After Much Deliberation

When I started this blog I had high expectations for my creative output. I wanted to put something out every few days, and at first I didn’t have much trouble meeting this goal. There were a fair amount of things going on in my life that I thought were worth writing about and I had a good time doing so. Things sort of trailed off as the school year came to a close, and as summer began I found myself having very little creative energy. Perhaps it was that I was in a less engaging environment. It could be that I simply ran out of things to say. It’s also possible that I just got lazy. I had ideas from time to time, but never got around to expanding on any of them. Then something happened that really got me thinking.

I had a few friends over early in August for a friendly game of poker. Well, perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to say that I was friendly. Throughout the course of the game I was really put off by comments made by one of my friends about how much luck is involved in poker. He was content to bet on nearly every hand under his belief that “anything can happen” on the flop. I had no idea how somebody could believe something that was so obviously wrong. There wouldn’t be repeat champions of large poker tournaments if the game was simply an observance of random chance. The notion that some hands aren’t just better than others is preposterous.

Some-crazy-how he ended up taking second in our ring of six. His philosophy landed him the short stack very early on, but he had managed to claw his way back into the game, lucking out on a number of horrible bets along the way. He said something about how he had been getting better at poker recently, which left me completely baffled- both in terms of how this was very much in contradiction of his philosophy and in that I couldn’t wrap my head around how far beyond bad he must have been before.

Of course, in my mind this was about a lot more than just a game of poker. What I was thinking about was the injustice of somebody saying something completely wrong and then being handed anecdotal evidence that they believe validates their position. Nobody is good at anything simply by merit of having succeeded at something, nor bad because they experienced failure. Results-oriented thinking is bad juju. From my perspective this was a clear-cut case of somebody that “won anyway”, but for whatever reason it really bothered me that he didn’t understand this. And it REALLY bothered me that it bothered me.

A few days later I was having some beers with the guys and as I’m all too often inclined to do I got to running my mouth. Obviously there was no way I could let my friend get away with thinking he was better at a card game than he is. That was, of course, the most important thing in my life. I said some things that were completely out of line about how easy my friend made the game for me and was met with very negative reactions from everyone there. Now, at this point it should be clear to everybody that I’m the villain of this story.

Everybody except me. 

After this incident I came up with what I thought was going to be a brilliant topic for me to write on. It was a work that categorized people into two camps- people that realize their own flaws and strive to improve themselves and people that are content to believe that they already know everything they need to know. It was going to be magnificent and I was going to show everybody just how brilliant Ryan Overturf is.

But the words wouldn’t come out right. Something was off, and I couldn’t grasp what that might be. I shelved the idea and thought that I might be able to articulate my ideas better if I worked on some of the other topics I had on my list, but I couldn’t focus on any of them. None of them were nearly as important as exposing the division between geniuses and fools.

I stopped trying to make the pieces fit after a few weeks. That is until I came across what I considered to be among the worst articles I had ever read. It was an attempt at a sob story about a man who was “chasing his dreams” by quitting his shitty day job because he couldn’t get the weekend off and being a prick to his wife. It was clearly written strictly in the vein of finding somebody- anybody- to agree with him and to help him justify the choices that he had made. After only two paragraphs I wanted to scroll down to the comments section to make sure that everybody else hated this piece as much as I did. Then a strange feeling came over me. It felt wrong to criticize this article, but I couldn’t figure out why. After reading it in its entirety it became clear that if nothing else it was very honest… but considering just how abysmal it was that should only make it worse. 

That’s when it hit me- This was the exact same piece I was working on. 

It wasn’t a conceptual writing or anything, but it was doing exactly what I denied that I was trying to do- justify being an asshole.

For a long time I convinced myself that working towards correcting my imperfections elevated me above those that didn’t seem to care. As if awareness of vices somehow turned them into virtues. I couldn’t in good conscious write about how people should realize their shortcomings while I ignored mine in my ignoble crusade to force people to think.

One of my professors made a comment that really hit home with me last week. He was talking about philosophers in the early modern period and how at that point in time a person could literally master every subject explored by humanity. Science and math didn’t reach nearly as far as they do now. Literature was considerably more limited. The world was, well, much simpler. There is so much more to know today than there ever has been. Before thinking about this it irritated me when I understood certain concepts on higher levels than my peers. I took it as a sign of their laziness- and as a person who has no problem admitting my own sloth this caused me to think very lowly of people. Not in terms of them not measuring up to me, but in terms of them comparing unfavorably to their own potential. While this doesn’t necessarily lead me to an inaccurate conclusion, it does ignore the possibility that they have invested just as much effort into something else that I don’t understand. I by no means consider all knowledge to be equally respectable- and I certainly wouldn’t say equally useful- but difference in substance doesn’t always imply difference in quality.

I have recently made it part of my credo that I have no sensitivity for the egos of others. I stand by this statement, but now realize that in the past I have not always properly scrutinized potential expressions of hubris.

It’s not arrogant to think that you’re good at something when you only ever engage in that activity casually. When my friend said he was good at poker I evaluated his words using definitions unique to my experience and foreign to his. Speaking from my perspective, he’d have been a liar. Speaking from his perspective, he’s as good as he needs to be. An artist need not waste their time on game theory. 

Over the years I have said a lot of critical things to a lot of people, and much of it was not deserved. As hard as it may be to believe, I can honestly say that I had good intentions. Well, most of the time anyway. For every time that I unintentionally crossed the line between tough love and being just plain rude, I apologize, and I hope not to repeat this behavior in the future. 

When it is Broke

There is a very real possibility that the state of Minnesota will be shutting down this week. It’s easy to get caught up in the particulars of today’s politics that have led up to this reality, but there is a fundamental question that seems to be largely ignored.

Why does the current system have such dramatic built-in consequences?

The answer seems pretty obvious to me. It’s clearly a deterrent. The idea was to have a punishment so severe that no rational group would ever come anywhere near this close to evoking it. The problem of course being that the Minnesota State Legislature is elected in part by the same people that elected Michele Bachmann to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why is it that my laptop installs regular updates when it works fine while there continues to be customs in this country that were clearly intended to serve functions that were appropriate in a different time and aren’t at all appropriate presently?

This archaic shut-down clause is not unlike the Electoral College. The Electoral College doesn’t make sense to most Americans, and that’s largely because it’s inconsistent with what many people seem to think that the United States is about. The Electoral College was a safeguard put into place to essentially limit the power of common people to elect the President. The idea was that Presidential candidates would all be respectable people that would split the Electoral College in most elections. Instead running for President is all about selling out enough to afford an outrageously expensive campaign. Instead we live in the world where George W. Bush got elected over the immensely more qualified Al Gore. Instead we live in the world where John McCain wasn’t stoned to death for so much as considering Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The founding fathers were a group of individuals whose wisdom exceeded that of most if not all living politicians. Even still their first idea for the U.S. government, the Articles of Confederation, was a complete failure. What set them apart was their ability to admit that they were wrong and to get back to the drawing board.

Today there is a stigma attached to changing one’s mind. To being a flip-flopper. It’s almost as if having an open mind is a sin. Reversing this paradigm is of paramount importance. As human beings it’s foolish to think that we won’t make mistakes. More so to assume that just because something has been working that it will continue to do so. Times change and rules only work as a function of context.

It should not only be accepted, but rather encouraged that politicians (and people in general) change their minds. I believe that a well-designed system involves mandatory evaluation on a regular basis. For some reason Facebook feels the need to reinvent itself every couple of years, so why doesn’t the government? 

Lessons Learned

I was planning on recounting everything that happened on my journey to Asia in this post, but I figure that I’ll be talking to anybody that cares anyhow. Not to mention that that’s a whole lot of story. Instead I’m going to pass on a few nuggets that are probably obvious to everybody else that I learned on my trip with regard to traveling internationally.

Change your money about a week before you leave

I wasn’t really sure how much cash I was going to need before I left so I put off changing my money until the very last minute. Most (perhaps all) banks don’t keep foreign currency on hand and it takes about three days for them to have it delivered. Additionally, the exchange rates at the airport are outrageous. You can always take money out at an ATM upon arrival but in order to do so you first need to contact your bank so that they won’t automatically block the transaction (believe it or not, it’s strange when the same check card purchases gasoline in Minneapolis one week and withdraws money in Singapore the next). When using an ATM in a foreign land you can never really be sure what exchange rate the machine is using nor what kind of fee the transaction is charging you, so all things considered I recommend changing money ahead of time and keeping very good track of your wallet.  

Have wheels on your luggage

Okay, this is something that I already knew, but there is something that I forgot…

Make sure the wheels on your luggage work

When I showed up at the airport I set my bag on the ground and began to drag it very slowly behind me. When I turned around to see what the deal was it was apparent that the wheels weren’t turning and that I had left some streaks in the entryway to the airport. Yikes. After that I proceeded to carry my 40 or so pound suitcase along with my backpack a few miles over the course of the trip on my way to and from various airports and hotels.

Be aware of cultural differences 

While we in the U.S. firmly believe that we do everything perfectly, the rest of the world does a number of things very differently. For instance, it is considered insulting in many nations to tip. It takes some time to really get a feel for cultural differences, but you should certainly be on the lookout for legal differences before tripping internationally. I made a running joke while we were in Singapore that I refused to jaywalk because the legal penalty was death. This is kind of harsh, but any country boasting a Jolly Roger on its customs forms as a warning to drug traffickers and a $500 fine for eating on the train invites itself to such criticisms. On that note, I’m pretty sure eating in public is pretty frowned upon everywhere outside of the U.S. They don’t fine you in Japan, but they sure do look at you funny.

If you don’t speak the language…

Then don’t mess around with English. You’re not going to make any progress trying to communicate by spitting out English words hoping to hit a cognate. Outside of the obvious inefficiencies, there is also the possibility that you hit a word that sounds like a word in a different language that means something completely different. Alternatively, you say a word that is extremely similar and the person you’re trying to communicate with still doesn’t take your meaning. While in Singapore my friend Matthias ordered a dish that he thought would benefit from some soy sauce. Nobody at the restaurant seemed to have any idea what he meant. After ten minutes of trying to discern what he wanted using the English that they knew, a man whom I presumed to be the owner explained that in Singapore they pronounced the word “sosss-uh”. The extra “s” is not a typo. While it’s really impossible to communicate something like “soy sauce” nonverbally, one would do well to attempt to communicate nonverbally when confusion arises (as it inevitably will) out of country. At a clothing store in Japan I found a shirt that I liked and when I grabbed it and began to search for the cash register I was stopped by an employee. He said something in Japanese and I made an “I’m just a stupid American” face. After about thirty seconds I pulled out my wallet to indicate that I wished to purchase the shirt and he promptly took me to the cash register.

Do what the locals do

I find that I have the best times on my vacations when I dine at restaurants I’ve never heard of and visit places that aren’t overly touristy. It only took one trip to the Sears Tower for me to learn that most big attractions are little more than manufactured crap. I recommend doing a little research and finding some sort of food special or activity that is exclusive to where you’re visiting. The obvious thing to do in Japan is to find a good place to eat sushi, but there’s sooo much more going on. One stop that I made while in Nagoya was to an all you can eat cake buffet. I kind of wanted to die after eating two plates, but they had some damn tasty cakes. 

10 Seasons Too Many

Did everybody catch the American Idol finale? I sure did! And by that I mean it was on the T.V. while I wasted my time in a significantly more interesting way by staring at my computer screen. It didn’t take me very long to remember that I hate everything about the show. Outside of laughing at the discovery that Jennifer Lopez was on the judge panel I didn’t see any entertainment value in the program.

I usually love championships, and I mean any kind of championships. I watch the Super Bowl every year despite the fact that the game is usually very one-sided and football is like the worst sport ever. There’s just something very wrong about a singing championship determined on the basis of popularity.

If you ask me the format of the show should be reversed entirely. I think that the judges should determine who is the most talented in the final leg and the fans should be able to say who they want to see more of in the initial rounds. The only contestant that I’ve ever seen on “Idol” that I would consider voting for is Larry Platt. Any contest that doesn’t allow Pants on the Ground guy to advance obviously has some fundamental flaws.

I don’t actually know anything about music. This is one of very few things that I have in common with like… all of American Idol’s viewers. It doesn’t make any sense to have a bunch of people who are clueless about something vote on it. That would be like letting ordinary people vote on tax policy… or gay marriage.  

Even if I did know anything about music what would I even be voting on? There are many, many talented singers that never make it in the music industry. So I guess I would be voting on stage presence. And wouldn’t you know it; the world is full of people who can put on a show that never get anywhere as well… Why aren’t we exposed at all to the contestants’ ability to write? I can guarantee that quality writing is rarer than good singing and performing. Of course, that's only requisite for good music- not popular music. 

What I really don’t understand is why people continued to watch the show after Simon Cowell left. He was by far the most articulate and constructive judge of the bunch, yet he was the most hated by the fans. As a performer I can tell you that he’s the only person on the panel that I would actually listen to. We all have enough friends that will tell us that we did well regardless of how terrible we really are. What we all need is somebody to tell us how to do better in the future.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that American Idol is a dumb show that is full of dumb. 

Who Knows, Y'know?

If you’re reading this, then congratulations, you’ve survived the rapture. Wait… that’s supposed to be a bad thing. Man, religion is confusing. I suppose that confusion is the only guaranteed result when one attempts to solve life’s great mysteries. Even still I can’t help but wonder what purpose my extremely unlikely existence is meant to serve. For the final of my philosophy of religion class I wrote an essay about the meaning of life. The writing was really rough but I’d like to think that some of the ideas are worth sharing, and share them I shall! I’m going to cut out a rather lengthy segment on what is called “Divine Command Theory” as pretty much everything I wrote on it could easily be found elsewhere. All you really need to know is that both actions being good because God commands them and God commanding actions because they are good are problematic ideals. Anyhow, here’s like half of the paper. 

“…I have yet to encounter a convincing argument in my life that has persuaded me that the meaning of life is necessarily anything more than simply “to live.”

In Leo Tolstoy’s work “My Confession”, Tolstoy provides the story of how he transitioned from leading a life that he believed to be devoid of reason to the pursuit of a life that was religiously virtuous. Tolstoy begins this work by discussing just how miserable he was during the period in his life when he attempted to rationalize everything and lived by logic and reason. At some point he began to be haunted by the question of why he was even alive. As far as he could discern there was no way to answer this question through reason. Science and rational thought could provide him with the answers to all kinds of questions about the particulars of objects within the universe and their relation to one another, but could not lead him to the answer of why he should continue to live that he so desperately desired. Tolstoy renounced his pursuit of reason after observing countless individuals leading what he believed to be good lives through the pursuit of faith. He believed that these people had truly a discovered the meaning of life- that life is about transcending our finite existence and pursuing an eternal life through God.

When reading Tolstoy’s argument for leading a religious life it is apparent that he was serious about throwing reason to the wind. The idea that religion has worked for many others is nothing more than an appeal to popularity. Just because a certain belief or custom works for another person or group doesn’t mean that it will work for another. In this case there isn’t even a sense of certainty that religion does in fact work as a solution to the meaning of life. Because others are following a certain lifestyle and seem to be happy with it does not mean that the values of this lifestyle are correct. A billion people believing in eternal salvation will have no effect on what happens to any of them when they die. Either they were correct or they weren’t and simply believing does not make the transition from the finite to the infinite a reality. The frame of reference that Tolstoy establishes in the beginning of this piece also suggests a bias in his search for meaning. A man who believes that he is “… an accidentally cohering globule of something.” is probably one with an immense desire to change this viewpoint that may or may not have high regard for objectivism in doing so. Additionally, his dissatisfaction with life by no means necessarily leads him to religion. It could just as easily lead him to lead a life of hedonism, or to simply embrace his nihilism. He may not be wrong in saying that disregarding reason is the only way to determine the meaning of life, and it is of course possible that religion is the answer, but this is far from a definite conclusion. There is a reason that they call it a leap of faith after all. In order to investigate the issue further it is beneficial to explore the motivation of others for pursuing religion as the answer.

…Insert discussion on DCT here…

All of this discussion on the meaning of life gets heavily bogged down when God becomes a factor in the equation, which is why I find Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus to be the most compelling work in this section. In his writing Camus suggests that Sisyphus’s tragic fate of aimlessly pushing a rock up a hill for all eternity is not all that different from the plight of modern man. This is a depressing notion on the surface, but Camus’ argument is one that sees Sisyphus as a happy man. While the rock can be seen as a burden it can also be viewed in a positive light. No matter what happens Sisyphus will always have a rock to push, and at times it could indeed be satisfying just to push the rock, even if he knows the exercise to be futile. Camus goes as far as to state that “[h]is (Sisyphus’) rock is his thing.” Once Sisyphus realizes and accepts the hopelessness of his situation he overcomes it. The only way for his situation to conquer him is for him to hope for more.

As I find myself awake at an unreasonable hour working to complete this paper I can see the link between Sisyphus and myself. This paper will be reflected in one grade that will probably have a marginal impact on the rest of my life which will likely be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I fully understand that my entire existence could be completely without meaning, but unlike Tolstoy I am not concerned with this idea. Maybe there is a Truth that establishes a fundamental code for morality and maybe there isn’t. So long as I can keep pushing the rock up the hill with a smile on my face and an open mind to embrace the Truth should it present itself to me I’ll be just fine. As they say, sometimes the journey is its own reward.”

This is a far cry from my complete views on life. There’s not even word one on how people should treat one another. It is a good start though, and if I were asked to state in one sentence what I thought the meaning of life was the answer could easily be discerned form this text. 

Keep on keeping on. 

Techschmology

Before I make the following statement I feel it’s necessary to state that I understand the hypocrisy. That being said, I hate technology.

 It all started with calculators. Calculators (not graphing calculators, mind you, we’ll get to those later) are horribly inefficient. In elementary school I was repulsed by the idea of using a calculator for any of the four basic mathematical functions. If I couldn’t find the answer mentally faster than I could punch the problem into my calculator then that was a sign that I should have stayed in bed that morning. Math is sort of like a second language in its own right. If you don’t practice regularly it gets harder. Using a calculator is like the opposite of practice. I think more people would be good at math if they weren’t so comfortable just saying that they were bad at it.

Of course, there comes a point when it’s no longer faster to do things with pen and paper. This is when one will rely on either a computer or their trusty graphing calculator. A graphing calculator has the ability to, you know, graph, which is a pretty handy tool. However, the differences between a basic calculator and a graphing calculator allow the user to have games on their computation device. Which brings me to my next qualm- technology is distracting. Can you think of any classes in High School that were more interesting than playing Galaxian? Maybe. Are any of them math classes? Probably not.

Graphing calculators don’t even compare to smart phones in this regard. I remember when the first generation of iPhone was released. A friend of mine was strangely eager to drop $500 on the new model as soon as it was released. After he picked it up I never saw his eyes again. There are some useful things that smart phones do. I mean, I don’t know what any of these things are, but I have to believe that they exist. Mostly they just make people forget about their surroundings. It’s ironic how much damage that a device designed for communication has done to face to face interaction: a topic much broader than I will bother to delve into for the purposes of this post.

And what the hell is the deal with Angry Birds? Why on Earth should I, a person who neither owns a smart phone nor has any desire to acquire one, have ever heard of that game? I hear somebody mention Angry Birds at least once a week and I can’t for the life of me make any sense of it. Perhaps there’s more value to simplistic handheld gaming than I understand, but that’s an error of judgment that I have no reservations about making.

Recently I started driving with a GPS. I quickly learned that it did not “know” the roads in my hometown as well as I did. I was heading to Minneapolis this weekend which required me to get onto a highway that is roughly a mile from my house. Instead the GPS thought it would be cool to drive two miles and meet the highway further along. I suppose that driving in town longer meant better gas mileage, but the route the GPS sent me on involved taking a left turn over a median that was constructed about a year ago. When I went right to turn around at a roundabout just down the way (which really has no business being there, but that’s another story) the GPS began to recalibrate my position to try to determine a new route. Hooray for satellite positioning. It’s nice to have for getting to places that I’ve never been, but I’ve started to unplug the machine as soon as I even vaguely recognize my surroundings.

So, this might have been more of an incoherent rant than anything else, and I didn’t even touch on the scary side of technology (gogo Skynet), but I think I got my position across. If you can do it yourself, you should. 

A Case of the Mondays

I stared at the rings under my eyes, wondering if they had become a permanent fixture of my appearance. Or worse yet that exhaustion might have become my default state of being. The morning air was cold and my shower had left me unsatisfied. Our hot water heater seemed to be as ill-equipped to handle the weather as I was.

I looked upon the leftovers in my fridge with an expression of disdain. I wasn’t about to throw any of the Chinese that I had been hoarding away, but I wasn’t about to eat any of it either. I didn’t feel keen on taking a trip to the local grocer, so rather than doing so I made my way to a local coffee shop to grab some soup before I consigned myself to the library for the night. Their soup of the day was chicken noodle. Appropriate.

At this point in time I realized that I had left my headphones in my room. The music playing at Mugby Junction would do while I ate my soup, but this would make my time at the library rather unpleasant. The inclement weather quelled any considerations that I had about retrieving them. As I pondered my predicament “Biggest Mistake” by The Rolling Stones started to play from the speaker above my head. This left me no choice but to laugh about my minor misfortune. I’d be returning home for dinner in a few hours anyway.

I wasn’t surprised that the library was crowded when I arrived. Perturbed, but not surprised. It’s always this way at the end of the semester. I wondered where these people did their studying during the rest of the year. To be entirely honest I was more concerned with why they weren’t studying there now. Some day when I have the time I’ll propose my model for priority seating in the library to the university. If the voting took place in the library during the middle of the semester it would pass for sure.

When I finally found my seat I examined my schedule for the week and tried to establish a timeline for when I would need to finish each of my projects. It’s probable that a number of these deadlines should have been set to be met some time last month.   

One seven page paper, one portfolio comprised of revisions of everything I’ve done in my writing class, one PowerPoint presentation and two exams. Easy peasy. As fortune would have it my finals schedule left my Monday and Tuesday completely free. It’s really never as bad as it looks- it’s always better or worse. Personally, I try not to sweat the pressure too much. These things have a way of working out. 

slaniF

I do a lot of my worst work during finals. I don’t believe that I’m alone in this regard. Finals are supposed to be representative of everything that has been learned over the course of the term, but they usually fall short in assessing this. When I have three or so major projects to work on it is very difficult for me to really get interested in any of them. I generally do my best to strongly incorporate my voice in my academic writing- I like to think that I’m giving my professors a much needed break from the monotony of grading another loosely constructed appeal to legalize marijuana from the perspective of a student whose personal motto is “’C’s get degrees.” However, at the end of the semester my voice can sound pretty similar to that of these wannabe nihilists. Like everybody else I constantly attempt to raise my spirits by thinking about how quickly summer break is coming.

It’s much easier to care at the beginning of the semester. The first few assignments and tests set the pace for the rest of your year. It’s important to do well on these both to give yourself some breathing room for your grade and also to establish good standing with the professor. After a certain point the work tends to matter less and less. It’s easy enough to finish the assignments once they’ve become a part of your routine and as long as you keep up on the readings and lectures you’ll probably do well on them. When you only have one or two projects left the uncertainty that motivated you in the beginning of the semester has diminished. The focus shifts from establishing what needs to be done to keep up in a class to an assessment of where your previously earned grades leave you. Knowing the grade that you’ve earned throughout the semester with only one grade left to compute makes it easy to determine the maximum and minimum grade that can be earned in a particular course. When I look back at my old schoolwork I can usually tell what point in the year an assignment was completed. The differences between writing from the perspectives of “I would like to get a 4.0 this semester”, “I couldn’t possibly get an A if I aced this paper” and “I could totally fail this and still get an A” is painfully obvious.

The other problem with the end of the semester is that most people are having a lot less fun. Human beings simply do better work when our spirits are high. Writing done in contempt is visibly worse than writing done with enthusiasm. College is unreasonably expensive, and it’s important to complete your work and to do well at it, but what’s the point if you're miserable the whole time?

I spend a lot of time in the library during finals, but I make sure that I enjoy my time spent away from the stacks as well. Working hard and being miserable don’t necessarily walk hand in hand. Never forget to relax- personal tension will show in your work.

Get some sun. Drink some beer. Wreck some exams. 

An Object in Motion

This evening I did something that I had never done before. I made a to-do list. Somehow despite signing up for a course in leisure I have more projects to finish at the end of this semester than I’ve ever had previously. More than the time I took 18 credits. More than the time that I accidentally signed up for three writing flags (for the record you’re only required to take two such courses in your entire undergraduate career at WSU).

So why did I spend two hours on Friday writing a four page primer for Risk when I have so much going on? The easy answer is that Risk is way more interesting than research projects. The real reason is much simpler.

Inertia.

In the episode of The Simpsons titled “Mountain of Madness” Mr. Burns and Homer find themselves lounging beside an enormous table of snacks. After reclining deep into their chairs Mr. Burns quips that “The only hard part is getting up.” A remarkably profound metaphor, if unintentionally so.

A number of the assignments that comprise my to-do list are recent developments. I’ve been working on sustaining this blog for over a month and a half. Researching and writing are easy enough, but starting in on the process is a very high hurdle.

I’ve long been a heavy procrastinator and I’ve been content to simply blame the difficulty of starting and to rely on my ability to keep running once I can get off the ground. However, difficulty is a terrible reason not to do something. An easier life is an empty goal (thanks, Dad). What I should have been working on for years is a remedy for my vice.

What I’m trying to do is to find a better way to establish momentum than to just jump into working. This to-do list is my first attempt at this. It’s a compromise between working and not working. Writing a list is negligibly more difficult than doing nothing at all and it’s almost like starting on a project.

I’d be surprised if this one change alone fixes my work ethic, but it feels like a good start. If nothing else I’ve discovered that it feels pretty great to cross things off. 

The Same Thing We Do Every Night, Pinky

One of my favorite movies of all time is Battle Royale. It’s a Japanese film about a class of students who are sent to an evacuated island to fight to the death. Each student is given a small survival kit including a random weapon and three days to kill everybody else before explosive collars fashioned around the necks of all of the students detonates. It’s a rather morbid tale, but the special effects and goofy subtitles make it very campy.

In many ways this fight to the death is a lot like a game of Risk. The objective is to eliminate all other players, each player starts with a random position and if the game goes too long it becomes unplayable (I mean, once you’re turning in cards for 40 mans you’re just asking which player is the best at rolling dice). Having seen Battle Royale more than any human being probably should and having won more tabletop games than I could possibly keep track of I’ve come up with a few guidelines for free-for-all competition. I’ll mostly use examples from Risk but these are certainly applicable in other games. And if you ever find yourself reluctantly engaged in a fight to the death they just might save your life.

RULE #1: Be Proactive

Alternatively- Get busy killing or get busy dying.

In most games there are advantages to be gained by advancing your position. In Risk you acquire a “conqueror’s card” once per turn if you conquer any territory (which can later be redeemed for mans) and you get a significant bonus if you’re able to control an entire continent. Additionally you claim all of the conqueror’s cards of any player you eliminate.

Beginning players are pretty quick to realize that they want to conquer a continent, but there seems to be a slow learning curve for learning that you want to murder anybody else who tries to hold one. Being proactive is as much about hindering your opponents as it is about helping yourself. Depending on the number of players in the game you are only allotted a fraction of your opponents combined forces, which is the way that you should be thinking about your pieces. After all, you have to eliminate a lot more mans to win than your opponents do to cause you to lose. Allowing any of them to hold a continent only pushes this disadvantage and also makes it more likely that the game will be proceed to the “random phase” (the aforementioned stage in the game when conqueror’s cards begin to grant completely ludicrous bonuses).

Personally I like to only place my mans on one or two territories in the initial placement of the game and to either conquer Australia or (preferably) South America on the first turn. I’ve also been known to go for Africa. The general rule is to follow the path of least resistance. Being early in the turn order can be very important to this end as it both allows you to take over your continent first and then use your bonus mans to break up somebody else’s before they can get their bonus. If you’re later in the turn order then your time is probably better sent just sabotaging everybody else and waiting for an opportunity to go big.

RULE #2: Play Conservatively

It’s very important to find the balance between rules one and two. I was playing with my friend Joe one time and his game plan was to attack so long as he still had mans left to do so. I’m sure that it’s not true, but I want to say that he conquered two continents on the first turn, but this left him with only one man on each of his territories. He never got a second turn.

You can only get one conqueror’s card per turn, so you should have a pretty good reason to conquer any territory beyond the first. Spreading yourself thin is a good way to lose a continent and you only get the bonuses if you can start your next turn with it.

My favorite character in Battle Royale is named Kizuo Kiriyama, or as I like to call him Cheat Codes. Kiriyama is an ice cold murderer and chalks up more kills than anybody else on the island. SPOILER ALERT- he dies anyway. Proactive as he was, he failed to survive, which was after all the primary objective. Style points are certainly worth more in a board game because you, you know, live to tell about them, but few good stories ends in “and then I lost anyway.”

RULE #3: Words Speak Louder Than Actions

Diplomacy in Risk is a funny thing. Never forget that the game is a free for all. This makes promises almost meaningless, but that doesn’t mean that your opponents won’t value them for whatever reason. If anybody asks you for any favor it’s usually correct to agree to it and then to betray them. A lot can happen in a turn and you can usually come up with a valid enough reason to rescind on your promise. They should know better than to trust their opponent. The obvious exception is when something is mutually beneficial, which usually can only mean that you are aligning yourselves against “the threat” (more on this later).

There is a lot to be said about being an enjoyable player in a multiplayer game. If you’re cracking jokes and having a good time people will want to continue playing with you. You may have noticed that I refer to game pieces as "mans". Small, quirky things like this do a surprising amount of work in terms of being liked both in-game and in life alike. If you’re complaining about being attacked then people are just going to attack you all the more. Either because they want you to take your negative elsewhere or because they are amused by your displeasure at a simple game.

Table talk is a really great way to play mind games. One of my favorite things to do is to establish an enemy in name alone. That is to say that I will pick one player to verbally spar with without necessarily ever attacking them myself. The most successful application of this is when you can actually get the table to attack that player for like, no reason. And if it doesn’t work you probably had fun anyway.

RULE #4: Be Able to Identify “The Threat”

I can’t stress enough that every other player is out to get you, but after the game has had some time to progress there is usually one player that is obviously advantaged over all of the others. There is quite a lot to be said about managing the threat.

Never align yourself with the threat

In general I try to never align myself with anybody better positioned than myself, but that rule can certainly be broken. However, you should never ally with the best positioned player. The threat is Hitler, and if you align yourself with it then you are Joseph Stalin. I think we all know how that story turned out. If anybody is able to just turn around and start eliminating players, it’s the threat. Why would you trust the player at the table that is most likely to just kill you?

Promises actually mean something once the threat is established

Just reinforcing the point that I made earlier. Once the threat is established it’s usually in the best interest of the other players to team up against it. “I’ll break South America if you’ll break Africa” is a perfectly reasonable exchange.

Once you become the threat, it’s hard to unbecome the threat

This one is kind of weird, but definitely true. Even when your forces dwindle and you’re barely hanging on people are still going to be thinking about that time that you went for Asia. Once you go big everybody else is going to try to break you, and once they’ve broken you then it probably won’t be too long before somebody finishes the job to take all of your cards. Not every game has an incentive for eliminating players, but I think that most people gain personal satisfaction from eliminating their former oppressor.

If you must become the threat…

Do it in a big way. It’s important to fly under the radar for as long as you can so that you’re better positioned when everybody else finally realizes that the game is yours to lose. It’s not always easy to evaluate, but this is my rule for when to become the threat-

The game should turn into a team competition of everybody against you and it should feel unfair that there aren’t more of them.

RULE #5: Know When to Concede

This rule doesn’t really jive with the others, but I think it’s worth mention. A lot of people think that every game of Risk goes on for days when in fact the game should most often take less than two hours. You just have to accept that the way that Risk is designed makes the end game an unnecessarily long grind. It’s true that the chance involved in Risk makes it so that there are no impossible situations, but there are plenty of boringly improbable ones. Unless you’re playing for money (or blood, I guess) there’s no reason to play to your outs if that game play results in a negative experience. When your opponent is heavily favored and the only way you can win is through an agonizing, mindless sequence of chance then you’re usually better off giving up. Consider the following scenarios:

One player is overwhelmingly dominating the game, but the other players recognize a small chance for victory. However, the game state has become unpleasant and the losing players concede.

Alternatively;

One player is overwhelmingly dominating the game, but the other players recognize a small chance for victory. The game state has become unpleasant but the losing players decided to grind it out. The game goes on for another hour and results in the expected outcome of the dominant player winning.

Or, some-crazy-how;

One player is overwhelmingly dominating the game, but the other players recognize a small chance for victory. The game state has become unpleasant but the losing players decided to grind it out. Let’s say that things go perfectly and somehow a different player wins within an hour. Congratulations to that player. They are truly skilled at rolling dice.  

The only negative that I perceive from the first scenario is that some people are too proud to admit when they’re beat. I really don’t want to play with this type of person anyhow because oh my God we’re human beings and we lose sometimes get over it. The negatives of the other two scenarios are significantly worse. That hour of unenjoyable game play is both a drain on your life and your perception of the game.

This is by no means an exhaustive piece of strategy, and I think that the most meaningful content is probably in Rule #5, but I hope that this was at least an interesting read for table-top gamers. Until next time, good luck trying to take over the world. 

A Minor Setback

As of this weekend it is officially disc golf season. Yesterday Ethan, Cole and I set out for my first round of the year (though it was Ethan’s third… He’s kind of an asshole). As we departed from the liquor store to the course at St. Mary’s University the grey skies indicated that the day might not go our way. We weren’t going to give up at the sight of rain though. A little water we could handle. Before we could make it out of town we were bombarded by marble sized hail. Not like peewee marbles either- I’m talking mashers. In the time it took us to get home the hail had let up and without a second thought we were back on our way to Goodview.

 

For those unfamiliar with how nature works, the rain left the course extremely muddy. However, getting a little mud on my boots was minor when compared to finally being able to declare winter over. On account of the mud we spent much of the day trying not to but falling over anyway.

As per usual I took a pretty solid lead on the front 9 and racked up much higher numbers on the back end. Ultimately the game ended in a three-way tie after I gave up my one point lead on the 18^th. Just sayin’.

After that we made our way to The Great Hunan, which is pretty much the greatest restaurant ever. The ONLY problem I have ever had there is that they don’t offer free refills on soft-drinks. At any other restaurant this would probably be an absolute deal-breaker, but outside of this oversight the food is fantastic and comes at a very reasonable price. Cole didn’t want to come because he prefers Winona Garden’s “like, 300 item” menu. Whatever. I was just going to get orange chicken anyway.

Dropping Cole off at home left us within ten minutes of missing our window to be seated before the kitchen closed, but we made it in time to enjoy some delicious Chinese food with our friend Isaac.

The meal was expectedly delightful and after finishing eating it was time to crack some fortune cookies. I’ve always had a certain affinity for fortune cookies that I can’t really explain. They’re not an especially good dessert, I don’t care for horoscopes and the juxtaposition of these two things is really weird if you think about it, but damned if I don’t love them anyway.

Isaac received a laughably bad fortune that foretold of a generic “social event” in his future. Ethan’s was probably stupid too. I opened this:

Accept something that you cannot change, and you will feel better.

True that. 

Peer Pressure

I had all but forgotten about peer reviews until this semester. They’re the type of memory that one can’t help but repress. The entire process was obviously designed by and for masochists. I’m sure that most professors are fed up with the depressing fact that the overwhelming majority of college students have the writing talent of Rebecca Black, but there’s no reason that I as a student should be reduced to reading their drivel. The idea is that the better writers are supposed to help out the worse ones, but this is no easy task.

Here’s how it goes-

Everybody exchanges their papers for the group to comment on. At least one (only one if you’re lucky) of these papers reads as if the writer had just pulled it out of a time capsule that they buried for themselves when they were seven.  Now, let’s assume that I want to help this individual. How do I go about this? Do I say, “This paper was really bad. You should really just start over. And I don’t mean the paper, I mean the eleventh grade,” and risk coming off too strong? Or do I try to sugar coat it and dance around my words and risk leaving them feeling that they already possess a shred of competence that they clearly do not?

I tend to stick to the smaller, padded comments in the interest of saving time. Of course, these comments are almost all met with excuses which undermine the entire purpose of doing a peer review in the first place. I’m not saying that I’m the be-all and end-all of writing, but much like Justice Potter Stewart to pornography I know crap when I see it.

 When you get past all of the technical aspects of writing (that very few good writers even get right in the first place) it becomes a very subjective business. I find the number of completely arbitrary rules that people adhere to in their writing to be... interesting. My personal favorite is the idea that one shouldn't include the word “I” in any manner of formal writing. It’s true that scholarly articles should be unbiased, but this is hardly a useful rule when writing a short paper that will never be read by anybody other than one professor and a small group of students. I wrote a paper about E-books earlier this semester that worked in a lot of my personal experience and opinion and another student critiqued me on breaking the “I rule”. I lied and told him that I “respectfully” disagreed and explained to him that my paper would be ungodly boring if I removed my voice from the work. 

In my most recent peer review group I had the great pleasure of having my paper edited by a girl who was clearly more optimistic about the revision process than I. Her comments in the margins quite possibly exceeded the length of the paper that I submitted. Her first comment was that I neglected to type my name on the document which was attached to a post under my name on a discussion board. I’m not saying that all of the comments were useless, but that was certainly a rough start. This type of comment really highlights another major problem with peer reviews- the fact that they’re graded. This forces students to try to correct things that might have never even been wrong.

Her final comment on my paper was that my conclusions came off “a bit bitter” which detracted from my “scholarly voice,” which read to me like I was erring on the side of being interesting. What would I even have to be bitter about? 

Railed

I had unwittingly walked past the train station a number of times before. I never gave a thought to what that building was as it didn’t look like the type of place that I’d ever have any reason to enter. The pavement that comprised the parking lot looked as if it had gone at least a decade without repair.

When I walked into the station I was met by a crowd evenly split between AARP members and college students. I made my way to the ticket counter and recited the six character alphanumeric string to acquire my ticket. I took a seat across from a fifty-something couple and began reading one of the books I had brought along while we waited for our ride. The couple was making conversation about how much waiting is involved in riding the train and how the whole process is boring and tiring. I was amused by this line of thought, but I didn’t speak up. I was there to board the train- not rock the boat.

The train arrived about twenty minutes behind schedule. The man at the ticket counter instructed us to make our way outside to board the train but cautioned us to watch our step. It was darker outside than it was earlier, he said. “Funny how that works,” I quipped to the girl on the bench next to me as I gathered my things.

When the train pulled up a couple dozen people walked off. Some had reached their destination, others were just getting some fresh air. Others still were feeding their nicotine addiction.

The railway personnel informed us that our car was full and that we shouldn’t bother trying to sit alone. Occupied seats were indicated by tags hanging from the overhead shelf which also indicated that passenger’s destination. I made my way to a pair of empty seats with a tag with the letters “far” on it. I knew that it was an abbreviation for Fargo, but the tag was amusing nonetheless. The window seat was reclined while the aisle seat was upright. It was obvious that the window seat was taken but I sat in it anyway.

Soon after a twenty-something black man informed me that I had taken his seat. I apologized and asked if anybody was sitting in the aisle seat. I knew that nobody was, but I was gauging whether or not I would sit there by his answer. He said no and I moved to the aisle. I could tell he was irritated that I sat in the seat that was pretty obviously taken, but he wasn’t rude about it.

I started reading my book again while Window Seat made a phone call. To the best of my knowledge he was talking to his girlfriend, who he informed he had just left “Wiscosha or Minnowa or something”.

About a half hour after the train starts moving it makes a stop. There is no announcement made and it doesn’t seem like a planned stop. I don’t know all that much about trains so I don’t ask questions and about ten minutes later we’re back on our way.

At this time a very inconsiderate man towards the back of the car begins snoring. Heavily. Most of the people in my peripheral turn to look at the man as if that is going to have any effect on him. During a particularly obnoxious bout Window Seat and I share a laugh.

“Sounds like a bear found its way aboard.”

“Mu’ fucka is hibernatin’ fo’ real.”

I get back to reading and very little happens for a long time, which is more than fine with me.

When I finish my book I notice that we’re getting close to Minneapolis. I don’t recognize any of the surrounding per se, but I’m familiar with where the stretches of nothing begin and end between Winona and the cities.

Window seat asks me if the next stop is Minneapolis. I didn’t know where all the train stopped, but I told him that it was.

An announcement is made over the intercom that we will arrive in the Minneapolis/St. Paul station in thirty minutes and I put on my coat. Window Seat offers me some Skittles, but I decline.

“You heading to Fargo?”

“What?”

I point up at his seat marker and repeat myself:

“Are you heading to Fargo?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“My little brother goes to school out there.”
“NDSU?”
“No, he lives in Fargo, but he goes to Moorehead.”
“Oh, MSU?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a good school.”
“Yeah, he seems to like it.”

I text my father to let him know I’ll be at the station soon, but that I don’t understand why it will take so long given that I can see buildings that I can recognize as belonging to the Twin Cities. He replies with this:

That’s odd. I’ve always thought of trains as one of the 19^th century’s fastest forms of transportation. Go figure.

Touché.

A young child walks past my seat to find his older brothers in the row behind me.

“Fatwad and midget it’s time to go!”

“If anybody is the midget it’s you!”

“I’m big for my size!”

“…”

“It’s true! I mean… Age… not size.”

Window Seat calls his girlfriend again to let her know that he’s passing through Minneapolis and I make my way off the train and to my father’s car.

“Thanks for picking me up.”

“No problem. It’s going to be interesting navigating our way home. There’s some road construction around here.”
“Is there any food in the fridge?”

“Yeah. There’s some lemon chicken. I think you like that.”

“It’s a good bird.” 

Recommended Reading

 Last semester a professor of mine recommended that everybody in the class pick up a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Technically it was part of an assignment but it was never actually required that anybody finish reading the book. I’m glad that I made the commitment to reading it all though. It’s a very insightful and thought provoking work and I recommend that anybody who is interested in leading a good life picks up a copy. There’s a section in Zen that discusses “stuckness” that has been very relevant to me lately.

Getting stuck is a natural part of doing work, regardless of what that work is. As human beings we simply don’t have all (or even most) of the answers. We tend to get frustrated when we get stuck as if we previously thought ourselves infallible. Where most of us get frustrated, Robert Pirsig instead argues that being stuck is a very positive state of being in Zen. Any synopsis that I offer here won’t do justice to the depth that Pirsig uses in discussing his philosophy, but in short being stuck causes, or rather allows us to think about our new “problem” in ways that we never would have had we never gotten stuck.

I was stuck on Monday when I composed my last blog entry. I knew what I wanted to write about but I really wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to go with it. I’m a very deliberate person and I don’t care to say anything strictly for the purpose of saying it. As I stared at the post that I would ultimately submit without any revisions I couldn’t help but feel something was missing. However, I was unable to come up with a very coherent way to take it any of the directions that I wanted to go with it. I was hung up on how short the post was, but I really had no reason to be. When I sat down to write the piece I really didn’t have much motivation beyond that I found the night’s theme of buildings collapsing to be humorous. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t stuck, but rather I was finished. There was no point in stretching the story to be anything more than that, and I’m happy that I left it where it was instead of trying to force it to become something different. Even though I didn’t make any edits I really wasn’t finished with the post when I was done typing. It was the reflection and realization that I already had what I wanted that resulted in a complete work. 

Dives

Part of being a college student is renting out a substandard residence that is undoubtedly thousands of dollars shy of being up to code. I’m not living in the worst house I’ve ever seen, but it’s pretty bad. No one room in the entire place looks as if it belongs in the same building as the others. I think that my landlord must have had five or six houses demolished due to their decrepitude only to realize that he needed a place to rent out and ended up duct taping the remains together.

On Friday night I was shooting the breeze with some friends in the common room. We couldn’t seem to get off the topic of wondering when the second floor was finally going to fall on us. The upstairs is rented out by a group of “bros” who for whatever reason REALLY enjoy jumping up and down. Our only line of defense against the house’s inevitable collapse is a thin ceiling with a very foreboding crack in it. It’s possible that I lost a few dollars betting that the house wouldn’t make it the weekend.

When we lost interest in the structural integrity (or lack thereof) of our surroundings we made our way out to a local bar. As you might expect from a Friday night in a college town the place was completely packed. Naturally everybody there was having a miserable time. That’s what happens when you cram yourself into a hole in the wall featuring loud music and lacking a dance floor. Even still a number of people got up and moving (to the extent that they could) to the tune of “Shout” by The Isley Brothers. At this point I could feel the floor beneath me rise and fall with those who were “dancing”. I thought that the night might actually get interesting if the floor gave way. I had no such luck.

I've always had a certain disdain for the “bar scene”, but this occurrence really put my position into perspective. I had literally gone from sitting around worried about having a ceiling fall on me to standing around wishing that the floor would collapse beneath me. 

Please Elaborate

Do you like surprises?

I don’t think this is a good question. I mean, who’s asking? If Publishers Clearing House is knocking at my door then yes, I would like a million surprises. If I’m speaking to my physician then I’m much more inclined to state that I would prefer that nothing too out of the ordinary occurs.

In short, I like good surprises. But who am I to say that surprises are good? At that, how can anybody say that any type of thing is necessarily good or bad? It might make life easier to use shortcuts like this, but I’m much more interested in establishing context than generalities.

I killed a lot of time playing Texas hold ’em online last semester. It all started one weekend when I discovered just how much professional poker is available on cable television. I could watch professional poker for hours. I find most poker players to be annoying, but a few of them to be extremely entertaining. It’s always interesting to see different approaches to a competition that is perhaps equal parts statistics and psychology.

A couple of my roommates got in on the craze as well. I don’t know that they appreciated the game as much as I did, but they seemed to at least be wasting as much time on it. One of my roommates would ask me questions that probably seemed reasonable to him, but that I didn’t believe I could provide a good answer for. Questions like, “Should I go all-in on aces?” By the time that I could ask him everything I would need to know to even consider that decision it would be well past his time limit for him to make it. Pocket aces? Off the flop? Turn? River? What’s your other card? Is it suited? How many players are in the hand? What kinds of hands have they been playing? Who paid the blinds? What has been bet this hand and at which junctures? What else is in the community? The bottom line is that there aren’t good hands in the abstract. There are certainly situations where you can be certain that you statistically have the best possible hand but that doesn’t happen the majority of the time. You shouldn’t look for good hands- you should wait for good opportunities. 

I know a lot of people that have “dream cars”. I don’t get that either. What car I want to drive is secondary to what life I want to live. Sure, I like the idea of owning a fast, expensive car, but I currently live in Minnesota. If I choose to live here the rest of my life then my “dream car” is simply going to be something dependable that I can actually drive in the winter. But what if I find myself living in Germany? I’d be remiss not to run with something that allowed me to take full advantage of the Autobahn.

Sometimes people get annoyed when I respond to hypotheticals by asking questions. It’s almost as if they’re not looking for a good answer. Or maybe they just think that any answer would be good… Who knows. I suppose it depends who’s asking. 

The Land of the Rising Sun

I was running on two hours of sleep, a can of Dr. Pepper, a peanut butter sandwich and two Advil. After waking at 5:30, departing for a two hour drive at seven, and around twelve hours of competition I was in the finals. It was the third game in a best of three match and my brain was essentially mush. I was behind, but I knew that I was still in the game. I established a very rough game plan with a few specific plays that would be easy enough to follow and good enough to win. Fortunately for me there was very little that could actually go wrong if I followed my plan because everything that I hadn’t decided to do turns in advance I did horribly wrong. Eventually I succeeded in executing my A plan (though a turn slower than I conceivably could have) and I found myself as the last man standing in an 148 man battle for a round trip ticket to Japan.

I’m not going to pretend like most people are interested in the particulars of Magic: The Gathering. In light of this I’m going to spare the details that I couldn’t pay you to care about. All you need to know is that I’m going to Japan because I did well playing a children’s card game.

I don’t think that the reality has fully set in yet. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get much sleep last night either. I’ve been competing in events like these since my freshman year in college, but there was never a point in time that I wanted to win more than yesterday and the weeks leading up to it. The way these events (called Pro Tour Qualifiers, or PTQs) work is that all entrants play for a set number of rounds getting paired against somebody with a like record every round- these are called swiss rounds. After the swiss rounds the eight players with the best records play in a single-elimination bracket where the winner is awarded free airfare to a Pro Tour event. In January I made my first top 8. After handily winning the first game in the quarterfinals I ended up losing the match and going home with a flashy pin that says “Qualifier Top 8”. Don’t get me wrong, I like the pin a whole lot but I was there for the ticket. I won’t say that I left that day feeling disappointed. I think that hungry is a better word. I vowed that I was going to win a PTQ this season. I worked a lot on modifying the deck that I played in January but after a point it just stopped being workable. Then I returned to my regular routine of waffling back and forth about what to play and last Wednesday I found something from another event that looked very well positioned. I made a few changes to the list, got in as many games as I could with it on such short notice and now here we are.

I feel a lot like Samwise Gamgee must have felt during The Fellowship of the Ring. You know that part in Fellowship where he completely loses sight of the fact that he is embarking on what will be the greatest expedition of his entire life and instead marvels at the first step that sets the record for the furthest he had ever been from the Shire? That’s probably where I’m at in my journey. I’ve never left North America and in June I’ll be on the other side of the planet. Heavy.

I wish I had more to expound on the matter as this is really more of a glorified status update, but as of now my brain is still demushifying (this is not a word).

Life is good. 

Expletive Deleted

Last September the music video for Cee Lo Green’s song “Fuck You” hit YouTube and became an overnight sensation. When it was first released I think that I watched the video about five times a day. There isn’t a lot of new music that I enjoy, but this song really had soul. Then I heard it on the radio. Well, something remotely similar to it anyway. Given the option between censored and uncensored music I would pick uncensored 100% of the time, but most of the time I can at least tolerate the censored version. “Forget You”, however, is not a song that I can tolerate. It has no soul. It has been chained. It is ugly. Listening to “Forget You” is like watching an episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in which Fred Rogers does not wear a sweater. The message might be the same, but the presentation is awkward at best.

The change of the specific lyrics “fuck you” to “forget you” isn’t what ruins the song. I would argue that the former is more cathartic, but the latter is manageable. What ruins the song for me is the change from “ain’t that some shit” to “ain’t that some sh…” I never considered the song to be vulgar until I heard the censored version of this line. The unedited version still speaks to me but I can’t listen to the radio-friendly edits without some level of discomfort. I find bleeps and muffled sounds to be a completely absurd form of censorship. You still know what is intended but for whatever reason it can’t be explicitly stated. A not so friendly reminder that some words are inherently bad. Or at least they’re believed to be so.   

I think that censorship like this really misses the point. I understand that we want to protect our children from the grotesque realities of the real world and all that, but isn’t it harmful to teach them that words have power? Is the world made to stop at the utterance of profanity? This is a very dangerous line of thought. After all, language is largely arbitrary.

I’ve gotten a lot of grief in the past for expressing this belief- that language is arbitrary. We all have access to the same information about what words mean. My counterpoint is that even with a uniformity of definition we don’t all have the same feelings about words. I believe that there does not exist any word that is completely without value in some context. Even words that that are not tolerated by the vast majority of people have their uses in artistic expression. I certainly can’t think of a word that I haven’t at one point found meaningful in a satirical context. Others find some words so obscene that there is no good reason for them to be uttered. And then there are some people that for a reason that they couldn’t possibly explain to another human being hate words that are completely ordinary by most. When I say language is arbitrary what I mean is that no matter how you arrange your message there will be some audience that will find a way to be offended by it. Any worthwhile message that is. Being offended is an active process. No matter how hard I try it’s really up to you whether or not you take offense. If you allow singular words to get under your skin then you’re doing yourself a savage disservice.

To harp on individual words ignores the intent of the author. It’s true that many obscenities are used with little to no thought by the speaker, but this is true of every word. Words aren’t vulgar. People are. The issue is never the word, it’s the context. Vulgarity isn’t a matter of how, it’s a matter of what and why. Vulgarity is yelling at somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Vulgarity is taking pride in vice. Vulgarity is disrespecting the downtrodden. Cursing “just because” is vulgar, but self-expression is not.  

I understand the need to use discretion about using profanity. Don’t swear at school. Don’t swear at work. Don’t swear around grandma. But don’t swear at all? That’s taking things too far. When you disregard a message simply because of the words used to express it you stop caring about the actual quality of that message. Under the standard that language constitutes vulgarity it’s entirely possible that South Park is the most vulgar program in television history. If you’ve ever taken the opportunity to absorb the meaning of the show you’d realize that it has a very good message. South Park is essentially a sitcom about how nobody is perfect and none of us have any right to believe that we are better than anybody else because we all have flaws beyond our own self-perception. My mother hates the program because of the use of strong language. Personally I believe that she’s really missing out.  

If you enjoy “Forget You” then more power to you. Good on you if you avoid profanity in your speech, but don’t pretend like cursing is a deadly sin. There is a lot of value to be gained from tolerating well-reasoned use of profanity and a lot of harm that can be done by alienating yourself from it. And seriously, “Fuck You” is a really good song. 

Time Spent Wishing

Most people take their social networking way too seriously. I’m not going to pretend to be an exception. I just spent the last fifteen minutes watching my cursor blink as I tried to think of the cleverest (this is a word) status about daylight savings time that I could. I thought up about four or five that I kind of liked but thought better of posting. They basically all complained in some manner or another about losing an hour of time. Ultimately I eschewed each of these in favor of one that better reflected reality. I realized that neither I nor anybody else who has the time to slow down and try to articulate their displeasure with losing sixty minutes actually has any use for them.

I used to let things like daylight savings time irritate me. It didn’t matter that I was going to waste it- it was my hour. I was one of those kids that thought of going to church every Sunday as a punishment because my Sunday morning was being taken away. As if an eight year-old boy has ever done anything meaningful in the history of humankind. At that point in my life I believed that I was entitled to be upset. People would tell me that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile and I would reply that I wanted to get a better workout. I was too caught up in what was said to think about what was meant.

I still think that referencing the ratio of muscles used in expressing disgust to those used in expressing delight is a pretty stupid argument for being pleasant. If your face is exhausted from pouting too much then you obviously have a serious problem, but as far as I know that’s something that only happens in my imagination. Even still, the existence of a bad argument doesn’t make its conclusion false. Several years ago I was presented with a much better expression.

There’s not enough time in the day to be angry.

If only I encountered those words at a younger age. How can you justify being upset at losing time after hearing this? No matter how much I complain about being down an hour I’ll never get it back. Worse yet, I now lose all the time that I spent complaining.

I know a lot of people that constantly need to remind everybody how much they have on their plate. The type that are constantly freaking out about the work they have to do and how they have no time to do anything fun. I wonder how much free time they’d have if they got a second of their life back for every time they’ve used the word “busy”.

This week was my spring break and I had a lot of things that I wanted to get done. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that I even accomplished half of my to-do list. I don’t exactly keep track, but I think it’s fair to say that I wasted at least 40 hours over the course of this week. It wouldn’t be fair for me to complain about losing one more.

Some would say that there is no reason that I should be blogging under these conditions. They might be right. It’s possible that I won’t catch up on all of my work. But I enjoy writing, so here I sit.

Another thing that I was told when I was young was that I was in charge of my own happiness. This didn’t register with me at all. There are a number of things that are out of my control that make me unhappy. I identified a logical contradiction, but I was once again making the mistake of hearing what was said and not was meant. What I was supposed to take from this expression is that I am in charge of how I manage the things that make me unhappy.

I would like to have a 24 hour long Sunday, but that’s not exactly something that I have power over. All there is for me to do is to make the best of the 23 that I do get. 

Standing Up and Being Uncomfortable

Growing up I was terribly shy. Well, shy might not be the right word. I loved getting attention but was very worried about getting negative attention. Part of being a perfectionist I suppose. When I was in kindergarten each individual class put on a play. Peter Rabbit to be precise. I believe the casting process consisted of anybody who wanted a particular part raising their hand and if more than one person wanted a part then their names would be put into a hat to be randomly selected. It was all very professional. The story of Peter Rabbit requires little more than a farmer and a rodent, but since this was kindergarten everybody had to participate somehow so the cast was stretched to fit all twelve or so students. I don’t recall exactly how things went down, but I want to say that I wanted to play Peter Rabbit. Either this is false or I got dream crushed by the lottery. I can tell you that I had absolutely no interest in any of the other parts though, and ultimately ended up “playing” a blackberry bush. Yes, you read that one right. Not a character, not even a prop. Part of the scenery. A plywood cutout of a shrub that for some reason had a face hole cut out. Two faceholes, actually. Apparently portraying a bush was too much work for one child. Needless to say kindergarten did wonders for my self-esteem. It’s okay, I’m obviously not bitter.  

From there I became more of an observer than a performer. Though I had an uncanny ability to memorize the things I had observed. When my mother used to take me to the grocery store I would run up and down the aisles reciting the commercial of every product. In my prime years of viewership it’s entirely possible that I could act out entire episodes of The Simpsons by myself. I never formally took to the stage until my junior year in high school. I played a couple small roles in a couple of bad plays and in my mind’s eye I was more than ready for a larger part. I auditioned for a one act during my senior year and found myself not getting cast. I could handle not getting a part, but I couldn’t handle who was cast instead. I’m not so petty as to drop names, but I am petty enough to say that it was a talentless social pariah. I had words with the theater director about what I considered to be a great injustice. To his credit he was able to speak rationally to me despite my obnoxious and conceited demeanor. He explained that being cast in a show is about a lot more than having more talent (though he was smart enough not to directly say that this was a quality that I possessed). He said he enjoyed having me in the program, but noticed that outside of whatever acting role I had I didn’t do any work for the theatre. The techies weren’t there to do work for me; they were there to work with the performers. I was hung up on the glory and negligent about the work. I was still upset, but I accepted his point of view. He offered for me to be his assistant director and stage manager for the show which I gladly accepted.

After that I put performing on the back burner for a while. I spent very little time on stage my first two years in college. I was still an entertainer in my own right. I don’t think that it’s unfair of me to say that I tell a good story, but entering the world of college theatre sounded like a bit much for a socially awkward freshman. Now and again I would participate in what was called WIT (Winona Improvisational Theatre), which was a weekly sort of show (more of a gathering) where people would come together and do some improv. I had a lot of fun with WIT at first but eventually I just sort of stopped going. I did make my way to a number of the shows of RunnerUp Improv though. They were (still are) the “official” improv club on campus and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them. In my junior year despite my general lack of activity with WIT I was strongly encouraged to audition for RunnerUp. I did, I got in and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done. Improv is somewhat indescribable. It’s uncomfortable, it’s uncertain and it gets ugly sometimes, but it’s magical. I can’t get through a show without both being impressed with what the group came up with for a scene at one point and wondering how we missed something at another. In that way I think that the art is really pure. It’s not perfect and it doesn’t try to be. It just is.

From my work with RunnerUp I’ve also gotten very into standup comedy. I’ve always enjoyed standup but the volume that I consume has grown vastly in the past two years. It’s very enjoyable and refreshing to absorb all of the different perspectives and takes on both comedy and the world. I performed my first set to open for a RunnerUp show at some point last year. It was awful. I think that I have the footage somewhere on my computer but I would be too depressed if I dug it up. I don’t think that anybody but me actually remembers this set, so at least I have that going for me. I still have all the jokes from that set saved in the word document where I keep all the material I’m working on. That document is actually titled after the opening line from that set to serve as a reminder to try harder in the future. It’s a bit painful every time I have to open up “have you heard about this swine flu thing…” but it has been a pretty solid motivator. My second set went significantly better. It has even been liked on youtube. Twice.

A lot of people ask me if I get nervous before I perform. When it comes to improv I do. When it comes to standup… not so much. With improv anything can happen and that startles me. When it comes to standup I get all my worrying out of the way in the days before the show. I spend an unhealthy amount of time refining what I want to say and when/how I want to say it. I get a little tense in the minutes before I’m called, but it’s nothing that a couple of beers can’t handle. Last night I performed at the amateur night at Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy at the Mall of America. If you’ve never been there I’d recommend checking it out. I’ve had fun every time I’ve gone and last night was no exception. About two weeks ago people started asking me if I had my set ready to go. It’s probably stupid of me, but I’ve never written a set more than a week before I delivered it. Sometimes I’ll lie and say that this stops the material from getting stale in my own mind or that I work better under pressure, but the reality is that I’m just kind of lazy. Even under this small time frame a given set will improve drastically from my first draft to when I perform it. I haven’t really established a good system for writing yet, but I always try to at least follow two rules. First, I want to get a big laugh (and I mean a BIG laugh) in the first minute. This pretty much eliminates any nervousness I have about performing and also provides a reasonable amount of time to think. After I get to that first laugh I can be sure that my confidence in the set is warranted and things really just kind of flow from there. The other rule I try to follow is to save the best for last. I probably spend about 70% of the time I work on a set thinking about my closer. The opening line and the closing line are the bread of a set, but the difference is that the closer is the piece of bread that has the cheese melted on. If you lose that piece of bread then you probably won’t enjoy your sandwich.

Okay, so this post may have degenerated from whatever my original intentions were into a rather incoherent story, but I’m going to go ahead and publish it anyway. I’d like to think that it’s an enjoyable story anyway. Until next time, thanks for reading.