Resolutions for 2010, rough draft: 1) Eat less and eat healthier, 2) Exercise more, 3) Quit smoking, 4) Branch out and explore the free/inexpensive side of Austin at least twice a month
31 December 2009
08 February 2009
25 Thoughts From Random Quotes
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
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...and then there's my mods... ;P
How does one achieve randomness with this exercise? Do you write in a stream of consciousness, almost like an extended version of a word association game -- one thought leading to another? Do you take your i-Pod and put it on random shuffle, and then respond to the first 25 songs that come up?
Well, here's what I'm going to do... I write (and speak) better when I'm responding then when I'm initiating, so I am going to generate a list of quotes, and then write the first thoughts that are evoked by each quote. 9 of these quotes will be quotes I easily remember - can you guess which ones those are? The other 16 quotes shall be generated by the Random Quote Generator, although to give myself a little lee-way, I will pick the "most evocative" one out of five choices for each of these quotes (as the RQG only gives you 4 to 15 quotes that you can generate at a time.)
...oh, and for added fun, can you guess the source(s) of the quotes used? I'm posting a spoiler note pre-dating this one, in case you want to cheat... but I'm encrypting it so that you have to do some work to read it; the encryption method is somewhat commonly used on the net.
Next, I'll randomize my thoughts' order by using my handy-dandy set of dice gathered from playing various role-playing games over the years... (and people thought that a 100-sided "golf ball" die was over-kill. ;P)
I'm going to bend the rules a little and try to tag people who's notes I've read on top of 25 people I'd like to know more about - if you've already done this, just add a comment pointing me back to your note...
-------------- 25 random things about Jody Bean, with introductory quotes --------------------
1. "Customs are more powerful than laws."
We are, if anything, creatures of habit. I like having my little routines and rituals; although these can change on a drop of the dime. For instance, I spent many years religiously playing NTN Trivia and Texas Hold'Em at my favorite neighborhood restaurant or bar. I also built my schedule so that I could watch Seinfeld and Simpsons re-runs. I have gotten into the habit of writing down all of my debit card purchases in a pocket ledger, because I've been burned too many times by overdraft fees. These days, I like to plan around my favorite AA meetings, and also for my Sunday morning meditation group. I also notice that I slip into some default interaction modes in both formal and informal conversation - more on that later, though.
However, I am still quite undisciplined, especially when it comes to eating, sleeping, and bathing. It's real easy for me to slip out of a regular schedule with these more mundane activities, especially if I find an interesting pursuit instead.
I think, in general, we are more apt to follow customs, like job interview dress codes or gender roles or so on, as we're socially normalized towards customs; whereas laws can, at times, seem quite arbitrary, so, if we don't see a lot of people following them, then we're less likely to take them seriously ourselves.
2. "...we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark..."
One of my fonder memories from my French House co-op years was a trip we took one November up to the NASCO Institute in Ann Arbor. We loaded the van full of 10 cases of Shiner Bock, which got drunk on the first night we arrived during a crazy game of "Drink While You Think". We stopped by a local grocery store up there and assembled the ingredients for a homemade salsa that I whipped up in a kitchen blender - it had an almost radioactive green hue and got several comments about causing endorphin rushes. The Institute was fun, with a variety of workshops. One bummer, though, was getting a flat tire on the way home, somewhere in Tennessee.
3. "Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond."
After basic expenses like food and shelter, I most like to spend my money on entertainment of all kinds. Even with food, I like to broaden my horizons by trying to sample from world cuisines. While I was living in West Campus, aided by student loans, I quite often would catch events at UT's Performing Art Center or movies at the Dobie Theater, one of Austin's independent movie houses. I think one of the best vacations a UT student can take is to volunteer heavily with SXSW, thereby gaining an all-access platinum badge, and an immersion in the festival - I've done this three years in the past. I do regret that I am not "well-traveled" yet, but I also feel that I would want to spend extended periods of time in another culture as a vacation, to avoid falling into the tourist mind set. If you're at a loss for what to get me for a birthday and Christmas gift, I would suggest a gift card for movies, music, or books; alternatively, I'd gladly accept tickets to an upcoming event.
As a side effect of this, I have worn out lots of my clothing over the years because I haven't really thought about buying clothes until they're absolutely neccesary - more on this later.
4. "What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?"
I am very much a nocturnal person; it's really hard for me to get into an "8 to 5" type of schedule. I've lost a couple of jobs because of this, and missing an 8 AM Math class as a sophomore led to my failing the class and losing my Birmingham scholarship to boot (a $9000, 4-year scholarship from my high school).
My ideal schedule is waking up between 10 AM and 2 PM, and going to bed sometime around 2 or 3 or 6 AM.
5. "I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
I love looking at the night sky in the country, where you can actually see the Milky Way. I'm also a strong advocate of space exploration.
I suspect this is influenced by reading magazines as a child put out by NASA, drawing space battles with my neighbor Gary Head (when we lived in the country), and engaging in starfleet wars with my brother. My brother and I built our bases in our respective rooms out of legos and models of our own design assembled from military models of aircraft and battleships. I distinctly remember that my brother modified an SR-71 Blackbird model, so that it had a carrying bay holding a smaller fighter ship inside among other things. Oh, and my brother and I also built several rockets - the most memorable of which being "the Witch" which was basically a D engine with fins and a nose cone - we lost that after the first launching, though.
6. "I am a pleasant mother-pheasant plucker..."
With regards to food, I am an omnivore to the core. Now, I enjoy vegetarian and vegan meals too, but I really like having meat on a regular basis. However, I must stipulate here that bland food is just "blah" to me - I was raised around a lot of spices and I like a lot of spices. My default pizza is the supreme. I love Asian, Indian, and Mediteranean food. I also quite enjoy sushi, with a dragon roll probably near the top of my favorites for that. Currently, I think I favor fish and chicken as my meats, probably because red meat borders on the "blah" category.
7. "How my achievements mock me!"
My high school class voted that I would be "Most Likely to Succceed". In high school, I was a bit of an academic super-star, reaching state level UIL in Science for 3 years, Number Sense for 1 year, and regional level competition in one of the Journalism events. I graduated Salutatorian of my class, I secured a job the summer of my Junior year writing for the local newspaper, and I went to American Legion Boys State (as an alternate) following my Junior year.
When I came to UT, I started out in the Natural Sciences Dean's Scholars honors program, I was a student and a teaching assistant for the Emerging Scholars calculus enrichment program, and I was in the Air Force ROTC my first semester.
However, I must say that Austin is extremely distracting... so my schooling got fairly derailed by my trying to deal with financing my education on the one hand, and increasing drinking and socializing on the other hand.
So, these days, I sometimes wonder if I failed to achieve what I could have achieved, coming out of high school. It took me 14 years to complete my degree, and even there, I did not finish with a teaching certificate following problems focusing during the student teaching semester. I wound up with a 2.8 GPA, due in large part to mismanaging my classes when I got behind in them. I have a long laundry list of various employments usually of 6 months duration or less, but I also spent 8 years as a college math tutor, 6 years as a convenience store clerk, and 1 year as a customer service representative at Cingular. I'm heavily in debt with regards to student loans, and I have some small legal debts and unpaid medical bills.
...and I've been single most of my adult life, but maybe more on that later...
When I look at where I'm at today, and think about where I could have been, I just feel this overwhelming sense of failure, and I can see that I've been drifting aimlessly for most of the last 18 years. If I had only been a bit more focused, I believe that I could have earned a doctoral degree by now and be teaching at a small college somewhere. Also, if I had been more frugal with my time and money, I'd probably have my own car and house, with payments left to be paid, and my student loans wouldn't be in default.
My advice to parents out there is to teach your children effective time management and money budgeting skills before they get out on their own.
8. "But, get away -- God, Buddha, Allah and Zeus --"
How do I conceptualize God?
I think an anthropomorphic God is out-dated, so I reject the idea that Christ or Muhammed or Buddha are Gods incarnate. I do, however, believe that the prophets, and the saints, are good examples of people living spiritual lives. I think that we cast God as a man, with the various prophets as examples, more to give us a clearer idea of how we can live in a Godly fashion ourselves; it's an attempt to identify with God, like treating our pets as people.
God-awareness, to me, is being aware of everything in the universe and our inter-relationships with the various parts, and behaving in manners that respect and love the universe and its parts. In high school, I once described to my parents my God concept as "everything in the universe, individually, is a facet of God", and these days, I would add to that: "and God itself is the super-awareness created by these parts interacting, much like an ant hive exhibits a collective intelligence beyond the intelligence of any individual ant". With us people, I think this last hive reference can be seen as our community trends and customs, or maybe our collective knowledge - no one person knows everything about the world, but the collection of specialists knows far more than one person knows.
Maybe it's a bit Borg-ish, but I think God is the larger structure(s) beyond the individual, and an individual can live successfully when he works within those structures, recognizing the value of all the parts. Buddhism talks about abandonment of the self, Christianity talks about "Love your neighbor as thy self, and thy self as you love God". In general, I believe religions' greatest strengths are creating time-tested moral codes on living at peace with the world - the examples of bad things happening to bad people in the Bible are based much more on historical fact than on hypothetical "what if?".
This is probably still not the clearest of explanations, but I all I can be is a "feeble finger pointing at the mountaintop", and not the mountaintop itself.
9. "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."
To me, spirituality is NOT the super-natural, but rather living beyond material goals. I honestly don't believe in an after-life or reincarnation, as I have no experience with either (well, except see #19 below).
As science tries to uncover underlying rules and models of how the universe works, I believe pure science really tries to look at the inter-relationships inside of the universe. Science also allows for its own modification, should contradictory evidence refute the models it has already built. In a lot of ways, I would call science the modern religion; as religious models were man's early attempts to explain and understand the universe around him. I think that science is a constantly progressing refinement of man's collective knowledge.
Someone once asked me, "Do you believe in the Bible, or in evolution?" I told them I believe in both. If pressed to explain, I would say that I believe the Bible has plenty to say about morality and codifies good and bad behaviors, but evolution has excellent evidence drawing from fossil records and modern genetics experiments with short-lived animals. If you doubt the last, I just ask you to consider the latest strains of Staph.
I didn't realize that the guy was **really** asking, "Do you believe in creationism or evolution?" I do think science draws from the Creation myth in trying to build its model of the beginnings of the universe, in that we assume that the development of the universe proceeds from simpler structures to complex structures, much like separating the light from the dark before putting man in the picture. If you think about it, though, the laws of entropy in physics tell us the universe is becoming more chaotic and unorganized as time proceeds forward.
One thing that influences my beliefs is an article Douglas Hofstadter once wrote about self-perpetuating knowledge systems, where he talks about how both religion(s) and science build into their "axioms" clauses that help ensure each system gets passed on to future generations.
10. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you..."
Through the years, I have often wondered about how I interact in informal conversation. I've noticed that most of the time, I sit on the sidelines in groups of 3 or more, listening and rarely speaking. There have been times when I'd like to put in my two cents on a current topic, but I can't seem to find the opportunity to contribute. I think it's because I wait for longer pauses than typical people do, out of respect to allow the current speaker(s) to "finish their thoughts".
Also, I don't like to repeat myself, thinking that if I've said something once in a group before than I don't need to tell that same story again. However, there is a fallacy here, believing that everything said in the past was heard perfectly and clearly and is easily recalled - I make more of an effort these days slipping into reminder mode when I feel a need to.
It's also quite possible that I don't have a lot of experience with many topics, like sports or politics or celebrities, as I haven't made any major efforts to engage with those areas of life. It irks me, though, that most of the time I come off as a silent observer instead of an active participant.
Now, if you get me into a one on one conversation, I will usually speak up a whole lot more, as the finished thoughts are easier to track. Along the same lines, if I'm in a facilitated conversation like an organizational meeting then I take will try to put in my two cents on whatever we're discussing, as I like to brain-storm on possible solutions to whatever the issue, and clarify anything that seems unclear via questioning techniques.
11. "Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry."
People ask me why I majored in mathematics at UT. It's not because I have any fond love of number crunching, although I am fairly good at mental calculation. It's more that I like to explore systems of rules, and logically connect seemingly disparate ideas. Probably the largest reason I started in mathematics, though, was because I was a math and science whiz kid in high school. Oh, and the Air Force wanted me to major in mathematics as part of the requirements for my ROTC scholarship.
There's two theorems in mathematics I particularly remember from my studies because of their proofs - Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, and the idea that "an infinitely countable union of infinitely countable sets is itself countable". I also really enjoyed the study of infinite series' convergence and divergence, and the use of infinite series in solving nth order linear differential equations.
At times, I think I would have made an awesome philosopher. I also like to try to model the world, which connects back to my love of all of the sciences. Actually, I started off UT as a Math/Physics double major, but I dropped physics after the first year because I was frustrated by the labs asking me to do mathematics, error propagation, that I hadn't even seen before. If I continue my education, I will probably pursue a science again (social or natural), as I would like to engage more with how the real world works instead of working in a pristine vacuum of a set of theorems. That and I would like to have a degree that has more direct application towards future employments.
12. "The particular human chain we're part of is central to our individual identity."
Sometimes I wonder if I might be a bit of a chameleon, blending in to whatever group I find myself in and adopting their rules and customs. I think that's a half-truth, though, as I'm actually much more of a loner in my behavior then a member of various groups.
However, my personality has been shaped by the people I associate with, as I can see the scientist in me, my actor side, my love of volunteering, my co-operative roots, my addict's traits, my poor college student persona, and my strong familial influences - I used to chide my dad about lecturing me as a child but these days it's so easy for me to slip into my own lecture mode.
I think it's fairer to say that I adopt those behaviors and beliefs of the groups I'm in which do not contradict earlier beliefs that I adopted from previous groups, and I'm thankful that I grew up in a healthy family that grounded me in good initial beliefs.
13. "Boxers or briefs?" '...depends...'
My fashion sense is almost laughable, as I do not invest money into regularly buying clothes. I have a fondness for Hawaiin shirts and slacks, and there's been many a day that people have seen me in a worn-out T-shirt and dress slacks. I'll wear a tie every once in a while, but I don't like the constriction of the neck. I'll also wear a sports coat (part of a suit) every once in a long, long while, but I may be still wearing a T-Shirt underneath it. For me, clothing myself is a lot more about comfort than flash; although I wouldn't be adverse to wearing silk shirts if I could afford them.
I'm notorious for taking poor care of my clothing, so wrinkles in dress shirts are not unheard of; and my pants and shorts are riddled with frayed hems and holes.
Oh, and to answer the question -- boxers. Definitely.
14. "What happens to a dream deferred?"
It's rare that I dream, but when I do dream, it can get pretty bizarre. I think there's an earlier note I wrote here collecting my dream journal from the last year. There was a point in high school where I started having dreams about my classmates dying in different situations, and I actually tried to share those dreams with the people involved -- got some strange looks. My dreams aren't terribly frightening most of the time - they're actually kind of fun to watch; so it's hard to convince myself to get up and going when my alarm goes off in the middle of a dream. I do have distinct memories of a couple of dreams where I felt like I was dying, and it was really hard to wake myself out of them - I think these dreams were my mind trying to make me aware that I was having problems breathing in the current sleep position I had put myself in.
I am going to try to make an effort this year to record more of my dreams, although the record may seem like a random juxtaposition of different concepts at first, as I don't know if I'll have the time available to flesh out the descriptions.
15. "People are always asking me what my lyrics mean..."
I have a really hard time remembering song lyrics, even for stuff like Christmas Carols. I know a smattering of Pink Floyd's lyrics, but that's because I listened to them over and over on the trips to math contests in high school. I also know a couple of songs from my early college years and from Monty Python, because they're just plain funny. Part of me thinks that this lack of memory is tied to not actively listening to the songs in my current life, which might also account for forgetting several prayers I grew up with, too.
I'd say that I suck at Karaoke, but I do like to sing the Banana Boat Song - "Daaay-oh! Da-ay-oh. Daylight come..."
16. "How much of our lives is just idle conversation?"
It seems to me that most of the things discussed in my conversations through the years are fairly shallow surface thoughts. I've spent a lot of my time trying to find common ground and common interests and talking about third parties, and not really plumbing the depths to explore my beliefs about the world. Conversations are about the TV show last night, or who won the football game on the weekend, or maybe just finding out others' plans for the immediate future. This lack of depth spills over into my plans, or lack thereof, in that I don't think far ahead in the future about what my actions can or can not lead to. I suppose that a lot of this is rooted in our consumer society, and our collective focus on material things instead of on the natural world around us.
Another thing is that I tend to suppress and ignore my feelings, so I'm much less aware of ideas that challenge my world view because the feedback loop of observation evoking strong feeling just isn't there.
What I would like to see in my interactions with others is an exploration of deeper beliefs and the impact that new technologies and circumstances have on changing or affirming those beliefs. As an example, how does cloning and stem cell research improve the medical services we can receive, and what are some of the new ethical dilemnas and risks associated with them? Or, how does the internet change the way we find and share information? Or, how have our ideas of the "nuclear family" and the roles inside of it evolved over the last 5, 15, and 50 years?
I suppose, though, that in order to have deeper conversations, I have to take a more active role in instigating them. If a topic really interests me, I should consider devoting some time towards independent researchof it.
17. "First secure an independent income, then practice virtue."
Finances have been my weak point through much of my adult life. On the one hand, I haven't ever earned more than $15 an hour and, most of the time, I've been lucky to get $10. On the other hand, what money I have had has been spent more often than saved, usually on entertainment pursuits and eating out. When I get really strapped for cash, it becomes a stressor, and I quickly become really depressed.
18. "Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
I have been sober over the last four years, and I have become increasingly happier with accepting my present situation(s) and appreciating what I already have instead of striving for what I think I need to have to be happy. During the last 6 months or so, I have begun to sit with a weekly non-ritualized meditation group that draws upon Buddhist philosophy, and I think that adding this meditation practice has further enhanced my ability to appreciate the present moment. To me, happiness and serenity go hand in hand. If I learn to adjust to the moment and accept where I am at as but a temporary set of circumstances that will change in time, I am not troubled by inner thought turmoil, and I am much more aware of my immediate surroundings.
19. "Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."
Back when I was in the 5th grade, I was in a car accident while riding in my brother's car to school one morning. Neither of us were wearing seatbelts, as his seatbelts were very difficult to connect. I went through the windshield of the car, and spent the next 6 months going to a plastic surgeon to dig pieces of glass out of my forehead. I was unconscious for several hours when they checked us into the hospital. This was by far the most serious injury I had sustained...
...until 1998.
The summer of 1998 was quite a lot of fun, as I began dating a woman I lived with at New Guild co-op all through that summer. Towards the end of that summer, though, I quit my 7-year employment as a math tutor because I was offered a job with steadier income. The lady, Kat, moved on to a different romantic partner, but we still crossed paths regularly, as we still lived in the same house - talk about uncomfortable reminders. The new job was not as intellectually satisfying as tutoring had been, and I found myself struggling on a shoestring budget; and I still was pining way, wishing I could be with Kat again. On top of all of this, I had gotten off my bi-polar meds for 6 months.
In the depths of the depression, about mid-October, I decided to overdose on a month's supply of Depakote - the bipolar medication I had been taking. My roommate did not discover me until 24 to 36 hours later, as he tended to stay at his own girlfriend's apartment frequently - when he found me, I was sitting on the floor of our room in my underwear in a coma. They called 9-1-1 and I was checked into Brackenridge hospital with a body temperature of 84 degrees and 90% kidney failure. I was in a coma for 9 days, hooked up to a dialysis machine via a plug in my aorta. I came out of the coma watching John Glenn return to space and watching The Simpsons' reruns of the Treehouse of Horrors. I still have scars on the back of my head and my posterior from the bed sores I had picked up by being in one position too long sometime during the coma.
I do not have any near-death memories from this coma, so I have little faith that there is any after-life that we'll go to when we die - I personally think our consciousness disperses and that's that. Now, there have been times, usually when I'm bordering on a mania, that I wonder, "Did I ever really wake up in the hospital, or am I, perhaps, in some sort of weird Matrix simulation?" Usually these occur when something just strikes me as really odd about the world.
20. "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it."
I've often heard that there's no such thing as a truly original thought
I can see that as our thoughts are the sum total of interactions between previous thoughts.
On the other hand, I do believe there is such a thing as an original experience, created by the confluence of differing conditions for different individuals.
What I'm trying to get at is that our thoughts are based directly upon our experience, so, no matter how bizarre they seem, they are rooted somewhere back in our life sense experience; but everyone's experience is different from everyone else's either due to differences in external or internal conditions. Nobody shares the same point in time and space, and two people observing the same phenomena are likely to connect it with different sets of experiences from their individual pasts.
However, I do believe our collective "shared" experience more often than not leads us to make the same conclusions when given the same premises.
21. "Have no fear of perfection -- you'll never reach it."
Perfectionism has been something I've struggled with all my life. Combine that with procrastination, and I never seem to get anything done. It's real easy to get caught up in this loop that I have to "consider everything" before making a decision, or put off doing something (like writing people back) because I'm overwhelmed by everything I want to say... or because I want to present a flawless argument. I also notice that I like to critique my experiences, always looking for ways to improve them.
22. "Four score and seven years ago, today..."
Some of the best people I've known are history majors; they just have a gift for telling stories that rarely border on the absurd. One of my favorite channels on TV is the History Channel. I enjoy watching documentaries and programs like Nova and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Now, when it comes to reading, though, I tend to find myself drawn more towards fantasy and science fiction writers, especially those who can do a good job of creating a compelling alternate universe.
I suppose there's a fine balance here between reporting on the real world sans opinion, and asking the question, "What if...?"
23. "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."
Education, I feel, is an important part of one's character. By studying the world and the people and ideas in it, we broaden our viewpoints and get a glimpse of the larger picture(s) beyond our direct experience.
Unfortunately, I think that public education, especially in K-12, has some serious flaws that can't be fixed by a simple measure or too. I'm not a big fan of standardized testing, as it tends to cater towards rote repetition, which is a lower level of learning then synthesis or judging. I think our schools have become, by default, more of a day care system where we place our kids instead of a genuine arena of inquiry and learning, and I think our current class sizes are unwieldy for one teacher to manage, especially if they're a new teacher without a lot of experience in interacting with large groups. In addition, I've asked many an education major why they want to teach, and am disheartened when I hear most of them say, "Oh, I like to work with kids!" (Yeesh! You mean you don't have a passion for the subject you're teaching?) I also think that the traditional lecture style of most lessons does not do a good job of engaging the students' interest, and, were I to teach, I would seriously like to explore problem-based inquiry models. I would also highly encourage teachers to consider alternate assessment methods, especially those that get the students talking about what they think they're learning - like a web-based discussion board.
Teaching is something that I would like to return to one day, as the feeling of accomplishment I get when I see someone finally understand a concept is just over-whelmingly amazing. In addition, I, myself, have often learned a subject phenomenally well when I turn around and try to teach it to others.
24. "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."
It may not seem like this, when reading through my notes here, or hearing my opinions on various topics elsewhere, but I do live fairly closely to this philosophy.
I try to respect all the people I encounter in my life, even if they are markedly different from me, and I will listen to their woes. However, my past has been characterized by spending extended periods of time with only a small handful of individuals at any given time. I'm much less likely to open up in a conversation with a relative stranger than I am with a neighbor who I visit regularly. I don't claim a lot of secrets - for one, I don't try to live a secretive life that I would regret at a later date. However, the secrets I do keep are closely guarded; if someone makes it clear that they're telling me something in confidence then I'm not one to go off and tell it to others.
I once got burned by blind trust, though, on-line. I had pledged Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed service fraternity in the Fall of '97, and I volunteered quite heavily with them, to the detriment of my class work. The following Spring of '98, I started receiving e-mails from a lady in APO. Thinking, "Cool! ..maybe this could turn into a relationship!", I started writing these long e-mails back to her, talking about all sorts of stuff. About a month into this, it was revealed to me that the people I had been writing to were actually the Tanks, a group of APO guys, who had hi-jacked her e-mail account. Sooo.. I take on-line interaction with a grain of salt these days, as the person you may be writing to may not be the person you think you're writing to.
25. "...and now, for something completely different..."
My humor is heavily influenced by sur-realism, absurdism, intellectualism, and British Comedies. My favorite comics are Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, Laurel and Hardy, and many more. My favorite jokes are ones that build up through a comic's routine, like a reference back to a topic 10 minutes ago. I thoroughly love watching cartoons, like the Simpsons, South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, old Tom and Jerrys... and the list goes on. I've watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Holy Grail innumberable times, and I quite enjoy reading Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. One of the first things I'll read in the news is the comics section, and I'd say that my favorite comics there have been stuff like Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and Pearls Before Swine. Oh, and I grew up reading lots of Tasteless Jokes collections.
In my family, I am notorious for finding truly evil Christmas and birthday cards. For example, one year my step-mom was going on a diet, and I gave her a card that said, on the front, "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat..." and then, when you opened it up, it said, "...they're not the only ones."
As I get to know a person better, I gain a sense of their values and their worries; and, consequently, I can better gauge the humor that they would not find too offensive.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
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...and then there's my mods... ;P
How does one achieve randomness with this exercise? Do you write in a stream of consciousness, almost like an extended version of a word association game -- one thought leading to another? Do you take your i-Pod and put it on random shuffle, and then respond to the first 25 songs that come up?
Well, here's what I'm going to do... I write (and speak) better when I'm responding then when I'm initiating, so I am going to generate a list of quotes, and then write the first thoughts that are evoked by each quote. 9 of these quotes will be quotes I easily remember - can you guess which ones those are? The other 16 quotes shall be generated by the Random Quote Generator, although to give myself a little lee-way, I will pick the "most evocative" one out of five choices for each of these quotes (as the RQG only gives you 4 to 15 quotes that you can generate at a time.)
...oh, and for added fun, can you guess the source(s) of the quotes used? I'm posting a spoiler note pre-dating this one, in case you want to cheat... but I'm encrypting it so that you have to do some work to read it; the encryption method is somewhat commonly used on the net.
Next, I'll randomize my thoughts' order by using my handy-dandy set of dice gathered from playing various role-playing games over the years... (and people thought that a 100-sided "golf ball" die was over-kill. ;P)
I'm going to bend the rules a little and try to tag people who's notes I've read on top of 25 people I'd like to know more about - if you've already done this, just add a comment pointing me back to your note...
-------------- 25 random things about Jody Bean, with introductory quotes --------------------
1. "Customs are more powerful than laws."
We are, if anything, creatures of habit. I like having my little routines and rituals; although these can change on a drop of the dime. For instance, I spent many years religiously playing NTN Trivia and Texas Hold'Em at my favorite neighborhood restaurant or bar. I also built my schedule so that I could watch Seinfeld and Simpsons re-runs. I have gotten into the habit of writing down all of my debit card purchases in a pocket ledger, because I've been burned too many times by overdraft fees. These days, I like to plan around my favorite AA meetings, and also for my Sunday morning meditation group. I also notice that I slip into some default interaction modes in both formal and informal conversation - more on that later, though.
However, I am still quite undisciplined, especially when it comes to eating, sleeping, and bathing. It's real easy for me to slip out of a regular schedule with these more mundane activities, especially if I find an interesting pursuit instead.
I think, in general, we are more apt to follow customs, like job interview dress codes or gender roles or so on, as we're socially normalized towards customs; whereas laws can, at times, seem quite arbitrary, so, if we don't see a lot of people following them, then we're less likely to take them seriously ourselves.
2. "...we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark..."
One of my fonder memories from my French House co-op years was a trip we took one November up to the NASCO Institute in Ann Arbor. We loaded the van full of 10 cases of Shiner Bock, which got drunk on the first night we arrived during a crazy game of "Drink While You Think". We stopped by a local grocery store up there and assembled the ingredients for a homemade salsa that I whipped up in a kitchen blender - it had an almost radioactive green hue and got several comments about causing endorphin rushes. The Institute was fun, with a variety of workshops. One bummer, though, was getting a flat tire on the way home, somewhere in Tennessee.
3. "Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond."
After basic expenses like food and shelter, I most like to spend my money on entertainment of all kinds. Even with food, I like to broaden my horizons by trying to sample from world cuisines. While I was living in West Campus, aided by student loans, I quite often would catch events at UT's Performing Art Center or movies at the Dobie Theater, one of Austin's independent movie houses. I think one of the best vacations a UT student can take is to volunteer heavily with SXSW, thereby gaining an all-access platinum badge, and an immersion in the festival - I've done this three years in the past. I do regret that I am not "well-traveled" yet, but I also feel that I would want to spend extended periods of time in another culture as a vacation, to avoid falling into the tourist mind set. If you're at a loss for what to get me for a birthday and Christmas gift, I would suggest a gift card for movies, music, or books; alternatively, I'd gladly accept tickets to an upcoming event.
As a side effect of this, I have worn out lots of my clothing over the years because I haven't really thought about buying clothes until they're absolutely neccesary - more on this later.
4. "What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?"
I am very much a nocturnal person; it's really hard for me to get into an "8 to 5" type of schedule. I've lost a couple of jobs because of this, and missing an 8 AM Math class as a sophomore led to my failing the class and losing my Birmingham scholarship to boot (a $9000, 4-year scholarship from my high school).
My ideal schedule is waking up between 10 AM and 2 PM, and going to bed sometime around 2 or 3 or 6 AM.
5. "I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
I love looking at the night sky in the country, where you can actually see the Milky Way. I'm also a strong advocate of space exploration.
I suspect this is influenced by reading magazines as a child put out by NASA, drawing space battles with my neighbor Gary Head (when we lived in the country), and engaging in starfleet wars with my brother. My brother and I built our bases in our respective rooms out of legos and models of our own design assembled from military models of aircraft and battleships. I distinctly remember that my brother modified an SR-71 Blackbird model, so that it had a carrying bay holding a smaller fighter ship inside among other things. Oh, and my brother and I also built several rockets - the most memorable of which being "the Witch" which was basically a D engine with fins and a nose cone - we lost that after the first launching, though.
6. "I am a pleasant mother-pheasant plucker..."
With regards to food, I am an omnivore to the core. Now, I enjoy vegetarian and vegan meals too, but I really like having meat on a regular basis. However, I must stipulate here that bland food is just "blah" to me - I was raised around a lot of spices and I like a lot of spices. My default pizza is the supreme. I love Asian, Indian, and Mediteranean food. I also quite enjoy sushi, with a dragon roll probably near the top of my favorites for that. Currently, I think I favor fish and chicken as my meats, probably because red meat borders on the "blah" category.
7. "How my achievements mock me!"
My high school class voted that I would be "Most Likely to Succceed". In high school, I was a bit of an academic super-star, reaching state level UIL in Science for 3 years, Number Sense for 1 year, and regional level competition in one of the Journalism events. I graduated Salutatorian of my class, I secured a job the summer of my Junior year writing for the local newspaper, and I went to American Legion Boys State (as an alternate) following my Junior year.
When I came to UT, I started out in the Natural Sciences Dean's Scholars honors program, I was a student and a teaching assistant for the Emerging Scholars calculus enrichment program, and I was in the Air Force ROTC my first semester.
However, I must say that Austin is extremely distracting... so my schooling got fairly derailed by my trying to deal with financing my education on the one hand, and increasing drinking and socializing on the other hand.
So, these days, I sometimes wonder if I failed to achieve what I could have achieved, coming out of high school. It took me 14 years to complete my degree, and even there, I did not finish with a teaching certificate following problems focusing during the student teaching semester. I wound up with a 2.8 GPA, due in large part to mismanaging my classes when I got behind in them. I have a long laundry list of various employments usually of 6 months duration or less, but I also spent 8 years as a college math tutor, 6 years as a convenience store clerk, and 1 year as a customer service representative at Cingular. I'm heavily in debt with regards to student loans, and I have some small legal debts and unpaid medical bills.
...and I've been single most of my adult life, but maybe more on that later...
When I look at where I'm at today, and think about where I could have been, I just feel this overwhelming sense of failure, and I can see that I've been drifting aimlessly for most of the last 18 years. If I had only been a bit more focused, I believe that I could have earned a doctoral degree by now and be teaching at a small college somewhere. Also, if I had been more frugal with my time and money, I'd probably have my own car and house, with payments left to be paid, and my student loans wouldn't be in default.
My advice to parents out there is to teach your children effective time management and money budgeting skills before they get out on their own.
8. "But, get away -- God, Buddha, Allah and Zeus --"
How do I conceptualize God?
I think an anthropomorphic God is out-dated, so I reject the idea that Christ or Muhammed or Buddha are Gods incarnate. I do, however, believe that the prophets, and the saints, are good examples of people living spiritual lives. I think that we cast God as a man, with the various prophets as examples, more to give us a clearer idea of how we can live in a Godly fashion ourselves; it's an attempt to identify with God, like treating our pets as people.
God-awareness, to me, is being aware of everything in the universe and our inter-relationships with the various parts, and behaving in manners that respect and love the universe and its parts. In high school, I once described to my parents my God concept as "everything in the universe, individually, is a facet of God", and these days, I would add to that: "and God itself is the super-awareness created by these parts interacting, much like an ant hive exhibits a collective intelligence beyond the intelligence of any individual ant". With us people, I think this last hive reference can be seen as our community trends and customs, or maybe our collective knowledge - no one person knows everything about the world, but the collection of specialists knows far more than one person knows.
Maybe it's a bit Borg-ish, but I think God is the larger structure(s) beyond the individual, and an individual can live successfully when he works within those structures, recognizing the value of all the parts. Buddhism talks about abandonment of the self, Christianity talks about "Love your neighbor as thy self, and thy self as you love God". In general, I believe religions' greatest strengths are creating time-tested moral codes on living at peace with the world - the examples of bad things happening to bad people in the Bible are based much more on historical fact than on hypothetical "what if?".
This is probably still not the clearest of explanations, but I all I can be is a "feeble finger pointing at the mountaintop", and not the mountaintop itself.
9. "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."
To me, spirituality is NOT the super-natural, but rather living beyond material goals. I honestly don't believe in an after-life or reincarnation, as I have no experience with either (well, except see #19 below).
As science tries to uncover underlying rules and models of how the universe works, I believe pure science really tries to look at the inter-relationships inside of the universe. Science also allows for its own modification, should contradictory evidence refute the models it has already built. In a lot of ways, I would call science the modern religion; as religious models were man's early attempts to explain and understand the universe around him. I think that science is a constantly progressing refinement of man's collective knowledge.
Someone once asked me, "Do you believe in the Bible, or in evolution?" I told them I believe in both. If pressed to explain, I would say that I believe the Bible has plenty to say about morality and codifies good and bad behaviors, but evolution has excellent evidence drawing from fossil records and modern genetics experiments with short-lived animals. If you doubt the last, I just ask you to consider the latest strains of Staph.
I didn't realize that the guy was **really** asking, "Do you believe in creationism or evolution?" I do think science draws from the Creation myth in trying to build its model of the beginnings of the universe, in that we assume that the development of the universe proceeds from simpler structures to complex structures, much like separating the light from the dark before putting man in the picture. If you think about it, though, the laws of entropy in physics tell us the universe is becoming more chaotic and unorganized as time proceeds forward.
One thing that influences my beliefs is an article Douglas Hofstadter once wrote about self-perpetuating knowledge systems, where he talks about how both religion(s) and science build into their "axioms" clauses that help ensure each system gets passed on to future generations.
10. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you..."
Through the years, I have often wondered about how I interact in informal conversation. I've noticed that most of the time, I sit on the sidelines in groups of 3 or more, listening and rarely speaking. There have been times when I'd like to put in my two cents on a current topic, but I can't seem to find the opportunity to contribute. I think it's because I wait for longer pauses than typical people do, out of respect to allow the current speaker(s) to "finish their thoughts".
Also, I don't like to repeat myself, thinking that if I've said something once in a group before than I don't need to tell that same story again. However, there is a fallacy here, believing that everything said in the past was heard perfectly and clearly and is easily recalled - I make more of an effort these days slipping into reminder mode when I feel a need to.
It's also quite possible that I don't have a lot of experience with many topics, like sports or politics or celebrities, as I haven't made any major efforts to engage with those areas of life. It irks me, though, that most of the time I come off as a silent observer instead of an active participant.
Now, if you get me into a one on one conversation, I will usually speak up a whole lot more, as the finished thoughts are easier to track. Along the same lines, if I'm in a facilitated conversation like an organizational meeting then I take will try to put in my two cents on whatever we're discussing, as I like to brain-storm on possible solutions to whatever the issue, and clarify anything that seems unclear via questioning techniques.
11. "Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry."
People ask me why I majored in mathematics at UT. It's not because I have any fond love of number crunching, although I am fairly good at mental calculation. It's more that I like to explore systems of rules, and logically connect seemingly disparate ideas. Probably the largest reason I started in mathematics, though, was because I was a math and science whiz kid in high school. Oh, and the Air Force wanted me to major in mathematics as part of the requirements for my ROTC scholarship.
There's two theorems in mathematics I particularly remember from my studies because of their proofs - Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, and the idea that "an infinitely countable union of infinitely countable sets is itself countable". I also really enjoyed the study of infinite series' convergence and divergence, and the use of infinite series in solving nth order linear differential equations.
At times, I think I would have made an awesome philosopher. I also like to try to model the world, which connects back to my love of all of the sciences. Actually, I started off UT as a Math/Physics double major, but I dropped physics after the first year because I was frustrated by the labs asking me to do mathematics, error propagation, that I hadn't even seen before. If I continue my education, I will probably pursue a science again (social or natural), as I would like to engage more with how the real world works instead of working in a pristine vacuum of a set of theorems. That and I would like to have a degree that has more direct application towards future employments.
12. "The particular human chain we're part of is central to our individual identity."
Sometimes I wonder if I might be a bit of a chameleon, blending in to whatever group I find myself in and adopting their rules and customs. I think that's a half-truth, though, as I'm actually much more of a loner in my behavior then a member of various groups.
However, my personality has been shaped by the people I associate with, as I can see the scientist in me, my actor side, my love of volunteering, my co-operative roots, my addict's traits, my poor college student persona, and my strong familial influences - I used to chide my dad about lecturing me as a child but these days it's so easy for me to slip into my own lecture mode.
I think it's fairer to say that I adopt those behaviors and beliefs of the groups I'm in which do not contradict earlier beliefs that I adopted from previous groups, and I'm thankful that I grew up in a healthy family that grounded me in good initial beliefs.
13. "Boxers or briefs?" '...depends...'
My fashion sense is almost laughable, as I do not invest money into regularly buying clothes. I have a fondness for Hawaiin shirts and slacks, and there's been many a day that people have seen me in a worn-out T-shirt and dress slacks. I'll wear a tie every once in a while, but I don't like the constriction of the neck. I'll also wear a sports coat (part of a suit) every once in a long, long while, but I may be still wearing a T-Shirt underneath it. For me, clothing myself is a lot more about comfort than flash; although I wouldn't be adverse to wearing silk shirts if I could afford them.
I'm notorious for taking poor care of my clothing, so wrinkles in dress shirts are not unheard of; and my pants and shorts are riddled with frayed hems and holes.
Oh, and to answer the question -- boxers. Definitely.
14. "What happens to a dream deferred?"
It's rare that I dream, but when I do dream, it can get pretty bizarre. I think there's an earlier note I wrote here collecting my dream journal from the last year. There was a point in high school where I started having dreams about my classmates dying in different situations, and I actually tried to share those dreams with the people involved -- got some strange looks. My dreams aren't terribly frightening most of the time - they're actually kind of fun to watch; so it's hard to convince myself to get up and going when my alarm goes off in the middle of a dream. I do have distinct memories of a couple of dreams where I felt like I was dying, and it was really hard to wake myself out of them - I think these dreams were my mind trying to make me aware that I was having problems breathing in the current sleep position I had put myself in.
I am going to try to make an effort this year to record more of my dreams, although the record may seem like a random juxtaposition of different concepts at first, as I don't know if I'll have the time available to flesh out the descriptions.
15. "People are always asking me what my lyrics mean..."
I have a really hard time remembering song lyrics, even for stuff like Christmas Carols. I know a smattering of Pink Floyd's lyrics, but that's because I listened to them over and over on the trips to math contests in high school. I also know a couple of songs from my early college years and from Monty Python, because they're just plain funny. Part of me thinks that this lack of memory is tied to not actively listening to the songs in my current life, which might also account for forgetting several prayers I grew up with, too.
I'd say that I suck at Karaoke, but I do like to sing the Banana Boat Song - "Daaay-oh! Da-ay-oh. Daylight come..."
16. "How much of our lives is just idle conversation?"
It seems to me that most of the things discussed in my conversations through the years are fairly shallow surface thoughts. I've spent a lot of my time trying to find common ground and common interests and talking about third parties, and not really plumbing the depths to explore my beliefs about the world. Conversations are about the TV show last night, or who won the football game on the weekend, or maybe just finding out others' plans for the immediate future. This lack of depth spills over into my plans, or lack thereof, in that I don't think far ahead in the future about what my actions can or can not lead to. I suppose that a lot of this is rooted in our consumer society, and our collective focus on material things instead of on the natural world around us.
Another thing is that I tend to suppress and ignore my feelings, so I'm much less aware of ideas that challenge my world view because the feedback loop of observation evoking strong feeling just isn't there.
What I would like to see in my interactions with others is an exploration of deeper beliefs and the impact that new technologies and circumstances have on changing or affirming those beliefs. As an example, how does cloning and stem cell research improve the medical services we can receive, and what are some of the new ethical dilemnas and risks associated with them? Or, how does the internet change the way we find and share information? Or, how have our ideas of the "nuclear family" and the roles inside of it evolved over the last 5, 15, and 50 years?
I suppose, though, that in order to have deeper conversations, I have to take a more active role in instigating them. If a topic really interests me, I should consider devoting some time towards independent researchof it.
17. "First secure an independent income, then practice virtue."
Finances have been my weak point through much of my adult life. On the one hand, I haven't ever earned more than $15 an hour and, most of the time, I've been lucky to get $10. On the other hand, what money I have had has been spent more often than saved, usually on entertainment pursuits and eating out. When I get really strapped for cash, it becomes a stressor, and I quickly become really depressed.
18. "Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
I have been sober over the last four years, and I have become increasingly happier with accepting my present situation(s) and appreciating what I already have instead of striving for what I think I need to have to be happy. During the last 6 months or so, I have begun to sit with a weekly non-ritualized meditation group that draws upon Buddhist philosophy, and I think that adding this meditation practice has further enhanced my ability to appreciate the present moment. To me, happiness and serenity go hand in hand. If I learn to adjust to the moment and accept where I am at as but a temporary set of circumstances that will change in time, I am not troubled by inner thought turmoil, and I am much more aware of my immediate surroundings.
19. "Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."
Back when I was in the 5th grade, I was in a car accident while riding in my brother's car to school one morning. Neither of us were wearing seatbelts, as his seatbelts were very difficult to connect. I went through the windshield of the car, and spent the next 6 months going to a plastic surgeon to dig pieces of glass out of my forehead. I was unconscious for several hours when they checked us into the hospital. This was by far the most serious injury I had sustained...
...until 1998.
The summer of 1998 was quite a lot of fun, as I began dating a woman I lived with at New Guild co-op all through that summer. Towards the end of that summer, though, I quit my 7-year employment as a math tutor because I was offered a job with steadier income. The lady, Kat, moved on to a different romantic partner, but we still crossed paths regularly, as we still lived in the same house - talk about uncomfortable reminders. The new job was not as intellectually satisfying as tutoring had been, and I found myself struggling on a shoestring budget; and I still was pining way, wishing I could be with Kat again. On top of all of this, I had gotten off my bi-polar meds for 6 months.
In the depths of the depression, about mid-October, I decided to overdose on a month's supply of Depakote - the bipolar medication I had been taking. My roommate did not discover me until 24 to 36 hours later, as he tended to stay at his own girlfriend's apartment frequently - when he found me, I was sitting on the floor of our room in my underwear in a coma. They called 9-1-1 and I was checked into Brackenridge hospital with a body temperature of 84 degrees and 90% kidney failure. I was in a coma for 9 days, hooked up to a dialysis machine via a plug in my aorta. I came out of the coma watching John Glenn return to space and watching The Simpsons' reruns of the Treehouse of Horrors. I still have scars on the back of my head and my posterior from the bed sores I had picked up by being in one position too long sometime during the coma.
I do not have any near-death memories from this coma, so I have little faith that there is any after-life that we'll go to when we die - I personally think our consciousness disperses and that's that. Now, there have been times, usually when I'm bordering on a mania, that I wonder, "Did I ever really wake up in the hospital, or am I, perhaps, in some sort of weird Matrix simulation?" Usually these occur when something just strikes me as really odd about the world.
20. "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it."
I've often heard that there's no such thing as a truly original thought
I can see that as our thoughts are the sum total of interactions between previous thoughts.
On the other hand, I do believe there is such a thing as an original experience, created by the confluence of differing conditions for different individuals.
What I'm trying to get at is that our thoughts are based directly upon our experience, so, no matter how bizarre they seem, they are rooted somewhere back in our life sense experience; but everyone's experience is different from everyone else's either due to differences in external or internal conditions. Nobody shares the same point in time and space, and two people observing the same phenomena are likely to connect it with different sets of experiences from their individual pasts.
However, I do believe our collective "shared" experience more often than not leads us to make the same conclusions when given the same premises.
21. "Have no fear of perfection -- you'll never reach it."
Perfectionism has been something I've struggled with all my life. Combine that with procrastination, and I never seem to get anything done. It's real easy to get caught up in this loop that I have to "consider everything" before making a decision, or put off doing something (like writing people back) because I'm overwhelmed by everything I want to say... or because I want to present a flawless argument. I also notice that I like to critique my experiences, always looking for ways to improve them.
22. "Four score and seven years ago, today..."
Some of the best people I've known are history majors; they just have a gift for telling stories that rarely border on the absurd. One of my favorite channels on TV is the History Channel. I enjoy watching documentaries and programs like Nova and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Now, when it comes to reading, though, I tend to find myself drawn more towards fantasy and science fiction writers, especially those who can do a good job of creating a compelling alternate universe.
I suppose there's a fine balance here between reporting on the real world sans opinion, and asking the question, "What if...?"
23. "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."
Education, I feel, is an important part of one's character. By studying the world and the people and ideas in it, we broaden our viewpoints and get a glimpse of the larger picture(s) beyond our direct experience.
Unfortunately, I think that public education, especially in K-12, has some serious flaws that can't be fixed by a simple measure or too. I'm not a big fan of standardized testing, as it tends to cater towards rote repetition, which is a lower level of learning then synthesis or judging. I think our schools have become, by default, more of a day care system where we place our kids instead of a genuine arena of inquiry and learning, and I think our current class sizes are unwieldy for one teacher to manage, especially if they're a new teacher without a lot of experience in interacting with large groups. In addition, I've asked many an education major why they want to teach, and am disheartened when I hear most of them say, "Oh, I like to work with kids!" (Yeesh! You mean you don't have a passion for the subject you're teaching?) I also think that the traditional lecture style of most lessons does not do a good job of engaging the students' interest, and, were I to teach, I would seriously like to explore problem-based inquiry models. I would also highly encourage teachers to consider alternate assessment methods, especially those that get the students talking about what they think they're learning - like a web-based discussion board.
Teaching is something that I would like to return to one day, as the feeling of accomplishment I get when I see someone finally understand a concept is just over-whelmingly amazing. In addition, I, myself, have often learned a subject phenomenally well when I turn around and try to teach it to others.
24. "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."
It may not seem like this, when reading through my notes here, or hearing my opinions on various topics elsewhere, but I do live fairly closely to this philosophy.
I try to respect all the people I encounter in my life, even if they are markedly different from me, and I will listen to their woes. However, my past has been characterized by spending extended periods of time with only a small handful of individuals at any given time. I'm much less likely to open up in a conversation with a relative stranger than I am with a neighbor who I visit regularly. I don't claim a lot of secrets - for one, I don't try to live a secretive life that I would regret at a later date. However, the secrets I do keep are closely guarded; if someone makes it clear that they're telling me something in confidence then I'm not one to go off and tell it to others.
I once got burned by blind trust, though, on-line. I had pledged Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed service fraternity in the Fall of '97, and I volunteered quite heavily with them, to the detriment of my class work. The following Spring of '98, I started receiving e-mails from a lady in APO. Thinking, "Cool! ..maybe this could turn into a relationship!", I started writing these long e-mails back to her, talking about all sorts of stuff. About a month into this, it was revealed to me that the people I had been writing to were actually the Tanks, a group of APO guys, who had hi-jacked her e-mail account. Sooo.. I take on-line interaction with a grain of salt these days, as the person you may be writing to may not be the person you think you're writing to.
25. "...and now, for something completely different..."
My humor is heavily influenced by sur-realism, absurdism, intellectualism, and British Comedies. My favorite comics are Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, Laurel and Hardy, and many more. My favorite jokes are ones that build up through a comic's routine, like a reference back to a topic 10 minutes ago. I thoroughly love watching cartoons, like the Simpsons, South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, old Tom and Jerrys... and the list goes on. I've watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Holy Grail innumberable times, and I quite enjoy reading Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. One of the first things I'll read in the news is the comics section, and I'd say that my favorite comics there have been stuff like Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and Pearls Before Swine. Oh, and I grew up reading lots of Tasteless Jokes collections.
In my family, I am notorious for finding truly evil Christmas and birthday cards. For example, one year my step-mom was going on a diet, and I gave her a card that said, on the front, "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat..." and then, when you opened it up, it said, "...they're not the only ones."
As I get to know a person better, I gain a sense of their values and their worries; and, consequently, I can better gauge the humor that they would not find too offensive.
10 January 2009
Biz-scheme 1: "Sidewalk surveillance"...
In my various travels around Austin on bike, I tend to use the sidewalks as my primary travel lanes. Unfortunately, not all sidewalks are "bike friendly" - there's the occasional unramped curb, or the sidewalk breaking up due to underlying tree roots, or even too narrow of a space to navigate due to intervening poles, fences, and shrubberies... or, worst of all, there's no sidewalk at all to speak of.
Sooo... I have the following idea:
Why not create a company that cooperates with city governments and land owners to fix up the sidewalks to where they become "bike-friendly", and, as a side effect, "wheelchair-friendly"?
One way I envision this, is to have a surveying crew that will go out and navigate the sidewalks in different neighborhoods with GPS equipment. Should they come across a trouble spot, they forward that spot's GPS coordinates back to the main office for further investigation. The office can then get a couple of bids from concrete companies to repair the problem; and then present those bids to the paying authority -- I'm just not sure if that authority would be the city government, or the landowner, or a mixture of both...
Sooo... I have the following idea:
Why not create a company that cooperates with city governments and land owners to fix up the sidewalks to where they become "bike-friendly", and, as a side effect, "wheelchair-friendly"?
One way I envision this, is to have a surveying crew that will go out and navigate the sidewalks in different neighborhoods with GPS equipment. Should they come across a trouble spot, they forward that spot's GPS coordinates back to the main office for further investigation. The office can then get a couple of bids from concrete companies to repair the problem; and then present those bids to the paying authority -- I'm just not sure if that authority would be the city government, or the landowner, or a mixture of both...
...biz-scheme 2: "Share your I-pod!"...
This thought struck me last night, while I was drifting off to sleep -- inspired by the touchtune jukeboxes I've seen in bars, and the "I-pod random shuffle Q&A posts" I've seen in facebook...
Wouldn't it be neat if we could share our I-pods?
For example, a club could offer to showcase your I-pod for a nominal fee (say $5/hour), either in shuffle mode or using some of your pre-created playlists. You would just pay for the time that it'll play, and the club then plugs it into their stereo system to either entertain or torment everyone there. (Note: I'm notorious for picking horrific playlists while playing pool in the past)
Alternatively, maybe you could swap your I-pod with a friend, or even rent it out to those less fortunate friends who do not yet have them... Going one step further with this swapping path, each of you could add some songs to the loaned pod(s); perhaps not even telling the owner(s) what those songs are. (Heh! "Hide and Seek!")
Wouldn't it be neat if we could share our I-pods?
For example, a club could offer to showcase your I-pod for a nominal fee (say $5/hour), either in shuffle mode or using some of your pre-created playlists. You would just pay for the time that it'll play, and the club then plugs it into their stereo system to either entertain or torment everyone there. (Note: I'm notorious for picking horrific playlists while playing pool in the past)
Alternatively, maybe you could swap your I-pod with a friend, or even rent it out to those less fortunate friends who do not yet have them... Going one step further with this swapping path, each of you could add some songs to the loaned pod(s); perhaps not even telling the owner(s) what those songs are. (Heh! "Hide and Seek!")
08 January 2009
another night at the saxon... (yahoo cross-post: 1/4/08)
So, originally, tonight I was supposed to work 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at the old 7-Eleven. However, my co-worker calls me at 6 p.m. saying he had just woken up, was wide awake and willing to work, and wanted to know if I'd like to swap shifts. I was kind of cool with that, but wanted him to clear it through our manager first... and about 10 minutes later, he calls back, saying, "the swap's on." That left me with a wide open evening, also wide awake, although not so willing to work. I went down to Alligator Grill and had some crawfish quesadillas (sp?) and 2 dozen peel-'n-eat shrimp, and I thought, "well, might as well see what's up at the saxon and alamo..."
Take the bus up there, and I noticed I missed the 7ish showing of "Juno", and most everything else at 7ish is sold out at the Alamo. I make a note that the next showing of "Juno" is at 9:25, and head over to the Saxon to see who's playing. Eight hours later finds me at this computer, posting this post, with a brief intro to the 3 bands seen: Carolyn Wonderland, George Devore, and Ramsey Midwood.
For some reason, Carolyn reminded me of Janis Joplin, although I haven't ever seen footage of Janis. I'm not sure if it's her vocal styles or her head movements; but she did put on a really good show especially since she said she's fighting a 102 degree fever right now... Here's two clips I found on youtube - the first being "I'm the Man" (which she said she wrote after getting a call from a telemarketer) and the second being "Come Together" - posted on youtube by hoopinman and milkriverfilm, respectively.
Next, we have George Devore, who I actually know from many a happy hour at Alligator Grill and late night snack runs on his part at the 7-Eleven. This is a video from his tour in Europe, posted by youtube user dbarnes001.. I talked with George a little as the evening wound down, and he said he had gotten kind of complacent and content this last year, and had some management problems... so he's in the process of rebuilding, with a 5th CD due out in February, I think? That, and he's also singing/playing with Paula Nelson (Willie's daughter..).. anyway, here's the video:
Finally, we have one of the hardest to remember names of the night (I literally had to go to the Saxon's web page to remember it for the 6th time, when I couldn't look at the board in the pub), Ramsey Midwood. This is a band from South Austin (Manchaca area)... One of the comments from Catalina (the lady who sat next to me for a little while) was that his mouth wasn't moving, and I'd agree. Now, the youtube search came up with RamsAy Midwood, but the songs I heard sound real similar in style and timbre to who I heard last night, and the guy looks about the same... maybe the Saxon just screwed up the spelling of his name? Anyway, this is "Monster Truck" posted by youtube user imlegion:
another random listing.. this time - goals (from 2008, updated in 2009)
I wrote the following at the beginning of 2008, and I'm adding "progress updates" in italics, now at the beginning of 2009:
Over the next year, I plan to:
- change careers to one that better uses my B.S. in Mathematics from UT Austin,
So, I'm doing "easy" tech support, at least for a couple of months, now - a little closer.. took 12 jobs to reach it... - become more involved in community volunteering, starting with Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic and SXSW,
I think I volunteered 4 hours with RFBD last year, 'cause I was derailed by job instability. I did earn a platinum badge at SXSW (80+ hours) - develop a meditation/exercise practice, drawing on Zen Buddhism, yoga, and Tai Chi,
Since this summer, I've been attending an un-ritualized Buddhist sitting group (Dharma Punx) on a fairly regular basis -- still, I'm only on a weekly sitting practice, and not yet up to a daily practice - reconnect with my Catholic heritage,
eh... I think I can count the number of masses I attended last year on one hand. I got to be the train conductor at the church's Fall Festival, though.. ;P - expand my circle of friends in South Austin, (one reason for internet dating)
I expanded my circle of friends, but mostly through my connection with AA - look up some old friends who I've lost touch with,
I have reconnected with some high school classmates, primarily through facebook... would still like to find former French House members... - become a better player of Texas Hold'Em,
I placed sixth in the city-wide tournament at the beginning of the year, but have not really played regularly since... - and get out to see more movies, music, and plays.
Here's where that unstable job situation blind-sided me again. ...that, and my dad moved to Houston, so I lost my primary "movie bud" **SIGH**
In five years, I would have liked to:
- spend at least one month in another country,
- found a fulfilling relationship with a lady I could grow old with,
- earned a master's or doctorate degree, most likely in the cognitive sciences.
Well... I have been looking into furthering my education here and there...
Errr... one year down, four to go...? (No significant progress made yet in any of the following...)
07 January 2009
Fifteen weeks...?
Another poem developed on a bus ride -
Tried to stick close to iambic pentameter,
a couple of rhyming schemes,
added a first letter vertical summary,
and attempted some engaging of all five senses...
Not too sure how successful I was in all that, but here it is:
-----------------------------
Let me describe for you, a lovely rose:
Its scent so sweet - it just tickles your nose.
Vibrant reds attack your eyes as it grows;
Each petal peels away with soft breath blows...
Velvet sheets crumble 'tween rough fingertips;
Impaling thorns stick out 'long the long stem.
Bedecked with drops of August morning dew
Rained upon it with this summer's dawn drips.
Ants line its lower leaves -- breakfast for them?
Not one sound stirs this scene 'tween I and you --
Taste these words, like honey along your lips.
Reclining now, under summer's bitter heat,
Our rose, she does bend, stoop, wilt, and wither.
Summer's gone, petals fallen -- lone stem remains;
Ethereal was that bloom, now long gone.
Tried to stick close to iambic pentameter,
a couple of rhyming schemes,
added a first letter vertical summary,
and attempted some engaging of all five senses...
Not too sure how successful I was in all that, but here it is:
-----------------------------
Let me describe for you, a lovely rose:
Its scent so sweet - it just tickles your nose.
Vibrant reds attack your eyes as it grows;
Each petal peels away with soft breath blows...
Velvet sheets crumble 'tween rough fingertips;
Impaling thorns stick out 'long the long stem.
Bedecked with drops of August morning dew
Rained upon it with this summer's dawn drips.
Ants line its lower leaves -- breakfast for them?
Not one sound stirs this scene 'tween I and you --
Taste these words, like honey along your lips.
Reclining now, under summer's bitter heat,
Our rose, she does bend, stoop, wilt, and wither.
Summer's gone, petals fallen -- lone stem remains;
Ethereal was that bloom, now long gone.
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