Although the Church maintains that his effort to learn new languages should be viewed as a credit, for it would be presumptuous for him to assume that crowds of listeners would be able to understand him in their own native tongue. Also, perhaps the gift of tongues is only gifted on special occasions. His contemporaries do not write or speak of his miracles, but in the Bull of Canonization, Xavier's miracles "make up the bulk of the nineteen pages, in folio, of the papal document." Also, in the biographies written after his death, the amount of miraculous works performed only grow with time. These discrepancies are explained away by the argument that finding witnesses and gathering stories of his great miracles also occurred over a long period of time.

At any rate, the miracles attributed to Xavier are quite fantastic and numerous.

While celebrating Mass, Xavier was often so rapt in ecstasy that those in attendance could with difficulty rouse him back to normal consciousness.
At other times during the Holy Sacrifice, he was seen raised from the ground a cubit and more so that “while seeing the greatness of the miracle, the people might acknowledge the sanctity of the servant of God.”
After his arrival in the Indies, one of the "more outstanding prodigies which he wrought for the edification of the faithful," occurred when a mob of pagan Badages made a surprise attack on a Christian village, intending to kill the inhabitants. But the mob was put to flight when Francis went out to meet them, accompanied by a mysterious figure whose majesty and splendor terrified the assailants.
At Comorin, when the pagans were not moved by his words, Xavier asked that a tomb which had been sealed the day before should be opened. Then indicating that this would be a sign of God's approval of Christianity, he called to the body to rise. The dead man came to life, with hundreds of natives embracing the faith as a consequence.
In the same city on another occasion, Francis healed a beggar with ulcerous legs when in a burst of heroism he drank the putrid water in which the running sores had been washed.
Also in east India, Xavier brought back to life a young man who had died of a pestilential fever, and was being carried to the cemetery.
In the city of Combutura, a boy had fallen into a deep well and drowned. His body was later brought up to the surface. Francis prayed over the dead child and then, “taking it by the hand, ordered it in the name of Jesus Christ to rise. Immediately the boy returned to life.”
In Japan, a merchant, blind for years, was given back his sight when Francis recited the Gospels and made the sign of the cross over his head.
On one occasion, a small crucifix which the missionary had lost in the ocean was restored to him by a sea crab when he reached the shore.
Again out at sea during a storm, the landing boat of the ship on which he was sailing was torn from its mooring and lost in the waves. Three days later, in answer to Xavier's prayers, the boat floated back to the ship and rested alongside the hulk, ready for landing, as though nothing had happened.
As examples of his prophetic powers, Francis predicted the fate of two ships sailing out of port-that one would be destroyed in a storm and the other, a smaller and older vessel, would reach its destination in safety. At another time, as he arrived at the altar for Mass, he suddenly turned to the people and asked them to pray for the soul of a wine merchant who had just died, at a distance of twelve days' journey away. He also promised a generous benefactor that God would reward him by telling him the time of his death. Years later, in apparent good health, the man was suddenly forewarned and died in the peace of God.

Money

2009-03-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago, I watched Charlie Rose interview Marc Andreessen on the television. Marc sits on Facebook's board, is an angel investor for Twitter, and was a founder of Netscape; among other things. You can see the full interview here.

He has a wealth of opinions concerning the future of information technologies and ye olde world wide web, but perhaps the most interesting comments shared were his opinions on the financial sector of the american economy.

Good banks, bad banks, doesn’t matter. What we need are new banks. And I actually think what we need — and I think the [Silicon] Valley can play a role in this, I think there should be a new wave of financial institutions that should be created from scratch today. And they should take the role. So instead of trying to unwind some big bank that’s underwater, and hundreds of billion dollars insolvent, let’s create a whole bunch of new ones. And by the way, let’s have them all be new and online. So instead of having all this infrastructure and all these old systems and these ATM’s and all this stuff, let’s do purely online, purely Internet banks. Purely virtual, much lower cost structure.

Maybe this is only interesting to me because for the past several months, ever since someone started working at one of the n-teen banks and processing centers in the somewhere area operated by some so-called "too big to fail" bank, I have ardently maintained that even a stupid piece of programming code written by me could perform that person's job -- which mainly consists of copying and shredding sensitive documents and filing the paperwork for loans which have been paid in full. So at least in a local sense relative to me, the criticism that Andreessen has for oversized, inefficient banking institutions is sound. Furthermore, this model of limiting capital expenditure on infrastructure by relying more upon server-filled data centers has proved successful in retail, as seen in the resiliency of Amazon which is described in this Slate article. At any rate, this is an interesting idea, albeit one that is unlikely to be espoused by anyone in the federal government.

Baseball Season

2009-02-27T09:36:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day, Beth surprised me with a gift of tickets for the Indians' final spring training games, when the play the Astros in Houston. And now that spring training has officially begun, I'm in a baseball kind of mood, for sure. There is a lot of hope in the air; A&M baseball began their season as the number one ranked team in the nation, the Indians have made some calculated risks on smart bargains bringing in Kerry Wood and Carl Pavano, and a slimmed-down Travis Hafner thinks he can steal a minimum of thirty bases this season.

Presumably to bring me down a couple of notches in terms of baseball spiritedness, ESPN Classic offered up this past week a replay of the memorable Game 7, extra-inning affair from the '97 World Series, pitting the Florida Marlins against my beloved Indians. I remember very well watching that game with my dad on a late October night. It was a very exciting game to watch but had an extremely disappointing ending.

My morbid curiousity got the better of me, so I started watching the replay. I even went so far as to call my dad and let him know that Jose Mesa was about to blow the save when the ninth inning came around. I was especially interested to see if I could identify the same scared, no-confidence look on Mesa's face as he entered the game that Omar Vizquel remebered seeing as described in his biography. When Mesa came in the Tribe had a slim 2-1 lead. I really didn't notice a lack of swagger, but it was immediately apparent that he was in for a rough time as he immediately surrendered a single to Moises Alou. He recovered though and got Bobby Bonilla out on strikes. Next came up the weak-hitting Charles Johnson, but he managed to put a good bat on the ball for a single, which advanced Alou to third. Mesa was now in a very tight spot, but with skinny, rookie infielder Craig Counsell coming to the plate; there was much reason to keep hope. As his long flyball fell into the mitt of Manny Ramirez, my heart sank once again as Alou crossed the plate to score the tying run.

Mesa got out of that inning, but the Indians' offense failed to muster any sort of scoring opportunity. The Indians would go on to lose in the 11th after the Marlins loaded up the bases, due in large part to a costly error by Tony Fernandez on an easily playable ball. Edgar Renteria famously bounced a ball over the pitcher and through a drawn-in infield to drive in the winning run.

Perhaps it would have been better to watch something else.

World's Smallest Radio

2009-02-26T10:45:00.000-08:00

This month's Scientific American has a neat article on the recent nano-development out of Berkley. The materials scientists Zettl, et al successfully demonstrated that a single carbon nanotube could perform all the functions of a conventional radio: tuning, receiving a signal, discriminating between signal and carrier wave, and amplification of the signal.

Zettl acknowledges that the ability of a single nanotube to perform as a fully-integrated radio is quite serendipitous, even going so far as to describe work on this project as an example of Murphy's Law in reverse; where everything that can go wrong, magically does not. The article in the link at the top gives a nice overview of how the device works and what novel applications could emerge as a result of this work.

What was the first broadcast received by nanotube radio? The answer to that future barroom trivia question is Eric Clapton's Layla. In the video below, once the nanotube is tuned to the signal's frequency, it becomes an indistinguishable blur. Because of the physical "weirdness" at the nanoscale, the EM wave is sufficient to mechanically vibrate the tube. These vibrations causes a change in the current through the nanotube and causes an avalanche of electrons to be emitted from the tube's end, thereby amplifying the signal. This is the so-called Field Emission current. This current is then passed on to an audio loudspeaker and turned into an audible sound wave.

List-o-tron

2009-02-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

1. I've been playing a lot of basketball recently, mostly pick-up games at the A&M rec center

2. Beth and I have been using the crockpot quite a bit, mostly using recipes from here.

3. Don't ever ask me to repair brakes on a bicycle. My current set-up is pretty ridiculous. As you can see in the picture above, if I need to stop in a pinch, my method of last resort is to grip and rip on the yellow cloth towel.

4. At the cyclotron, my tasks for the moment are as follows:

a. constructing light pipes by bundling together optical fibers

b. playing with 4-hour cure silicone rubber for the purpose of making various molds and clamps

c. testing different methods for wrapping scintillator detectors

d. gluing things together with optical cement

5. Maybe Beth and I will go to the NAHBS this weekend in Indy.

Morningtime

2008-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Doc J starts his day feeling energized, having just scarfed down a delicious breakfast bagel from his favorite bagelry in town, Atomic Bagels. Actually he is not certain whether or not the bagels taste good or not, since he severely burnt his tongue drinking his piping hot cup of joe. Every morning is the same, he comes into his kitchen and starts up the ill-kempt coffee machine, a device at the leading technological edge of innovation in the field of bean percolation and tongue scorching. One can't help but notice immediately that the machine has taken a sound beating after only two weeks of operation. He readies the machine to make 12 cups of coffee, even though he fully well knows that he will drink a cup and a half at most. He loads the grinding attachment with an overabundance of grounds, not realizing that its true purpose is to produce grounds from beans. He even has the audacity to place a small, brown paper filter over the fine, gold permanent filter that comes included. Doc J doesn't have the time to take the care needed to make even the simplest of observations. The 1-3 cup option button's LED is blinking with a determined intensity, trying its darndest to let the good doc know that the water will be heated to nothing less than two times the necessary amount.

Doc J doesn't need instructions to ruin even the most intuitive of devices.

Fortunately for the poor device, the doc doesn't bother to blame it for the ultimately tender condition of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He just stops to wonder if a burnt mouth is the newest, cool thing.

My Bicycle

2008-06-10T11:55:00.001-07:00

This is how you turn a green and purple bike into a blue and yellow dream machine.

Thanks are in order for Mr. Sears who lent me his garage, some parts and tools, and his know-how; Beth for giving me ideas on how to paint the frame, and the dudes at Aggieland Cycles that installed my Shimano 105 headset for me.

The cranks, bottom, bracket, and track cog are from IRO Cycles. The gear ratio is 46/14, and the rims are Weinman DP18.

Weekly Roundup

2008-05-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

1. Bicycle Decal of the Week!

2. Negative Anniversary Card of the Week!

3. Bicycle Frame of the Week!

4. Three Dimensional Solid of the Week!

This is how you turn a simple post into a nerdy post

2008-05-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

Oh, here's where I left that blog. Awesome.

Ever since I linked this thing to Facebook, writing on here has lost its appeal. So that's out.

A list of things that are in:

1. Not Boston

2. Nuclear physics experiments

3. Rattle-can paint jobs on bicycle frames

4. Getting married in August and honeymooning in Belize

5. The picture in the latest SI of a shirtless Bob Uecker standing poolside and doing the play-by-play of Brewers' ping pong matches during their latest roadtrip

6. Beth's lemon bars

7. Jumping rope until your heart blows out of your chest ... you know, for kids

8. A team is not a team if you don't give a damn about each other

9. I swear that I don't read and write posts on Cleveland Browns message boards.

10. Wasting money on baseball cards

Something illuminating about gas prices

I typically get around on my bike, which, if you convert calories to gasoline, gets 3000 mpg. I got that from an article in the latest Bicycling magazine. To fact check that, one gallon of gas has 31,549 food calories, if you burn the gas under ideal conditions. So that means the writer estimates that you burn 10.5 Calories per mile on a bicycle. The wiki page on bicycle performance claims you burn 0.4 Calories/second over 15 seconds to accelerate to 25 mph and then burn 0.3 Calories/second to travel at an average speed of 25 mph. This means that the wiki page thinks you burn about 47 Calories per mile of bicycle riding instead, giving you a fuel efficiency of 675 mpg. Perhaps then the Bicycling magazine writer used a more modest estimate for a rider's average speed, maybe like 15 mph.

No one ever travels 3000 miles on bike in a single day, and you could probably achieve 675 miles over a week. So let's think about this in more real terms. An ABC poll in 2005 said that the average one-way commute distance to work is 16 miles. At almost $4 a gallon for gasoline and assuming a fuel efficiency of around 27 mpg, that would mean that the average commute to work today would cost roughly $2.40, probably more if you have to sit in traffic. Neglecting that this long of a bike ride would leave you a sweaty mess, at the going-all-out speed of 25 mph, you would burn 750 Calories. But at the calm pace that Bicycling magazine suggests, you would only require about 170 Calories. The tricky part now is estimating the cost of food. I don't know why anyone who would bike to work would also eat unhealthy food, but the average cost of high caloric junk food is $1.76/1000 Calories, meaning that depending on your pace, your one-way commute would cost between $.30 - $1.32. But everyone knows that people who are health conscious and ride bikes eat low calorie, nutritious food. At the study claimed astronomical price of $18.16/1000 Calories (which, by my experience actually sounds reasonable) then, your one-way commute jumps to a price that ranges from $3.08 - $13.62.

So, there you have it, I guess. In fuel consumption terms only, riding a bike can be more expensive than driving a car. Furthermore, since the cost of food and gasoline are fairly heavily correlated, no matter how high the price of gas becomes, riding may never be cheaper than driving. But, I would have to guess that riding a bike everyday and eating right makes you a better, healthier person. And there must be some value in that.

I was really surprised to find that in reality, the "3000 mpg" statement is completely misleading. When I first read that in the magazine, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a savings that will translate into!" (when I think to myself, I frequently speak like I'm selling a product) But alas, things are never so cut and dry.

ADDENDUM
My bicycle research colleague Matt, pointed out that on occasion, we'll buy this ridiculous mass-gainer product in a bottle as a post-workout supplement. We've always viewed buying these as an extravagant 1000 Calorie convenience since they cost roughly $4/bottle at the rec center here. In reality though, accepting the claim that the price of quality whole foods is very high, we were actually making an economic choice.

Of course, you should use this product as a dietary supplement, and if you drank a whole bottle before hopping on a bike, you'd have the worst stomach ache ever. But, in the scenario where you wake up in the morning before work, maybe eat something light to get the metabolism going, hop on the bike, ride 16 miles at a moderate pace (at the extreme pace of 25 mph, you would burn $3 on this trip), and then drink this product or one of their non-mass gaining alternatives to replenish your body then you would finally realize fuel savings with the health benefits that riding has to offer.

10 things

2007-08-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

!. I finally have a research advisor and should be ready to defend my master's thesis by this time next year.
2. I have approximately two semesters of classes left, including this one.
3. I would like a subscription to Scientific American. After reading the previous issue on obesity and undernourishment, I feel like some kind of friggin' expert.
4. Time to go puppy shopping!
5. GK: …….after a message from Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie and frozen pie filling.
6. "I lost my contact! But it's ok because I still won the spelling bee."
7. It was good to get back to "America's Roller Coast."
8. Where's an egg?
9. I have a new cellphone and approximately one and one-third of an old cellphone.
10. Favoriddddddsssss!

Potentiometers (Beginners' Guide to Pots)

2007-06-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Potentiometers (Beginners' Guide to Pots)

2007-04-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

I'm really excited about the Browns drafting both Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn yesterday. Already, the Browns brass and Cleveland media are talking of a reversal of the sad fortunes of the franchise since '89. I don't know if I'm ready to commit to that, but, as this picture from Brady Quinn's childhood suggests, I'm sure that we are all constantly living under the tremendous shadow of Bernie Kosar's greatness...and that guy didn't even go to the Super Bowl.

I can't wait to home and search for my Hutch brand Bernie jersey and helmet.

Some Things

2007-04-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

I guess I haven't written anything in quite some time. Here's a rundown of some stuff I've been up to as of late.

1. I've been watching The Venture Bros. on DVD.

2. I'm following Major League Baseball extraordinarily close and hoping to move up in the vaunted TAMU Physics Fantasy Baseball League. I'm currently mired in place 8 of 10, but I'll be sure to wheel and deal my way up to the top.

3. I was in Bloomington, IN last weekend to see Beth and got to see the Little 500 bike race. I now want a sleek, light road bike more than ever. As an aside, if you've ever seen the movie Breaking Away or are from Bloomington, you may be interested to know that the Cutters team won. Team Cinzano was there in full-force as well and had a respectable finish.

4. I've recently purchased new NIN and new Bloc Party albums. They're both hot.

5. When flying to Indiana last weekend, I had the pleasure of sitting with two drunk 40 year olds on their way back home from vacationing in Cancun. Their names are Steve and Jim, both divorced. Jim was just recently divorced and is currently staying with Steve until he gets his bearings, as it were. I suppose they took the trip to Cancun to clear their heads...or actually to do the exact opposite of that. At any rate, Jim used to work for his ex-father-in-law. As is wont to happen, after divorcing his daughter, the father-in-law summarily fired Jim and tried to stiff him of his last paycheck and some severence pay. He also tried to make him pay for the nine year old BMW he had given Jim, but instead Jim told him to fuck off. After some court dates, Jim managed to get a nice $10,000 payday from his ex-father-in-law. Good for him. But the icing on the proverbial cake is yet to come. Jim has been talking to his ex-father-in-law's brother, who owns a competing business and does not get along with his brother too well. Jim and the brother are working on an arrangement to buy out the ex-father-in-law's company.

Now how's that for some Dynasty shit for you?

The plane ride was extremely amusing because the two of them were imbibing in alcoholic drinks for the entirety of the two and a half hour plane ride. So of course, the two of them were crass, rude, and hilarious towards everyone around them. I'm fairly certain that the ladies seated around us and the various female flight attendants are still in trauma over the delightful affair.

If I only had a brain...

2006-11-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

1. OH SNAP!
2. Italo Calvino, Golem, and so much more can be yours if you go to see Stranger than Fiction. I enjoyed seeing Dustin Hoffman reprise a role similar to the one he played in I *heart* Huckabees.
3. I enjoy 1920s era furniture: We've done gone streamline crazy, y'all.
4. I, much like Eddie Albert, am often cast as the friendly, good-natured buddy of the hero.
5. "Fred darling, I'd marry you for your money in an instant."
6. Folk Art is my favorite form of Folk Anything.
7. "Terminal E is far cooler than Terminal C." -- me to a stranger I met at the Houston airport
8. Am I the only person excited about the new Rocky movie?
9. Yay green bean rigamarole!
10. "I was a turmite. I be inside the gueen turmite. It lad eggs, and I be baby turmite one day. I like insects. Would you like to meet my seester?" -- lil kazoo

Hungry, Hungry Hippos

2006-10-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

For the past two some odd weeks I've been fasting everyday from sunrise to sunset in celebration of Ramadan. Now I'm roughly halfway through it.

The hardest days have been Saturdays when there is a home football game during the day. On Saturday mornings we go play soccer against the Chinese or Nigerians, so I'm already feeling drained before we even leave to go watch the game. Then at the football game, there is a lot of standing and yelling going on out in what normally feels like 100 degree weather. The end result is an extremely taxing, but strangely gratifying, day.

The best days are when I can find the time to take long naps during the day. In a lot of ways I'm becoming increasingly nocturnal, but there is a period of time in the afternoon where I can be extremely productive. At any rate, my muslim friend Jonathan was right in making the observation that we spend a lot of time everyday in procuring, eating, or digesting food (or in the very least, food product).

During the day, my range of emotions extends from glum and sullen to confused and easily distracted. I have a very difficult time staying awake during lectures because of my erratic sleeping and inability to consume caffeine during the day. On the other hand, I generally feel less anxious during the day.

Once the night rolls around and I get some food into my nutrition starved body, I feel like there is no limit to what I can do physically. During the summer I started working out regularly with Jonathan, and so I originally wanted to fast during Ramadan out of deference to him. With the start of Ramadan, we decided to change our workout schedule such that we would be lifting in the evenings, so that we would have a chance to consume some protein before going to lift. We wait to eat dinner until after working out. The remarkable thing is that in the past two weeks I've been getting stronger in the gym. The gains almost seem radical. In the traditional benchmarks for strength, the bench press and the squat, I've blown by my previous bests.

For all the impressive strength gains though, I've never felt weaker when doing cardio exercises. When I bike to school or run or play soccer, I feel like I lack explosiveness and energy. It's most frustrating when playing soccer because I don't feel competitive in the least.

I hoped that fasting would help me regain some feeling of focus. To some extent that has happened, but I'm not completely certain. Feeling fatigued and slightly sick is quite a distraction after all. In general though, I feel different from the person I was. I have no sense of whether or not it is for the better. I'm more aware of my physical abilities and limitations, and everyday is a constant reminder.

The most subtle observation of myself that I've made during this time is in seeing more fully how my lack of a strong spiritual life is affecting me. I think that is the one aspect of my life that I've been in denial over for the longest time. I feel like I've been making strong claims without conviction to my own faith. It's seriously disturbing, but when I look around at my friends, in a superficial sense, there seems to be no sense of urgency or moral dilemna in regards to making a spiritual life for oneself. I didn't think it was necessarily a problem, because I felt so strongly that it was a private matter. That sentiment could not be further from the truth. I feel like I have to bring myself out of a deep and long abiding coma.

That subtle desire must be the true reason why I ended up fasting with two good friends. Doing this for any other reason would be disastrous.

What I look forward to most during Ramadan is yet to come. One of the nights during the last ten days is called the "Night of Power." Staying awake for the whole night in prayer on this night is akin to receiving three-thousand times the blessings. We're not going to necessarily spend the whole night in prayer, but we'll watch movies and have good conversation.

Resuscitation Instructor

2006-10-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Today, I received student reviews of my teaching from the sections I taught last spring.

Here are some random comments:

1) His strengths lie in his person; his weaknesses, nonexistent.
2) Button is very knowledgable, funny, and promptly responded to e-mails. Good at answering all questions, cares whether or not students understood the concepts.
3) First one I've ever had that could effectively communicate using the english language.
4) So nice, willing to help...
5) Jonathan was flexible...
6) Weakness: Long-winded; Strength: Spoke good english
7) He isn't well-prepared. It is rare if he finishes a problem w/ the correct answer...is likely he will confuse you. I like his grading style, and he's nice and funny.
8) Hard to follow. Always late.
9) He was great.

So there you have it, I seem to have opened to mixed reviews. The consensus clearly was that I showed a lot of concern and patience, although that did not always translate to being effective as a teacher.

So far this semester, I feel that I've been well-prepared for every recitation period. But the lab periods tend to be a nightmare because of the equipment or because of how the lab instructions are written.

Oh well...

The Sun Also Rises...

2006-09-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

1. Being a T.A. for three sections of freshmen engineer students is hilarious.
2. I am going to observe Ramadan.
3. I'm having a week of strange coincidences.
4. Almost dropping an 85 lb. dumbell on your face is no laughing matter.
5. The Indians are complete garbage right now, and that makes me sad.
6. Who's the last MOID standing tonight?
7. Irish Car Bombs.
8. Ms. Kazoo never ceases to surprise me.

boom SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! BOOOM popopopopop

2006-08-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

Friday night is fireworks night at Jacobs Field.

Almost One Year of Incessant Rolling

2006-08-26T19:21:00.000-07:00

After quite the long hiatus, I'm back in College Station for another fun-filled year of getting kicked around hard in my classes and suffering through some rather intolerable heat (of the type emanated from my loins and otherwise).

A rather simple itinerary of the past two weeks:

1. I flew to Indianapolis, got picked up by Beth, and drove with her to Cleveland.
2. Surprised my brother at the AMC theater where he works with some help from his girlfriend Nora. We then all watched Talladega Nights (Shake 'n' Bake and whatnot).
3. Three Indians games in two days: a Friday night fireworks night special against the Royals won in the final at-bat by a Grady Sizemore triple to leftfield, a Saturday day/night doubleheader (first game's promo was "pick from a random smattering of the current season's other promos" and the second game's promo was a Drew Carey bobblehead giveaway). The Indians won all three games (and swept the series the following day).
4. Went to this nice Irish pub and restaurant by the name of Nighttown in Cleveland Heights to listen to some live jazz and eat fine food out on a patio complete with outdoor waterfall.
5. Rented Movies: I *heart* Huckabees, Mannequin, Waking Ned Devine, Keeping the Faith, and Made.
6. Ate far too many of my mother's egg rolls in one sitting.
7. Pushed Beth around on an adult-sized stroller (severely sprained ankle) through the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
8. Contracted some disgusting sinus/cold thing.
9. Drove to Bloomington, Indiana with Beth so that she could be present for her random assortment of orientation functions.
10. Watched too much Sex in the City.
11. Read books one through three of the Harry Potter series.
12. Flew back to College Station.

Ball of Misshapen Clay

2006-07-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

1. I've long held the position that the best way to defuse an awkward situation is by sticking one's fist into one's mouth.

I present to you exhibit A:

2. I'm packing up my things and preparing to move away from the (now cut down) dead tree and the water sewage treatment plant for greener, livelier, and less odiferous pastures.

3. In packing up my things, one of the relics that I unearthed from the mounds of stuff that formerly occupied my room was a coupon for a free game at the Pisgah Lanes, courtesy of the Sunset Motel.

I'm glad I still have it because it is one of the few things that remain as a reminder of the wonderful time I had in the mountains of western North Carolina. At any rate, it's a reminder that I still like old timey toy stores, antique shops, and dances on Main St.

Going to North Carolina last summer really helped me to unwind from all the stress of living at home. Working out daily, playing video games all night, and going to Indians games is such a hard life.

I'm definitely paying for it now though. Video games all night has been replaced by late night experiments investigating how light interacts with matter. And Indians games have been dutifully relieved of their post by adventures in the machine shop. Luckily, I only have one or two cuts on my hands while working big, powerful lathes, mills, and band saws.

As my E&M professor from last Spring would attest, "When you live by the hose; you die by the hose."

4. Why are the Indians playing so bad? I personally feel that they got too complacent after last season and came to rely too heavily on their offensive prowess. They still hit very well (albeit in a streaky way). Such fundamental skills as good baserunning and solid defensive glovework and throwing are definitely not trademarks of the '06 Tribe. Furthermore, the losses of Arthur Rhoades, Kevin Millwood, and Bob Howry in the off-season have proved too costly.

Oh well, there's much to look forward to for next year. I like Fausto Carmona at closer. Maybe we'll get to see Andy Marte over at third (if they end up trading Aaron Boone as well, which I think they will).

But I will be devastated if the Indians let "Sophisticated" Ron Belliard walk in this up-coming off-season. I love that guy.

I get to go home for a week or so after the summer sememster ends in two weeks. I can't wait to make my triumphant return to the Jake. Whatever that means.

5. Now I know why I'm trying to be a physicist and not a machinist. Machining is difficult. I thought maybe the knowledge of being a good machinist would be passed down through the genetic code, since my grandpa worked as one at a tool and die company in Middlefield, OH. Sadly, that is not the case though.

My Dad on a Drive

2006-07-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a local radio station in Cleveland used to play classic rock exclusively. Then one day, the dreaded format change occurred, and the radio station became a much edgier, hip haven for all things alternativo.

When I was in the seventh grade, I remember having a tournament basketball game across town. My dad drove me, and the car was virtually silent the whole way there and back, save for the radio pumping out its alternative-style tunes. I don't really recall if we won the game or not, I suppose there was nothing all that remarkable about the game. But on the way back from that game, a strange thing happened. The alternative music stopped, and some sex talk show started.

I should have realized that this would happen. After all, I had listened to this particular station late at night. But the shock was too much, and there seemed to be this odd implicit agreement between my father and I that if he could take it, then so could I. Things became uncomfortable in a hurry. Callers called in with the strangiest of sexual queries. I was astounded and dismayed, in the usual adolescent way. I could only imagine what my dad was thinking as the topics of lesbian experiences, sex toys, and group meet 'n' greets came up across the airwaves. No matter how awkward the situation in the car got though, I was definitely not going to be the one to give in.

I stayed strong until some jackass called in to complain about the effects of humping leopard print sheets. I lost it. For some reason, that was just too much to handle. I changed the station right away. Neither of us ever talked about it.

The above situation was pretty bad. As you can imagine though, things can get worse.

Naturally, as I got older and entered high school, my prurient interests merely enlarged in scope and size, aided and abetted by the worlds and vistas offered by the wonder of dial-up internet connection. My dad was driving me into downtown Cleveland where my school is located, and we were having our typical quiet car time. Out of the blue, he says, "I found some interesting pictures on the computer of a girl going down on a guy." I replied that this was very strange. He then said, "Don't ever do that again. If your mother were to find those, you'd be dead." Clear, concise, and to the point; this was typical of him. We then continued our quiet ride, and I had much to think and be ashamed about.

I learned to at least be very diligent when cleaning out any and all internet file caches.

Perhaps things can get worse than that.

When I was in high school, I spent one of my summer vacations working with my dad at a furniture store where he was the stock manager. The store was looking for extra help as it began remodelling. It was pretty hard work, but the experience was well worth it. One day, I had it particularly rough. We moved a lot of things. I probably broke a couple hundred dollars worth of merchandise. I was yelled at for something. Towards the end of the day, I had to move around a large stack of floor tiles. Per my usual doing the summertime, I probably didn't sleep too much the night before. So as the end of the day drew near, I was definitely ready to go.

I don't really remember what triggered what happened next. I just remember being very mad and upset and wanting to quit. But I didn't say anything. After closing time, I got into the car with my dad and started bawling my eyes out. I cried the entire way home. I didn't look once at my dad though. I was just staring out the window, trying to muffle any sound. I felt terrible, weak, and pathetic. But I would have felt worse if my dad asked me about it, and so I tried as hard as I could to not let him see.

Of course, it would impossible to miss the sight of your first born son crying his eyes out in the seat next to you while on a car ride home. But I guess he understood and knew not to say anything.

It doesn't seem to be in his nature to do otherwise. Although he was short on advice, he knew when to bail me out of trouble.

At any rate, I was fine by the next day, and the rest of the summer was an enjoyable one.

I had been thinking about what I'd be like as a father. I think that I'd be the type to say a lot of things and make a lot of speeches. When I get going, I can be long-winded like that. Over the course of three vehicular moments which may or may not have been pivotal in my formation from adolescence into adulthood, my father had a sum total of about six or seven words. I don't want to think of my dad as being afraid to talk to me, so I'm going to suppose that he knew what he was doing. Besides, there was much strength behind his silent messages. And he respected me enough to be able to figure it all out later. Truly, one can make his presence strongly felt and his message heard without any degree of loudness.

2006-07-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

responsibility is like the sky.

'I told Bird it's like the sky, boy. Is what I told her. How about if I come and ask you what does the sky feel like to you? The sky ain't a feeling, boy...But it's there, friend. The sky is there. It's there, over your ass, every fucking day. 'Matter where you go, boy, look on up, and on top of every goddamned thing else she's there. And the day there ain't no sky...'
-- "Lyndon" by David Foster Wallace

larfing

2006-07-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

NEWS YOU CAN USE!

so i read this, and i was like...why in the world am i going to the gym, when all i have to do is laugh some more....it's pretty simple, all i need is someone to tickle me for an hour straight.

and then that reminded me of what happened earlier. see, my uncle's car is sitting in our driveway behind my dad's minivan thing. and so, when my mom is also parked in the garage, it's really, tremendously difficult to back the minivan thing out.

so today, i was driving my brother to his baseball game, and i had to take the van and back it out with my mom's car still in the garage. 10 minutes elapsed without me being able to back the van out successfully...and that's when i looked at scott, who was in tears from laughing at me so hard, and i said, 'well it looks like i failed maneuverability.'

at that point, i also decided it would be easier to just drive the van through the lawn...but, scott talked me out of that. and then we tried looking at the directions to the baseball field, because i thought maybe mapquest knew how to get the van out of the driveway.

and then i called my dad using scott's cellphone....and told him that i was lost.

and he asked me what i meant...so i said that i'm in the driveway still.

and he said, 'what do you mean you're in the driveway?'

and then i said, "i've been trying to get out of the driveway for the past 15 minutes."

and then i tell him that the directions for getting out of the driveway are wrong...and at that point, he hangs up on me, walks to the driveway, and tells me to get the fuck out of the driver's seat....and so i do that, and he backs the car out in 10 seconds.

and scott is still crying from laughing so hard...and i'm laughing and sweaty for some ungodly reason...and it was a good time....cept i looked stupid. and i think my license is now invalid because i can't back out of a driveway.

this all occurred about a year and a month ago.

8 Things to Drink to

2006-06-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

1. A tribute to Buehner, Martinez, and Martinez: the most fearsome threesome to encounter in an opposing lineup while playing the famed Super Nintendo game, Ken Griffey, Jr.'s Major League Baseball.

Nevermind that the game was Ken Griffey's; the fact remains that Jay Buehner, Edgar Martinez, and Tino Martinez collectively made their stamp on the land of video game folklore by being true mashers with no apparent holes in their swings. The format of the truly arcade style video game played well to their greatest strength: speaking quietly and carrying extremely large, wooden bats.

In order to provide lineup protection for a player of Ken Griffey's ability, it was necessary to have not one, but three, superbly talented batters in order to force pitchers to even think about giving young Kenneth a proper pitch worth swinging the ol' lumber at. Buehner, Martinez, and Martinez used their privileged position atop the bully pulpit of major league lineups to preach the goodness and moral fiber inherent to swinging away (at a pixelated baseball whose movement is restricted to only two degrees of freedom).

2. A tribute to tubing: the laziest way to enjoy the great outdoors.

During my latest trip back to the cornfields of Indiana, Beth and I went tubing down Sugar Creek, courtesy of the Sugar Valley Canoe and Fun Company.

Despite having to make a number of textile, taciturn, talcum-powdered, tarrytown-ed, troubadour-faced, Tarkentonian maneuvers; the journey down the Sugar Creek (although I much prefer the Little Potato Creek, the creek of ill-repute) was generally a leisurely one due to the easy moving current, sunny skies, and sparse population of annoying, fellow travellers.

3. A tribute to Facebook: When my little brother Facebooked me, it made official the fact that he is going to be in college and that my parents will be all to their lonesome for most of the year.

My parents were married for several years before having my brother and I; and during those years, as the photographic evidence suggests, they travelled the country quite a bit and did fun things (such as visiting the Corn Palace and dressing up in some interesting 19th century fare). I guess those fun things had to come to an end since Scott and I are quite the handful. Maybe things will change for my parents now that we're both out of the house. To what end, I'm not very certain (maybe that garden will come to shape and the last vestiges of the house's 70's past and style will be completely banished to postmodern oblivion), but for once, I might be curious as to their goings-ons.

My suggestion: College Station has a ripe, open market for the opening of an egg roll shop.

4. A tribute to the Egg Roll House: Even when I was an REU student at the cyclotron facility at TAMU, this local establishment looked to be firmly in the throes of foreclosedness. This building looks so closed and so sad. It is enough to make a grown-man with the personality of a twelve year old to openly weep in despair.

Seeing this place for the first time was like finally finding Paradise, only to find that it had been shutdown due to the ineptness of new management or because of a hybrid-super-disaster (hurricanadonamiquakelcano). An Egg Roll House is my Dream House, whether it be that the walls are papered in egg roll wrapper or that there are running egg roll taps throughout the house (a service provided by the local lumpia utility, to be sure).

But perhaps, now my calling in life is clear.

5. A tribute to crazy dreams: Indiana seems to bring about the best in crazy dreams for me.

In two nights, my brother's music video (a love ballad featuring mostly head shots of Scott) debuted on MTV2, the Indians had an AMAZING laser light and firework show, I got re-aquainted with an old, highschool friend of mine, and Britney Spears chased me around her palatial estate (presumably trying to make-out with me, but I'm not sure).

Sleeping in Indiana seemingly challenges the shape of possible topological shapes in my dreamscape. For instance, I had a dream that I was telling my Physics Grad friend Matt that I had a dream where Britney Spears tried to make-out with me. Upon telling him this though, Matt excitedly told me that he had the exact same dream. Then the next night, I had a dream where i was having a conversation with Matt and his girlfriend, and I told them that I had a dream where I was having a conversation with Matt about how we both had the Britney Spears make-out dream.

If I have a similar dream tonight though, I would have to say that my dreamcenter's originality has been seriously compromised and is thoroughly exhausted.

Since I taped Scott's music video as it debuted, maybe I'll be able to watch it in a later dream.

6. A tribute to Ben Folds: I was sad that I missed the chance to see him this summer at Bonnaroo, which seems to be his only U.S. appearance for the year.

I haven't had any dreams of making out with him, but I would like to move down to Australia and be his next-door neighbor. That would be really strange to be able to go outside and say, "Hey Ben Folds, I'm going to put some shrimp on the barbie so come by this evening."

7. A tribute to old-timey toy stores in small-town Indiana: For the low, low price of $9.99, I could have been the proud owner of a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man figurine.

To truly fire up the smoldering embers of my deep sense of sentimentality and mawkish attitude toward all things Ghostbuster, this particular establishment would have to proffer up the glow-in-the-dark stuffed version of my favorite marshmallow man.

So, instead, I opted for Major League Baseball by LCJ, the 1988 classic video game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. That particular season's Cleveland Indian lineup featured unforgettable stars such as Cory Snyder, Joe Carter, and Greg Swindell. This team should have contended for a pennant, in my highly biased opinion, and now I have the ability to make this dream of a star-struck five year old a reality.

The fact that Beth owns and operates a Nintendo Entertainment System out of her apartment and that she is my girlfriend is no mere coincidence.

8. A tribute to my knee: I politiely decline to reveal why.

Photodissociation Fragments

2006-06-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Button (the storybook bear with buttons for eyes, not the person) wakes up startled to the sound of banging on his chamber door. Luckily for him, everyone lying in bed is still clothed, albeit now awake and confused.

As the words from the man on the other side of the door fluttered through the air into poor Button's ear, Button was forced to hastily reconstruct the previous night's events the best he could. All the while, his severely intoxicated head persisted in the unnerving task of assembling the steady stream of virulent noise into a coherent message.

In the colloquia of the times, the message was this: "Jon, is my daughter in there?"

Last night the Hindenberg crashed. Nevertheless, Button flew to the door to meet his inquisitor face to face.

If the narrator were a man of substance and aware that being impolite will never become passe, perhaps he would have made the following sardonic remark: "Well hello, Mr. Cook. What can I do for you on this fine Saturday afternoon."

In lieu of that heroic remark came a wide-eyed, open mouthed, "Hi."

"Well you don't look very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

"Yeah."

"Jon, do you mind telling me what happened here last night?"

"Well, why don't you ask your daughter? She is right here."

"We are both men. So let's talk man to man."

In my nineteenth year, I received my first lesson in manhood. Men have talks like this. And if you fail to understand, any explanation that I can proffer is useless to you.

"Mr. Cook, your daughter and I drank too much, got really sick, and then passed out."

"Is that all that happened, Jon?"

"Yes."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

Satisfied with me, he looked over at his daughter, clutching my comforter and terrified of what was to come. The following exchange forever remains a microcosm of my fatally frail condition and how the fates choose to toy with me in the worst of ways.

"Tonya, come on, you are coming home with me."

"No I'm not."

The sensitivity of my consciousness heightened a thousand fold in that brief amount of time, along with my undying desire to hide underneath a pile of old, winter coats for the remainder of this hunting season. I should have made my level of stress known by making audible the question that raged on the order of a hundred decibels within my head, "What do you mean you are not going home?" After all, I had just met this girl merely two weeks before. I was not ready to become this person -- not here anyway, not in this fraternity house, not in this bastion of male adolescence. No way.

And so, Mr. Cook began walking away but did not leave before making clear to me what I had already inferred. "Make sure she gets home, Jon."

I slumped in the hallway, the one with the atrocious wood panelling, with my head in my hands, wondering how I had allowed my life to veer in this surreal direction. My pledge brothers and friends surrounded me slowly, inquisitive as to the nature of this most recent spectacle; but I had no answers for them, and they had no answers for me either. Things had become Boltzmannian in scope.

VIDEO!

2006-06-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we had a birthday party at the duplex. One of the physics grads, Matt, dropped by with his girlfriend. At any rate, I thought I was taking a picture, but apparently I was not.

White Square

2006-06-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

The man hurriedly rushed throughout the kitchen looking for as many household poisons that he could find. He was sweating profusely with his brow pinched and furrowed in deep, detached, pensive concentration. His intolerable pince-nez beating against his chest with every step, the dull light managed to produce an irregular glaring and blurring at the top of his bald head. The veins and arteries were under great stress as the blood seemed to pulsate through his thick, muscled neck.
The doctor found some detergents and bleaches and paused momentarily to take a slight pleasure in the aesthetic topography of the plastic contained beauty. He rushed down to his bloodstained workshop and worried over his workbench, where he has labored for years developing and designing skillfully constructed prosthetics for the heart – his own pacemaker struggling to keep up with the doctor’s hurried and evil designs.
The doctor painstakingly went to work on his most recent project to blend these horrible, powerful agents into a purifying solution. Seemingly calling upon his own ritualistic past, the obscure, older gentleman finally knew the secret history of man’s sacrificial story.
The powerful cleaning agents aroused an awful feeling of nausea. The noxious fumes rose through the dark matter of the dimly lit room and through the membranes within his olfactory cavities. A lamp hung down from the ceiling as the only source of light for the room, and the table with its dark, black top, smeared with blood seemingly emanated from the darkness behind. As he continued to labor, his thoughts meaninglessly meandered from thought to thought, yet managed to return to the scene of his darkest desires.
He stood over his unconscious patient like he just woke up from a horrible dream. Unable to account for the past several minutes, he viewed the young, supple, pale white skin of the woman before him. Her tender, small breasts pointedly mocked the doctor’s shame of impotence and advanced age.
The doctor’s overbearing figure appeared as an awful contrast to the delicate instruments that he was constantly drawing and replacing from his small surgeon’s kit. He fell back into his awful trance as he continued through his work, only to wake up once more to a scene of blood soaked hands and mangled body parts.

We entered the Victorian mansion on Old Hickory Lane yesterday. We got the call to check in on this place after reports that a neighbor had heard violent screaming coming from the basement, continuously for the past three hours. After breaking down the door, I was overcome by the smell of chemicals; we proceeded down towards the basement, which was pitch black. My partner fumbled around in the dark to find a light switch. I immediately began vomiting. A young woman was spread across a table with flies occasionally swooping down to violate her corpse’s resting spot. The light also revealed a man in the corner of the room. He had shot his brains out.

*I wrote this about 2 yrs ago. The only thing I really like here is how dark it is. Whenever I write anything, it's normally all introspective and flowery.

Coulomb EXPLOSION!

2006-06-08T18:55:00.000-07:00

1. Why is the Jolie-Pitt baby named after Neil Diamond's imaginary friend?

2.AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG!

I miss the Ultimate Warrior. Why is it that what seemed awesome when I was little, seems ridiculously silly today?

3. In my lab we use a femtosecond laser. It produces a pulse of photons every 10^-12 seconds, so it deposits energy like Dhalsim from Street Figher II (in extremely fast, short bursts). In the experiments that we are running now, the laser interacts with a beam of hydrogen ions. In order to test the intensity of the laser before running an experiment, the professor intends on focusing the beam such that it turns a small spot of air in the room into a plasma which turns into a visible and audible spark.

I cannot wait for that.

4. The dead, creepy treen in my front lawn was cut down yesterday. I was extremely saddened to come home only to find the once friendly sight now strewn about the yard.

Chariot Races

2006-06-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

At my high school, we would have a Latin Day where these chariot races were the main attraction. The layout of the campus is unique. There are multiple buildings around a central mall area, resembling a miniature-sized college campus. The best feature is the six-story tower that overlooks the campus, built in a gothic German architectural style by German Jesuits in the late nineteenth century.

I found this video. It's alright, with the exception that it seems as though the person recording is a bit impaired. But you can at least get a flavor of how fun this day is. The students are gathered around to watch their peers race around the mall in their homemade chariots.

NO SUBJECT!!!!

2006-05-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Let's drink till we can't feel feelings anymore.

For all y'all sentimental son of a b's (sorry for the harsh letter). Explore how lovey dovey and/or lonely and pathetic the internet is.

Ten Spot

2006-05-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

10. Chocolate Truffles

9. Chief Wahoo Belt Buckle, this is an awesome stocking stuffer. How awesome would it be if the facial expression changed to reflect my mood?

8. I got posterized.

7. "Kamikaze wasn't called precision airstrike for a reason."
6. According to Pyramid Brewing Co., "Cold filtering should be left to the kidneys." This is the first beer coaster that I've ever come to question.

5. My Secret Chocolate Lab
4. Febrezzzzey

3. Mining Tooooooooools!

2. Next Steps
1. Our Lady Antipolo of Peace and Good Voyage, Pray for Us

VOIP! BAM! BOOP!

2006-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

This past week, I've been recovering from one of the more bizarre occurrences of my young life. I vehemently wish, for the sake of my masculinity, that I could say that I was slapped by a high nobleman of the eighteenth century; that he challenged me to a life-ending duel, on the grounds that I had unfortunately impugned his high honor by whiling away my time in his daughter's chambers (or something). Per my usual though, even instances of assault upon my person end up being more farcical than tragic.

Last weekend, I went out to grab a drink or two with some of the usual suspect physics graduate students; in particular, Matt and Karie were there. Several of the physics graduate students who have been in the program longer live behind the Northgate area, where many of the more popular bars in College Station are located. At any rate, hanging out in their front yards as the night draws to an end provides for the right relaxing and comfortable mood a physics graduate desires, I suppose. And for that reason, those in the know call that region, "The Neighborhood."

Matt, Karie, and I were leaving The Neighborhood to watch a DVD. We were walking in opposite directions, as I was riding with Matt and Karie was driving herself. At this time, I noticed that a crowd of five drunk guys were walking in our general direction, looking for their cars to drive home after a long and eventful night of drinking. One of the five was clearly a bit more drunk. The term is "belligerent." He was telling his friends about how he wanted to beat some ass or some nonsense. Hearing that, I looked over at them from across the street and gave them my patented, skeptical, "What me?" shrug. I guess the belligerent one took umbrage to that particular look because he was litterally, "hop, skipping mad." And his woeful friends were trying desperately to hold this pistol-less Yosemite Sam back.

I simply said, "Go home and go to bed. It's not worth it."

As I got to Matt's car and opened the passanger side door, I realized that I had two individuals rapidly approaching me. The belligerent one was yelling for me to get out of the car (which, at no point, had I entered), and one of his very sober friends was wisely trying to head him off. The friend came up to me and apologized. Paying full attention to the friend and unaware of my surroundings, I replied that it was fine and that he should get his friend home. At that moment, the belligerent one transcended into "Pathetic Asshole" and gave me an open-handed slap to the face, across my eye and over the bridge of my nose.

Seeing nothing but stars and confused as hell, I slumped into Matt's car, closed the door behind me, and slumped over -- catching the blood with my hand as it ran profusely from my nose and worried about getting blood all over poor Matt's car.

After slapping me, the pathetic asshole was extremely shocked by what he had just done and started running away. His woeful friends huddled around his back and ran with him.

At this point, Karie drove up in her jeep, and Matt ran up to her to say, "Button got slapped!" So Karie jumped out of her car, left it idling in the middle of the street, and sprinted after them (all five foot-nothing and ninety-some pounds of her). She yelled at them and somehow intimidated the hell out of them. They must have thought she was a little drunk, crazy or both. One can only suppose.

Meanwhile, Matt, who had been a student of Tae Kwon Do, inexplicably had his boken wooden sword sitting in the back seat. Rationally, since there were one of him and five of them, he grabbed the boken and ran down the street after them. He caught up to the very sober one, who was absolutely petrified of Matt, and coolly gave him his phone number and demanded that the pathetic asshole call in the morning to apologize. Of course, he never called, but I appreciate the sentiment anyway.

Karie came back to check on me, and we inside one of the grad students' homes so that I could wash up. Matt came back, and we decided to drive to the grocery store so that I could ice down my swelling eye with its extraordinarily flattering contusion.

On the way out though, we noticed that the pathetic asshole and his friends were wandering around the streets, seemingly lost and looking for their car. We slowed down as we approached them and heard one of them say, "Keep walking." And with that, we drove off.

The above took place in a span of at most three and a half minutes. Bizarre.

We spent the night watching DVD's, eating Snickers Ice Cream Bars, and laughing about the lunacy of the night's events as I kept a frozen package of California Medley Vegetables on my sore face.

Fantastic Future Features

2006-04-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

1. Stereoscopic 3D Post Viewer -- Words literally jump off the screen, into your eyeball, and peck incessantly until you look away or plead for mercy.

2. Specially formulated algorithms which keep inside jokes and bad puns to a very pleasurable and meaningful minimum

3. Financial News and Insurance Quotes: You gotta love that Allstate Guy.

4. Space and Time Transcendency -- Answer deep existential questions in a single sitting

5. "How We Rolled: Earth" -- Almost-real time view of Earth from above; all done in Crayola

6. Problem Set Generator -- OK, this is just a ploy to get someone else to do my homework for me

7. Koala Life Simulator -- Sleep for 20 hours, eat some leaves, and then hump something...anything.

Ohio is for Lovers

2006-04-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

1. I think I'm getting paranoid. Lately anything could happen at anytime, and I'm going to be prepared for the worst; like all good Buttons should. Perhaps turning off my inner monologue would be somewhat helpful. Actually, cross that, I'm sure this is not my inner monologue's fault as much as it is the caffeine consumption. The more wired I become, the more annoying that little voice in my head becomes; and in an asymptotic behavior to boot.

The world just needs to chill for about fifteen minutes or so.

2. One of the more disturbing trends (or not, really) is the recent rash of awfully high-scoring Major League Baseball games. Note that as of this morning, I'm currently ranked 1541 (the 98th percentile) in the ESPN Baseball Challenge Fantasy League. I've got my sights set on the first place prize (1 plasma screen TV); and if I can't count on Roy Oswalt and the Astros to keep teams like the Brewers under 12 runs or the Jake Westbrook and the Indians to keep the Orioles under 18 runs, I'm going to find it difficult to continue my gradual upward ascent up the power rankings.

Some of the more astute observers are probably thinking to themselves, "But Jonathan, aren't you supposed to be studying for Physics exams and writing up excellent solutions to Physics problem sets?"

Well, yeah, that may be the case, but as long as I'm not spending long hours pouring over the bestiary of statistical trends and weighing the outcomes of such trivial match-ups as Eric Bedard vs. Jason Michaels with the wind coming in off the right field porch at Oriole park, I think I'll be just fine.

3. Without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, that sort of egregious waste of time is as disgusting as turdukenflomein...that would be a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey inside of a buffalo; all covered with heaping, heaping amounts of lo mein. Served slightly chilled with a fine sugary glaze.

4. "Oh yeah, I speak perfect Korean."

I went out to lunch at Taco Bell with two of the Korean international graduate students yesterday. At one point, they started talking to each other in Korean and pointing at the plastic lid. During a lull in the conversation, I pointedly said, "You press those dots in so that you know which drink belongs to whom if you're carrying more than one."

Pleasantly surprised, the one said, "Oh, you understand Korean?"

Eh, maybe you had to be there.

5. "I want to take you down by the river,
where you can watch me undress.
I want to lay with you in the water,
we can float naked in the sunlight."

I hate it when I start considering terribly cheesy song lyrics to be provocative.

6. I *heart* topological humor.

7. "A Weakly Interacting System of Moviegoers?"

8. Getting into an Atomic and Molecular Optics research group means that I'm officially one step closer to developing the famed 'Shit Lazor'.

9. "It's not good to be naked in Cincinnati..."

-- The opening line to the Scorecard column in last week's Sports Illustrated

10. Come back next time to see where who will be naked next.

Back to Builder's Square Roots

2006-04-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

Identifying my motivation is not always an easy task. In fact, motivation for any particular action is probably easiest when you are young.

In one of the more endearing stories concerning my childhood, I make a lot of dramatic noise, which proves to signify nothing, and act like quite the petulant toddler. Around the time my little brother was born, I got yelled at by my dad and sent to my room because I was bugging him while he was trying to do some work in the garage. I was really upset over this because I don't think I had ever been yelled at previous to this. At any rate, my response was to run up to my parents' room and steal my mom's big, red suitcase -- which I promptly filled with all the clothes in my dresser and closet. I then dragged the big, red suitcase down the stairs and left it on the landing by the front door. Realizing that the whole family was in the basement with my baby brother, I went down to announce my imminent and permanent departure from the household. Earlier in the day, I went grocery shopping with my mom and bought some fudgsicles. I didn't think it was very fair that I wouldn't be having any, especially since I was the one that requested them, so I also declared that I would be taking the fudgsicles with me. I waved goodbye to my baby brother, hugged my mom and dad, and then left forever.

When I was little, my best friend Jimmy lived next door. Without asking, I went over to his house and asked if it would be OK to live there from now on. He thought that was a fantastic idea, so I dragged my suitcase into the house, put my fudgsicles into their freezer, and then we plopped down in front of the TV to watch Dukes of Hazzard. Afterwards, we played a make-believe game of baseball where he was the Yankees and I was the Indians.

The next morning, Jimmy and I were eating fudgsicles out on the front step when I noticed that my mom was pulling into the driveway after working for the night at the hospital. Suddenly, I got really sad. So I ran home and gave my mom a big hug and told her how much I missed her. I went back to Jimmy's to grab my suitcase. I told him that he could have the remaining fudgsicles (I suppose it was only the just thing to do).

I must remark, with or without irony, that I suspect that I also felt a bit of shame for spending the night in the home of an avowed Yankees fan. Jimmy ended up not being the greatest friend. He would get me in quite a bit of trouble from time to time. One time he suggested that I eat two Flinstones vitamins. Everyone knows that more than one a day is harmful for little kids because of the danger of overdosing on iron, but who was I to resist its oh so addictive flavor.

I was always surprised by how little my parents seemed to care about and how little they mentioned the whole running away episode. I'm a bit disappointed that the story only seems noteworthy (or even footnoteworthy, for that matter) to me. Not until much later would I realize that my parents saw right through my dramatic call for attention. Clearly I was feeling neglected with the new baby around and all. More importantly though, I only went next door. I'm sure they also thought that I would cave pretty quickly. At any rate, I guess they knew what they were doing (I hope).

My runaway attempts always seem to play out more dramatically in my head than they end up actually occurring. Whatever the motivation for running away though, I always come running back. More alarming though is the fact that regardless of how bad I know running away will play out, I seem to fall into it so easily -- must be like riding a bicycle (a big and stupid bicycle, the kind with a rusty chain and two flat tires).

One can only hope that one day I will manage to prevent my attempts to sabotage the whole growing-up process. Maturation is hard enough to come by when you don't have some odd feeling of nostalgia for your own childish behavior. So cheers to my clingy, attention-starved, and emotionally unexpressive self! You have indeed served me well all of these years.

Crossroads of the Revolution

2006-04-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

Punctuate your statements with a period.

I guess sometimes I opt to take an altogether different route. For instance, most people would say, "When life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade." Although, from time to time, I may subscribe to such a statement, I think I often would say something more along the lines of, "I'd much rather enthalpically create my own lemons out of the vacuum of this universe than wait for them to pop into existence on their own accord." Maybe others would opt for the more violent, "When life hands you lemons, throw them at the people you hate." I would humbly suggest though that this particular route is wholly unnecessary.

I can't come up with any solid reason or smoking gun or red-handed culprit when assigning the blame for my unnecessarily bad attitude. I can however come up with some shaky arguments based on seeming red herrings, false motives, or circular reasoning. As an aside, I think it's fairly humorous that at one time, i subscribed to the notion that circular argument could be a useful rhetorical device, rather than the fallacy that it truly is -- but I suppose that discussion is for another time.

Without further explanation or loss of generality, I would like to propose that I am fairly proficient at creating bad, awkward, or messy situations -- situations that I am wholly unable to get myself out of without recourse to some form of substance abuse. On the same token, or rather in my defense, I think I'm normally patient, in that I can make do with, rather than fight against, those situations which are immutably set in granite or etched across the cosmos. Like galaxies writ large across our sky, most situations, whether bad or good, are the result of some quantum fluctuation in the background of my life. And that's how we are brought up, believing that every little thing and piece of minutiae counts for something, no matter how trivial the pursuit or meaningless the midnight fling. At the same time, there exists the paradoxical knowledge that you can dismiss rote memorization by attacking and exposing the very root of every situation -- that is to obtain some wild sense of all that just happened.

At any rate, the matter still remains: What to do with all these damn lemons? How many lemons is too many? And when is the right time to walk away from all the lemon trees you senselessly choose to plant for yourself?

Well, I was told that a good experimentalist cannot be afraid of anything. How fucking romantic is that notion? So here comes the physicist, regaled in shining armor, to save the day. But I suppose there is much truth to that. If only I had more courage, I'd be willing to try every creative and conceivable angle at deriving a solution to every predicament which rears its ugly head. Maybe then I'd learn something, and at the end of that day, I'd lay my head on my little pillow with the smug satisfaction that for once I was correct.

Instead of becoming the active participant though, I sit somewhere in the middle of the crowd which wastes its time observing -- some of that crowd, I pray, actually hopes that some odd situation can figure itself out in time for my sanity to make a remarkable recovery.

But how likely is it that a problem can just figure itself out? It must be like magic sometimes -- this life that you are free to make remarks about or may deem worthy to make note of.

At any rate, why would a seemingly sane person choose to solve his problems by spinning up new ones on a whim? Regardless of what the state quarter may claim, don't search for the crossroads of the revolution by travelling through New Jersey. It's just a harmless idea, right?

This Week in Baseball

2006-04-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

1.Weird dreams that I've had the past couple nights (x-zibits a through c):

a. I realize that I'm dreaming and so am really pleased with myself after punching out a car window and experiencing no pain.
b. Murphy Brown is a pregnant zombie.
c. Hulk Hogan is dead.

Those dreams seem a bit dated, don't you think?

2. Unbernzing is a one step process. Step One: Unbernzing.
Bernzing
Unbernzing

3. Eating healthy seems really expensive, especially considering that you can now purchase a McGriddle for one dollar. I don't even know why I try anymore. If Texas had any White Castles around, I'd just go binge eat myself into grease oblivion right now.

The thing is, I don't think the breakfast that I prepare for myself most mornings is all that healthy in comparison. Ok, that's a lie, the breakfast i prepare for myself most mornings is at least ten times healthier than a McGriddle sandwich.

At any rate, is it sad that I get pretty excited when I consume my daily recommended value of fiber? The way I figure it, all the fiber intake has to somehow counteract all the coffee consumption. That could be entirely way off base. At the very least, I'm sure the generic rip-off of Centrum Performance that I take every morning is boosting my health levels some. (I don't think health levels is an accurate metric of overall health. I think I just made the term up.)

4. I do like spinach a whole lot. That's a bit of a recent development.

5. Sorry Scott, but if I win this, I want Grady Sizemore to be my best man.

6. After one week of fantasy league play in ESPN's Baseball Challenge, I am in the top 95.8%. The Jobu Aggie Nation is currently ranked at 3127. I've got a long way to go to get to number one, but I've got my sights focused on it. Furthermore, I'm certain that what my team lacks in talent evaluation is more than made up for by my team's overall heart and desire. Let's not overlook that.

The first place competitor at the end of the season wins a brand new plasma tv.

7. Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time?
Albert Markovski: Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about.

8. I went to the super special spring Midnight Yell this past Friday (although coinciding with parents' weekend here, it was presumably meant to usher in spring football practices). I saw an aggie's dad wearing a Cleveland Indians jacket, so I gave him a thumb up sign and said, "Go Tribe!" Then he said, "Hey yah, we won today!" And then he gave me a high five.

I really like it when fans say "We won!" over "The Indians won today." I mean, I became verifiably excited when he said that and gave me the high five. God Bless America.

9. I'm starting to get worried about when my next set of midterms is going to take place. If I were a betting man though, I would place all my money on Good Friday and Easter Sunday as the most likely dates to have them. I can't imagine a better way to spend a religious holiday than in a classroom sweating and swearing over how much I don't know.

I probably shouldn't be gambling on Good Friday and Easter Sunday though, so I take all of that back.

10. I get hot-skipping mad (not so much mad as giggly) whenever I see the ad for "The Final Theory" atop my gmail inbox. And I see it there quite a bit since, well, 80% of all my incoming mail has to do with physics. The Final Theory is proof that people will believe anything and is ripe full of misrepresentations based on what most people learn in high school physics.

Since I don't want to end on that note though, take a moment to consider this interesting, readable article about a current problem in physics in regards to how we keep time. Basically, it explores the notion of the seeming paradox that as we keep time more precisely, down to a scale of 10^-17 seconds, general relativistic effects make it impossible to keep a uniform measure of time.

"At the level of accuracy of parts in 10^17 or 10^18, comparing clocks scattered around the world would be no more meaningful than comparing the rates of pendulum clocks on small ships scattered in the oceans, each bobbing in its own way and keeping its own time."

Throwing the Baby out with the Bath Water

2006-04-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

In honor of defenestration being the Dictionary.com Word of the Day this past Sunday, let us pause to reflect on the great defenestrations of times long past.

de·fen·es·tra·tion (d-fn-strshn) n.
An act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

Things to Defenestrate Before the Close of yet Another Year:

1. A 1980's style printer
2. A clunky, 45 lb, supposedly portable laptop
3. A peck of hens (how many hens are in a peck?)
4. An albatross, uncaged
5. A donut-ham-hamburger (that would be a hamburger inside of a ham sandwich, using donuts as buns; courtesy of Jim Gaffigan)
6. One electron
7. A collection of Peter Frampton vinyl LP's
8. A bestiary of solved Electromagnetic Theory exam example problems
9. A One-Hundred Tonne Load Anvil
10. Twenty bowling balls (simultaneously or otherwise)

Things to NOT Defenestrate:

My keys.

Like a Kid on Opening Day

2006-04-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

1. This walrus is as big as a walrus.

2. This person that is not my brother recently got a perfect score on the SAT. At any rate, the Scott Button that is actually my brother will be going to the University of Toledo next year. Scott was not available for comment, but my mother reports that he was indeed admitted into the pharmaceutical program.

3. I would say that I was disappointed in walk-on, senior starting forward Chris Walker of the Aggie Basketball team for this video, were it not for the fact that I would have made this also if the idea had come to me earlier.

4. "You smell so fucking pretty." -- Jay from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

5. Grady Sizemore signed a 6 year deal worth over $35 million to live in Cleveland and play baseball. He's 23 years old. I figure have approximately 50 days left to accomplish the feat before I too turn 23. Grady re-upping with the Tribe is great news for the ladies of Cleveland also, apparently.

6. Technically, I passed my last E&M exam with a percentile score of exactly 60%. Amazingly enough, that score is somewhat respectable when taken relative to the performance of my fellow domestic graduate students.

7. Somehow I've managed to watch the following movies in the past week: Shaun of the Dead,The Weatherman, and V for Vendetta. All are very good. Shaun of the Dead is a comedic take on zombie movies. The Weatherman is a somewhat sad movie about a middle-aged man whose career is on the up and up, but his family life is ripe with crisis. And V is quite the action-packed thriller.

8. S is for Surprise
a)Sabies
b)Seagulls
c)Segals
d)Sangles
e)Sungles
f)Sagles

We'll feed sagles to sabies who play with seagulls on the seashore while watching the sangles play a tune about sungles and segals.

9. What is with Burger King these days? Their food makes me want to vomit everytime one of their ridiculous commercials come on. "Keep Bucking Chicken?" What does that even mean?

10. Go Tribe!

Strangely Patriotic

2006-04-01T02:13:00.000-08:00

A wistful sentimentality and a false sense of accomplishment, ultimately just some window dressing to an altogether haphazard existence, conspire vindictively and fatally to warp reality beyond recognition.

During our last lecture, my E&M professor, frustrated with our poor performance on the previous exam, asked the class what he needed to do in order to make the class better. One of the international students quickly responded that we needed more time on the exam to finish the problems. To which the professor replied, "You could masturbate all night, and if it's not going to happen, well then it's not going to happen." Aside from the glaring reality that the poor international student probably did not catch all of the subtle nuances of the statement, I definitely thought it was one of the funnier things I had heard in awhile.

Frustration seems to be standard these days. I would like to go back and order up my life to come custom with bluetooth wireless compatability, side airbags, and perhaps some tacky ground-effects lighting.

When I was a grade schooler and I asked my dad for a word's spelling, his first response, invariably, would be to say, "Well, look it up." Some learning comes from rote memorization; while in other subjects, intuition comes at the heavy price of arduous problem sets and cranky, sleepless nights. Most unfortunately though, only a finite number of references exist. That's lame.

How much of myself is my own work? How much is cribbed from the canon of culture that biases opinion towards an ambiguous point of reference? Maybe it's deep inside of me, behind a left ventricle, that hint of originality and creativity. I'm fairly certain though that the notion was copied from somewhere -- most likely a music video or some movie or a documentary I just watched.

At any rate, in case you were wondering, my professor is right. You may perform the experiment at home, if you wish. But please wear your lab coat and goggles.

Word or Words

2006-03-30T05:29:00.000-08:00

DOLLOP

dol·lop (dlp) n.
A large lump or portion of a solid matter: a dollop of ice cream.
A small quantity or splash of a liquid: a dollop of whiskey.
A modicum; a bit: not a dollop of truth to the story.

(courtesy of the one and only dictionary.com...but you are free to look it up in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, if you wish.)

At any rate, how does a dollop get to be both a liquid and a solid? Is it some sort of phase transition or some sort of duckbilled platypus (the classical analog for an electron)? Furthermore, I'm no physicist or anything, but how exactly does a dollop go from being a large lump of solid to a small quantity of liquid?

This is as confusing as that time we talked about ducks and decorated sheds in cultures and traditions. I bet a post-modern architect is beneath all of this dollop nonsense as well.

This blog entry contains not even a dollop of sense. I learned something today, please to explain.

Yawping Ad Nauseum

2006-03-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

This is a picture that you will not find on the Wabash College homepage. In the very least, I would have never guessed during the months that lead up to my first year, that an activity anything like Chapel Sing existed at Wabash.

Before coming to A&M, I had never humped it and yelled with 44,000 before, but I had certainly humped it and yelled with 24 in a match of competitive screaming with the other pledge classes my freshman year.

In the month or so leading up to homecoming and Chapel Sing, you could walk across campus at night with the sounds of the school fight song being evacuated from the young and naive lungs of our new freshmen -- each house delivering the same fight song with its own cadence and own spirit.

With the scarlet, green, and white house colors that adorned our faces, we were asked to look fierce and yell loud. I, for one, looked absolutely ridiculous and scared shitless; but I most certainly loved every minute of it.

Bat Sh** Crazy

2006-03-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

"Your solution, although brave, is not supported by logic."

Perhaps more debilitating words have been written as remarks on the margins of graded problem sets, but none can challenge the succint directness of that particularly phrase. Of course, this fate is better that writing a solution which is neither brave nor supported by logic, as is often the case -- for this remark was written on the problem set of one of my fellow graduate students last semester.

I seem to think about that a lot during an exam, especially when I have no idea how to approach any of the problems that appear on the exam. I wish I could get some bravery points though while writing an incorrect solution. At least that would boost my confidence a little bit.

At any rate, my Thursday night statistical mechanics exam went resoundingly well. And what a change of pace that is! Needless to say, I felt really great after the exam and went out to the Fox and Hound to celebrate -- as opposed to the commiserating that occurred after the Monday night E&M debacle.

The more I think about the Pokrovsky-ism that adorns the first line of this particular entry, the more I realize the potential broader application of the phrase. The ability for a person to take on the task of seeing through an illogical solution really shows their mettle -- and perhaps their gluttony for punishment.

Looking back on some of the solutions I have attempted in response to life's great problems, I wonder how brave I really was. For instance, how crazy or respectable could it possibly be that I made the choice to come down here for graduate school in physics? I don't think this was an opportunity that I made the conscious effort to create -- it was one that materialized outside of my willing cognizance. Making the decision to come down here required no bravery at all. It did require a knowing resignation to the fact that I am undeserving and am a largely lucky individual.

Sometimes though, a correct solution in physics, along with the best things in life, requires a lucky discovery. Perhaps though, a certain bravery exists in waiting that discovery out.

No Style Points

2006-03-21T22:43:00.000-08:00

!. When did exams during the day become so passe? They're like the Encylopedia Brittanica of 2006. I hope next year pants go out of style. Those things itch like crazy.

2. Also, when did "Your gynecologist" jokes become the new "Your mom" jokes.

3. I'm a tool and read the most current issue of Details Magazine. Supposedly, Vin Diesel wants to make a trilogy of movies on the life of Hannibal -- movies where the hero "will speak Punic, a language no one has heard in 2,000 years."

And that didn't come from the Random Vin Diesel Fact Generator.

Judging by this picture though, I'm afraid that Vin Diesel's dopey smile managed to eat my dopey smile whole. He lead a rich and full life.

4. After March Monday's Midnight E&M Exam, I went to the Fox and Hound with another graduate student. After a few beers, he made the scathing observation that a girl who just walked into the bar clearly had fake boobs, fake hair, and a fake tan. That ladies and gentlemen is the Tri-Faketa -- a dubious distinction at best and a recognition of one's commitment to Sparkle Motion.

5. Nothing is going out of style faster than logic. Some family of supposed Baptists have been protesting the funerals of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Their message is that God is punishing soldiers who defend a nation that harbors homosexuals.

Every now and then I see a bumper sticker that says, "Support Our Troops. Support Our President." And I've always wondered what other mutually exclusive things could you juxtapose together. My personal favorite is "Support Our Troops. Support Fried Rice," which seems to be in the very least a statement which promotes good nutrition for the soldiers. They get more support from fried rice than they get from the president, I suppose. I might be biased though since I grew up on the stuff. And perhaps I'm guilty of the prevalent Midwestern Half-Filipino bias that is running rampant in this country.

At any rate, I suppose these fellows protesting funerals would have a bumper sticker along the lines of, "You don't have to be Pro-Khomeni to be Anti-American." I think that's a difficult line to walk though, what with the sharp discontinuities in sense and all.

6. Pomeranians.

7. Voice Inflection.

I'd like to show you my private accountant.

I'd like to show you my private accountant.

I would like to wear a little green visor, a button-down shirt with those band things around the elbows, and a good pair of suspenders though. And yes, I would like to fill it up with petroleum distillate and re-vulcanize your tires, post-haste.

8. I would like to see a problem where you are asked to find the potential everywhere for a a potato of time-dependent charge inside of a grounded conducting cylinder which is cut in half by an oscillating infinite plane -- standing on the infinite plane are two conducting monkeys which are jumping up and down because they are right quick mad. For extra credit, stick your head in a microwave or jab a pencil in your eye.

9. I woke up the other night during the middle of an awesome thunderstorm. A flash of lightning woke me up, but the resultant thunder-crash was so loud and so immediate after the lightning strike that my first conclusion was that the waste-water facility next door to me managed to somehow violently explode -- bringing down the largest shit-storm to hit College Station ever. I thought the ground was shaking, but that could have just been my imagination.

Now that I think of it, waking up covered in the entire town's sewage does sound gross.

10. Baseball is America's pastime.

Lazy Park Days

2006-03-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

Istamby was a man of the city.

He would often think to himself about the nature of personality. Strangers were the greatest curiousity of all, and Istamby spent a great amount of time sitting on park benches and watched the walking strangers of the city pass by him. Each stranger could be broadly defined through interests -- superficial ones such as fashion, sports, and entertainment. Each stranger could be more narrowly defined through personality -- the quick-tempered, the lazy, and the humorous. Istamby liked to target a person as they passed through the park and then go about pigeonholing the stranger into the smallest of pigeonholes -- until there was nothing left, in his mind, by which he could identify that particular park passer-by. Istamby would target a person and then follow him through the park and observe. He would follow him through the park until the person transgressed the park boundaries. At that specific moment, that specific stranger could no longer be the subject of Istamby's favorite pastime.

Speaking of pastime's, Istamby's father loved baseball. And Istamby's mother loved to dote on her one and only son. Istamby was born Miguel, but Istamby's father quickly noted (and quickly resented) that Istamby was of the idyllic and pensive sort. Perhaps this was a result of sitting by the tube while just a toddler, watching Sesame Street and some Mr. Roger's Neighborhood while snacking on the lumpia that always seemed to be around the house. Istamby's father would yell, "Istamby Buong Maghapon," whenever he caught the young boy dozing off or staring intently on the activity outside or in the television. "Why don't you want to take part? There is more to life than watching." Over time though, as young Istamby entered the awkward and rebellious phases of adolescence, the two parents came to agree that his role as an observer most assuredly trumped the risks of having a son who spent his time idly gallavanting about, getting into lots of trouble and being troublesome towards young girls. At least they could agree on that.

Istamby would walk out to the park everyday. He did not have a strict schedule to follow, but he would normally be out in the park by two in the afternoon. At that time, he would take out his lunch bag and unwrap the two lumpia that his mother would carefully assemble and place at his bedroom door every morning. Lumpia, as you might expect, is not a morning food. But, for Istamby, it was definitely a food that enhanced the meditative and contemplative process. Istamby liked his lumpia to be cooked early in the day, so that when he was ready to eat them, they would be slightly cold and soggy. This really managed to seal in the true flavor of the lumpia. Istamby would wait for the first suitable target of the day to enter the bounds of the park. When that moment happened to occur, Istamby would then take the first bite out of the lumpia. His digesto-meditative state proved to be full and satisfying at times only when the subject of observation was of particular interest.

As one would expect, after some time had passed with this activity, Istamby found that not many new people would come into the park on a daily basis. Many of the faces would begin to become familiar in a way. But Istamby would merely add to their story, and soon these strangers felt like old friends -- or at least according to Istamby's view of friendship. At times, Istamby would feel compelled to approach one of the park-goers. But, as often accompanies the ability towards astute observation, Istamby found conversation to be especially troublesome.

When Istamby was a schoolboy, all the children would eat their lunch at their desk. This was because the private Catholic grade school that he attended failed to be equipped with a lunchroom. Lunchtime would come, and the children would go to their lockers in the hallway to retrieve their packed lunches. Occassionally, some of the mothers would volunteer to organize a hot lunch, and fresh and hot pizzas would be delivered to the classroom, much to the children's delight. Istamby liked school mostly because of the teachers. He didn't get along so well with the other children -- though this was not at all his fault. Strangely, Istamby felt intimidated by his peers but thoroughly felt at home with the kindly nuns and layperson teachers.

Istamby sat in the park one day and noticed a girl. He drew a blank but continued observing anyway. She passed and left the park's confines -- leaving Istamby a dudgeon mess. "Completely uncharacteristic," mused Istamby as he continued to while away his afternoon in the park's sunny environ, "and yet, strangely compelling and absolutely necessary."

A kindly, old woman walked into the park and offered up some fresh lemon square snack to the boyish Istamby. "You sit here everyday young boy. You watch and muse yet yearn for nothing." Istamby smiled graciously for the kind gift and nodded approvingly in response to the seeming harsh criticism.

"Perhaps this is true, but I contend that I do in fact live for something of value -- although you may not agree."

"Your father would not approve of this behavior of yours. He loved you dearly though, in despite of your awful shortcomings."

"I've had a full day of sitting here. I'm going home to cook up some lumpia. You should join me, and we can discuss this further."

(Note: I had the idea for this character while on spring break. He's not too much unlike a Korean boy that I was classmates with in grade school. I definitely don't have time to develop the ideas here more, but I like the start that I've gotten off to.)

Koalas Gone WILD!!!

2006-03-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

1. I have two midterms the week following spring break. The classical electrodynamics midterm will begin promptly on Monday the 20th at 7 pm. Not to be outdone, I have a statistical mechanics problem set due the same day, to be followed by my second midterm on Thursday beginning promptly at 6 pm.

Evening exams are wonderful, because then I still have the pleasure of sitting in on the lectures for both of those classes on their respective dates.

My koala friend will have to party twice as hard this year to make up for my party-deficient spring break.

2. Dictionary.com's word of the day for Saturday, March 11:

crapulous \KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:
1. Suffering the effects of, or derived from, or suggestive of gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous stomach.
2. Marked by gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous old reprobate.

I always thought crapulous was a word made up by not-so-creative teenagers (such as myself when I was a budding, young, barely legal teen).

3. The Gordone Awards Competition:

I was naive enough to think that I would have plenty of time over spring break to write a new, original piece of creative fiction for this English Department sponsored writing competition.

I could use some help in picking a submission from the small-ish body of work that I've compiled and posted on this blog. I could also use some help in revising said piece. So, any suggestions or insults would be greatly appreciated.

4. Earlier this week I woke up after 3 hrs of sleep thinking, "It's ok, I can go back to sleep because I conformally mapped my sleep patterns." Conformal mapping is a very useful tool where you map points from a two-dimensional space onto a complex plane, thereby making some complicated geometry easier to manage.

I hate it when I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about a physics problem. That's bullshit.

5. If I don't start learning physics faster, the next course I take might be called "automotive mechanics." And then I wouldn't have to worry about being assigned problem sets which are illustrative of nothing at all and which contain a numerous amount of onerous pathologies.

6. I came home from class yesterday and fell asleep by 5 pm. I woke up for about an hour around midnight, went back to sleep, and didn't wake up again until 11 am. It was awesome. Everything I could have ever hoped for, considering my physics consumption of late.

7. Thank God for my physics friends. Although my idea of a good time usually does not include poring over a single problem set with ten other physics students on a Wednesday evening for over ten hours straight -- it is often an illustrative and enligtening experience.

Who Got the Best of Jobu?

2006-03-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

Because of my infatuation with concatenation and truncation, Jobu is perhaps my favorite nickname for myself.

And so, here is the first annual list of "The Best of Jobu":

1. No Jobu compilation would be complete without paying homage to the famed Voodoo character from the critically acclaimed, box-office smash Major League. This movie about the Tribe from Cleveland, those lovable losers who formally played in "The Mistake by the Lake," made Jobu a permanent fixture on the pop culture radar -- influencing the course of human history inalterably forever. In the words of that inimitable, aging pitcher from the aforementioned movie, Eddie Harris, "Hey Bartender, Jobu needs a refill!"

2.Jobu is the greatest southern rock act out of New Jersey that you've never heard of. Click here for more Jobu music.

3. Are you in the market for heavy-duty gimbals, super telephoto flash brackets, or double bubble levels? Are you a rugged individualists on the go, continually looking for the world's most perfect nature or sports action photograph? Well look no further than the Canadian photography engineering firm Jobu Design.

4. So I lied when I claimed to "make an excellent handbag." But I sure as hell sell an excellent handbag. At Jobu Handbags, you can not only purchase some of the world's most exclusive and elegant ladies' handbags, you can become utterly confused with foreign currency exchange rates while fighting to understand the true value of the British Pound.

5. Zum Gluck! It's Meggle Time baby! Try Meggle's new JoBu Erdbeer for a delightfully delcious, creamy strawberry trinksnack. Now only 299 Kilojoules per serving!

6. Jobu Dudley? What a n00b. Apparently if Branecki and I ever successfully mated, the product would be some sort of video game nut.

7. Try my not-so-secret anymore recipe for sausage and peppers. No, don't do that. Sausage and peppers sound gross -- no matter how kind this supposed Mr. and Mrs. Jobu sound.

8. Extra Heavy, XXX Strong Forged Shank. Deep Throat Bend. Cutting Point. Anti-corrosion Black Chrome. Titles for full-length, feature pornographic films? Nope. Owner Jobu Big Game Hooks are ideal for chunking and trolling. So target and rig that huge as fuck tuna all you want big boy.

9. Catch Your Dream. Jobu University. They'll deceptively weed your mind of roughly ill-smelling ideas -- or so Google's Beta translator claims.

10. Although our techniques are based on centuries old knowledge, it is our application of that knowledge that sets JOBU SHIN KAN Hoku apart.

That's all for this year's top ten in Jobu.

Zum Gluck! Remember the 3 R's. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Physics Fun

2006-02-26T22:35:00.001-08:00

In celebration of the past Saturday morning's electromagnetic theory midterm and all the problem sets I've been scrambling to complete, here's a link to a short story that is referenced in an undergraduate thermal physics book, conspicuously found in a chapter entitled, "The Canonical Probability Distribution."

"Inflexible Logic" by Russell Maloney

Ball of Misshapen Clay

2006-02-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

At the Witching Hour

2006-02-19T02:10:00.000-08:00

A 67 year old Vietnamese farmer has not slept in the past 33 years. He came down with a fever once a long time ago, and since then he has been stricken with insomnia. Amazingly enough, he was given a clean bill of health, with the exception of some liver damage, last time he visited a doctor. The news story is slightly reminiscent of something out of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's brand of magic realism, and I'm frankly left perplexed.

My attitudes have changed somewhat over the years. And perhaps, after some statistical averaging, one could make the case that I've steadily matured in despite many fits and starts. Most notably, I used to think highly of staying up, burning the midnight oil, and working steadily through the night. But nowadays, I would only resort to such extreme study habits if the scenario posed was worst-case. In fact, even then, I would be much more inclined to give up and rely on some hours of good rest over desperate attempts to patch up some significant holes in a problem set or in my understanding of a subject.

In despite of the obvious deleterious health effects associated with such insomniac behaviors, I think a certain dark magic becomes apparent as the hours tend steadily forward through the night and toward imminent daybreak. Oftentimes, those moments are best spent with someone else, someone you really care about. But more often than not, those moments are spent fighting off devilish attacks schemed up by a beloved friend turned enemy. Spending late nights and early mornings alone is the most taxing. If finding myself during those times alone were possible, I'd think that I would have found myself at least a hundred times over. In the end, you find yourself chasing after ghosts summoned up by an indefatigable imagination.

Sometimes these long nights are caused by supposed dead ends. I think for a long time, I was consumed with the fear that I had been rendered immobile. Turns out, all I needed was some suggestion to get moving again -- but even then, sometimes not without a fight, for I'm a stubborn and obstinate fool among the worst.

Movies can show insomnia and early mornings spent with another without giving the slightest intimation as to the emotion proscribed by actual physical sense. An early morning after no sleep should be dewy, with a distinct bit of chill which runs up high into your nose -- setting up camp for an indefinite period. A distinct rumbling comes from below as hunger pangs set in. Your body has been running non-stop for an entire night and much energy was burnt on the laughter or the crying or the lonely, withdrawn thoughts and recollections. All of this sets the stage for an inimitable sense of enlightened thought and wisdom. With daybreak comes the closure. No words are necessary because all is known and common. Simple. Beautiful. Elegant. In the bleary eyed ranting and ravings of the sleepless.

My last weeks at Wabash, I found myself blacked out and intoxicated or interminably awake and sober. Maybe I'm the only one to find that fitting and appropriate, a properly defining moment.

I Shill for no Man

2006-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

The temperature hovered in the mid-70s today.

I got my PowerBook back yesterday. The hard drive had some major character issues or something, and so the mysterious people at the local Mac retailer finally got around to replacing it with one that works. Unfortunately, I never got around to backing up the old hard drive. Although, I did figure out how to get the songs off of my iPod and onto the new hard drive (iTunes be damned). The fact that my PowerBook now runs on the Tiger Mac OS X is perhaps one of the more encouraging aspects of this whole ordeal.

Mac and Windows users alike can get a dozen or so useful open-source programs from the aptly named disc, Software for Starving Students. It includes such gems as OpenOffice, Blender (for 3D modeling, among other things), and also has a handful of games and whatnot. Also, if you're looking for a jankety open-source, genero-version of Mathematica, give MuPad a try.

While I'm advertising, I just have to say, "You gotta love that Allstate guy."

And speaking of guys, no product has a more biblical spokesman than Sweep n' Mop's own Saul Judah. Would you try this with your old-fashioned mop? Not a CHANCE!. So what if the product is simply a mop sponge with ridges -- the fact of the matter is that the voice behind this product may or may not be a successor to the throne of David.

Always Cooler

2006-02-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

When antagonized, Alastair often could not find the right words to say. In his mind, he always felt like the coolest, toughtest, hardest guy that ever lived. And frequently, he rehearsed all the right things to say in order to strive towards that goal. But when the moment came to put it all on the line, Alastair oftentimes would crumple up like a well-engineered Volvo -- he would give just enough so that his inner psyche could remain intact and be found salvageable. That illusion of hardness could vanish in a puff, to be filled in an instant with the feelings of helplessness.

Nevertheless, in Alastair's mind there existed a distinct and distinguisable, well-cultivated sense of self. He worried over it endlessly and, at best, was only moderately satisfied.

For all these reasons, Amelia's long, drawn out, and complicated admission seemingly stung at his very soul. In place of words came out a disfigured and pained facial expression -- a beautiful visage now distorted and warped by outside blows and inner inablities.

A day earlier, Alastair caught himself walking down the streets of the city, feeling overwhelming pleased with himself. He considered his blessings and daydreamed of a life without misgivings. The kids, the wife, the beautiful home -- all these wonderfully placed and timed advantages stood well-ordered in a foundation built with care and patience. Truly, the scariest thing he or anyone could ever know is consistently, perpetually looming just over the horizon. But at long last, he felt that he was closer than ever to understanding his often wary and misunderstood father.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Bicycles and Such

Amelia Buendia

Regional Transit Authority

Solitude

Preponderant Dismissal

A Point for Participation

2006-02-04T08:21:00.000-08:00

1.If you don't think I won't not put the song "Copacabana" on my cellphone and set an alarm to go off to that ringtone at some arbitrary time during an 8AM recitation period for which I'm the TA just so that I can make a surprised and excited face and yell out, "POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWER SURGE!!!!!! IT'S TIME FOR THE PHYSICS TRIVIA LIGHTNING ROUND!!!" then you have another coming.

Unfortunately, I'll probably need espresso beans to be injected into my heart in order to acheive that sort of excitement at eight o'clock in the morning.

2. Small point that is of interest only to me: Last week I answered a question correctly in my graduate level electromagnetic theory course. Prior to this, the only other time I've managed to speak in class was to make a dumb joke (well, a funny dumb joke maybe).

At any rate, graduate courses at a large, public university are distinctly different from the intimate and nurturing (read: intoxicating) environment that I was so accustomed to at Wabash College.

3. Getting a crazed expression on my face while shaking my head furiously such that my hair bounces fervently and shouting, "We'll be rich!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" never ceases to put me in a really good mood.

Consequently, other things which manage to make me smile include: A pantsless round of "Kings" with the physics grad students, lying down on the grass in the middle of campus with a loved one during a warm and sunny day in February, and a hot cup of tea (which apparently is "my cup of tea," now or something).

4. Two nights in a row last week, I had the same f'd up dream. In this dream, for some reason, my teeth became very brittle and delicate, like glass. Every time my mouth would open, chunks of teeth would just fall out of my mouth. I would try to keep the pieces in my mouth, but my mouth would then just fill up with broken shards of tooth. The second time, in the dream, I was hanging out with Scott, playing video games in the living room (a nobel pastime, if there ever was one) when my teeth started falling out of my mouth. I was crying and saying, "See, it's happening! Just like in my dream." But he only laughed at me, so I punched him, a lot.

At any rate, I feel this dream has a fairly reasonable and literal translation (I'm not original or abstract enough while in the dreamscape for anything but). When I had bridge work done on the lower set of teeth, my dentist made it sound like I habitually grind my teeth in my sleep. Ever since I left my mouth guard at home in Cleveland, I guess I've been worried about damaging the bridge while in my sleep.

5. My koala friend says hello.

6. "POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWER SURGE!!!!!"

7. Speaking of power surges, my powerbook has been in the local mac shop for two weeks running now. F' that noise.

8. When my roommate suggested getting a shot block for the party that's being held here tonight, I thought that he meant that I should be roaming the party dressed in 80's basketball gear (replete with thick headband, extremely short basketball shorts, and knee-high tube socks), slamming drinks out of people's hands, and yelling, "Not in my house! It's gametime baby, c'mon now." But no, he meant that we should have a large block of ice from which people could drink shots. I personally prefer the latter. Perhaps we can agree to disagree?

9. If physics graduate students Matt and Peter were in town this weekend, we could make for some pretty formidable shot blocking...that's all I'm saying.

10. "We could talk and not talk for hours."

Preponderant Dismissal

2006-01-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

Something important had inexplicably vanished. He stared at the walls of his former office, absolutely puzzled and confoundedly bemused. Few things in Alastair's life had leveled such a shock. In fact, as he continued staring off absently into the space before him, Alastair could only count one other such instance -- the unexpected death of his father. The shock of that though was not nearly as immediate. Alastair was young and unfamiliar with him in many respects. The effects of that death were felt over a period of time which could be represented as an oddly continuous distribution of hurt and missed time and lost experience. The whole lot of it was strange, but Alastair was able to hold his own.

Alastair walked down the hall. He was a bit confused, a bit concerned, and a bit over the edge. For the moment, the frigthening, harrowing aspects which Alastair feared most over the past several weeks had irremediably gripped his entire sense of being. Alastair saw time move past him in slow-motion. The slower it moved, the heavier he felt -- until Alastair had expanded into a super-massive, aging gas ball, ready to implode.

Alastair felt betrayed, and his reaction to the betrayal was anything but healthy. As most betrayals begin, Alastair's began with the gift of himself to another and ended with the irresponsible and irrevocable misappropriation of blood and body, years of toil and selfless understanding.

This was all known. This was all common. People lose their jobs all the time. Unfortunately, not many seem to steep themselves in horribly inexplicable messes in the process.

"Pressure," Alastair remembered saying, "can be a good thing. It can spur on the imagination and inimitably disrupt the status quo at its cowardly foundations." Alastair felt profoundly naive and ashamed for having been so drunk with youth and inexperience. "Turns out," Alastair would now tell himself, "that a man's self worth ought to remain a constant in this universe. Evidently, I was once a young dirigible."

And with all this, Alastair's eyes finally opened to the hurt around him, and he grew from that in ways which would be shown to astound even the least of his friends and lovers -- this horribly embarassing scandal would only open the door to greater opportunity. He had no way of knowing at the time that judgment really is a two-way street, in that the hurt perpetrated by ill-will, ingraciousness, and misunderstanding can often become a distinctly reversible process.

And thus began Alastair's big day.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Bicycles and Such

Amelia Buendia

Regional Transit Authority

Solitude

Hooray!

2006-01-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth as of late. Oh well. My powerbook is currently very sad and sick right now. If you could please say a prayer for its timely recovery, I'd very much appreciate it.

In other news, I just started my second semester as a physics graduate student at Texas A&M.

Beth literally bought me a real koala for christmas. His name is Harry, and he lives at a koala refuge in Brisbane, Australia.

I saw two Beluga whales at the Georgia Aquarium.

And I played lots of video games while at home in Cleveland.

All in all, I must say that I had a most productive winter break.

For my T.A. sections this semester, I think I'm going to allow my students to earn extra credit by writing letters about what they are learning in physics to Harry the koala.

I also resolve to turn purple and sit in the stink-o corner for fifteen consecutive days.

And I would like to try writing longer, better pieces of short fiction. Perhaps I'll study some classical electrodynamics and statistical mechanics along the way.

Your Precocious, Presumptious, Pretentious Putz

2005-12-21T19:00:00.000-08:00

Hey dad. I thought I should tell you something. When I was little, every now and then I would rummage through your desk drawers. I know this sort of behavior is dishonest, but I had to find some way to while away the time during those lazy summer days when I'd be home alone with Scott. Although, I don't think Scott would ever rummage through your things.

At any rate, the most interesting thing I had ever found was your lockbox of items which I presume to be dated from your college days. The contents of this box included your high school diploma, which had a crisp two dollar bill tucked away inside of it. There was also an old leather wallet with some old photos and the cards of businesses that are no longer extant. You also stowed away some poetry you once wrote on some torn out pages from a smallish stenographer's notebook. I have to admit that finding the poems was a surprise, even at such a young age, because I guess I never presumed you to be the sort to write anything. And then I actually read the poems. They look a lot like you dad. Silly. Dated. Yet to the point.

I don't remember the poems now, and I'm not going to go through the effort to dig them back up (even though I'm pretty sure of their exact location) because I want to remember just as I experienced it as a little kid. The only thing I remember though is that you inexplicably started a poem with the line, "On top of Ol' Smokey." This I consider to be a grave offense to the written word, but oh well. You then went on to describe some guy getting his head split open -- hardly the type of literature you would want your impressionable young son to come across.

I guess it occurred to me though that what I'm really doing is creating a longer, wordier, and more self-obsessed version of the short-lived literary effort that you once made, stowed away, and then blissfully forgot about. I bet you wrote those poems for a class you once took. That wouldn't surprise me because although I previously made clumsy attempts to write short fiction, not until I took a class on it at Wabash did I really get the process of it. Vonnegut once said that writing short fiction is the best way to help your soul grow, and that's why creative writing managed to spread to every university in the land, even though the prospects of making a career out of it are slim to none.

You were young once too, and you don't hesitate to remind me of that or to reassure me of the strange direction that I'm headed. So, thanks dad. But I have to ask, why did you stop?

A Fork and a Knife

2005-12-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

Growing up, my brother Trevor and I were great competitors. We fought, played, and argued all the time. We were boys and were best of friends, living in a neighborhood populated mostly of older people who enjoyed wearing their pants all the way up to the waist and wore sweater vests with the leathery, old-time buttons. When you live in a neighborhood like that, you grow up feeling like some sort of curiosity. Everything smells old, and everyone has a critical remark to share with you. That's how Trevor and I grew up though, and we protected each other from all the old farts out of necessity.

Trevor is older by two years. He'd invent games in which he would innately be the better, but I couldn't do anything about it because I simply wasn't as creative. Other times, we'd simply play some one-on-one games of basketball in our driveway, or play a game of catch out on the street. Trever always seemed to be able to throw harder, and I resented him for it. But baseball was my favorite, and I could never begrudge him for wanting to play a game of catch -- even though it typically meant that I would go to sleep that night with a sore, red palm. I'd plead with him to let-up a bit, but secretly I wanted to show him that I could take all his stuff.

My favorite game though was when we'd sit out on the front porch swing and spin a long yarn about the Wednesdaq. It all started when I asked him if he'd always be my best friend. We were sitting out on the porch, drinking tall glasses of sweet tea that mama poured out for us, relaxing after a long game of "who can throw a stone closest to Old Mr. McGregor without waking him up." I was nine, and I felt it was a valid question to ask him. Summer was winding down to a close, and school was going to be starting up.

He said, "I will be your best friend every single day Sean-- even when we're old men and are begrudging little kids for playing the games that they play."

I thought that was a good idea, and I said as much to him. But I thought that I would push the issue further. "Everyday? Even the days that end in Q?"

"Especially those days. That's when we need each other more than ever. Don't you ever listen to Mrs. McGregor talk about Wednesdaq?"

He knew that I would never ever come close to stinky, old Mrs. McGregor. She smelled like rotten salami -- the kind that made me throw up all over the classroom the year before. I told Trevor as much, and I also said that if mama ever put rotten salami in my lunch again, that I'd probably pack up my things and walk right on out of the house with her big, red suitcase full of my stff. And I most certainly would not forget the fudgsicles in the freezer, because those belonged to me.

"Well her and Mrs. McGregor know that the only way to keep a Wednesdaq away is by keeping some rotten salami under the lettuce in the crisper. It's not her fault that she smells like that sometimes though. Their refrigerator is as old as their creaky old knees, and sometimes it lets out little rotten salami burps."

At that, we went behind the house towards the woods and the creek and began hunting for any Wednesdaqs that could possibly be lurking about. We figured that we'd need to go at least one hundred yards from the house since the refrigerator that mama kept our rotten salami in wasn't as old as the McGregor's refrigerator. The Wednesdaq's sense of smell is pretty good. We were able to reason that the refrigerator's ability to project the smell of rotton salami was proportional to a rate of about one hundred yards per ten years. Later in life, while considering such banal topics as transition amplitudes and ground state energy levels, I would stop to wonder about how that smell evolved over time.

A month later, we were out on the front porch spinning a yarn about the Wednesdaq. By that time, I was finally able to figure out that Trevor made the whole thing up. But when I told mama about it, she just told me that the best thing is to roll with the punches. And then she said something about baking an apple pie for pops because, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

Mama's wont for aphorisms and cliche inspired me to a height of creativity that I had not yet known during my young life. Trevor had a distinct way of putting me on my ass in laughter with a quick one-liner, and I envied him for that in a sort.

That day, I told Trevor that, "the way to a Wednesdaq's heart is through his stomach." I then showed him the knife and fork that I had carried in my pocket all day long and explained to him that if a Wednesdaq ever ate me whole, I'd be ready to eat out his heart.

Trevor must have thought that was the funniest thing he had heard all summer long, because he laughed and laughed until his face had turned red and he couldn't breathe anymore. He was a good older brother and maybe he was humoring me at the time, but I would never begrudge him for that.

A long, running inside joke was what typified our brotherhood.

Befor Trevor left for college, I asked him again if he'd always be my best friend. And of course, he said that he would be my best friend, even on the days that end in "Q" and especially on the days that end in "Q." And with that, we got out a sheet of paper and wrote down the worst of the worst about the Wednesdaqs.

1. If you call his name, he will get angry and will attack you.
2. He's big and hairy and foams at the mouth.
3. He is of no relation to NASDAQ.
4. Tuesdaq is no match for the Wednesdaq.
5. The way to the Wednesdaq's heart is through his stomach. If he eats you whole, wait until you reach his stomach and then stumble around until you find what looks to be a triangular opening. Go through the opening and eat his heart. It will take at least 15 days to finish eating his heart, but you will be rewarded the next time you move your bowels and find a BRAND NEW LEXUS, complete with red ribbon atop the roof. Collect the jade monkey and break it open to find the keys to the Lexus. Drive the Lexus right on out of the Wednesdaq's dead and rotting corpse.
6. When unmasked, the Wednesdaq is unidentifiable. If you find his mask on the ground, be wary of everyone...even your closest of kin...ESPECIALLY your closest of kin.
7. Seek the help of a koala for protection against the Wednesdaq.
8. The Wednesdaq abhors gelato pie but will consume the occassional one-day old whole.
9. He is powerless on "rotten salami and rotton salami alone day."
10. If cornered by the Wednesdaq, yell out the name, "Marilyn Manson" and take to the fetal position -- this is your last hope if caught in such a situation. If Marilyn Manson takes pity on your poor soul, he will emerge from the local sewage treatment plant and fight the Wednesdaq to the death.

The years following slowed the amount of correspondence between us. We went to different schools and had completely different lives. The occassional holidays, breaks, vactions, and getaways brought forays into the competitive world of excessive consumption -- be it food, drink or women. Turns out that nothing quite compares to binging on alcohol and White Castle cheeseburgers. I frequently seemed the lush in comparison to him, but I took solace from having the more attractive (albeit more vapid) girl by my side.

We became consumers in every sense of the word. Sleep was hard to come by. Alcohol was always a weekend away. Independently of each other, we found that life was meant to be lived in excess. Somewhere along the way, life became too short to accept moderation as an acceptable compromise. Girls, friends, and enemies found their way in and out, back and forth through the revolving door that campus life becomes.

The morning when I woke up to a father banging on my door vociferously while his daughter lay inexplicably naked next to me seemed to do little to knock me from the sweet reverie that comes from making life's choices from under a pile of winter coats. I told the story once to Trevor, who found it to be a hoot. Apparently, about the same time, he found himself ducking into and around window wells and tall hedges about campus and his fraternity in order to avoid the albatross of an angry parent that had come into his life.

And that's what our lives managed to become -- strangely and inexplicably independent of each other, a hodgepodge of ill-managed decisions and choices and drunken debauches. He called me up one night, and I traveled across the state to meet up with him. For the first time, we talked and really talked -- all inside jokes put aside for a moment in time. We thought about the Wednesdaq and noticed that it became real in ways that we never imagined solely because we stopped paying attention to it. The Wednesdaq marched incessantly forward and drove us towards old, dusty, and musty, sweater vests with leathery buttons and the smell of rotten salami.

"I think you're right," he said to me.

Months passed, and all of a sudden the time came for mama, pops and I to travel down and watch as Trevor made the solitary march towards commencement. The dark foreboding manifested itself in the heavy grey clouds that filled the sky and in the end of spring wind which gave life to an otherwise dreary exercise. I didn't go alone. I came with the girl that I thought I would marry, and I was anticipating the moment to let Trevor in on my secret.

I gave him a big hug at the end as he stood side by side with another girl dressed in cap and gown. He smiled at me, eyed me standing next to my girl and said, "Thursdaq already?" And we all laughed because in an oddly serendipitous way, we ended up all being in on the same joke.

Alright...Just Do It Already

2005-12-13T03:09:00.000-08:00

Oops, it's the middle of December, and I think it was like 64 degrees outside yesterday.

Beth was here for the past week and a half, and that was absolutely wonderful. She was excited about doing karaoke with the other physics grads, but the guy that runs it at the bar we go to did not show up, sadly.

I think we've been giving each other the same form of snyphyllus: congestion, runny nose, persistent sneezing, headache, body pain. Back and forth. Forever.

If you don't want to fuck around with having a stuffed-up nose (and I'm sure you don't), there's only one medicine to turn to: Tylenol Severe Cold and Congestion with Cool Mint Afterburst Freshness. That shit stops a cold dead in its tracks, providing relief for 8 hours straight.

If you're surprised that I can find amusement from talking in a made-up accent (in this case, arbitrarily adding r's after mostly every vowel...such as in, "It's ther Fartin' Tarxas Arggies!!") and through expressing laughter in a closed-mouth cackle, then you must hardly know me at all.

The trailer for the M. Night Shyamalan movie, Lady in the Water, starts with, "There once was a man named Cleveland Heep(Steamer)..."

Now for something completely unrelated to everything else:
Everyday? Even the days that end in "Q?"
Yes.
Good, because signs of an imminent Wednesdaq are all around.
Oh no! We should seek shelter immediately.

De-bunking myths about the Wednesdaq:

1. If you call his name, he will get angry and will attack you.
2. He's big and hairy and foams at the mouth.
3. He is of no relation to NASDAQ.
4. Tuesdaq is no match for the Wednesdaq.
5. The way to the Wednesdaq's heart is through his stomach. If he eats you whole, wait until you reach his stomach and then stumble around until you find what looks to be a triangular opening. Go through the opening and eat his heart. It will take at least 15 days to finish eating his heart, but you will be rewarded the next time you move your bowels and find a BRAND NEW LEXUS, complete with red ribbon atop the roof. Collect the jade monkey and break it open to find the keys to the Lexus. Drive the Lexus right on out of the Wednesdaq's dead and rotting corpse.
6. When unmasked, the Wednesdaq is unidentifiable. If you find his mask on the ground, be wary of everyone...even your closest of kin...ESPECIALLY your closest of kin.
7. Seek the help of a koala for protection against the Wednesdaq.
8. The Wednesdaq abhors gelato pie but will consume the occassional one-day old whole.

Some things to consider:

1. Would you rather be Toby Keith or have a boot stuck in your ass?

2. Would you rather have a koala infestation or a beagle infestation?

3. Would you rather be a hot, young astrophysicst (a la Kelly McGillis) or do Maverick (a la Kelly McGillis again)?

4. Would you rather be George W. Bush or Dan Quayle?

Thanksgiving

2005-11-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

1. My brother looks, self-admittedly, goofy in all pictures because of the way he smiles. With a little coaching from his much wiser older brother though, I think we nailed down the secret to making fake-o looking smiles appear genuine.

I mean, look how happy he looks. Someone must have told a really funny joke.

Truly, the hallmarks of the Button Family Smile is to simply squint your eyes and smile really big. I never realized it before, but everyone in my family (with the notable exception of Scott, until now at least) smiles like that.

Also, note the new winter fashion everyone: horizontally-striped polo shirt over vertically-stripped, button-down dress shirt.

2. I had no idea that driving through Ohio during a holiday weekend could be so rough. Considering the traffic going north and south down I-71 (which basically runs the length of the state), I would have to assume that the entire state population was on the move.

3. As if everyone in my family wore this stupid, curly-hair, Magnum P.I. wig this past weekend...

I guess it is a good look though. I can't complain.

4. Facts about Kurt Vonnegut that only interest me (Taken from a collection of his short stories entitled, Bagombo Snuff Box):

a. He once told Joseph Heller that if it hadn't been for World War II, he would have been garden editor of The Indianapolis Star.

b. In an early short story that he wrote titled, Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp, he references Crawfordsville, Indiana.

c. In the fifties, Vonnegut quit his job doing PR for GE and moved his family to Cape Cod to begin writing full-time.

d. These are his 8 rules of creative writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

5. I would like to give thanks to the following relationship sponsors:
a. The Greater Main Street Association
b. The Koala Foundation of America
c. The Track Pants Twins, stars of the "Rock Your Bod" series (written and directed by Elisabeth Sugrue)
d. S.O.B (Save Our Beagles)
e. Lewis Black
f. Ben Folds
g. The letter, Q
h. Things that make you go, "Mmmmmm"
i. Continental Airlines
j. The Neon Cactus
k. The Parking Garage Preservation Society of Cincinnati
l. Chimney Rock
m. Friends and family

6. The thought of eating another White Castle cheeseburger makes my stomach turn, but I know someday, somewhere I'll try to share an entire Crave Case (that's 30 White Castles folks) with someone who is as much a glutton for punishment (and ungodly, awful food product) as I am.

What's in a Name?

2005-11-28T14:26:00.000-08:00

In the town of White Settlement (an unforunately named suburb of Fort Worth), during the most recent election, a measure to have the name of the town changed to something more politically correct was struck down in a hotly contested vote by inhabitants. Proponents of the measure argued that the town of some 15,000 was being hurt economically by the less-than-appealing name. Recently, Home Depot and Wal-Mart have packed up and left (and judging by the number of these hardware and retail behemoths that are scattered about the country, I would say that this is a major warning sign concerning a town's economic health), and the local chamber of commerce has been up-in-arms over its struggles to attract new businesses.

The name "White Settlement" comes from the fact that a large contingent of white folk built a settlement amid a large number of Native American settlements in the 1840s. The town, which is 80% white as of the 2000 census, claims to have no real trace of a racist past. Thus, the so-called "heritage" that the slight majority of the townfolk have (for the time) preserved is based largely in a desire to re-affirm their ancestors' uncreative choice of a name.

I think that if these people were really serious about keeping the name, they would have at least had the decency to make some cute alterations to the name's past. For instance, a town named after a person is particularly delightful. In this case, let's call our quiant hero Ichabod White. And if they really wanted to strengthen their argument for keeping the name of "White Settlement," they would have our Ichabod, dashing hero and founder, fighting off hordes and hordes of vicious, man-eating Native American savages. Not only does this point give the name historical fullness, but it also preserves some of the original (yet hardly creative) irony that, at the time of its founding, the most distinguishing feature of this town was the fact that it was a bastion of white-ness in a heavily Native American populated region.

One of the arguments for maintaining the name "White Settlement" was the fact that the city would have to spend over $25,000 to have all official-type uniforms, signs, and letterheads changed. Without knowing the extent of the city's dire financial situation, I would have to say that this point is out-and-out stupid -- given, of course, that the major cause for the flight of big business in this simple burgh is indeed due to the politically incorrect name. I also think that changing a really unattractive name to one with a bit more pizzaz is simply a smart business decision that any sober-minded capitalist could appreciate. The monetary price to have the name changed is a small one if it can at least give the town a fighting chance in the battle to stave off its unfortunate economic doldrums.

Since the name is really the city's first line of attack when trying to sell itself to prospective businesses and residents, having an unoffensive name makes good business sense. And as such, I propose a compromise: Give the town a slogan and have that slogan added to all official documents and signs. States have slogans, and they proudly display them everywhere. Ohio is both, "The Heart of it All!" and "The Birthplace of Aviation." Illinois is the "Land of Lincoln." And Alabama, curiously, has "Stars Fell on Alabama." (Not to be out-done, Texas has a whole fucking song, but I'm not even going to get into that one right now.) Any good ad man would agree, "Slogans are slog-tastic!!"

So, the good people of White Settlement should try the following on for size:

1. White Settlement: "We may, in fact, be 80% white and our name IS White Settlement, but we seriously love you colored folk."

2. White Settlement: "We're white, and we're right. So get used to it!"

3. White Settlement: "The 'I' of Ichabod."

4. White Settlement: "Look how low our crime rate is?!"

All in all, I think a lot of people have missed the boat on this issue. The primary concern here should be, "How far should a town go to sell itself out to corporate America?" The hulaballoo that this is an example of political correctness running amok in our society is but a red herring. The fact of the matter is, this is really an example of how much sway outsiders such as Home Depot and Wal-Mart have in the day-to-day operation of small communities across the country. Rather than being accepting of the unique idiosyncracies of small towns, with their quaint toy shops and hardware stores (which are true measures of a town's heritage), these aggressors come into town and immediately stamp their way of doing things as the right way to do things (with the corporate paradigm of political correctness dragging in tow).

At any rate, White Settlement has a stupid name and a stupid story behind the name.

A news report prior to the election can be found here.

Also, the poorly thought-out opinion piece in the A&M school paper that prompted me to write this cynical diatribe can be found here.

...And You Can Count on It

2005-11-21T05:45:00.000-08:00

I don't get to be in Cleveland very often throughout the year. In fact, being home for most of this past summer was the longest amount of time that I've spent at home since after my freshman year at Wabash. At any rate, when I am at home, my brother and I typically spend most of our time between working out at FitWorks or playing video games into the early hours of the morning.

Marc Brown is the owner of Norton Furniture, a store located in downtown Cleveland which offers credit to just about everyone and even leaves out fresh baked bread for any homeless individuals who pass by. Another interesting aspect about this particular furniture store is the costumed mannequins which decorate the showroom.

Between the hours of midnight and 5 AM, Marc Brown's off-beat, homemade commercials frequently air on local television. The first time I saw one of his commercials, I honestly thought it was the freakiest commercial I had ever seen -- predominantly because of Marc Brown's raspy, wheezy voice. The audio from this particular commercial can be heard here.

After making fun of the commercial at length, my cousin's boyfriend alerted me as to why his voice sounds like that...

As it turns out, Brown was kicked in the throat by another kid as a child, injuring his vocal cords. Yet behind his peculiar presentation is an uncommonly astute merchant who's managed to become the king of the urban-furniture business.
Cleveland Scene, 1/19/05

Bonfire

2005-11-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

I went to Bonfire last night.

I don't want to misrepresent the tradition, but as far as I know, every year before the t.u. game, a large stack of logs is erected and then razed to the ground as a symbol of Aggieland's "burning desire to beat t.u."

The largest stack was erected in 1969. It holds the world record for largest bonfire erected at 109 feet, 10 inches. This tidbit of information comes from a scathingly critical, yet interesting article written by a former member of the cadet corps.

When 12 students were killed by collapsing logs from the 60 ft. tall stack in 1999, the tradition of having Bonfire on-campus was stopped. In fact, ligation involving the university is still on-going today. Nevertheless, students have taken it upon themselves to move Bonfire off-campus and hold it without any university involvement. For more information on this organization (which, in despite of a recent controversial vote by the student government remains unrecognized by the university), I refer you to the Student Bonfire website.

At any rate, in despite of all the controversy surrounding the continuation of this 90-some year old tradition, I went to Bonfire with two of the other physics grad students. This year, it was held in Bryan, which is in close proximity to College Station, on a dirt race track called Hot Rod Hill. I was ecstatic to see signs posted for demolition derbies and the such. How this little piece of paradise has remained hidden from the A&M student body writ large is beyond my reasoning. The fact that there is a dirt track within ten minutes of me where cars slam into each other with tremendous violent force is equally tremendously pleasing. The facility had ample parking. We parked in a grass field and had to traverse a great amount of cow plop in order to get to the race track. We arrived quite early, so not very many people were in attendance as of yet (the girl at the gate said that they were expecting approximately fifteen thousand). But we were pretty excited to see a tall stack of logs ready to be set on fire with a small-ish burnt orange outhouse on top with the words, "t.u. frat house," inscribed on the side -- a skull with the longhorns sawed-off was fixed to the outhouse directly above those words.

Since we were there awfully early, about four hours until burn, the three of us found some Aggies with a glow-in-the-dark football to play a friendly 4-on-4 game with. The most notable thing that happened during this time was when I deflected a potential touchdown pass and then tripped and tore up jeans while doing a little victory dance. Clearly, this was an incident of karma coming to bite me in the ass for committing the veritable sin of excessive celebration in the endzone.

During the middle of our contest, the crew working on Bonfire began hosing the 50-some foot tall stack of logs with kerosene (although Peter would claim it to be jet fuel). They did this for a good half of an hour.

Eventually the lights went down, we all did some yells, sang some songs, and witnessed some pageantry before the Bonfire was finally lit. The picture here shows approximately the top twenty feet of the stack. You can make out the burnt-orange outhouse amid the fiery, intense blaze.

For whatever reason, the logs had trouble catching fire. The crew managed to keep the fire going though. After some time, someone made the questionable decision to hose more kerosene (or jet fuel?) onto the stack. At this point, the three of us took many, many steps backward and viewed this insanity under curious protest. After about three minutes, the blaze was going very strong again, and the hose was turned off without any incident (thank God).

Soon thereafter, we left because of the cold and because we were getting pretty hungry.

Part of the tradition around Bonfire is that if the stack collapses before midnight, then A&M will lose to t.u. I think, this year at least, that A&M can consider it a victory if they keep the score within three touchdowns.

A Terrible Font of Light

2005-11-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

I was sitting at dinner across from my lovely girlfriend Sissy. We were eating out at a trendy bistro on the opposite side of town before leaving for Paris. Sissy was having the sicilian chicken, and I ordered the beef flank steak. We got our usual corner booth near the back of the darkly lit restaurant.

The gentlemen that were sitting at this particular table before us seemed to have left some of their files behind. I notified the waitress, and she said that they were due to come back soon for them. Apparently the two gentlemen gave strict orders to leave the files at the table and that they would pick them up themselves. I thought that was an extremely odd request, but admittedly, I didn't even think twice about it. I had a lot on my mind, we were going to Paris, after all. Much had to be done before leaving that night, the last flight of the day.

Two sharply dressed men approached the table. The one was asiatic in his features and skin color. The other gentleman was a white man with an eye patch over his left eye. He had scars which looked to be the result of cigarette burns on his right hand. I counted five of them at least. They approached us and made a simple request. "May we sit down at your table for a moment. I need to enter some information into my computer before we leave."

Before I could reply, the white gentleman was sitting next to me in the booth. The asian gentleman remained standing. I asked him who he was and what he was doing, but he simply replied that he was in quite a hurry and that there was no time for this sort of hub-bub right now. I thought this gentleman to be quite rude, indeed. I was about to call the waitress over. Before I could though, the gentleman pulled out his laptop. I was mesmerized by it. It seemed to be strangely above what technology is. There was a certain mystical quality to it. The display looked advanced, and the screenshots that seemed to be popping off the display were hypnotic. I don't even remember what I was looking at. The gentleman was furiously typing. The sound and the colors made me instantly lose my mind, and I was sucked into a different world.

When I came to, everything was just as it was before. Sissy was eating her dinner and drinking her wine. The asian gentleman was still standing. And the white man was by my side. The two gentlemen were talking. I looked at the laptop again and noticed the wireless card that was jutting out the side of the computer. For some reason, I wanted to put it in my mouth. I wanted to taste it. I was sure it had a distinct taste. I thought maybe that's where the magic was coming from. I was going to consume it whole, and it would be a part of me forever.

The two were clearly distracted. Sissy didn't notice. I pulled the card out and begin chewing on it. It was fragile, delicate...it broke into a million pieces upon first contact with my molars. I was disappointed though -- it was just plastic. It tasted distinctly like technology. I didn't feel any magic.

Instantly though, I was frightened out of my mind. Worry crept over me like a disease. We were going to be late, I knew that. The men were going to realize what I just did. I was scared. I turned to Sissy. "We need to leave. Now." She didn't understand why though. She looked at me, absolutely puzzled. I whispered in her ear, "I'm going to be in a lot of trouble with these men. Let's leave now." She didn't want to because we weren't finished with our meal yet. I guess that's completely understandable. I told her to just trust me and that I'd explain after we had left. We got up. They didn't notice.

I found our waitress, slipped thirty bucks into her hand, and said to her that we had to leave in a hurry. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

We went back to the house and gathered together our luggage. We had plenty of time before the shuttle would arrive to take us to the airport -- about twenty minutes. Sissy's father would be meeting us at the airport. He's a technician for the airline and got us seats as stand-by passengers for the flight to Paris. The shuttle arrived. The driver retrieved our luggage and put it on the luggage racks near the front of the shuttle. We sat in the back. I fell asleep, my head resting on her shoulder. We arrived at the airport with an hour before board-time.

When pressed to describe Sissy's father, I normally reply that he looks strikingly like an older George Clooney. No one ever seemed to see the resemblance but me. People think I'm crazy. So pops met us out in front of the ticketing and check-in area of the airport. I noticed that my luggage was missing. An undescribable fear crept over me once again. I felt panic all around me. My heart raced.

My cell phone rang.

"Esteban, we have your luggage here on the shuttle. I'll be driving back. I seem to be stuck though. There's a slight situation here, and traffic is at a standstill. It may be 20 more minutes before I can pull back around near where you are."

I was very confused. Ten stressful minutes passed. Sissy's father told me everything would be fine, that we'd just be in a slight hurry is all. Sissy gave me a worried expression. She said I was turning pale. I thought maybe I shouldn't have eaten the gentleman's wireless card.

I called the shuttle number back. This time a man with a Nigerian accent answered. He said one thing to me.

"I can see you and your girlfriend."

A terrible vision befell me. So I walked over to the nearest police officer and punched him in the face. I broke his nose. I sucker punched him. Hit him in the kidneys. Kicked him while he was down. Two officers came from behind and tackled me. Led me off in cuffs.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

In the newspaper it would say that a crazy man assaulted a uniformed police officer for no apparent reason. I did it out of desperation though, because I could not be on that plane. I don't know for certain, but I have an inkling that if I reach a certain altitude that I'll blow up into a million pieces. I imagined that plastic wireless card in mouth falling apart and radiating light with an awful power.

"Likely story," they told me. "We've heard of your kind before."

Memories of Monon

2005-11-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

After a semester of watching some almost-high quality Division I NCAA football here at Texas A&M, the size, scope, pageantry of the Monon Bell game seems to differ greatly from the way I remember it while an undergraduate at the estimable Wabash College. But regardless of the seemingly diminishing quality of my memory, the strength of the intoxication associated with the game remains with me, and the joy of the exploits are as strong as ever.

As a freshman, the Monon Bell game was at DePauw. The morning of the game, I awoke to the pleasant sensation of orange juice and vodka screwdrivers and biscuits and gravy. As an unwitting freshman, I got severely inebriated at the Kappa Sig house without thinking of the consequence. I got on one of the many charter busses leaving Wabash College for DePauw. The realities of having to endure such a long trip while drunk on screwdrivers did not really set in, ever. The crisp fall air and nearly cloudless sky -- I did not notice these things as a result of the alcohol. It was cold, but pleasant nevertheless.

I got on the bus. Hunyadi took a plastic bottle filled with straight vodka -- that crazy bastard.

I got off the bus having to piss like a racehorse, as the expression goes. I was neatly bundled up with winter coat and a hat atop my head. I noticed that several of the upperclassmen were urinating in some bushes. The bushes were in the front yard of some poor sap's home. Not fully realizing what was going on, I went to relieve myself in said person's bushes as well. I remember that Mr. Jason Huggins was there at the bushes with me. He gleefully acknowledged my presence. When I finished, the seemingly large number (read: maybe 6?) of Wabash upperclassmen had already finished and were well on their way up the hill leading to Blackstock Stadium. I started chasing after them. My hat fell off my poor and overwhelmed head. I had to go back to retrieve it. I was severely behind the other Wabash men.

I made it back up the hill only to find some of Greencastle's uniformed finest. I'm sure that they looked at my youthful, punk ass with great amusement. They were set to give me a hard time. I radiated the essence of underage alcoholic, and I'm sure they saw it like a great beacon of light from afar, with the noticeable exception that I was right in front of them, of course.

"How old are you, son?"

"Well, I'm 21 sir."

"Is that so? Where is your I.D.?"

"Oh, I don't have it."

"That's unfortunate. You know, you sure don't look 21, boy. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Wabash College. I'm 21."

"I don't think so. Why don't you head back to those busses? You're not getting into this game. That's for certain."

"Alright sir."

I went back to the busses and saw one of the seniors from my house. Wormser told me to just hide out behind the busses until the coast was clear, and then we'd go up into the stadium. I thought that was a fantastic idea. (As if I were in any position to disagree with anyone) We went up the hill again towards Blackstock Stadium, and I enetered. The great necessity to urinate struck me again after showing my ticket and passing through the entrance to the stadium. I went into a port-a-potty and upon exiting ran into the same sheriff who stopped me atop the hill previously.

"I thought I told you that you were not allowed in here, boy."

"Uh, yah, sir."

"Don't let me catch you again."

He let me on my way, and I took a seat in the bleachers by my pledge father and his girlfriend. A lot of my fraternity brothers were in that area. Pledge Gary and his girlfriend were standing in the bleachers directly in front of me. I really don't remember much from that game. Whenever Pledge Gary would leave his seat though, I hit on his girlfriend. I didn't even say anything. I just merely massaged her shoulders. She would smile back at me. Very strange indeed.

During halftime, a sophomore in my house, Andrew Roy, was playing the role of Wally Wabash, the Wabash mascot. He got tackled pretty hard but managed to steal the head of the DePauw Tiger. The head passed through the Wabash stands before being returned.

I was sitting near the endzone where "The Catch" happened. With almost no time remaining in the game and Wabash tied with DePauw, that Jake Knott pass floated in the air before my eyes, glanced through the hands of Ryan Short and landed in the hands of Kurt Casper.

I rushed onto the field in a seeming instant, only moderately less-intoxicated from when the game began. It's weird to think that a freshman, Elisabeth Sugrue, was with the DePauw side, playing in the band, near the endzone when that play happened.

I drank from the Bell that night, a truly glorious experience.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

2005-11-15T19:18:00.000-08:00

My dad is oftentimes short on fatherly advice but can run long when it comes to fatherly directives and/or ordinances. But, when he isn't telling me what to do, telling me when to have it done by, calling me a putz, or telling me that I'm strange; he's been known to tell me to think before opening my mouth.

With that in my mind, I think I've come up with a dandy list of stupid things which have managed to fall out of my mouth before getting filtered back by any form of conscious thought.

1. "I think I need a little Jon time." I think this phrase was said with an extreme amount of exaggeration around, "Jon time." I don't think I know what "Jon time" really is. I don't think anyone does. Saying that you need to spend time with yourself and invoking the third person in order to do so is and has always been a capital offense.

When someone drops a statement like the above, and does so during a rather tense situation, it's very easy to lose your bearings. In fact, you may find yourself being completely taken aback and surprised. This sort of statement calls for a swift and direct slap to the face.

2. "My heart is a cold and lonely place." Well, I was a little intoxicated when I said this little gem. The thing is though, talking about your relationship while intoxicated is a generally unforgiveable offense in and of itself.

3. "There's a hole in my closet where my heart used to be." Sophomore year, I had a roommate for about 30 seconds before he moved over to Phi Delt.

4. "How many of you are there?" Mike was wearing a sweatshirt that said, "Einterz & Einterz."

5. Person on phone from Pizza Hut: "Cash or check?"
Me: "Yes"

6. Phone rings during my recitation period. I get distracted from what I'm doing. Inexplicably, I turn back around towards the board and say, "I'm sorry."

7. My math professor is going over a difficult integral with little time left in the period. He says that the only way to do this in a short amount of time is by going over it carefully. He then says it's like the saying, "A man tells his butler, 'Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry." He says the statement doesn't make much sense. I immediately reply with the question, "Is the butler's name slowly?"

8. "It doesn't matter who I'm with, as long as I'm with someone."

The above are generally all thoughtless, but some are clearly more offensive than the others. Like most people though, when pressed to give a good, thoughtful answer, my mind generally goes blank -- perhaps that's why I genuinely like to write. In a written medium I have all day to compile a thoughtful answer and regardless of the end product, at least I'm more comfortable doing it.

Not putting thought into what you do, as it turns out, is far more offensive than not putting thought into what you say.

Walking towards quantum mechanics yesterday, I was caught in a bad rain storm. I sat through the class soaked down to the quick, feeling cold and absolutely miserable. At the end of the hour-long class period, I walked outside towards the bus stop. The rain had stopped, but the wind was putting up a good fight in the battle to break my spirits.

When the bus finally came, I was glad to get out of the wind. For some reason, I thought the bus would be a good place to do a proper examination of my conscience. I have not received the rite of reconciliation in well over a year, but I think the examination of conscience part must be engrained deep within me as a relic from my Catholic grade school and high school days. I think you can go through the actions of loving someone, saying and doing the right things, without being honest about it. I also think that it's difficult to know whether or not you're being honest about love until after making that mistake repeatedly. As it turns out, the pain sticks with you far longer than when you're little and you accidentally put your hand on a hot stove top or put your chewing gum in your brother's hair. The mistake of not being honest about love is one that I don't ever intend to make again.

I was sitting on the bus, letting a wave of sentimentality hit me, when the person sitting next to me shoves a small booklet in my hand and asks me, "Have you gotten one of these today?" The cover of the booklet says, "Are you a good person?" I tell him that I haven't seen this ever. I tell him that I am a good person. He asks me if I'm a christian, and I tell him that I'm Catholic. For whatever reason, I guess he felt that he still had to convince me to believe in God. I'm going to count this as the first of many thoughtless things he said to me. He asks me, "Have you ever lied?" And I answer that I have. He asks me, "What do you call someone who has lied?" And I tell him that you call him a liar. He asks me if I have ever stolen something. I tell him that I haven't. He then asks me if I've ever downloaded music. I then tell him that in that case, I have indeed stolen something during the course of my life. He asks, "What do you call someone who steals?" And I tell him that you call that person a thief. So far, I'm not doing horribly bad at this quiz, I suppose.

At this point though, I'm failing to see the relevance of this line of questioning. Although I may not be the best Catholic, I genuinely believe in the rites and sacraments of the Church. And so, he continues going through his pre-programmed spiel. "You cannot rely on your own goodness to be saved. You need to have Jesus in your life." I take offense to this because I suppose that he is assuming that Jesus is not present in the life of a Catholic. "If you are guilty of murder, a justice will not let you off from serving your time if you present a case of good works that you have done. Justice must be served, and God is just." At this point, I realize that he must not really care what I have to say. So I tune out. If I had more time, maybe I would have tried telling him that the severity of the sin is judged not by the deed alone, but by thought also. A father understands that his eldest son may not realize how difficult it will be to get that gum out of the youngest's hair. No matter how much we grow up, we'll still be little kids.

At any rate, although I would never buy what that guy was selling me, I may go receive the rite of reconciliation. I guess sometimes God can speak to you through someone who isn't even thinking about what he's saying.

Safety Town

2005-11-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

I tell this story quite a bit, probably because it speaks to my gullibility or remains a testament to the quaint obliviousness that resides deep within me. I told this story to one of the other physics grads while sitting around, drinking coffee, and wasting time -- having a casual conversation about how the media and government are particularly adept at instilling abject fear and paranoia in the populace at large. For some reason, this came to mind.

At any rate, when I was a pre-schooler, my mom enrolled me in this summer program designed to teach little children like myself how to be safety conscious and aware of the dangers lurking behind every corner. Safety Town was a veritable safety wonderland. During this program, we'd sit and listen to boring grown-up types tell us how to be safe. I'm sure there was dumb craftsy things that we had to do also. This portion of our safety-rific day was an absolute snooze fest, but I learned very important lessons such as never talk to strangers and always look both ways before crossing the street. Perils of wisdom were handed down to us, giving us the understanding that accepting candy from someone that we don't know is a very unsafe and unwise thing to do. From that time on, I wouldn't think twice about playing in the street or attempting to operate heavy machinery. If I found a gun or some other lethal weapon or any suspect object in general, I would be the first one to alert the nearest adult. Contrary to popular belief, huffing toxic fumes in the garage is not a good time in the least bit. Pull the green wire to defuse a ticking time bomb. If you're trying to escape from evil terrorists, a very rudimentary but effective bomb can be made out of chewing gum, a paper clip, and a plastic straw. The very important advice went on ad nauseum.

The aspect of this program which remains indelible in my memory was the safety playground in the parking lot of the school where all this safety-extravaganza went down. It was a fenced in enclosure that mimicked city conditions, just on a miniature (read: AWESOME!!!) scale. It had scaled-down buildings and accurately marked streets. Miniature street signs were at every street corner. Working traffic signals hung over the streets and alerted pedestrians to when it was safe to cross. During the course of the day, we would all get to learn and play in this miniature city and would take turns at being pedestrians or at riding big wheel tricycles down the city streets. Whoever thought to let us pre-schoolers ride big wheel tricycles down scaled-down city streets is an absolute genius. (Petulant Pre-schooler Me + Me-sized City = Most Incredible Fun Ever)

On the very last day of the program, I very much eagerly anticipated my last opportunity to ride the big wheels around the little, enclosed town. All went well, and it was a joyous occassion. Before I knew it, we were being told that it was time to head back inside the school. I was sad. At that instant, a strange man approached me from the other side of the fence, outside the school property. He offered me a piece of candy from his plastic bag. I almost took it, thinking that there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with a simple piece of candy. But I quickly remembered how important it is to never trust strangers. And this guy was most certainly a stranger, in every sense of the word. He was wearing the stereotypical bad guy, black winter hat (in the middle of the summertime, mind you) and was wearing a dark and creepy trenchcoat. I told him, "Thanks, but no thanks sir."

The fools behind me though were quick to take candy from this monster. I was absolutely perplexed. How could these kids be so stupid? Weren't they paying any attention? Some of the others smartly refused this strange man's offer of sweet, sugary goodness -- effectively reassuring my faith in humanity but not erasing the disappointment that I had in my peers who had sat with me and learned such valuable nuggets of safety wisdom yet still failed to recognize the most obvious looking of strangers.

I remember this next part quite vividly. Once we got back inside the school a bunch of us (the smart ones, that is) ran up to the officer who helped instruct the program. We told him about the stranger and the candy and the fools who had brought themselves to a quick and untimely demise by taking this candy (obviously laced with strychnine or maybe LSD). He went out into the parking lot to assess the situation further. Before we knew what was happening, he was chasing down the candy-pusher out in the parking lot and tackled him down to the ground, giving him violent blows to the head before finally placing him under arrest. That was the most exciting thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life, by far. It was a very surreal experience to have, and I was only a pre-schooler, so there's no way that I would have been able to identify the surrealness of the occassion. We all clapped and cheered for the heroic officer who had saved us from imminent doom and went back inside for more safety-themed arts and crafts, followed by a fun awards ceremony to commemorate the successful completion of the Safety Town Program.

The sight made quite the impact on my young mind. First they told us about the dangers of strangers, and then I actually saw it with my own two eyes. What a coincidence! Amazing! It's all true! Strangers are bad, and the rest of the things that we had been told must be true also. I was committed to being the most ardent follower of being safe.

Not until high school did I realize that the whole thing must have been staged.

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act (or Ten Things that I am Partial Towards)

2005-11-07T19:15:00.000-08:00

1. "...put a little boogie in it."

2. The Great Koala Infestation of '05 (pronounced 'aught-five')

a) My koala wristband
b) My koala shot glasses that seem to be constantly misplaced
c) My faux-beanie baby koala friend
d) SudaCare Shower Soothers
e) Those Koala-Kare fold-out tables in bathrooms for changing smelly-diaper babies

3. Oversized hats, sunglasses, scarves, or mittens on undersized people or animals

a. Beagles
b. Babies
c. Bagles
d. Bugles
e. The Cincinnati "Bungles"
f. The Bangles and their amazing hit, "Walk Like an Egyptian"
g. Babies who root for the Bungles while listening to The Bangles and riding Beagles who play Bugles for Bagles (and any permutation thereof).
h. I don't know if that last sentence works so much any longer because Carson Palmer and the Bengles are pretty good this year.

4. Very bad puns

5. Cheese

a) Literal cheese, like the kind you can eat
b) Bad music, as in the cheesiest techno with the most vapid, banal lyrics and the out of control music videos that go along with them
c) Dressing and acting like a big chach (pronounced (CH-otch), completely irreverantly and out of spite
d) Bad infomercials: There's one on TV nowadays for a urine remover. It's called "Urine Gone!" I think it would be more aptly named "Urine Luck!" or even "Urine Trouble (No Longer)!" The best thing about "Urine Gone!" is that it comes with a blacklight. I presume this is so you can play the MTV Room Raiders game at home and at your own leisure.

At any rate, this product would have come in handy at Wabash. I have a long and colorful relationship with public urination.

6. I miss summers filled with basketball and baseball all day followed by hide-and-seek, ghosts in the graveyard, and video games all night.

7. Mannequins that wear nothing but their underpants and making them anatomically correct by snuggly fitting a large bouncey ball in the crotchular region

8. The way reading a good novel makes you feel after you finish and close it. It feels as though you are filled with an immutable wisdom -- not a transmuted sense of knowledge, but an intimacy of experiences that are now your own.

"The idea is not to get caught up in the minutae and all the details but to have a wild sense of what the time was like."
-- The Fr. Ober, S.J.

9. The comedic stylings of Lewis Black, Family Guy, and The Simpsons and the people that can reference them cold

10. "...To fight and not to heed the wounds..."

AMDG
AEKDB
TAMU
IHOP
BFF LOL
TCY HI5

Solitude

2005-11-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

Alastair thought of his mother. The lonely, aging widow needed him to be around and that's why he did not go far when the time came for him to go to college. Before dying, his father had taught there briefly, uprooting the small family from their home in New York to accept a tenure-track position as a professor of physics at the small, midwestern University of O.

Alastair thought about when he was in grade school and how every Friday, after school, Alastair and his mother would go shopping at the smallish mall that was thirty minutes down the road. He didn't altogether enjoying shopping with his mother, especially when she would go to try on clothes for a seemingly interminable amount of time. Making the most of the opportunity of being beyond the watchful gaze of his mother though, Alastair would frequently hide behind the dresses on the clothes rack and peer out with that inimitable impish grin of his. For Alastair, this exercise was all about getting caught and being an annoyance to his mother. As he got older, his exercises in trying poor Chelsea's patience would become more complex and subtle.

One day, Alastair was flippantly making some remarks about his sixth grade classmates. Joanna was unable to finish the last arithmetic quiz as fast as he did. They would race to finish, and this meant that the both of them would frequently make little, careless mistakes. Alastair began picking up little tricks that confused Joanna, and she could not understand how he could finish so fast and do the work so well. Of course he would never let her in on his secrets because that would be giving up a great edge that he had on her.

His other nemesis was Jose. Jose's mother worked in the school as an algebra teacher for the junior high. Alastair and Jose were matching each other on the Accelerated Reader chart, book for book. The program was simple. You picked a book from a list, read it, and then took the corresponding quiz on the correct floppy disk. The computer recorded your score, you printed out the certificate which gave the quiz score and showed it to the teacher, and then the teacher would put some stars up on her chart next to your name. Each book had a number next to it, indicating level of difficulty and the number of points earned for successful completion of the book's quiz. The teacher, Mrs. Williams, would put up a number of stars that equaled the percent correct times the number of points earned for a perfectly done quiz. Of course, Alastair was excellent at this game. He was always an avid reader, and now he was finally getting some reward out of it. At the beginning of the program, Alastair was off to a maddening start, and then all of a sudden he slowed down. His large lead was slowly diminishing by Alastair's over-acheiving match Jose, who was largely disinterested until the accolades began pouring down on Alastair by Mrs. Williams.

Alastair, of course, was just biding his time. He let his mother in on the secret finally. For the past two weeks, he had been reading Charles Dicken's David Copperfield. He should be finished with the work by that evening. Alastair went on and on about how this would be his crowning achievement, how the class would be dazzled by his remarkable performance, and how poor Jose would be disheartened and defeated by this altogether, well-executed knock-out blow. Eighty-four points were up for the taking if Alastair managed a perfect score on the quiz. Alastair admitted that the depth and bredth of the work made it hard to discern how many points he would walk away with, but he was excited nevertheless. And of course he would do well on it. There was no question in his mind about that trivial fact. Upon examining the chart, Alastair realized that only twenty spots remained after his name on the Accelerated Reader chart hanging at the back of the classroom. He was not sure what Mrs. Williams would do, but Alastair was certain that whatever measure she took to recognize his feat would make obvious to any stranger who enetered the classroom that the boy known simply as Alastair Templeton was more than just your ordinary student. Alastair's former teachers and the teachers from the upper grades would come by and heap more accolades upon Alastair. They would rave about how they absolutely adored having him in class. The teachers he did not have class with yet would remark on how they looked forward to doing their part in molding his clearly brilliant mind.

Maybe Mrs. Williams would make a big ceremony over it. After all, his feat was worthy of some celebration, no matter how small. Alastair liked the idea of a great, big trophy -- one made of cheap plastic with a plastic, golden book resting at the top of a plastic, golden pedestal. There would be a little plaque on the fake marble base bearing his name, and it would be in recognition of his remarkable aptitude in literature. Alastair, of course, would act surprised by all the adoration heaped upon him. After all, feigning humility in front of his peers would better serve him in the long run, he reasoned. And then he could go home and bask in the warm glow of the cheaply made trophy and his copy of the quiz certificate. Maybe he could gain some points with his classmates if he brought in some cupcakes the next day.

His mother cut him off there while she was fiddling with some panties strewn about a table in the department store they were in.

"Oh honey, I love to listen to you brag," was all she said.

Alastair was a bit puzzled. Only later would he realize that she always knew more than she would let on. At the time, Alastair wasn't worried -- they would be going out for ice cream in about ten minutes.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Bicycles and Such

Amelia Buendia

Regional Transit Authority

UH OH...(I think I Crapped my Pants)

2005-11-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

1. A convicted murderer and rapist who had escaped from an Oklahoma prison was captured last weekend on the A&M campus. He had been hiding out on one of the upper floors of an academic building which stands right in the middle of campus. The news though didn't make the front page of The Batallion, the school newspaper here at Texas A&M. One can only suppose that not making a big, hairy deal of the situation is in the best interests of the campus as a whole and that maybe sensationalism serves no great purpose, but perhaps the story should have gotten more attention.

I'll give The Batallion the benefit of the doubt because of some of the other pressing issues on campus, such as international students getting assaulted or discriminated against in the popular Northgate area (a strip of bars directly across from campus). A graduate student from India was assaulted by four A&M students. Two other incidents, that I can think of, have occurred in the past several months as well.

2. Hiding out amongst forty-thousand some-odd students is fairly easy.

I've already heard of two other instances of students living out of a non-residential building on campus. I'm not sure if these students were doing this out of spite or for the purpose of not paying rent. One involved an undergraduate who supposedly was sleeping at the MSC (the student center here) and showering at the rec center. The other involved a physics student who supposedly was living out of the physics building. But, those stories are all hearsay, I suppose.

3. Pi-Curious: A pun, a play on words, possibly meaning an intense desire to have an irrational amount of sexual relations with an irrational number of members belonging to any set of gender/sexual orientations; it could also refer to an intimate understanding of the number PI or engaging in passioned study of the number PI.

Matt, a fellow physics grad, came into class earlier this week with the word written on his hand (he claims it's the first original thought he's ever had). The community of physics grads, writ large, have been in an uproar ever since over it's meaning. The above is what I'm sticking with though.

4. Shotgunning Keystone Light: A fine Kappa Sigma tradition dating back to 1400.

I've come to this conclusion largely based on the following facts:

a. We met some Kappa Sigs, randomly, on a beach while on spring break in Destin, FL. We had noticed earlier in the day that they were shotgunning Keystone Light. We joined them and shotgunned three out of spite or maybe out of brotherhood -- I'm not certain, the memory is hazy at best.

b. We shotgunned a lot of Keystones my senior year. Although the memory of that is not very clear either, I have the digital video evidence to prove it.

c. "Tweeder drank beer, because, well, Tweeder drinks beer."

d. I have a student who facebook-ed me. She's dating a Kappa Sig here at A&M, and I noticed in her Facebook photo album that she is indeed shotgunning a Keystone Light at a Kappa Sig party of some sort.

And thus, the status of this fine tradition is confirmed.

5. Karaoke Night: a fine physics graduate student tradition dating back to three weeks ago.

After the first quantum mechanics exam (which happened one week after our first math methods exam), several of us went to Fitzwilly's to celebrate not dying (I suppose). Peter, Matt, and I stayed late into the night to sing karaoke to a rather empty bar audience. News of the hilarity spurred much interest among the other grad students, and now karaoke has become a much anticipated weekly event.

This past Tuesday, two of the Chinese international students came with us. They didn't sing, but the fact that they came out was wonderful.

My song selections from the most recent karaoke night:

Domino -- Van Morrison
Wheel in the Sky -- Journey

I sound awful when I sing, just awful. No karaoke song should ever go past two minutes, because that's precisely when you become extremely self-conscious about how bad you sound.

Regional Transit Authority

2005-11-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

Amelia was a superstitious person. Her comfort level rose as her habits became more engrained into her daily life. While in high school, her day was seemingly compartmentalized and organized with an utmost, complete lack of temerity or spontaneity. She woke up every morning at 5:30 AM with her stereo blaring the song, "There's Always Someone Cooler than You," by Ben Folds. And the song was fitting and uplifiting in that ironic sort of way that fit Amelia to a tee and that never failed to bring a smile to her face -- like clockwork. Amelia would walk over to her "Far Side Day-to-Day Calendar," and tear one day off, discarding it forever in the trashcan and effectively removing all the concerns and worries from the past day along with it -- a ritualistic cleansing of the soul. She would go downstairs, sit on the large couch in the living room and turn the big-screen television onto MTV. Her breakfast consisted of one Toaster Strudel breakfast pastry with icing and a glass of orange juice. At exactly 5:55 every morning she would start running the water for her shower. She would wake up her father at about 6:30, giving him about 15 minutes to wake-up and drive her to the bus stop, which was located in the mall parking lot. There they would listen to the radio until the bus would arrive and take her away for another day of school.

These innocuous idiosyncracies though became much more significant as the date approached for her to leave home for the University of O. and begin her freshman year of college. The very neat correspondence between her academic day and her morning routine suddenly registered in Amelia's head, and she worried that maybe there was more to her seeming luck and successes than met the eye. As that last summer wore on and quickened toward her imminent departure, the smells of the morning bus ride became real to her and she carried it with her through the day, always thinking about it and focusing on it. When night came around, she would plop herself down in the front of the television and concentrate on the morning bus rides that she would never have again once she was at the University of O. She would sit and think about it until falling asleep, not even aware of what she had been watching. Her parents would come down the next morning and see her positioned strangely, not even making the connection that she looked like a sleeping bus-rider. They would ask her about it, but Amelia would just shrug it off and say that she must have been exhausted from a rough day of working at the fast food place down the street.

Amelia never realized before that summer that her best sleep came while on the bus. She didn't know if it was the smells that she experienced during the bus ride every morning, but she reasoned that this must have been the case because it was strong in her memory. Amelia was puzzled by this because the smell was what she hated the most when she first started riding the municipal buses every morning. At first she had trouble pigeonholing the smell, but it soon became identified with urban decay and decrepitude, of poverty and sickness, and of hard-times and exhaustion. Oftentimes, in the morning, she would sit on the bus while listening to her favorite CD for that month and think about exhaust, waste, and the abject tiredness that seemed to surround her on the faces of those sitting on the bus and on the building facades that lined the well-worn path to school.

One morning during that last summer, she woke up early and walked herself out to the bus stop in the mall parking lot. She got on the bus and quickly realized that this was nothing like as she remembered it. Sitting on the bus and thinking about her disappointment and misplaced expectation, she soon realized that the weather was too warm and the sun too bright. A proper morning bus ride was cold and filled with grey skies, dreary thoughts, and the occassional nap to escape all the tiredness that surrounded her.

Her motivation, the secret to her success, what turned her onto academics in the first place all those years ago was the fear that the smell would catch up to her and consume her whole. Life in the city was hard, and she saw its affects every morning. The city's hardness lived in that smell. Her early morning routine was merely to steel herself against its effects.

Her classmates were wrong to joke that she was blowing members of the faculty. Sometimes there are forces at work that are greater than the sum of your worth.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Bicycles and Such

Amelia Buendia

A SCARY Halloween Story

2005-10-31T14:22:00.000-08:00

There once were two plasma-laser carrying robots named Jonathan and Scott. The two brother robots were from outer space and were on their first weekend away from home. Their Ma and Pa robots gave them cute, little backpacks and sent them on their merry way towards the planet Earth. Little Jonathan and Scott did not want to go though. They liked to play video games when they had days off from school. But Ma and Pa argued with them all the way home from soccer practice earlier that week and told them that they had to visit their Aunt and Uncle.

Their Aunt's name was Heavy-Duty 12" single-bevel compound miter saw, and their Uncle's name was iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot. On their home planet, a BILLION light years from Earth, Uncle iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot was always seen as a tad too effeminate. Aunt Heavy-Duty 12" single-bevel compound miter saw was always seen as a bit too masculine. They made the perfect pair and made a very nice home for themselves on Earth, where they found gainful, lucrative employment in the Button household of Parma, Ohio.

Aunt Miter Saw and Uncle Washing Robot welcomed little Jonathan and Scott into their homes; they lived in a toolshed in the backyard of the Button residence. Auntie Saw told Jonathan and Scott that there were two little boys in the Button house named Jonathan and Scott also. What a coincidence!

Robot Jonathan and Scott were really curious to see these two people brothers, especially since they all had the same names! Robot Jon and Scott had plasma-laser rifles, fusion hyper rockets, and ultra cool platinum casings around their robot feet. But they had never seen people with hair, hands, and toes before. "How primitive these people must be," the older brother robot Jon told little robot Scott.

Uncle Floor Washing Robot was inside the house washing the floors like usual when he ran into people Jon and Scott. He told them that he had a very special surprise for them and that they should get dressed up in their Halloween costumes early. Uncle Floor Washing Robot had helped people Jon and Scott build their very own robot costumes. In fact, they looked a lot like the robot Jon and Scott when they put the costumes on. Oh boy, the two robot kids are going to be in for quite a treat!

Auntie Miter Saw helped robot Jon and Scott to make nice, little drawings of themselves and their house on their home planet to give to people Jon and Scott. The drawing looked very professionally done, because their robots!

When people Jon and Scott were done dressing up in their costumes, they came downstairs to meet with Uncle Floor Washing Robot, and then they all went into the backyard for the highly anticipated meeting. They sat down at the picnic table and waited for robot Jon and Scott to come out of the toolshed.

Robot Jon and Scott were very well-versed in doing grand entrances. All robots learn how to do this when they reach the second grade. A laser light show started and fog began coming out of the bottom of the toolshed. Then there was a very, very loud explosion, and the toolshed seemed to go up into the air fifty feet! When the toolshed exploded into the air and the fog cleared, the laser light show came to a stop and all that remained were robot Jon and Scott.

They looked incredible, like nothing people Jon and Scott had ever seen before. They had shiny, well-polished platinum casings on their feet! Real, live plasma laser rifles! And the coolest fusion rocket packs anyone has ever seen ever! They showed people Jon and Scott their drawing of their home on their unnamed planet, almost a BILLION light years away; and then gave them their very own quantum oscillators to play with and keep forever.

At that moment, people Jon was so scared that he farted really loud, right then and there. Robot Jon looked at his people counterpart and gave him a very curious look indeed. People Jon was unaware that flatulence is the most offensive sound that you can make at a robot. And so, robot Jon raised up his plasma laser rifle and blew away people Jon's head. People Scott started crying a LOT, so robot Scott blew off his head too.

That's how the robots from a BILLION light years away enacted their horrible plot to enslave the human race for all time, and that's why you should never, ever trust robots with anything. THE END.

Amelia Buendia

2005-10-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

Amelia came to the University of O. on a seeming whim. The good grades and plus standardized test scores could have gotten her anywhere, but she settled on the smallish, Midwestern school based on the obscurity and comfortable atmosphere. Her parents didn't quite understand her decision and were a bit uncomfortable over the large distance she was putting between them. The oldest of their two daughters, Amelia was always quiet, pensive, almost brooding at times. High school taught her the value of humility and living in seeming mediocrity when amidst excellence.

St. Joseph's was run by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. The Congregation of the Incarnate Word and the Blessed Sacrament was founded by Jeanne Chezard de Matel in France and confirmed by Innocent X as a pontifical institute in the year 1644. To Amelia, the nuns were a relic indicative of a different time. The academic influence of the largely layperson faculty was naturally imbued by the humility, simplicity and charity stressed by the Catholic sisters, yet those virtues did not seem to translate into how the students at the all-girls school treated each other on a day to day basis.

Amelia lived on the other side of town and commuted to school every morning on the municipal transit system. Riding the city buses every morning fortified her against the filth and aggravation that comes with urban living, and she felt steeled against the seeming loneliness of it all. She enjoyed her mornings to herself and would frequently take little naps during the nearly forty minute commute. Somehow she managed to know when to wake up from her slumber, pull the cord to alert the driver that she would be getting off soon, and then step off of the bus and cross the street towards the St. Joe's campus.

Once she crossed over from the urban, outside world onto the bricked walkways of the prestigious academy, the warm feelings from the morning bus ride vanished and were replaced by the foreboding gauntlet that her academic day threatened. Her quiet personality and homely appearance made her an easy target for her seemingly infinitely more intelligent and wealthy classmates.

To her credit though, Amelia did very well for herself. After starting slow as a freshman, her study habits improved greatly in response to her growing interest in her courses and in the teachers that taught them.

Calculus seemingly became quickly accessible under the inspired teaching of Mr. Thompson. Thompson sang little ditties throughout the course period and drew funny pictures to accompany the multitude of transparencies explaining such thrilling concepts as differentiation and variational methods. He was also very serious about his mathematics and very demanding of his students. In despite of the fact that Amelia was seen as nothing more than a middling student, she somehow managed to excel under the course structure that Thompson laid out for his students. Amelia was encouraged to participate in the various math competitions and whatnot and quickly became a favorite of the esteemed Mr. Thompson.

The improvements she made in her sophomore year parlayed into success in her other courses as well, and her classmates began to notice the change. All the girls somehow managed to know exactly where they stood in comparison to the others. Secrets were naturally ill-kept. And as such, when someone manages to step outside of the status quo and challenge the established order of things, the rumors and question marks begin to fly. Amelia, though, managed to live in obscurity from the harsh opinions being tossed about. She was, after all, an outsider in many senses. Amelia never prescribed to the accepted notion of what it took to be successful at the academy. Her family did not have a luxury sedan, and she was not driven to school by a parent or by an upperclassman friend. The city buses always stopped in front of St. Joe's, but the only person that anyone would ever see getting off or on was Amelia. She didn't dress the part of a student of the academy, and up until now, she didn't have the grades to be considered worthy of any consideration whatsoever. Regardless of the facts, Amelia was labelled a phony and a blight upon the student body by her peers. For a long time, Amelia was unaware.

That was how she spent her years in high school. She was always intrigued and amazed by the magnitude of prestige and tradition that highlighted the St. Joseph's experience, but she was always on the outside and felt as a stranger mistaken for a long, lost friend would when the time came for Amelia to accept her diploma.

Amelia was convinced that her enrollment at the University of O. would change all that.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Bicycles and Such

I Love the Smell of Fresh Raw Sewage in the Morning

2005-10-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the satellite maps on Google, I can bring you a crystal clear, crisp photo of the duplex I live at in College Station. Make no mistake about it, I really do live right on top of a sewage treatment plant. There is nothing more invigorating than waking up on a fine Texas morning with a fresh cup of coffee in your hand and standing in your backyard, taking in the full, rich aroma of raw sewage. If you had any doubts about how much I love raw sewage, note how my duplex seems to be recessed further back off the street than the rest of the duplexes on April Bloom.

To quote my roommate Jon, "It's almost like living on a beach, except it smells a lot worse and there's no ocean nearby."

Truer words have never been spoken.

There must be some benefits to living next to the sewage treatment facility. For one, it can act as a type of "friend filter" because someone is going to have to like you a lot to put up with the stench. Furthermore, I think it can help to keep crime down, because I'm fairly certain that the naked black guy that likes to terrorize college girls by staring at them while they sleep does not like the scent of raw sewage. I could be wrong though, but I hope not. Also, if I were to stop showering and people started criticizing me for it, I could try blaming it on the sewage. I'm not exactly sure how that would work. I suppose that I could say that raw sewage is getting into my shower or something along that line. Then I could use all that free time that I have from not showering to learn how to make a better potato salad or write a better physics quiz. I just hope that I don't get really drunk one night and then try to break into that place. I'm not exactly sure what I would do once I got over the fence though. Maybe I could take some raw sewage home with me, put it in a nice little jar, and try to grow something in there. I don't know if raw sewage has any value on the black market, but I think it may be worth looking into.

The duplex that Jon and I share is pretty nice, for the price anyway. For awhile, whenever I came in through the front door, my first reaction upon viewing the living room was along the lines of, "Hey, I think we got robbed." Needless to say, we were a bit sparse on the furniture side of things. I didn't play any role in picking out or even purchasing the furniture that we share, but I'm fairly certain that even if I had done the interior decorating in here, the room would still look the same, right down to the shoddy, old couch straight from the Goodwill. We have a very stereotypical college male's place, for certain.

Of course, over on the other side of the duplex, where Jon's girlfriend and her friend live, the standard of living is much higher and the furniture is much nicer.

Regardless of the interior design work though, we all live amidst the same raw sewage. How's that for gender equality?

That's Baseball

2005-10-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

Despite his dressing-down from the Colonel, E.A. got drunk again the next Saturday after beating Sherbrooke, and he stayed over with Earl and Moonface at the Jolie Blon with a woman who didn't speak two words of English. Gypsy was waiting for him in the kitchen when Earl slowed down just enough for E.A. to stumble out his car and stand shakily in the dooryard in the sunrise.

The 6:05 whistled at the railway crossing, reminding E.A. of Teddy. He felt bad. He felt like crying. Something was wrong, and it was more than just being hung over. He remembered learning how to read from the names on the sides of the boxcars, but he couldn't remember exactly ho he'd gotten to the Jolie Blon or when they'd left. He vaguely recalled Earl and Moonface helping him into the car.

He stood in the dooryard, watching the freight pass like a ghost train in the mist. Gypsy sat at the kitchen table, watching E.A. out the window, Grandpa Gleason Allen's deer rifle in her hands, pointed at the door. Gran sat in her old-fashioned wicker wheelchair by the table. For the first time in years, she'd gotten up before ten A.M.

-- Waiting for Teddy Williams by Howard Frank Mosher

In baseball and life you get a lot of days like this while growing-up, and I'm not referring specifically to the drunkeness (although that is significant in its own right). The stumbles and pitfalls along the way do not occur infrequently, regardless of how mature and responsible one may seem. Clearly, a child, adolescent, college student will test the patience of everyone around him or her -- that's baseball, that's life.

In the book I refer to above, Teddy helps E.A. grow-up through baseball. He wisely keeps E.A. from getting down on himself by telling him that his mistakes in the field are a part of the game. After making a mistake, Teddy thinks simply pointing out the error is enough. The responsibility to learn and keep it from happening again is up to E.A.

The part where the reader sees a drunken, teenage E.A. is the first real mistake made off of the diamond. This is also the first divergent path that E.A. seemingly takes which leads him away from his dream of baseball immortality.

Wating for Teddy Williams is a great piece of fiction that reminds the reader of Mark Twain. I give it plusses for humor, baseball, and outlandish scenarios and personalities.

Being away from home and at Wabash, I was able to keep all the big mistakes away from the attention of my parents; a situation that was much easier with respect to the situation that E.A. found himself.

Not surprisingly, most of those mistakes involved some situation that included alcohol, girls, and my own outlandish personality.

Some Valuable Life Lessons:

Do not urinate in a public place in front of Greencastle's finest before a Monon Bell game. In fact, do not urinate in any public place.

Do not invite more than one girl to a party without making it very clear whether or not you want or will have a date to the party. The best (and consequently only) way out of this sort of predicament is to black-out as fast as you possibly can and let the proverbial chips fall where they may.

More than two pieces of flair are necessary to drink.

Do not drink so much that you vomit on the local constable, get to ride in a little ambulance, and then spend the next six months wondering how you're going to take care of outstanding medical bills.

Do not slap the bartender on the ass after getting her to give you her cowboy hat. She only gave it to you because you were probably being really annoying and because you bought all those jager shots that she foisted upon you.

Do not take shots consisting of one part the cheapest vodka you've ever laid eyes on and one part the cheapest rum you've ever laid eyes on.

If you walk into a room and see that your friends are in the middle of century club, most certainly do not, under any circumstances, start from twenty shots down and catch up when everyone is starting shot number 35 or thereabouts. You may finish this insane endeavor of drinking stupidity, but you sure don't feel like a winner afterwards.

Do not slip n' slide in the buff. You'll find bruises and marks in all sorts of fun spots.

Do not try sliding across the dance floor of a nearly empty Neon Cactus. When the bar hasn't filled up yet and you start doing stunts like that, you are essentially marking yourself as a clear and open target between the bouncer, his foot, and the door.

Do not dance with women over 40 while out on spring break.

Do not drink so much that you fall asleep with your eyes wide open...that's just creepy and really sends the wrong message.

Do laugh and be as loud as you can all the time.

Baseball, drinking, life -- they all seem to blur together quite nicely after all.

Word of the Day

2005-10-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

Word of the Day for Thursday October 27, 2005
mawkish \MOCK-ish\, adjective:
1. Sickly or excessively sentimental.
2. Insipid in taste; nauseous; disgusting.

The movie's attempts to connect these out-of-body experiences with the '60s ethos of consciousness expansion are so forced that the transcendent, feel-good leaps of faith with which the story culminates seem mawkish and unearned.
--Stephen Holden, " 'Eden': Out of Step at a Prep School as a New Age Dawns." New York Times, April 3, 1998

Philadelphia Inquirer dismissed it as "a terrible play, a hopeless jumble of juvenile humor and mawkish sentimentality."
--Peter Applebome, "Blasphemy? Again? Somebody's Praying for a Hit." New York Times, October 18, 1998

Joe DiMaggio, who died this year to often mawkish eulogies and overwrought sociology, was an ancestor of the current four: driven, selfish, unidimensional in his playing days.
--Robert Lipsyte, "Time for Sports Heroes to Start Acting in a Heroic Way." New York Times, August 22, 1999

Mawkish originally meant "maggoty" (from Middle English mawke, maggot), hence squeamish, nauseating, hence tending to render squeamish or make nauseated, especially because of excessive sentimentality.

--Dicionary.com

...as in, this blog is exceedingly mawkish.

Little Coincidences

2005-10-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

1. SudaCare Shower Soothers. Warning: This product will cause koala infestations in your home and shower.

2. According to an unidentified source, the "relationship clock" starts ticking the first time you make-out (licit, illicit, or otherwise) with someone. Although that assertion sounds rather arbitrary and dubious, I suppose it will have to suffice since it seems to me that most benchmarks of a relationship involve the exchange of gifts (Have personalized "baller bands" or decoder rings reached mainstream society yet?). Custom Wristbands.

...I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
-- Crash Davis

3. I flew first class for the first time. Before serving you a meal, the steward or stewardess comes around with hot washrags that you use for hand-washing and face-steaming purposes (come back next week for my intellectual discourse entitled, "Cleveland Steamer vs. Fresh Vegetable Steamer: Who Really has the Upper Hand?"). I think the sight of some poor schmuck physics graduate student sitting in first class would be quite unnerving to your average paying coach customer. To my credit, I put on my best smug, pretentious face while sitting in the lap of luxury as the grovelling members of the middle classes boarded the plane and walked past my reclined, self-satisfied self. That was the easiest, most comfortable two hours of flying I've ever experienced. Awesome.

I've been very lucky and privileged as of late. Hopefully some of that luck will rub off on my performance in quantum mechanics this semester.

4. While driving around with Beth this past weekend, two Simon & Garfunkel (or Art & Paul, as they were originally titled) songs from the soundtrack for The Graduate played on the radio. I personally took that as a sign that we should go rent the movie in question and do so in a hurry. After driving all around West Lafayette though, we found out that the movie rental places either didn't have the movie available or didn't even bother carrying it in their store.

I was led to believe that The Graduate was one of the "Movies that Shook the World." Who is AMC to argue with the likes of Blockbuster or Family Video though? That's all I have to ask. Furthermore, can a business refer to itself as "family' oriented when it has a rather expansive adult section? Admittedly, in light of the fact that I took part in proposition "let's rent the porno bloopers tape from Family Video" as a pledge, I guess it would be hypocritical for me to criticize...although, the particular tape we rented sucked a lot and was not funny, so that has to be worth something.

5. I love beagles. I also like going to the pet store in the mall and disturbing some poor, sad beagle's slumber just so that I can play and dote over it while entertaining the notion of trying to own and care for a puppy for the fourth time. Barry Manilow wrote a song about his beagle, Mandy.

6. Wabash does NOT love sheep. No, I'm not upset about the time I was turned down by a sheep. And yes, I'm well aware that, "Baa means Baa."

Wabash beat the hell outta Wittenberg this past weekend to put them at a perfect 7-0. Mount Union was upset this past weekend by Ohio Northern, giving Wabash an outside chance at being #1 in the NCAA North regional rankings.

7. The men's department in the average department store is a lot more fun than I had ever envisioned. A wide world of funny hats, techno underwear, tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbow, and old man shoes await those of you who are inexperienced in the fine art of dressing like a stodgy, old, pretentious prick.

8. I like ice cream.

9. "...so many buttons, you could make a shirt!" -- random quote taken extremely out of context

10. Steve Perry of Journey fame vs. Ashlee Simpson of Ill-repute

"The resemblance is uncanny..." -- famous koala bear.

Bicycles and Such

2005-10-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

Alaistair bought a bicycle during his first week at the University of O. and rode it to the large academic building on the western side of campus. He was running late per his usual manner but managed to deftly lock his bicycle to the rack near the parking lot and across from the building. Realizing that he would be awfully sweaty after making the fairly lengthy ride, he brought an extra shirt. Alastair stode with the early afternoon sun beating down upon him. At that moment, a girl rode up and thought it extremely odd to be greeted with such an anomalous sight. Alastiar was aware that this stranger was looking at him, but he tried not to act as if anything were amiss. He merely continued fumbling with his dry, button-down shirt, maybe trying to appear stoic and as though he were trying to see something that was not there and existed off beyond the horizon.

Once he finished with his own arduous task, Alastair turned abruptly towards the entrance to the academic building and walked with an air of purpose.

The girl, Amelia, was a bit perplexed. This was hardly the situation she envisioned once she realized that she was running almost ten minutes late. Rushing towards the orientation and peddling harder and harder, she didn't think she would be rewarded with the sight of a lean, male, nearly post-adolescent body. She followed the boy into the academic building, stood behind him in line as they collected all the necessary folders and packets, and took a seat positioned diagonally behind him.

A lady was speaking. She turned the floor over to a portly, grey beard of a professor standing off in the corner of the lecture hall. He had a great, big smile on his face and introduced himself as Dr. R of the psychology department at the prestigious University of O. He related to his audience his long association with the yearly orientations, and a tinge of sadness entered his voice as he remarked that this would be his last.

Retirement seemed like a rather odd concept. The irony of the old man's imminent departure being coupled with his anticipated, yet silent emergence into this locale of higher education was not lost upon Alastair. He was momentarily bemused by the thought but managed rapt attention to the retiring professor's active speech and gesticulations.

Amelia saw the old man talking but found herself distracted by the boy's constant fidgeting. It suddently drove her mad. She tried to concentrate elsewhere, but her efforts proved futile. Suddenly the motion stopped, and she realized that the boy was introducing himself to her. Amelia was confused, and her look of bewilderment amused the boy. He started to giggle, said, "My name is Alastair," and then said that he oftentimes found himself daydreaming during class as well. Amelia blushed and let out a soft murmur. Alastair was barely aware that she had spoken aloud, and the concept of having conversation would have been lost on him if he had not seen her lips move slightly during the middle of his discourse on absent-mindedness and the such. Alastair gave his winning smile and apologized for not hearing correctly.

"My name is Amelia."

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

Lost in the Penumbra

Street Art and Fun

2005-10-18T04:54:00.001-07:00

I got this from here. I really didn't look at that site very long, so I have no judgments or opinions on it, but this particular pic of some grafitti seemed to catch my attention. I think in particular, my fascination (...an overexaggeration) with this stems from the trauma of all those standardized tests that I've been forced to take since grade school. At least in grade school though, the threat only came from nuns with rulers and with a penchant to grab the hair on the back of your neck. When high school hits, the standardized tests become of greater and greater import...as things like college and potential careers begin to register in your brain as standing off the horizon with a scowl and a determination to make your life miserable.

At any rate, I'm going to visit Beth this weekend in West Lafayette, and with the World Series going on in Chicago this weekend, it seemed like a more than fantastic idea to try to buy tickets for one of the games this weekend. I made a comment of this to my lovely brother, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep (luckily not in fertilizer, as in the ad hanging inauspiciously amongst ads for proctologists and bail bondsmen in the outfield walls in "Cleveland Stadium" in the movie Major League II) trying to coordinate a massive effort to get my brother to fly stand-by on Continental, using my uncle's buddy pass, to Indy.

A whole bunch of complications arose from this:
1) We were planning on going to the Sunday night game to accomodate Beth's friend's friends (I think you need to use some sort of associative or distributive property of algebra to figure out that massive and inane possessive phrase. You will also find that the phrase does NOT commute. To do this, you will need to treat "Beth" and "friend" as linear possessive operators and work from there.). Unfortunately, Scott would not be able to go because, and this is a testament to the will and power of my father, "SCOTT MAY NOT MISS SCHOOL, AND THOU SHALT NOT MISS SCHOOL EITHER OR I WILL EMERGE FROM THE BLOODY SEAS TO SQUASH YOU FOR YOUR IMPUDENCE AND ILL-TIMING."

2) I had made the proposal to Scott that I would graciously and benevolently purchase either a) his ticket to the game or b) his stand-by buddy passes to and from Cleveland (note that both of the showcases in this showdown are of equal to near equal value) as an early birthday present to him. The natural consequence of this is that I would NOT buy both. I made the logical recommendation that he seek assistance from dad and implore the "But My Birthday is in Two Weeks" clause, made famous in the year nineteen-dickety-two. My father was again unrelenting on this extremely not-so-trivial issue. Scott then made the "If You Pay for me, I'll Get You Back Later" clause of aught-five. And in the wild and frenzied moment, I all too generously agreed to clear out my bank account in the name of having a fraternal presence with me at the World Series. THE F'ING WORLD SERIES!!!

3) It was made known to me that the tickets would go on sale on whitesox.com starting at 12:00 PM on Tuesday the 18th of October. Since Beth and I had made the concession to go to the Saturday night game instead of the Sunday night game in order to accomodate Scott, I made plans to spend the entire time between my Math Methods and Quantum Mechanics courses inside the Blocker Computer Lab.

4) I began making travel preparations for this postseason convoy. Using very delicate and precise intstruments to predict the probability of me and my brother successfully getting onto flights as standby passengers, I began slowly and methodically navigating the pages of Continental's employee website in order to build a monstrous itinerary from the ground-up by scratch (and when I say scratch, I MEAN scratch...I was summoning and directing the most fundamental of particles, such was the care and expertise that I exhausted on this particular endeavor and most noble of causes).

After intense deliberations with my brother over possible flights and heated debates with Beth over possible places to stay, everything seemingly began to come together. Periodically, I was forced to retreat to my corner where I begged my trainer, "Cut me Mick, Cut me." But I kept my "Eye on the Prize," and slowly, but surely, my confidence began to grow. I was navigating the internet with a swagger and had the look of a champion in my eye.

It was at this point that Scott told me that he had to take the ACT on Saturday morning. Sadly, all was for naught. Sucks. Which brings me back to my point, in standardized tests, you're just another number in the system, a statistic, a casualty. You're not an individual; you're a barcode. You can take your dreams, aspirations, and desires and flush them along with your World Series hopes right down the toilet.

Oh yah...and within fifteen minutes of going on sale, the tickets for both games this weekend could no longer be bought in a pair or triplet or quadruplet...

Sucks. I hate the White Sox. Serves me right for trying to go see them in the World Series.

Tall Tales

2005-10-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

I've waited far too long to talk about drinking on this blog. And I suppose that really is an instrumental facet in understanding "how we rolled."

At any rate, sometime during sophomore year, I must have had a particularly bad week...or something. When you have a bad week, and you think that you can find some resolution to that bad week through drinking, that's when stuff like the above happens.

The circumstances escape me at the moment, so per usual, I'm just going to make shit up.

I spent a great deal of time that week studying for a big linear algebra exam. My head was afloat upon the stagnant pools of self-adjoint matrices, orthonormal eigenvectors, and the in's and out's of the Gram-Schmidt process. As you can imagine, it was truly a difficult week -- especially when you have to juggle that with whatever responsibilities and obligations come with having a girlfriend (we'll call her Taco Salad, in order to protect the innocent and for comedic purposes). So, with the weekend coming up, Taco Salad and I were going to get straight-up shit-faced. More likely though, I resolved to do that on my own, while she was planning on getting several levels of drunk beneath that.

When you're an under-aged drinker-type person (like I most certainly was at the time), there's only one way to go about getting your alcohol. I'm fairly certain it involves lying, cheating, and screwing your way to get to the top; because it's a very ruthless and cold world out there where only the strongest and most unethical survive. Luckily, I didn't need to resort to those kinds of extremums to get my fix. Instead, I waltzed across campus to meet with my alcohol supplier -- an old employee of campus services that wore a jaunty eye patch that we'll call Gordon Lightfoot. I gave the secret knock to the door of his little shanty on the outskirts of campus and supplied him the necessary secret phrase (it was, "Bucket o' Potato Salad") to gain admittance into his exclusive stash of alcoholic goodness. Gordon knows what I like, and he always keeps a bottle of Absolut Citron, ice cold and ready for consumption, on hand. I slipped him $30, and the clandestine transaction was complete.

I came back to my room absolutely giddy in anticipation of what was to come next. When I got there, I queued up the usual drinking songs, with the all-important "libation track" at the ready. I also called down the usual suspect drinking buddies to my room so that we could start the patented (although admittedly not yet perfected) drinking process. At our most efficient, the process involved six shots in thirty minutes accompanied with the loudest and most obnoxious of music selections.

In my excitement (exacerbated by the stresses of a most unfortunate academic week) I unwisely charged ahead of the pack towards the more uncharted territories of drunkeness. I called back behind me for my friends to accompany me, but it was to no avail. Taco Salad was only casually sipping at her drink while talking on the phone, while John and Terry were in hysterics over some funny internet cartoons. Meanwhile, I continued to drink hard, throwing caution to the wind like I normally do.

Right quick, I was in the bathroom, shirtless and on my back (and inexplicably without any chest hair, apparently), while John and company were struggling to de-pants me, presumable because I had gotten sick all over my jeans (not at all because they were trying to take advantage of me, honest). Those jeans were my favorite pair of all time. Sadly, they would develop a huge hole around the ass pocket much later during that school year. I miss those jeans dearly, and they serviced me so well during its oh so short lifetime.

My friends are a kindly folk, and they know that the cold, hard bathroom floor tile is no place for a mighty warrior, such as myself, to seek the blissful repose that only extreme inebriation can bring. They also know that I am far too heavy and manly to be carried back to my room. And so they began dragging my incooperative carcass across the bathroom floor and towards the exit which serendipitously is right across from my room. Not wishing to have me wake up with any funny looking tile burns on my legs and ass, they were so kind as to put a towel under me (which, as was related to me, also reduced the coefficient of kinetic friction between me and the floor by a significant amount).

For whatever reason, it was very difficult to get me from the bathroom tile and onto the carpeted hallway, as can be seen in the picture below. My butt is just far too big apparently.

Luckily for me, Terry was dating a "very large" and kind girl at the time. Apparently she had twice the strength of any normal man because she carried me the rest of the way and threw me oh so gently onto my futon. Afraid that I would get sick again while asleep, they put my head into a trash can, which I promptly began snoring into (much to the delight of Taco Salad, who was apparently laughing hysterically over that scene).

I woke up with a nice hangover, confused as to why I was naked down to my boxers.

Robert Button

2005-10-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

I knew him as grandpa, but I really didn't know him. Now all that I have of him are some gag gifts he once got, a Miller High Life beer sign that he made, a miner's helmet (not to be confused with minor's), and an amazing yellow, tan, and white sweater jacket that he used to wear.

I'm fairly sizeable, I suppose, but I still have some growing to do if I am to properly fill it out. That is for certain. The thing is, I don't have any particular memories of him wearing it. When I found it, I remembered hearing in his eulogy that he was a sharp dresser. I wasn't too sure that this was evidence of that assertion, but I took it with me anyway. I came across it while my family got together to clean out the home built by my great-grandfather Gayle. Of course, we came across a LOT of intereting things -- too many to bear mentioning it all. Grandpa was truly a packrat in every sense of the word. He collected everything it seemed. There were license plates from pretty much all of the states and from different eras. He had golf balls everywhere, for he was an avid golfer. Coins, stamps, postcards, gag gifts, Playboys -- all of it had just accumulated over the years. Every room in the house, it would turn out, was just brimming with stuff. And so, when I came back for my first summer since leaving for college, I was most certainly expected to help clear everything out so that the home could be sold.

After several days of clearing things out, sifting through garage sale worthy items, and finding all sorts of manner of interesting photos and the such, hardly a dent had been made. It was truly a monumental task, in every sense of the word.

The home was in Middlefield, Ohio -- home to the third largest Amish settlement in America and known for its muenster cheese (the best damn cheese there is). Growing up in Parma though, roughly an hour and a half from Middlefield, the relationship that I had with the place was almost strictly on an Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas basis. It meant hiding away in the basement away from all the adults with my cousins -- getting bossed around by Jeff, playing pool, sneaking into the playboys, and solving the Rubik's Cube which revealed nudie pictures when solved correctly. We would all sit up on the bar and take turns playing the bartender, from where you could control the basement's stereo setup and radio (quite the ancient relic). The light switch cover was a golfer with an embarassed look on his face. Only when I was older would I draw the connection that the switch in the on position was meant to convey the allusion that the golfer had gotten out his wood, as it were. The quote bubble over the golfer's head read something corny like, "Old golfer's never lose their balls," or maybe it was "Old golfer's lose more than their balls," or it could have even been like, "Quit playing with my pecker you prick." OK, it definitely was not my latter-most suggestion, but I think we can all agree that it should have been. My appreciation for lewd behaviour and bawdy jokes does indeed have an origin after all.

There are so many things that seem vivid about that basement even today. A Norman Rockwell drawing hung on the wall. It was of an urban neighborhood experiencing an automobile driving down its thoroughfare for the first time in its history. Kids and adults alike were hanging out the windows and were amazed by the sight, as it noisily clattered down the street. Surprised housewives accidentally drop all manner of household items and flower pots out of trembling fear and fervent excitement. But perhaps they were just looking out of the drawing, trying to understand what all the commotion was about regarding us kids, working off a meal with a game of pool and still glowing from the fruits of our Easter egg hunt earlier in the day.

I had no idea that there was much more to the house. This ignorance was a natural consequence of spending so much time in the basement with the cousins or in the living room watching golf or football. The upstairs areas were normally a place where we did not venture too far. Irregardless of that, there was a room in the basement, directly next to where we spent most of our time that I had not even seen until we started cleaning the house out. There was no room to walk in there. We found a rifle, that no one seemed to know had even existed. All sorts of tools. Even more sex gag gifts. And junk...lots of junk. I found what looked like an old German military helmet. It had huge bullet holes going through both sides of it, most likely from the rifle we presumed and due to an afternoon of drinking with friends I hoped. I took it home with me, along with the same miner's helmet that I'm wearing in my profile pic.

One summer though, following my completion of the first grade, my mom flew home to the Philippines following the death of my lolo (which is Filipino kid-speak for grandpa), and she spent what seemed to be the entirety of my summer vacation in the Philippines. As a result, my brother and I were split up for the summer, and my dad was left to be at home by himself. Scott had the pleasure of staying in Middlefield with my grandparents. Apparently, one of my brother's first words was "ninety-nine" and because he was given to saying that quite a bit, my grandparents took to calling him "ninety-nine."

One of my favorite memories of my grandpa happened about that time. I tried to pull a prank on him. Now, I was very little at the time, and so it didn't amount to much. He had some of his friends over, and they were all out on the driveway in front of the garage sitting in their lawn chairs. The driveway was slick, and I got the idea to try to sneak behind him and then hide behind his back while he turned to see me. And he played along with it. He said, "Who's that? Who's that?" as if there were any other mischevious young children around that day. But I wasn't paying any attention and in shuffling about to stay behind him, I immediately slipped onto my ass once I stepped back onto the pavement. The joke, as it should be, was on me.

I got shifted around from place to place that summer. I got to stay for a couple weeks at a family friends' condo out on Candlewood Lake, where I learned how to fish and how to repair broken G.I. Joe's using only a lighter. I stayed for a couple days in Middlefield, but then got handed off to stay with my aunt and uncle out in Akron, which was deemed to be more to my liking because I could spend time with my cousin Sara, who is very close to me in age. But I think now, maybe I would have preferred to have stayed in Middlefield, where I could have explored the deep recesses of the attic and the upstairs' closets. I'm sure the immensity of it was lost on me because I really didn't get to see it until I was much, much older. I think also, that my brother was too young to appreciate it.

And so, when I came back home for the first time, only one week since moving into Wabash and on the occassion of my grandfather's funeral, I didn't fully realize what I was walking into or what I would be saying goodbye to. I wish I knew my grandfather beyond the anecdotes, memories, and things. But it was the moment there at the funeral home, when I saw him for the last time, that I realized that I actually came from somwhere and that there is something that I will grow into. It was that sublime feeling of the largeness of fate and the consequence of time, seemingly catching up to you.

For now though, at least I've got that yellow sweater jacket to fill into and a hardy miner's helmet for my head just in case I'm in danger.

On this Day, the Eve of my First Quantum Mechanics Midterm

2005-10-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

1. Knowledge of the first midterm came from a second, third, maybe even fourth-hand source. It's rather difficult ascertaining important facts like assignments and exam dates when your professor does not speak in altogether clear English and enjoys keeping some things secret. At any rate, I hope the message got all construed like in some convoluted game of telephone. Maybe, "Exam next Tuesday," is code for, "I will bring you all a bucket of potato salad. We'll have a picnic outside. Someone bring chips and dip."

I suppose I'll take my chances with there actually being an exam though...one can never be too cautious after all.

2. Are you feeling those nearly mid-semester doldrums yet? Try a Jello pudding pop....bleeeeeeeeble blaaaaaaaaable. Or so says Bill Cosby.

3. There may not be anything funnier (or perhaps more pathetic) than spending a portion of your Sunday afternoon watching WWE Monday Night Raw on the Mexican channel, complete with Spanish dubbing nevertheless.

4. According to Dr. Krause, the best way to prepare for an exam is, "to be smart." And that is NOT taken out of context, ladies and gentlemen. Imagine being a young, unwitting freshman undergraduate looking for study advice on an upcoming exam and getting that as an answer. I for one, am incredulous that I managed to make it this far.

5. "HEY...WHA' HAPPENED?!" -- Fred Willard in "A Mighty Wind"

Ali-G says, "That's a bit racialist, don't you think?"

2005-10-07T17:09:00.001-07:00

I got this in my email today.

___________________________
Incident and Safety Advisory

On October 4, 2005, an A&M student met with a university official to
report an incident that occurred at her house in south College Station.

On September 24, 2005, at approximately 4 a.m., the College Station
Police Department responded to the 2300 block of Axis Court in
reference to a burglary of a habitation in progress. While sleeping,
the student victim woke up to observe an unknown nude male peeking at
her from the foot of the bed. The victim startled the subject and he
ran from the room and presumably out the front door. The victim and
her roommate ran out of the house through the back door to safety and
called the police. After a search of the area, the police could not
find the unknown subject.

The victim described the subject as follows:
Black male
Early 20’s
Low cut hair
Thin build (lanky)

If you witnessed or have any information regarding this crime, please
call the College Station Police Department at (979) 764-3600. If you
wish to remain anonymous, you have the option of contacting Brazos
County Crime Stoppers at (979) 775-TIPS.

The victim wishes to share this information with the desire of
preventing any further occurrences.

Safety Tips:

• Always lock your exterior doors when sleeping or home alone.
• Install a door viewer so you can see who’s there without opening the
door.
• Close drapes or blinds at night.
• Use light timers.
• Don’t automatically open the door - have the person identify
themselves.
• Do not give personal information to a solicitor you do not know.
• Have your exterior door locks re-keyed or changed when you move into
a new residence.

___________________________

This sort of non-sense is why I sleep with a loaded gun. Charlton Heston is my president. NRA4EVA.

Don't be confused, this is quite a scary situation indeed. I'm fairly certain though that I wouldn't have heard about it if it was just some pimply-faced, white kid caught sniffing some panties. Thankfully, the university went to the trouble of describing the subject...that way, when I see some shaggy, fat fellow rifling through my things, I won't have to worry about a thing.

Of course, including the description of the subject is meant for those with information regarding the incident.

If you were Michael Moore though, this would instantly become an example of white people's irrational fears of a black uprising. I really don't buy into all that. I just think it's interesting to find something like this in my email the same week I watch Bowling for Columbine for the first time.

To add to all that, before I got down here, there were two incidents of international students being assaulted in the popular Northgate area, where pretty much all of the bar scene is located.

Whatever all this is worth (and I am failing to process it all because my head is completely under the influence of Sudafed at the moment), I think it would be wise of me to start locking the doors here at my humble abode.

Hurricane??

2005-09-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

I was expecting to at least get some cool thunderstorms...

All we got was wind though. F' that noise.

Changing Priorities

2005-09-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

If my mom wanted me to give up on playing baseball, all she had to do was put beer, girls, and music in front of me long enough to become overwhelmed, as it were.

When I was in high school, I had an above-average arm -- not a Major League arm, not even a professional ball arm, but one with which I should have been able to play some school ball with. Coming into St. Ignatius, my body was far from an athletic one. In short, I was fat and slow. I guess I was absolutely determined to change all that.

Having not played with the local travelling teams during junior high, I was at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to my fellow freshmen competitors (with well over 100 frosh showing up for the first day of pitchers and catchers try-out, the competition promised to be far from lax). In the weeks leading up to try-outs though, my mom came through for me and brought to my attention that Cleveland State University would be holding a winter baseball camp for junior high and high school students. I would attend those and really absorbed a lot about how the game is played. I still carry a lot of that knowledge with me today, and it really affects how i even watch a game. The pitching coach at CSU was a young man called Coach Healy. He offered one-on-one pitching clinics for the low, low price of $25/hour. I quickly convinced my father to let me set up a clinic with him every weekend leading up to and through the first weeks of freshmen tryouts. From the clinics I learned a lot about the intricacies of pitching mechanics, and every night I would practice my form and perform the various drills in front of a mirror in order to perfect my delivery. Every now and then, I find myself working on my mechanics even today, when I get bored or anxious.

I learned how to throw a great circle change-up pitch while working with Coach Healy. Had I not been dumb and lost confidence in that pitch, I would have thrown well enough during a scrimmage on the last week of tryouts to make the team. I was too dumb to realize that the reason my change was bouncing in front of the catcher while I was warming-up was because I was throwing from a distance greater than the regulation 60 feet 6 inches from the rubber to the plate. I was convinced that I was throwing in the 70-75 mph range that day of the scrimmage against the farm boys from Orange High. I was blowing my fastball by them but was having trouble putting them away without the aid of plus change.

As a result of that severe miscalculation, I had a less than impressive performance that day and ended up not making the freshmen team. I worked hard all off-season and played both summer and fall ball for the city of Parma. I went into tryouts the next year on a roll. The weekend before tryouts, I threw a bullpen at around 70 feet from the catcher where I had pinpoint control of my two-seam, change and curve. That was the one moment in my life where pitching seemed effortless. I was completely zoned in and had such great command of those pitches that I felt that nothing was going to keep me off that Ignatius JV roster. I must have worked my body too hard though, between workouts with the team and doing extra work at Cleveland State, because I ended up being sidelined with painful shin splints.

The next year, my elbow gave up on me.

As a senior, I tried out again. My heart definitely was not in it though. I was more interested in participating in things like Kairos and SEARCH retreats to care as much as I had in the past. I went through the motions anyway and got cut for an inauspicious fourth time, out of spite of course.

I loved baseball more than anything at the time, but it never loved my back. That's what my mother would tell me. She's a smarter lady than I had given her credit for. During that time, I think she felt that I was wasting my time. At least she let me discover that for myself, because I wanted baseball badly. I'd spend countless evenings in a row going through the mechanics of my delivery as though I were in a deep meditative, contemplative state. It became prayer for me in its own way. Oftentimes, my mind would wander to delusions of grandeur -- like pitching Ignatius into the state championship or toe-ing the rubber from my hometown Tribe. This is not to say that I never had any successes as a ballplayer. I really enjoyed playing summer ball with the other kids that got cut in my class, and I really felt that I was their undisputed leader whenever I stepped onto the rubber. There was the one summer where I pitched four complete games and only incurred one loss. But that was just not enough for me, I wanted it all of course. I worked so hard every day -- running and lifting and working on my mechanics. I worked in the vain hope that one day I'd wake up with the gift of having a "thunderbolt for a right arm."

When I graduated from Ignatius, I was excited at the possibility of playing as a non-recruit for Wabash. The change in scenery, diet, and routine made it so difficult to keep my focus like I did back in high school though. I found myself struggling to stay off the bottom of the depth charts with my dead, sore arm and inability to stay awake during weekend fall ball games while sitting on the bench and charting pitches.

One of those first weekends at Kappa Sigma, I found myself at the movie theater with my pledge brother Bob Chapman watching Zoolander. We left the house because we both did not want to drink. I had not even touched alcohol yet at this point. We came back to see many of my pledge brothers hammered beyond recognition. Everyone was yelling, running, and someone had fried Howard's pants.

The next weekend, I was at a party at the Fiji house. I met some of the other baseball players there, had a great drunk time, and danced on some girls. The next morning, we were to leave for an away game. I stayed in bed. I told Coach Flynn of my decision the next day.

My dead and sore arm would thank me for the break, although every now and then, it likes to wake me up in the middle of the night, screaming in pain. I think it misses the days when I'd raise it over my head and bring it thundering down back towards the earth. I think it gets nightmares due to separation anxiety. My right arm loved baseball as much as I did, and it thinks it can still blow a fastball by some poor sap of a hitter. I should have thought more highly of it and treated it with more respect when I had the chance.

I guess no one will ever know though.

The Weekly Ten

2005-09-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

1. "You know I got what it takes to make the club go outta control." -- Curtis "50 cent" Jackson

I think this statement sums up my teaching philosophy as a whole, mostly because it is so difficult to even seem engaging to a group of students when your sole responsibility is to do homework problems on the board. Last Thursday, I was so tired by the time recitation came around that I felt like I was going through the motions, as it were. The thing is, I like the solutions to the assigned problems that I draw up for class, and I think that they're interesting and enlightening and helpful to undergraduates who want to learn how to do these problems efficiently while getting a wild grasp of these introductory physical concepts.

Taking a similar course as the one I'm teaching as a senior in high school was what got me excited to be a physics major in the first place...even though it was mostly due to the fact that I rocked that class's face off. I guess I had the false impression early on that the study of physics is extremely easy. And that misunderstanding was exacerbated by the fact that the first two years of undergraduate physics is really easy as well.

The frowny and pouty version of myself must be extremely boring to listen to, that pretty much sums up how Thursday afternoon recitation went last week. I forced a couple smiles though for those that braved the torture of sitting through an hour long review for next week's exam after having suffered through an hour of extremely boring recitation with me.

2. Yelling and standing in the bleachers during the course of an Aggie football game will leave you feeling wilted, spent, and strangely fulfilled. Yelling, "Whoop!" feels so good as it leaves your throat, and it's good for your soul too.

If this sounds like good sex to you (well, people yelling "Whoop!" in bed seems rather disturbing), maybe it's because there is a similarity.

3. Completing problem sets for graduate level quantum mechanics is a labor of love. The moment when a wave of realization hits you as to the nature of a problem's solution is very intellectually gratifying. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between.

4. "Can lay in your bed all day? I'll be your best keep secret and your biggest mistake..." -- Fall Out Boy

5. I miss being caught out in the rain on Main St. and candlelit dinners at Hobnob.

6. "Don't pet me, I am working."

There was a seeing-eye dog in church this morning. Reading that tag on him made me think up some morbid thought involving hapless twits petting seeing-eye dogs and horrible things happening to the person they are assisting as a result. It also made me consider my own inabilities at multi-tasking and that my own attention span must not be all that much greater than that of a dog's.

That dog is so cool.

7. "Get off your knees ump, you're blowing the game!!" -- random Red Sox fan in the movie Fever Pitch

This is definitely one of the greatest epithets concerning baseball umps that I have heard in a long time.

I thought this movie was pretty good. It's based on a Nick Hornby novel (of High Fidelty and About a Boy fame). I keep seeing his movies but haven't read a single one of his books. Maybe I should get on that.

8. Cleveland Indians: 3.5 games back of the White Sox in the Central Division, .5 game up on the Yankees in the Wild Card race. I'm watching the game on mlb.tv, and they're beating the Royals by 2 after 4 innings of play.

9. I rub my baby blue koala bracelet between my thumb and index finger for good luck.

10. Grading lab reports is tedious... Especially when you really don't have any scoring rubric so to speak of and are grading reports based on how warm and fuzzy they make you feel after you are done reading.

The Indians are so Hot Right now

2005-09-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

There is a really nice article about the Indians by Albert Chen that appeared on Sept. 19 on cnnsi.com. You need a subscription to SI to read it, so instead of doing that....I'm putting the story in its entirety on this blog.

In the center of the home clubhouse at Cleveland's Jacobs Field, atop the big-screen TV, sit two wobbly stacks of DVDs, a collection of bawdy comedies you'd expect to find in a college dorm room. In the lazy hours preceding home games Indians players slouch on leather sofas watching classics such as Deuce Bigalow and Old School. "Other teams may have fancy mottos to rally the troops," says 25-year-old leftfielder Coco Crisp. "Here we draw inspiration from Will Ferrell."

Last Saturday, however, the lighthearted programming on the big screen was preempted by more serious fare: the latest happenings in the American League wild-card race. Three hours before their game against the Minnesota Twins, Cleveland's players eschewed Anchorman in favor of the final innings of a showdown between the Yankees and the Red Sox. After watching Boston prevail 9-2, the Indians took the field and won their sixth straight, 7-5, to extend their wild-card lead over the Yankees to 1 1/2 games. After a 12-4 win over Minnesota on Sunday, Cleveland maintained its lead over the Yankees and pushed the Oakland A's 2 1/2 back.

"It's nice to be the hot team today," first baseman Ben Broussard said on Saturday of the Indians, who had the league's best record since Aug. 1 (27-10 at week's end). "But we know how quickly things can change in a race like this. Blink, and we could be back looking up at two teams in the standings. That's how things will be until the very end of the season."

With the majors' 26th-highest payroll at $41.5 million ($14 million less than the famously low-budget A's), the Indians have ascended to the wild-card lead so suddenly and unexpectedly that even their own fans, it seems, haven't noticed. Although they are poised to advance to the postseason for the first time in four years, the Indians rank 25th in attendance. "It's been the best sports season in Cleveland that no one saw," one team official groaned last Friday night, when only 26,078 fans (half its capacity) turned out at Jacobs Field to see the Tribe beat 2004 AL Cy Young winner Johan Santana for the first time in 19 tries.

In June 2002, seven months after taking over a team that had won six AL Central titles in the last seven years, general manager Mark Shapiro set about dismantling it, unloading ace righthander Bartolo Colon for a package of prospects that included outfielder Grady Sizemore and lefthander Cliff Lee. Shapiro (pronounced sha-PIE-roe) jettisoned other expensive veterans such as outfielder Kenny Lofton, starting pitcher Chuck Finley and relievers Ricardo Rincon and Terry Mulholland, and declared in a press conference that the Indians wouldn't be contenders again for three years.

"I felt like George Bush saying, 'No new taxes' -- there hasn't been a month since then that someone hasn't brought up that I said we wouldn't contend until 2005," says the Princeton-educated Shapiro, 38, a devotee of baseball's new math who had spent three seasons as an assistant G.M. in Cleveland before his promotion. "But even though we were a playoff team in 2001, we knew, privately, going into '02 that we were moving toward a dramatic rebuilding process, given how thin we were in our farm system, combined with the aging of our players and the expiration of contracts. We had to accelerate the rebuilding process, which meant restocking the upper levels of our farm system through trades."

Reporters criticized the rookie G.M. for tearing apart a perennial contender, and fans called radio talk shows comparing Shapiro to reviled former Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell.

Fast-forward three years. The rebuilt Indians have risen as contenders again, not only for this year but well beyond. In '02 Shapiro acquired his current starting outfield (Crisp, Sizemore, 23, and Casey Blake, 32), his biggest bat (designated hitter Travis Hafner, 28) and his winningest pitcher (Lee, 27, who was 16-4 with a 3.69 ERA through Sunday). Cleveland has also developed players like 26-year-old catcher Victor Martinez (a major-league-best .378 average since the All-Star break) and 23-year-old Jhonny Peralta, who at week's end ranked second only to Baltimore's Miguel Tejada in slugging percentage (.520) among American League shortstops. "They've got some great young talent, guys who are ready to win now," says injured Twins centerfielder Torii Hunter. "No one around the league is surprised they're in it. What's scary is that they're just going to get better over the next few years."

Scariest of all the Indians' hitters is Hafner (.304, 25 homers, 88 RBIs), whose 1.967 OPS over the last two seasons ranks first in the majors. Hafner reminds many of the first baseman he succeeded in Cleveland, Jim Thome. A fan favorite and the Indians' alltime home run hitter, Thome was a humble, lumbering lefthanded slugger from Peoria, Ill. The 6'3", 240-pound Hafner, who grew up idolizing Thome, is a humble, lumbering lefthanded slugger from Sykeston, N.D., a town of less than 150 that, according to Hafner, has "no stoplights, four stop signs, a post office and one café -- and that's pretty much it."

Hafner's graduating class at Sykeston High totaled eight students, and he arrived at Cowley County (Kans.) Community College with little experience playing organized ball; even in American Legion play he had never seen a pitch over 80 mph. How raw was Hafner? "One day my first year [at Cowley] the coach said we were going down to the field to take some fungoes, and I asked, 'What's a fungo?'" Hafner says. "When he talked about getting a runner from first to third by going the other way, I figured that was some real top-secret information. I had no idea what he was talking about."

Despite his rough edges, Hafner dominated at the junior college level -- in '97 he was a juco All-America and MVP of the juco World Series -- and the Rangers chose him in the 31st round of the '96 amateur draft. He broke in with Texas in 2002, playing in 23 games, but Shapiro acquired him that winter for catcher Einar Diaz and righthander Ryan Drese. In his first season with the Indians, Hafner had the daunting task of replacing Thome at first base, but after a yo-yo rookie season in which he hit .254 in 91 games, he settled in as the team's every-day DH in '04, hitting .311 with 28 homers and a .583 slugging percentage. The Indians' recent hot streak coincided with Hafner's return on Aug. 1, after he'd missed 17 games with a concussion; since then they have ranked third in the majors in runs and second in homers. "Everyone seemed to hit a little better when he came back," says Sizemore, "and that's no coincidence. His presence alone changes the whole dynamic of the lineup."

If the Indians do win the wild card, they could be a tough out in October. Beyond their balanced lineup, which, according to Detroit Tigers lefty Mike Maroth, doesn't really have "a weak link," Cleveland has the best bullpen in baseball (anchored by AL saves leader Bob Wickman) and an underrated trio of starters -- Kevin Millwood (3.11 ERA with a league-low 3.23 run support), C.C. Sabathia (7-0, 2.37 ERA in his last seven starts) and Lee (6-0, 3.37 ERA over his last 10 starts) -- who are peaking at the right time. "I've said since the start of the season that they were a dangerous team," says White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. "I love that lineup and the pitching. Cleveland is one of those teams that can put a lot of runs up on the board, so you have to swing the bats."

A year ago the Indians were one game out of first in the AL Central on Aug. 14, then lost nine straight to drop out of contention. "We were young, we were inexperienced, and we ran out of gas," says Broussard. "Last year we learned how hard it is to get into the playoffs, but now we're ready to go the distance. Everyone says how young we are, how our future is bright, but we don't care about the future. We're here to win this year."

Lost in the Penumbra

2005-09-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

"Alastair honey, draw the bath so we can get you into bed soon."

"Ok mom."

Alastair was a very quiet boy, always doing as his sweet mother told him. His mother Chelsea loved him dearly and doted on the poor lad severely. Alastair clung to his mother at all times. The loss of his work obsessed father nearly two years ago merely exacerbated the child's intense shyness and social anxieties. Chelsea saw past this and only saw her model child. He was praised magnificently by his teachers for his incredible work ethic and behaviour. He never talked out of turn, was always prepared for class, and showed incredible potential in reading comprehension and the such.

Alastair was tucked into bed, and the lights were turned off after Chelsea planted a nice kiss upon his forehead. When he heard the click of the door, he immediately grabbed for the flashligh he left hidden between the mattress and headboard. Alastair reached under his bed, patted the ground until he found what he was looking for. It was his old, dear friend Huckleberry Finn. Together they went to go find poor Jim sleeping under the tree outside. They played a good trick on him and had a great laugh about it later.

Alastair could see, really see what Huck saw. He felt the power of Twain's words jump from the living page, and the resonant mode of the incident words sent his thoughts into an excited state. Floating down the Mississippi lulled him into a deeply relaxed state. His heart raced as the dauphine was nearly tarred and feathered. He teared up when he realized his best friend Jim was a free man.

The young boy could absolutely tear his way through a text. But he found himself hanging on at some points. He didn't want to leave that place, like when they tried to pass themselves off as girls or while amidst the great joy of finding each other reunited with Jim once again. These moments conspired to slow the movement of time down to an intolerably slow space, staving off the sunlight for what seemed like an eternity.

He dreaded the prospect of waking up to face his tormentors for the nth day in a row. Alastair felt abandoned, but he durst not say a single word.

...Some More

Alastair Templeton

Alastair

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

2005-09-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie the past weekend with Beth. (But Jon, don't you live in College Station, which is several states away from Atlanta?) The movie is interesting. It really creeped me out and made me long for the days when saying the rosary at home was an everday activity.

I attended grade school at the Incarnate Word Academy (or The Academy, for those in the know). In the seventh grade, a priest by the name of Fr. Herron would come in to talk with us every now and then. Typically, he would tell us his ghost stories. These stories though, which wasn't obvious at the time, were pretty much vehicles for warning us against the dangers of the occult, devil-worship, or what have you.

Once he told the story of a priest who would frequently be overwhelmed with his study late into the night. He studied alone, in a creaky, old house relying solely upon candlelight to aid his vision. He was a holy man of famed repute for his skills as a theologian. One night, while reading on the signs and symbols of the early Church, this priest came across something very curious. He was spurred by such curiousity that he called a friend and colleague in hopes of collaboration in an effort to confirm his dark suspicions.

His friend, using his sound priestly instincts, warned the priest against putting too much stock in the material that he was currently reading. He warned him against exploring such tenebrous realms. The paganism found therein could have extraordinarily dire consequences. The priest mechanically agreed to his suggestions, but his own curiousity continued to gnaw and ache at his very soul. He wished to experience for himself the mystic, incredible power that the texts outlined for him in great detail. For years, the priest had been absorbed in fruitless meditation, He found that his concentration was lacking, with the exception of his innate ability to become absorbed in study.

The chants and ritual all seemed so simple. The texts promised great mysteries would be revealed to him through the course of intense meditation. He began one night with great trepidation in his heart. Finally the warnings he had received through his friend began to sink in. Slowly, he reopened the by now familiar text. His hand shook greatly. He began. The chant sounded in his head like a thousand walls crashing to the ground. Immediately, he felt as though he was right in exploring these dark rites. Blood started shooting out his nose and ears. The last thing he saw was a flaming pentacle appear floating before his very eyes. The medic would declare this the result of massive hemorrhaging of the brain.

But we know better, don't we?

So, my reproduction of that story is very poor (a tenuous one at best). What stuck with me though was how stern he looked at each of us when telling us to never, ever mess with anything dealing with the occult or the devil or whatever....because it is REAL! That's an intense moment for a seventh grader to have. I was honestly scared shitless after that (trust me, the story as told by him was much scarier and had a billion times better details).

I had bought an oujia board approximately a month before that incident. I went home and threw it away.

Word of the Day:

afflatus \uh-FLAY-tuhs\, noun:
A divine imparting of knowledge; inspiration.

America's Pastime

2005-09-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." -- Actor James Earl Jones, talking to Ray Kinella, played by Kevin Costner, in the movie "Field of Dreams"

You can hear James Earl Jones' booming voice in that quote. If you really want to see me sob like a little girl, all you really need to do is make me watch this movie. It never fails. I guess what I miss most about being away from home is being able to play catch with either my father or brother. And really, I guess that's why Ray goes to the trouble of building a ball diamond over valuable crop land at a time when he is desperately struggling to make ends meet. Ray wanted to play a game of catch. Ray's father shows up as a ghost. They play catch, and I start to cry. Life is hard sometimes.

At any rate, the Indians are in first place in the AL wild card race over the hated Yankees by a full game (5.5 games back of the dreaded White Sox in the AL central after gaining 9 games on them since August 1st). It's September, the season is winding down, and the Indians are contending again. No one in Cleveland seems to care. Home attendance is still hovering around the 20,000 mark. I guess after selling out a Major League record 455 some odd home games in a row, you can give the hometown support a break for awhile. When that streak began, the Indians were entering a new ballpark and were good for the first time in nearly 40 years.

More people show up for a Browns practice during the off-season. What's the great attraction there, Trent Dilfer?

The old Cleveland Municipal Stadium (read: Mistake by the Lake, seating capacity of 78,000) remains in my memory a hallowed ground. The former home of both the Browns and Indians, the stadium bespoke a time marked by remarkable industrial prowess in the city of Cleveland. The factories of that era are, of course, long gone. The imposing steel girders which would oftentimes block a fan's view of the playing field bespoke of a time when you didn't need a plenitude of distractions and bright lights to keep a fan entertained. Seats angled towards home plate? You wouldn't have seen any of that bull honkey here. But if that weren't enough to keep me wanting to come back, there was always Cleveland's own Stadium Mustard. This spicy condiment, slathered on a hot dog in a bun is quintessential Cleveland baseball.

Of course, when I knew the old stadium, I was much younger. I was at an age when baseball was the biggest thing out there. I vaguely remember the first game I went to. It was just me and my dad. Roger Clemens led the Red Sox into town and absolutely beat the Indians senseless. John Farrel pitched that game for the Tribe and gave up a couple of homers. The Red Sox were still wearing those old gray jerseys with "Boston" written across the chest in black block-letters. It was a day game and a beautiful day at that. The moment that hit me, as an impressionable youth, was emerging from the bowels of the stadium to enter the section where we were seated. The sensation of going from dark into light with Stadium Mustard dog in hand is an incredible one, especially when the backdrop is of an expansive green field where ballplayers are stretching and warming up in preparation for a game. Can you imagine the luxury...batting practice with clean, white balls on a real Major League field?

Those were the days of Brook Jacoby, Jerry Browne, Chris James, Sergio Valdez, Rudy Seanez, Cory Snyder, Tom Candiotti, Bud Black, Greg Swindell...

Wow, they sucked a lot.

The Tribe was my first love.

Aggie Traditions: Midnight Yell

2005-09-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Yell Practice began as a post dinner activity in 1913, when different corps companies would gather together to "learn heartily the old time pep." However, it was not until 1931, that Yell Practice as it is known today, was held before the t.u. game. It began, when a group of cadets were gathered in Peanut Owen's dorm room in Puryear Hall. Someone suggested that all of the freshmen should fall out and meet on the steps of the YMCA building at midnight. The cadets notified senior yell leaders Horsefly Berryhill and Two Gun Herman from Sherman, who could not authorize it, but said that they may just show up. Well, needless to say, the word spread quickly, and when the freshmen began to arrive, there were railroad flares and torpedoes stuck in flower pots around the YMCA building to light the area. The first Midnight Yell had begun!!!

Today, Midnight Yell is held the night before a home game in Kyle Field and at the Grove on Thursday nights before away games. Also for away games, a site is designated for a Midnight Yell in the city of our opponent on the night before the game. For example, for the t.u. game, it is held at the Texas Capitol in Austin. For a yell at Kyle Field, yell leaders lead the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band and the Twelfth Man into the stadium. The yell leaders lead the crowd in old army yells, the singing of the fight song, and tell fables of how the Aggies are going to beat the everlivin' hell out of our opponent for the next day. Lastly, the lights go out, and Aggies kiss their dates. If they don't have a date, all they have to do is flick their Bicks. As the story goes, the flames make it easier for two dateless people to find each other, and maybe they won't be dateless anymore!

The purpose of Midnight Yell is to pump up the Twelfth Man for the next day's big game!

In September 17, 1999, a new tradition was formed... First Yell (the first Midnight Yell of the school year) brought with it many related activities for everyone on Friday and Saturday including concerts, BBQ, and a Former Yell Leaders Reunion.

-- Taken directly from aggietraditions.tamu.edu

I hear words like "handsomness" and "incredibly chiseled features" and for me that's like a vanity that I don't buy into.

2005-09-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

It turns out that flash photography is still my mortal enemy. Who is this guy?

I suppose that I have a relationship with picture taking that is akin to one of mutual distrust. I think it's sad really. I think I could have really been someone. My mom took me to one of those cutest baby things that you'll frequently see at the mall. Although apparently I was plenty cute for the world of professional baby modelling, I was too "inactive" in front of the camera. It's just wonderful to think about how much of a dumpy, sad sack of a baby I looked like when I was little.

There was the time in pre-school where I was clearly upset over something random. If you can imagine a non-curly haired, five year old version of myself pouting and fidgeting with his fingers in his lap, I think you have got a very good idea of how that particular photo turned out.

Then there was that awkward phase where I really didn't realize that my hair was becoming curly. This was around the second or third grade or so. My hair was suddenly puffy and was so stubborn as to not yield to the demands I exacted by force using hairbrush and plenty of water every morning. Pictures from this era were problematic because I tended to look greasy or intoxicated. This is indeed a very sad, sad fate.

Adolescence....there's no conceivable reason why we should even broach this topic.

Somewhere near the end of that period, I started getting my hair cut in a fade. That was worthless, because you should not get that kind of a haircut if you cannot end up looking like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or at least Play, from Kid n' Play. Luckily, I think that sort of ghastliness was adequately compensated by the removal of my braces and eyeglasses from my life. Contacts are definitely the way to go.

Minus the flash, I still look goofy (note the profile pic and here's an extra piece of evidence: REU-TASTIC!!?).

While we're on the topic, candid photography is not my bag either: I'm goofy.

Alastair

2005-09-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

Young Alastair approached his father, Aristotle, and asked him to play catch outside. The eight year old boy grasped his miniature ball glove in his hands and wore his cap doffed messily to the side, his unkempt blond hair spilling out the sides and back. Aristotle though was busy pouring over his equations, combing each line for the supposed mistake that he was sure he had made. Aristotle said, "In just a minute son." Alastair sat in the corner of Aristotle's expansive study with ball in hand. His small hands could barely make a sure-grip on the ball. He flipped it in the air to himself, keeping his eyes focused on the red seams. As the ball began rotating faster and faster, the seams blurred into a continuum. He strained his eyes in vain to keep each seam as a discrete mark as perceived by his poor vision. Alastair meditated on each individual seam, trying to keep them all separate from one other and in their rightful place in the order of things. The blur was strangely disagreeable to him, so he fought it as hard as he could. He pictured the ball as large as basketball and then a beach ball. Surely, at that size, the seams could be kept from unfairly intermingling with one another. The oversized baseball tumbled slowly in the air. The motion itself became discrete, as though rotating in front of a flashing strobe. The image made Alastair feel warm inside, and he began longing to go outside with his father. The longing began to tie knots in his innards, and he wanted to cry out and grab his father's attention away from his work.

Strange combinations of letters and symbols danced in front of Aristotle's face, mocking him for his efforts. By playing with funny topological spaces, he sought to unlock the world at the quantum scale. The small permutations that he made in his hand failed to make any sense. His concentration wore extremely thin, his eyes lost their focus, and the page became a blurry mess to him. His head came down with a loud thud, displacing young Alastair from his reverie. "Father!" He ran up and shook him, but Aristotle was unresponsive.

Not sure of what to do, Alastair started to cry. He ran to get his mother from downstairs.

Alastair Templeton

Ten Things

2005-09-08T16:41:00.000-07:00

1. Apparently, 2 minutes really is the operable blender run-time for making delicious smoothies. After countless experimental runs and after pouring through mountains of chocolatey and flavorful data sets, 2 minutes appears to be the hands down winner.

2. After nearly 8 years, whenever I hear someone offhandedly refer to the 1997 seventh game loss by the Cleveland Indians to the Florida Marlins in the World Series (or consequently discusses such banal topics as Jose Mesa or Edgar Renteria), the heartbreak feels pretty much the same as while watching it live on television.

3. I didn't tell either of the classes for which I am the teaching assistant that I have a facebook profile, which implies that I did not give them explicit permission to do this, but I'm curious to see if anyone shall dare to become my facebook friend. Furthermore, if no one wants to be my facebook friend...I suppose that's just fine by me.

4. I drink a LOT of caffeine. On an average day, I normally consume upwards of 8 shots of espresso and a 16 oz. energy drink (lo-carb of course). As if that were not enough to keep any normal person's energy levels way below the ground state, I also supplement my diet with a Centrum Performance vitamin tablet (with ginseng, gingko bilboa, and all the vitamin B's you could ever want). I also frequently snack on trail mix. If productivity falls below 300%, I may need to employ other energy giving resources as a precaution.

5. Now that I've taken to buying my water in cute half-liter bottles, my room is absolutely strewn with empty plastic bottles. I'm thinking after a couple months, I may be able to melt them all down (while wearing a proper mask to protect myself from the awful fumes?) and construct a large plastic cube or maybe a bust of Thomas Edison's head.

6. Taking only two courses (albeit graduate level) in one semester seems quite alright to me.

7. I forgot that going into a hot tub is only awesome when the weather is cold or at least cool. Jon and Mindy invited me to go along with them to their friends' apartment, where we relaxed and drank beers (read: shotgunned beers) in the hot tub. Of course, I was sweating profusely after about 2 minutes (this is Texas after all). One of their friends is Vietnamese. Another guy showed up later who is half-English, half-Indonesian. I probably seemed to eager too talk to them, but I never really had the opportunity to meet (or at least drink) with many different Asian types.

One more tidbit of information from this night: Tito's Vodka is incredible. At $11 for a fifth of this 40% alcohol per volume product, you would expect this delectable treat to go down rough -- fighting you all the way down to your stomach and even afterwards. This is the smoothest vodka I have ever had.

8. What is this?!?!...A center for ANTS!

9. a. When I told my class today that I did my undergraduate studies at The Wabash College of Crawfordsville, Indiana, I had the pleasure of being outed by one of my students. I claimed that none of them have probably ever heard of it. One of my students was apparently recruited for a time to play football for my beloved Little Giants. After the words "Wabash" and "College" left my mouth, the student's hand was raised, and he asked me, "Isn't that an all-male school?" Per usual, I put the dopiest grin I could muster upon my face and replied with the affirmative. After some incoherent hemming and hawing about Wabash, I began the class.

b. I told my class about significant figures today during the lab period. I warned them not to confuse that with significant others. I had a very nice polite chuckle emanate from the class. Being humorous is hard.

10. It is far too hot out here to drink hot coffee. I'll take mine iced. Thank you and gig(gle) 'em Aggies!

Seeing God

2005-09-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

By no means am I any sort of mystic, but there are certain moments that give the inimitable impression and overall sensation of presence.

"Aaron is eight years old when he sees God. He is on a night flight home from his grandfather's funeral, a man he never met while living. He has a window seat and has spent the entire flight staring at the tiny lights below which, intellectually, he knows correspond to buildings but which seem more like sequins on an endless black blanket. When the plane flies into a cloud, Aaron's sense of unlimited span and distance disappears. His window is swathed in white. A pulsing red light emanates from the cloud's whiteness. Aaron stares, awestruck. With each pulse of light the cloud is transformed into something magical. Aaron wonders if God lives in all clouds, or if his plane just happened to pick the right one."

-- Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

Junior and Senior year at St. Ignatius the Jesuit Preparatory School of Cleveland, Ohio is a special time for one specific, distinct reason: the Kairos retreat. The fact that this was an experience that occurred so long ago makes the memory a blurred one at best. So when I think of it, there are only several significant things that come to mind. The retreat is a four-day escape to the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma, which is my de facto hometown. On the expansive ground of the retreat house, there are two distinct landmarks that fill one with the feeling that only the sublime can proffer. The one is a tall and oppressive stone statue of Christ, with palms open. The other is a clearing in a wooded area where a Jesuit cemetery lays, in the middle of which stands a large, wooden cross. As often happens, in the daytime, these two respective landmarks lose their mystic, sublime qualities. Imagine for a moment, though, the experience of walking with a close friend and coming to a clearing where the sky and its endless stars open themselves onto you. The moon, large and full and seemingly within reach over the cross, provides a soft glow to guide your way.

When I was a junior, I went on Kairos for the first time. We had all heard the stories and early reports of mystic happenings occurring at the Christ statue. Rest assured, we would have senior guides to aid us in this unofficial part of the Kairos programme. We would later learn that the Jesuits generally frown upon such behavior, but that really is not enough to stop a precocious bunch of adolescents from amateur pursuits in mysticism. Every night, we'd sneak out and stay out late exploring the outside grounds of the complex. A group of us would begin gathering around the Christ statue for prayer. Spontaneously, one of us would be so moved as to approach the statue and climb up onto its base. Some would gather near as well and place their hands in solidarity about his feet. All would continue in prayer. Some would be admittedly distracted from their prayerful state by the seemingly random happenings around them. The young man standing at the base of that statue would then grab the hands of Christ and stare deeply into His eyes.

A lot of people would immediately identify this as some sort of idol worship. In a lot of ways, that may be true, but there was a definite sense of presence. Also, this is what young males are supposed to do. Look at Knowles' A Separate Peace. This really was like Phineas climbing out onto the longest tree limb overhanging a river and jumping. For all intensive purposes, this seemed to be where one could prove his ultimate worth as an Ignatian. I look back on it now as a sort of rite of passage.

One by one, I watched them all hop up onto the base of that statue and feel the emotional shock of His presence. Some would say that they could see tears in Christ's eyes or feel warmth from his hands. There always seemed to be some sense of being displaced, feeling as though the statue was welcoming the young retreatant.

I went up timid and shy, and didn't feel a thing. I was disappointed, but I wasn't really surprised. Looking back, I realize it was because I was still innocent, and I didn't hurt from anything. I would soon realize the connection, after conversation with thme, that they hurt from something and that they needed that presence to be felt. That period of adolescence is an awkward one, because the small things don't fill you with the same sense of awe and amazement anymore.

I would go back to that place my senior year as a retreat leader. I remember walking around with my friend Michael at night. We went past the statue, where a new host of Ignatians were getting their fill of presence, and we came across that clearing in the woods. I hadn't noticed it on previous occassions. The sky just seemed to open up out of nowhere and sent down upon us a very soft glow of moonlight. Maybe that's what let him release his hurt. He told me stuff that I would have never been able to guess on my own about him. I never realized how much stress he was under. He went through the pain of having lost his virginity and then of having that same girl tell him she was pregnant. The rub was that she really wasn't pregnant, but she had kept up the charade for awhile. She made it all up to get back at him for breaking up with her. Later she claimed to have had an abortion or maybe a miscarriage. But it was certainly a host of lies and undeserved pain.

Secretly, I was jealous because I had never known pain. I never felt a real need to cry and let out emotion. I would feel it later and realize how naive I was to think like that. I tried to be there for my friend, but I never know the right things to say. I never will. But at the same time, he got to experience a closeness to that presence which can only be made possible by a painful separation. I wish I had understood more clearly, for Michael's sake.

Michael was the one who would introduce me to Lewis Black. After school one day in the weeks before graduation, we rode around downtown Cleveland and then made our way towards Parma while listening to Black's White Album. I laughed so hard that I cried. I've listened to it so often since then that the humor seems to be a part of me. The jokes are like old and reliable friends. I look back to that now and wonder if I had an innocent laugh that he was jealous of. I wouldn't even know if I had lost that. I laughed a lot then, and I still do today. I wish I knew, because it would clear up a lot. I can only suppose.

Alastair Templeton

2005-09-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

"The most important thing to remember is to change your ways while you're still young." That was the last thing I heard from the crazy, wound-up bastard. I could never understand how he got that way. Maybe it comes with trying to beat off urges that come as natural as breathing. I didn't see it at first, but over time, one could easily tell that the paranoia was tearing him apart from the inside. His insides were crumbling like a weathered and bombed out villa. The scene though wasn't as majestic and not nearly as sublime as one.

I could never figure what day to day living could have been like for that guy. His life must have been absolute torture. A speck of dirt would enter into the scope of his vision, and he could feel the shivers run up and down his spine. He'd see a plate of rotting food, and panic would hit him hard in the chest. Hyperventilating and beginning to perspire, he'd need a seat to regain his composure. His world was an absolute nightmare, and it was a wonder that he had made it this far.

Maybe his obsession was the product of a simple denial at first. I suppose that is most likely the case, since most big things grow out of some weird small thing that really doesn't resemble the end-product in the least bit. It just never made much sense to me is all. I'd say hello on a daily basis, I was friendly with him all the time. Maybe he didn't like all that, and it made it exponentially worse for him, my co-worker.

Some relationships start off so simply but grow into that of mutual distrust. What thing or person did he have such a relationship with? I didn't have such a relationship with him. I trusted his instinct when it came to matters concerning the job. His expertise was well-known and respected in the field. He knew how to dissect a problem, an issue, a matter of grave seriousness like no other -- a physicist nonpareil. He was at his most calm and relaxed when relied upon. Maybe that was the issue all in itself. The filth, the entropy of it all, maybe it got to him in the worst way as age crept up and over him -- supplanting his outmoded self.

A month before his tragic end, he looked at me with piercing, deeply reflective eyes and bared all. He said, "Get out while you still can and take the kids with you." I had no idea what he could have possibly been talking about. I didn't know if he had family lost to him, or if he just decided to just up and go crazy on us.

Growing Up

2005-09-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

I think for a long time, when you're little, the idea of growing up really just doesn't make much sense. Growing up is confined to the idea of losing your baby teeth and just getting outright bigger. What you don't realize is that as you grow up something dies in you. It so often happens, and too often people give in to that. What you don't realize is that all the best things will happen to you when you were younger. You'll forget that and be so lost to the world that you won't stop to have any fun.

There was Rheka (or Reyhka even?) who, when I was a first grader at the Incarnate Word Academy, would taunt me for not having lost any of my baby teeth yet. She always threatened to punch them out for me. I felt like I was missing out, and I wanted to grow up so badly and lose those teeth. She was an Indian girl, which I suppose is significant because there were so few non-white kids in my school. And although we may not have been the best of friends, anytime you're thrust into a new situation you seek out those that may be somewhat like yourself. For all intensive purposes, I was like her in many ways, except for the fact that I was falling desperately behind in the race to grow up. She would ask me everyday at recess if I had lost any teeth yet. And when I would give her my reply to indicate the negative, she would threaten to punch them out for me. I guess it's nice to have someone who is willing to put in that special extra effort to help you along the way. I wanted to lose those teeth so badly, but it just wasn't happening. Not until the next year would I start losing my baby teeth. I have to admit that I was excited about it. I just didn't realize it would hurt so bad. Losing a tooth is never any fun.

Coincidentally, it would turn out that the two front baby teeth in the lower part of my mouth would hang around for much longer than expected. I really don't think there's a term for that, my dentist just said that I had congenitally missing teeth. Now there's an awkward thought, because if I have congenitally missing teeth, isn't it remotely possible that I had congenitally missing other body parts as well? It's a severely discomforting thought indeed. I was eighteen, and I was guilty of the crime of hanging on to those last two baby teeth. Maybe I was able to conspire, out of spite for those like Rheka, to not let those adult teeth grow in. Those teeth would have to be knocked out for me, and I now have a dental bridge in place of those adult teeth that would never grow in.

If anything, I really do just ape the motions of a real, mature, adult male.

Poop Jokes

2005-09-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

I think one of the few things that I'm able to do fairly well is to laugh at myself with great regularity and with the precision of a well-tuned (but nevertheless haphazard) Swiss time-keeping device. There was the time where I was playing rec league baseball. My dad was the coach of the team, and I remember waking up that morning to eat my raisin bran before the game. It was one of those wet mornings, where the sky is grey and dark, and the onset of rain is imminent. Rain fell hard the night before, and as a result the infield proved to be unplayable. We moved the game out onto the outfield though and made a make-shift diamond. We always did the best that we could to fit games inbetween the wet, cold spring and the fall that would arrive so fast. I guess it really is fitting that we were playing in the wrong direction. In physics, we refer to this sort of nonsense as some sort of coordinate transformation. The field had the look and feel of real ball diamond, with the exception that the action was transposed in the wrong angle. Regardless of the inertial frame though, the same laws of physics apply. Today would prove to be no exception.

At any rate, the game played on, and I felt uncomfortable from the get-go. Nothing seemed right, and the grass was slick from rain. The batting helmets felt too tight. Maybe my head was absorbing the moisture from the air around me, causing it to swell to some significant portion above normal. Some people get big heads from their achievements, but not me. No sir, I'm a simple type, and I only get a big head when it rains. Several innings into the game we got a nice drizzle. I remember walking up to the plate for my at-bat when my bowels made the first indication that not all was well in Brownstown. I don't think the Cleveland Browns left town that year, but let's pretend that they did for the sake of argument.

As often happens, the physical limitations seem to disappear when the opportunity to shine arises. When a beautifully fat pitched ball came floating towards the plate, my body transformed from that of an awkward and chubby pre-adolescent to that of a steroid-inflated Barry Bonds. I was really in the zone, like you'll often hear Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods refer to. You could count the number of seams sticking out of that moist, dirty baseball. With great coordination and grace and symmetry and power, bat met ball. The all to familiar metallic clank off my trusty Easton Magnum sounded in the air, alerting fan and player alike to the excitement to take place on the bases. The black and gold beauty sent the ball screaming out towards the gap in left-centerfield.

Per expectation of a boy my size, the idea of running quickly returned my body to its previous, less impressive form. I struggled towards first, concentrating extremely hard on preventing myself from slipping due to the moisture on the ground. Wind and drizzle conspired to impede my progress. And as I rounded first, my bowels made there second indication. I couldn't hold it. One fart, two, three, four...it wouldn't stop. The second baseman looked at his counterpart at short and made a chuckle. When it became evident that the rapid succession would continue, full out laughter began to build in the infield. Meanwhile, I managed to motor all the way towards third. A quick slap on the back from my dad coaching third, plus his trademarked ridiculous laugh made me burst out into laughter as well. I looked around and could not believe what I just did. I didn't make a single comment about it, I just looked sheepishly around and felt completely embarassed. But it really was funny, and I like the sound of laughter. "Yeah Jon, you really turned the jets on for that one, didn't you?"

"I sure did pop, I sure did."

That was one of the earliest memories that I have of the mutual distrust that would grow between myself and my bowels.