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. 

Musings on Chess

I should probably preface this posting by stating that I don’t believe I have ever won a game of chess. In my defense I’ve never read word one about chess strategy and I don’t know if I’ve even played ten games in my entire life. Last year my father and I were grabbing a cup of coffee when he noticed that Mugby Junction (a local coffee shop in Winona. They’re pretty all right. I like their soup.) had chess sets available for the use of their customers. He challenged me to a game and I reluctantly accepted. Naturally he clobbered me and then proceeded to ridicule me for at least four months. This was exactly the outcome that I expected, so I’m going to chalk that one up as a moral victory. Despite my ineptitude at the game I am absolutely fascinated by chess. It’s so straightforward, yet so complex. Even though I don’t know too much about chess I recently had quite the epiphany while pondering its mechanics.

Within the game, most things are equal

In a game of chess both players begin the game with the exact same set up, with only two relevant differences. The player that plays first has an edge in that until he/she makes a mistake (which he/she almost assuredly will on multiple occasions) he/she dictates the pace of the game. The other edge is granted to the more experienced/well-read player. Of course, the only games where skill doesn’t come into play are games of chance. Speaking of which…

There is nothing random about chess

This is probably the greatest aspect of the game and precisely what causes chess to be so challenging. Never in the course of the game does anything happen that is not the will of at least one of the players. This allows skilled players to “map” out many turns in advance and illustrates more often than not which of the two players is the better strategist. If you make a mistake you don’t get to make any saving rolls. There is no chance that your hand turns from nothing into a flush on the river. When you lose a game of chess it’s probably your fault, and the only way that your mistakes go unpunished is by the good grace (or more likely poor play) of your opponent. Quite the exercise in humility.  

Chess turns bluffing on its head

Generally speaking I play most games very conservatively and only ever bluff for one of three reasons. I’ll bluff if I can’t conceivably win without doing so, if the risk of bluffing is negligible, or if I have a very good reason to believe that my bluff will work. That being said, I bluff all the time. There is nothing more satisfying than stone-facing an opponent and “no-sirring” them out of a play that would assuredly result in their victory. The major problem with bluffing in most games is that you have to rely on your opponent’s ability to recognize exactly what it is you’re trying to bluff. You have to get inside of their head and make them see what isn’t there. But chess isn’t most games. There is no hidden information to bluff in chess. The only manner of bluff that can be made is one where a player relies on his/her opponent not seeing something. A bluff in poker attempts to incite uneasiness about what might happen. A bluff in chess attempts to blind the opponent to what will happen.

For the above reasons and more, whichever player plays a better game will win every time

If only this were true of every game. I hate it when horrific play is met with victory. I curse the New Orleans Saints for performing an onside kick to start off the second half of the Super Bowl. I abhor it when an opponent bets on a two-seven off-suit and hits three of a kind on the flop. Whenever I land on a hotel on Mediterranean Avenue that an opponent actively traded for I have half a mind to blow my nose with the negligible $250 that I owe them. It’s not that I mind losing. I mean, I lose all the time at all kinds of things. It’s the fact that a bad play unpunished leaves the bad player with a feeling that they never made a mistake, or worse that they actually played well. Bad play never pays off in chess. If you want to play chess often you are forced to improve or your desire to continue to play will quickly diminish. You’ll either find yourself consistently beating worse players or losing to better ones. Neither of those strikes me as a very enjoyable regularity.

No matter how skilled you become at the game there will always be room for improvement

This is what I find most fascinating on the matter. Chess, while technically a solvable game, will never be played perfectly by a human being. The math is simply too complex for us to comprehend at the level that would be necessary to play optimally. Take a second to reflect on that. Chess is played on a 64 square grid. Every game starts the same way, give or take playing first. There are very specific rules about how the pieces can move, and both players have the same knowledge of everything that happens in game. Given all of this there is no known “correct” way to play. Now compare chess to everyday life. We don’t all start on near equal footing. We have to deal with tremendous amounts of variance. There is far more hidden information than known information. And sometimes no matter how well it seems like we’re doing we still end up behind. If that isn’t a humbling revelation then I’ve never had one.

You can take this and run one of two different ways with it. You can go ahead and blame your pitfalls on variance and posit that bad things will happen no matter how well you try to live your life. The Saints did after all win Super Bowl 44. I have been cleaned out by triple deuces. Nobody ever loses on Mediterranean Avenue because that’s just ridiculous, but the point still stands- sometimes David beats Goliath. Personally I choose to go the other direction. Variance happens, but most of the time when met with a bad scenario there is something that I could have done differently. If Goliath had taken the match a little bit more seriously he would have won it. He had every advantage save the eye of the tiger. If the Rocky saga has taught me anything it’s that wanting to win and doing everything in one’s power to do so are the most important factors in victory. Rocky only ever won by pushing himself to new heights. That and having a superhumanly thick skull. It’s true that nobody bats 1,000, but without applying oneself you’d be lucky to bat 200.

I don’t know everything. I never will. But I think it’s better to try to approach that goal than to live in mental stagnation. It has oft been said that "you learn something new every day," but I don't think that this adage is typically delivered in the proper context. Learning new things shouldn't be considered an incidental factor of living. It should be a goal for the day's end. I have never sat down to write a bucket list, but I think it might be time to start. Item number one- Beat my father at chess.