The Entirety of my Tweeting Experience

Around 2010 I finally joined Twitter. From certain people I have found a constant stream of "isn't that interesting?" items I might not have otherwise seen, several of which are good enough to pass on. While I primarily use Twitter to read conten, I have made attempts to, in the short form, recreate the purpose of this blog. I never enjoyed this. The 140 character limit is too constraining - if I'm the only person reading what I wrote, I might as well have more freedom to write. Until I become famous (and gain a million followers) I think I'll discontinue tweeting and stick with here as the primary medium to record my goings.  Bu,t I did want to also consolidate (and back-up/record) all my previous tweets into this space.

What follows is the entirety of my tweeting history - all eighty tweets in reverse chronological order going back to my first, "Whole Foods' Oreos are so much better than real Oreos..." back in October, 2010. Links are provided for context...

Silent No Longer: Cauliflower Ear

"Don't worry about your faces, none of you will ever be models" - a constant refrain from our wrestling coach. The purpose was to motivate us to use correct form (face close to the opponent's body) during a take-down drills without concern for the inevitable wear and tear on our faces (actually, one of us did become a model and soap opera star).

Over four years of wrestling I experienced all kinds of maladies: jammed fingers, split lips, a torn ankle, and an assortment of contagious skin infections.  The one I dreaded most, however, was cauliflower ear, a puffy disfigurement of the ear. I was certainly having no luck with the ladies in high school, and I didn't need any more marks against me. Is anything more important to 15 year-old?

Given the daily wear of intense practices, the inevitable finally happened. One night I glimpsed in the bathroom mirror with a growing knot in my stomach a definite puffiness. Even me.

At least, it could have been must worse than what I had - one night in bed after a prior wrestling practice I touched to where by upper ear joined my head and found blood - by ear was literally being torn off.

Other afflicted wrestlers spoke of going to the doctor to get their ears drained - I was never sure what exactly was filling the ear - and at least a couple times I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, poking my ear with a pin. Nothing came out, but I had heard there was only a short time window for treatment. Afterwards I could only focus on the preventative and I henceforth always used protective headgear at practice.

I just checked in the mirror, and sixteen years later I still have the faded signs: my right ear is definitely less "defined", with a bit more puffiness in the upper part of the ear lobe. Luckily, you can only really tell if you immediately compare one ear to the other - by itself it doesn't look so out of the ordinary. Moreover, as I move into my thirties, there are so much other aging-related wear that my ear is, in the scheme of things, small potatoes.

I was pleased to see the video NBC hosted in which USA wrestlers talk about cauliflower ear. Even within the elite, it is seen by some as either a disfiguring scar or a badge of honor, but it is so common that it's just accepted as going with the territory. As Jordan Burroughs says at the end of the NBC segment, "Once you get it you're like, screw it, I'll just keep it for the rest of my life".

I smiled with a certain nostalgia when he added, "I just can't be a model".

Matching the Soul to the Sport

Of course, different body types are more favorable to certain sports. A small man would have difficulty in basketball as a large man would have difficulty in jockeying. It is also just as true that certain sports fit better with particular personality types.

In some capacity during my youth I was involved in two contact sports: football and wrestling. Neither was ever a good fit: then as now I'm nothing if not confrontational. Athletic ability aside - in which I was certainly lacking - I never had the requisite desire to hurt my opponent. Instead, I only felt empathy - here was another kid just like me, who was probably swept up in winds larger than he was which landed him across from me - maybe playing for his dad's acceptance, his peers acceptance, or like me, both. In that realization, how could I want to hurt him? He did nothing to me. Instead of a blood lust, I was nauseated by guilt. My coaches or teammates, on the other hand, actively encouraged the desire to hurt. Undoubtedly this explains how I often viewed my teammates to be bigger bastards than the kids on the other side. And that view extended outside the team: "Get mean! Get tough!  Why don't you go out there and hit somebody?! You'd rather play in the band with all the queers and fags". I heard that at least every week from my father, off-season included.

At least in football, you are just one element of a team and are obscured to anonymity by a masking helmet and large padding. Wrestling had an additionally unpleasant, mano-a-mano element, focusing the center of attention on just two people during a match. Even more than being non-confrontational I was then, as now, extremely introverted. All those eyes that would be on me! I hated the thought. At tournaments I hoped to get called to the small mat, off to the side, where maybe no one else would even notice that I was wrestling.

Looking back, how else might it have been? Was there a sport more geared to my personality? There is a scene in Grease where Danny Zuko successively tries out basketball, where his aggression prompts the coach to push him towards wrestling, where that "he's a hitter" prompts the coach to push him towards baseball, and finally, it is decided that long-distance running, alone and solitary, would fit best. I deeply wished a knowledgeable adult would have taken me aside, working with me to find a sport tailor fitted. I fantasized that both athletic glory and my happiness were only a matter of match.

What could it have been? A non-contact, team sport, in which I'd be indistinguishable from the other players. I'm thinking crew? I'm thinking bobsleigh?

The Lives of Others

City living is always quasi-communal. It's inevitable, our lives' spheres are larger than the tiny apartments we're cramped into. We see our neighbors when glance from our windows, we smell our neighbors when they cook their dinners, and we hear them too often to ever be without earplugs.

When I lived in Washington and New York, my neighbors were close indeed. In New York, my (perpetually broken) bathroom window was arm's length from the corresponding bathroom window of the building next door. Perilously, the other bathroom was always occupied; disturbingly, its occupants (plural) were always in conversation; unfortunately, the conversation was always in an impenetrably foreign tongue. More positively, before our Wi-Fi was installed, we benefited from the unprotected network named "Denize", and over dinner discussed how to best repay the unknowing altruist we nicknamed Denise (sadly, we never found her).

Last month I moved to denser Cambridge, MA. A selling-point when I saw our future apartment is that it is on the top (fourth) floor - no creaking floorboards, heavy steps, or moving furniture from above. Typical city sounds aside, the apartment is blissfully quiet.

My neighbors are still there, however, just in other ways. Where I live is actually a group of buildings under the same landlord, which are close enough that I can easily peer into the rooms opposite mine. Here's what I've experienced so far:

• The male neighbor whose door faces mine, Apartment 44 is passionately arguing politics when I leave for work at 7:15am. The topic is the shooting massacre at The Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado. He gets the New York Times delivered daily. I only have Sunday delivery.
• The female neighbor who I share a kitchen wall with I've heard while exiting the kitchen back entrance to take out the trash. She consoles her female friend to accept the lack of quality, dateable men their ages.
• The neighbors I most often see live in the apartment across from our kitchen window and two floor downs. There is a pretty young wife constantly in their kitchen. She is always cooking. Presumably its for the middle-aged man who occasionally joins her. From my vantage point he is much below her league - overweight and hairy, which I know because he most often appears shirtless.
• Directly across from our kitchen window is a young lady. She cooks dinner 7-8pm (as do we), and then eats in her kitchen, alone in a chair.
• An occupant of the corner apartment opposite our bedroom's - it would belong to the apartment of the women who eats alone - I saw once when I sat up in bed at night. She walked away (I could not see her face) from her half drawn blinds, in her underwear. I immediately laid down again to give her privacy. Her body type was heavier than the young lady I see eating dinner.
• Not directly across the way from our living room but the room to the right lives a blonde young lady. There is a perfect line of sight between her on her couch and me at my desk. We haven't made eye contact yet. I'm sure it will be awkward when we do. I try to avoid looking out that window an unavoidably into hers.
• The aprtment directly across from our living room, one floor down, is filled with plants and furniture, is always lit, and is always empty. I fear a year from now an elderly resident will be found mummified.
• The other rooms are fainter to see into. A couple apartments have large-screen TVs. I've only seen ESPN.
• Many of the current or former residents were physics and finance majors. Their textbooks fill the shelves of the lending library bookcase in the basement by the washing machines. The lending library is more accurately a textbook graveyard, for materials easier disgarded than packed on moving day.  There is also a copy of Perfectly Normal: Living and Loving with Low Libido, by Sandra Pertot, PhD.
• Although I can't see it, in the afternoons you can hear someone in the building block across the street practicing scales on a piano.
• Directly across from me, but one floor down, lives a cat. It likes to look at me from over a double window fan in the apartment's kitchen. We've engaged in brief staring contests. It's so-far the only neighbor I've yet to make eye-contact with, the only neighbor who knows I'm also looking out.

The Epic Trash-Talking Poetry of Muhammad Ali

In the history of trash-talking, Muhammad Ali's "poem" concerning his Rumble in the Jungle match with George Foreman surely ranks high:

Last night I had a dream, When I got to Africa,
I had one hell of a rumble.
I had to beat Tarzan’s behind first,
For claiming to be King of the Jungle.
For this fight, I’ve wrestled with alligators,
I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don’t get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali.

Coincidentally, this poem is currently being featured in an well-produced adverstivement for Louis Vuitton (wait, what?).  It is preformed byYassin Bey (Mos Def) and I love the juxtaposition with the seemingly random calligrapher (artist Niels Shoe Meulman).

My Hero of Revolutionary Massachusetts, Samuel Whittemore

I recently completed a postdoctoral fellows, which focused on the care of older Americans. Prior to the program, lives of the elderly had never really been on my radar, until in a big way starting the summer of 2010. I became much more interested in the lives and conditions of the elderly. Probably the best decision I made during my fellowship was to read The Coming of Age by Simone de Beauvoir, a comprehensive treatise on aging and what should be, in my option, an essential read for the young and middle-aged, if for no other reason than that we will be old one day, too.

At some point a friend posted on Facebook the story of Samuel Whittemore and how he was in awe of the guy after learning his story. So was I, once I also learned about it. Whittemore lived during the Revolutionary War, and attacked British forces retreating from Lexington and Concord. This description is from Massachusetts State Senate proposed bill No. 1839 "to designate captain Samuel Whittemore the official state hero of the Commonwealth and provid[e] for an annual proclamation of a day in his honor".

On April 17, 1775, while working in his fields, Whittemore became aware of the retreating British army which had fought the militia men at Lexington and Concord. Although then over 80 years old, he immediately armed himself with his weapon; disregarded warnings of onlookers, and stationed himself behind a stone wall directly in the path of the troops which were being harassed by our militia. When the British army came into point blank range, Samuel Whittemore stood up, opened accurate fire, and killed three soldiers before he collapsed from numerous wounds inflicted by the enraged English combatants who then left him for dead. However, Whittemore recovered from his ghastly injuries and lived to be 90 years old. Samuel Whittemore is the oldest known Patriot to fight in the Revolutionary War. And most recently, the United States never had a braver warrior.

Specifically, those "injuries" wounds were that he was shot through the cheek, beaten, and bayonetted thirteen times. After the British left, the townspeople, searching for wounded, found not only Whittemore alive but trying to reload his musket! Whittemore lived in present day Arlington, MA - just one town north of Cambridge - and there is a monument dedicated to him there now. Before I knew I'd be moving here I considered taking a pilgrimage up here to visit the site. Now that I'm probably just a few miles away, there's really no reason not to. I was planning before the weather cools to take a trip along the Minuteman Bike Trail to visit Lexington and Concord. I should include a detour to pay my respects to Mr. Whittemore.

Never too old...

My Hero of the XXX Olympiad, Oksana Chusovitina

This may be first, a follow-up to a previous posting. Four years ago I wrote about the Soviet-born German gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who at 33 was still competing in elite-caliber gymnastics, when most of her peers were teenagers. I was awe-struck by her story. I rooted for her, and deeply cheered when she took the silver medal on vault in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Before her set, I vividly remember the announcers commenting that history would be made today. She was an inspiration and left such a mark on me that I was still telling me about her prior to the start of these games. Surely nothing these games, I thought, could top a 33 year-old gymnast.

Except, of course, a 37 year-old gymnast.

Chusovitina is back, at 37, to compete in the 2012 London games - and she's expected to medal. She wants one more, with her son there to watch, before she retires to next coach for Uzbekistan's team. I'll look forward to cheering for her again.

#nbcfail

Give a Christmas present to somebody on December 20th and then there are only two kinds of people: the ones (like me) who will insist, religiously, on waiting until the 25th as Christmas presents are for not until Christmas morning.  Opening them earlier, moreover, will just leave you with one less to open on Christmas, a smaller pile, a little less joy that day.  Isn't the anticipation half the joy?  The other kind of people (for example, Roberta) will without hesitation rip into the wrapping paper, not being able to stand the anticipation, the waiting, the not knowing what the gift would be.

There is an equivalent for Olympic games which are time zones ahead (specifically ahead of me, by the way - it's always local time where the games are).  Atlanta (Eastern Standard) was the last "current" Olympics in 1996, but since then it's been Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and London.  For these, the main events we watch in prime time have already happened.  1996, Atlanta's year, was also the first steps of the Internet age, and I do not recall that the results then being easily available before the events aired.  Now, in 2012, I have to actively avoid most media during the day so that the results are not "spoiled" for me half a day before I'm able to watch them on NBC.  The United States men's gymnastics team is about to compete for gold now.  I"m not even sure I'll be able to stay awake to watch and see how they do.  It'd be nice to be able to grab video online, fast forward through, and see the results.  The results are there, of course, I could know them in ten seconds through a Google search.  I could, but I'm just not that kind of person, remember?

There are times when I would really want to watch online.  Today in women's volleyball the U.S. team beat Brazil and at best I could only follow on Twitter and get score updates every few minutes.  I would also love to see the sports they generally are not showing on television - wrestling, for example.

This isn't possible, this year, due to NBC.  I wasn't expecting how, in this age, live feeds would not be provided (I feel that they were for the Beijing games?).  NBC's website reads "Watch free video of the London 2012 Olympic Games on NBCOlympics.com". Well, not quite.  You need a cable subscription that includes MSNBC, etc., and then on top of that, only, access is free.  To a cable-less guy like me, out of luck.  The pangs of cord-cutting regret I felt on learning only through a cable subscription could I enter the kingdom, "fortunately", quickly evaporated when I heard about how poor the video quality of the are - often very glitchy, if they work at all - though the regular ads that come on it seems have perfect quality.  By the way, this has all been already summarized today already much better than here. A twitter hashtag, #nbcfail, has popped up and makes for fun reading, and gives some sense of revenge against those denying the people their Olympic access.

Anyways, those complaining of tape delay get a reprieve next time around: Rio de Janeiro's Olympics in 2016 will be almost Eastern Standard (one hour ahead in July).  For me personally, however if all goes as I hope, it won't matter: I want to be there in person.  It might be the best chance I have, until Norwalk, CT wins an Olympic big...

What the Candidates and Athletes Have in Common

Aside from a lot of sport, I've realized during the Olympics coverage that I'm also watching a lot of commercials.  Fortunately (or due to the expected audience), many have an almost Super Bowlesque quality.  However, I've also noticed I'm watching lots of political ads.  What cruel timing that years of the summer games coincide with presidential election years.  And I'm in Massachusetts, not even a swing state.  The one playing most often, supporting Barack Obama, features Mitt Romney singing "America the Beautiful" terribly off-key.  How do they expect us to support Team USA with that in our heads?

Another category of commercials relays how hard the athletes have worked.  Hitting the pool at dawn, alone with the weights, nursing injuries, etc.  Well, duh.  Honestly, I'm not fully sure of such ads' exact message.  The sacrifice the athletes have made?  Hopefully not that with enough hard work "anyone" could become an Olympic athlete (the more common non-athletic version are variations on "you, too, could be rich").  Certainly not true, that hard work, that total dedication every day over years  is necessary, but not sufficient.  How many unknown unnamed countless others have put in the same number of hours of those who will be standing on the podiums?  They are not in London this week.  Their times may be within seconds of the world record for all we know.  But there are just only so many spots on the national team.

I thought of a New York Times Magazine article a few years ago profiling, essentially, the machine that identifies basketball talent.  It starts with preteens.  Across the country, there must be - how many? - untold numbers of kids, spending everyday shooting baskets at a hoop, hoping its the start of a path that will eventually lead to a pro contract.  For most nothing will ever come of it.  Some will effectively win the lottery,  go the NBA, and will then be able for the camera to recall those long hours alone every day in the gym practicing free throws, and testify how worth it it was.  But we'll never see all the others who took the same number of shots and have nothing to show for a wasted youth.

So price of a even the possibility of Olympic success is, probably, the majority of a hopeful's young life in devotion to the perfection of their sport.

The price of a president campaign?  Presidential candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars.  Millions even to lose the primary.  You'd better be prepared to spend an obscene amount just to run and most likely, statistically, it will all be for nothing.

For both athletes and political candidates, it's an all-pay auction.  Everyone is putting forward, above some threshold, an exorbitant payment.  Yet history won't remember most, only the few winners. 

The difference?  It's the athletes own time, their loss of a "normal" life.  The political candidates funds are usually largely donated - it's instead someone else's loss.  They're not really sacrificing.

Four Year Sports Famine, Two Week Feast

I don't watch professional sports.  I lose out on a great deal of social currency since I can't talk about how the Red Sox are doing.  Still, I prefer the hours, cumulative days - weeks? months? - of my life I'm saving.

I watch the the Super Bowl for the commercials, I'd go to baseball games only to eat hot dogs, pro basketball is probably fixed, I went to a college without a football team, I watched its basketball team only in what I considered for pay due to my pep band scholarship, golf is elitist - and boring, tennis is also elitist (though less so) - and elitist (though less so), I'm American, so soccer, cricket, rugby....well.....If I ever did I would only watch hockey for the fights, boxing is sleazy, MMA is ridiculous, almost two decades ago I came to terms with pro wrestling being fake, I'd only watch car racing for the crashes, demolition derby races don't seem to come out here, and spectators of professional video game or poker players need to seriously reexamine their lives.


I've regularly worn the apparel of teams for which I couldn't name a single player.


And with a passion I hate the smug, sportscasting analysts who, if they're not reminiscing of their past glory, are selling their product through insinuating your effeminacy if you weren't to buy in, since real men watch sports (specifically, in order: football, basketball, baseball, and sometimes hockey.  Nothing else).

But I love the Olympics, and during the summer games run every four years I make up for all the sports I pass on by completely binging during its two week run.  While there are some criticisms of the modern games, in general I believe they support the amateur spirit and dream of a united world.  It's far more satisfying to cheer on athletes out of patriotism than to give millionaires more money.  Most of all, its largely sports stripped down to their fundemental level, utterly purged of BS.  No abstruse, complicated rules.  See that line there?  Who ever crosses it first, wins.  That's it.

An Olympic Opening, 2012

Tonight, despite thick, under-conditioned air, I finished the 60 minutes at 7.8mph on the treadmill goal I set for myself at the gym.  I distinctly remember wanting to quit at 15, 20, 30, 45, and once I got to 50min, I knew I would finish.  Even at 53min, when my stomach was knotting, I pushed through (I wouldn't really vomit, would I?).  I counted down the last 90 seconds.  I thought of an athlete in the final 10 seconds of their gold medal hope.  When I finally finished, I was so happy I did it.  I immediately resolved to write this so I could read this again.  It's always worth it to finish.

The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics is airing on NBC as I write this.  I've already caught the bug.  I know how I'll be spending the next two weeks.

Tonight on Facebook I posted Jamie McGregor Smith's feature in the New York Times Lens Blog, from her  work "Borrow, Build, Abandon", on the state of the 2004 Athens Olympics stadiums, which only eight years later have fallen into neglected decay.  How quickly splendid becomes forgotten.  I remembered my Latin, sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world).

Also: the opening ceremony featured Caliban's "Be not afeard" speech from The Tempest.  I love the line "...when I waked I cried to dream again".  I remember December dreams of my youth receiving an 8-bit Nintendo for Christmas, what I wished for more than anything, and what my mother would never buy, only to wake up to the creeping horror that I still didn't have a Nintendo.  So, five years ago, today, my youngest brother Scott died.  Regularly since then (and just again the night before last) I dreamt he was able to somehow "come back" and rejoin us the living.  It didn't usually happen, he said, but it did then, and we could hang out again and I'd be able to savor the second chance we were given.  We'd be able to just hang out again, talk, and I'd have my brother again, and I was so relived and thankful.  But soon I woke up.

It was a dream that was sad to wake up from.  I miss you, Scott.

Treasure in the Attic

When I was younger I had possession of a 1905 nickle, and lost it.  I kicked myself for quite sometime because I thought I had a valueable item.  Actually I just looked up the price and it'd be worth $0.75 today.  I'll no longer be feeling bad.

A 15x increase in value isn't too shabby.  I just turned off the terrible The Great Big American Auction on ABC with that crazy from Home Improvement Makeover.  It's sort of like Antique Roadshow, with the class of public radio.  A good amount of time has folks lugging junk to the appraisers, hoping they've been sitting on a winning lottery ticket all along.  I did get a bit of pleasure in watching several of them them being told that, in fact, their items are junk.  My heart went out to many though, as not all were just looking for a quick buck.  Several were willing to part with what they believed or knew to be quite valuable because of the economy - the rich will exploit their desperation and take their treasure, but isn't that what always happens?

A few years later, an older cousin went to Europe and brought back a piece of the Berlin Wall.  My others and I put it in our fish tank.  When you're 10 it's just a rock.  That piece of history probably has a bit more value, but now, maybe if it's anywhere, it's lying in the rock piles underneath the deck.

A Daily Dose of Scary

"Do one thing every day that scares you" is a call to break out of one's comfort zone, to conquer one's fears.  To actually do it every day - I don't think I could go through a month of scary things before I ran out of "things I'm irrationally afraid of but would be healthy for me to actually try" and was forced into "things I'm legitimately afraid of because they will kill me".

The scariest thing I did today was to watch, then rewatch Gary Oldman portraying an evil dummy singing an equally sinister "Bring Back My Bonnie To Me", filmed for the New York Time Magazine's Hollywood issue.  There goes sleep tonight...

Two Kinds of Christmas Songs

The only song that Santa and Jesus cross is in the final verse of "Here Comes Santa Claus"

"So let's give thanks to the Lord above 'cause Santa Claus comes tonight..."

Otherwise there are two kinds of songs, religious and non-religious, and religious people complain that "Silent Night" is forbidden now from some schools' pageants, so instead it's "Frosty the Snowman".

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

Poor Charlie Brown, no one sent him a Christmas card.

Right now I'm watching Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown on ABC.  It wouldn't be the holidays without it.  Charlie Brown is bummed out, as usual, this time over Christmas's commercialization.  At the end of the show, Linus tells Charlie Brown about the true meaning of Christmas, alla Luke, often forgotten in the holly and jolly.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Linus Breaks It Down

The funny thing is that, almost fifty years later, how quaint it seems.  If anything, we in this decade think of the 1960s (when the special first debuted) as a simpler time, when carolers still passed house to house.  If Charlie Brown saw what Christmas has become in 2011, I can guarantee that eggnog would shoot out of his nipples.

Don't Be Rose

To Be Rose (verb): To inconsiderately, self-centeredly, or thoughtlessly complain to someone who is suffering much worse  from the same complaint.

"My twenty-something, size one, marathoner office-mate was totally being Rose, complaining to our middle-age coworkers that she put on two pounds over Thanksgiving."

-ORIGIN:
From Titanic (1997), where Kate Winslet's character Rose, floating on wood, complains that she's cold to Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack), who is at that time freezing to death in the water.




I've been using this with my girlfriend since at least 2007 after watching Titanic together one night, and we often tell each other now "don't be Rose" when one is complaining of something the other is suffering from much worse, such as complaining of being tired to the one who had to wake up at 5am.  The film's very corny dialogue set-up magnify this action to the absurd extreme.  As I saw from just looking up the scene on Youtube, many others have picked up on Rose's selfishness, and the exchange even inspired a Facebook page dedicated to what Leo should have said.

An Encomium to Martha Stewart

Although I've never met her, I like Martha Stewart.  I like her because she makes a big deal about things.  It's the idea she embodies, acknowledging and immersing one's self in the present season.  When you walk into a room Martha Stewart has touched, it's not just that you see Christmas.  You feel Christmas.

 - Or Thanksgiving, or Halloween.  As I get older I'm increasingly discouraged by the apathy I see in my peers and community regarding the holidays.  Halloween has fallen the farthest.  The sense I get from my friends' Facebook photos are that a Halloween party means a bowl of pretzels on an undecorated table in the corner, beer, and tasteless costumes that only looked good on the model advertising it.  What adults do in their apartment is their own business, I suppose, but I'm disheartened that Only a minority of homes in my neighborhood participated this year.  This neighborhood, new for me, was far more lively than last year, when I didn't get a single trick-or-treater.

Now, let me be clear: no one walking into any retail store or watching TV for more than 15 minutes can really miss it's Christmas.  But all that's more of a drumbeat proclaiming "buy, buy!, BUY!",  The only Black Friday shopping I did this year was to buy picks for a wreath I will make.  I won't even be in my apartment for the last half of December, but it's important to me to make something with my hands, Bing Crosby Christmas standards playing, soaking in the holiday season.  Thoreau told us to "live each season as it passes", and it's healthy to season our lives with something bigger than out daily routine.

Martha is written off as - why?  - a goody two-shoes?  An overachiever?  As she probably does not spend much time herself crafting, a hypocrite?  Maybe.  But that aside, she calls us to mark each holiday with something more than a bowl of pretzels on an undecorated table. To take the time to create something, be it food or decoration.  Indirectly, we'll create richer memories.

To become jaded is to being old inside.  We remain young by retaining our enthusiasm.  Living by Martha?  If there was a touch of doing simple things in our lives, making crafts by hand, marking the time of year, we'd all be happier and have healthier communities.

Thoughts after Jabbing Myself with a Pin

Does acupuncture work?  How does acupuncture work?  Could it be like sensory overload?  Could it be like eating really spicy food, that to compensate for pain your body unloads endorphines?   We call that The Indian Food High.

The numb feeling that occurs when blood circulation stops in a body part - what we call "pins and needles" in Brazil they call "ants crawling".  Which would be worse?  Poked with a thousand needles, or be covered in ants?

At what density could pins be lined together so that a person could walk over them without being punctured?

The booby trap in Home Alone where Marv steps on a nail is one of the more painful (It goes in so deep!).  The worst is when Harry touches the heated doorknob and burns an "M" into his hand.

At the doctors, I'd always preferred a shot in the arm to a finger prick for a blood sample.  Much less pain.

Sharpness is relative to size.  A needle sufficiently magnified would look like a plateau, yet it punctures.  Perhaps it fits 'between' something in the skin?

There's always one last pin in a new dress shirt you just don't see.

And I'm back....

Since last Thursday, I've been writing again.  It's been good to get to write something regularly, and be creative about what I could put up.

I'll hope to keep it up through this holiday season....and let's say the 12th day of Christmas: Three Kings Day

Unappealing Ice Cream Flavors Created on Iron Chef America

• Trout
• Scallop
• Purple Peruvian Potato
• Veal Sorbet
• Bacon
• Turkey Sorbet
• Asparagus
• Sugared Salmon with Beet Sorbet
• Lentil
• Olive Oil
• Vanilla Ice Cream - with Lobster Sauce
• Skirt Steak
• Prosciutto
• Tomato Sorbet
• Balsamic Sorbet
• Bacon
• Coleslaw

Source: My traumatized memory and GSNN.

Ooh, Slow First Day Back at the Gym

Two realizations on my strength and I get older:

1. How much less I've got, and
2. How quickly it goes

Yesterday was my first day back to the Planet Fitness gym after the week off for Thanksgiving, and I was seriously sucking wind.  In times past, I would return from an occasional week off reinvigorated and have a really good work-out.  Yesterday I couldn't finish my usual warm-up.  OK, it was a warm-up 5K on 8.2mph, but still, it's only been a week.

It could be that this break involved a steady diet of Stew Leonard's cheese bagels and ice cream sandwiches with an all-out Thanksgiving gorging, coupled with mostly a lot of lying around on the couch.  Hopefully yesterday I was just working the last of the tryptophan out of my system.

It does concern me that a more rapid loss of gains could be part of a larger downward trend.  I'm definitely sure I can't lift as much as I used to.  The hard thing is that the memory lasts longer than the body.  Years ago I met my thesis adviser at school's gym one morning just getting back into it (guy was probably only a few years older than I am now), and he lamented to me that "you can remember what you used to be able to do", but if you start with that weight again, you're straining out the second rep.

Heading back today of course for some cardio - consistency is the key - my muscles weren't too sore this morning so I think it's mostly my stamina that went.  December is a weird month and I'm already looking at the calendar for when I'll have to miss - it looks like I'll be back home for the last third of the month in the same routine as last week.  It's sad to think at best now at the gym I'm only lessening what the December holidays are going to do to my body.  Playing for keeps starts in January.

Hiding What I'm Reading

The book I am currently reading, London Fields by Martin Amis, contains a fair amount of naughty bits.  I'm only a third of the way through, enough to know the movie version would be rated R for language and sexual situations - today the protagonist of the black comedy insouciantly justified rape.

I'm painfully self-conscious and worry even about the options of complete strangers.  So it was only after I was assured my seatmate was sufficiently conked out that dared to crack open my book on the Amtrak back to Providence this morning.  There's a lot in there that'd be easy to take out of context.

Several years ago I sat down on a plane to read a book entitled White Man's Burden (by Bill Easterly) for an economics class.  Guess who sat next to me?  A non-Caucasian, let's just say that.  If it came up I could have explained that the book was actually about identifying effective development strategies - a noble goal, of course - but it coming up at all means digging myself out of a hole so I simply buried the spine (displaying the title) in my lap until we departed the plane.

Amtrak coach is cramped enough that it's easy to read over someone's shoulder, and books cannot accommodate privacy screens.  Computers can, but no one bothers with them.  On the train home last Monday I couldn't look up without looking straight into the movie some college kid was watching on his laptop (this morning those same college kids were mostly asleep).  All was pretty tame.  The person in front of me watched Captain America, to my right, Titanic.  So, no one's media choice revealed their perversions, only how boring they are.

Now, back when I was in college - on a trip to the NCAA basketball tournament I ended up sitting next to the mascot on the plane.  On his laptop, in loop, he played the scene in Road Trip when Amy Smart takes her shirt off on loop, pausing it at the most obscene point when the the flight attendants passed.  Maybe you don't have to worry about shame when you hide inside a giant foam head.

It was this memorable plane ride I recalled when I heard how over this most recent Thanksgiving travel period a flier was in arrested in Boston after other passengers noticed him viewing child pornography on his laptop.

Certainly, such a gross episode makes all other questionable viewing seem strictly PG-13.  But, I still retain my self-consciousness.  I wouldn't reveal to my mom what I was reading when she asked, lest she seek the book out, read it herself, and confirm my exposure to the F-word (Fiction, Adult).

A New Mass Begins Today

Today, November 27th 2011 is the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the new Catholic liturgical year, and the first Sunday a new English translation of the Catholic Mass is being implemented.

The purpose is to move the mass nearer to the original Latin.  A widely cited example (likely because it occurs within the first five seconds of mass) is that when the priest greets the people with "The Lord be with you", instead of "And also with you", the people now respond "And with your spirit".

Awkward, but I'm no writer.  My first thought upon hearing of the coming changes was sympathy for the all the 80 year-old priests, old dogs who have to learn new tricks after decades of a particular litany ingrained deep into their brains.

As with the rest of us.  My own personal concern was that I would feel somehow an obsolete Catholic.  I do not have a perfect attendance record by any means, but have gone enough that I can get by through motor memory of my mouth.  Certainly not anymore.  Worse, I am also concerned I will feel a disconnect with the Church I grew up with.  It was comforting to have an unchanging continuity, to go to mass for an hour and hear the same unchanging words, anywhere I went, as I did when I was eight.

I slept in this morning but my mom went and told me even the priest was reading off the card.  The people, she said, recited a mix of the new and old.  She felt the new translation is a step back.  When she was young and the mass initially changed from Latin, she said there was an similarly awkward, almost too literal translation.  She preferred the version I grew up which had a more common language usage, which she found more accessible.

I'm not sure how other languages handle their translations from Latin.  At Columbia, our Polish chaplain criticized English (or the American version, anyway) as the only translation to begin the Nicene Creed with "We Believe" - the Latin is Credo, "I believe" - because "Americans think they're special".  I liked our version, it gave a sense of community.  Unfortunately, he won: the Nicene is changed because to  "I believe" in the new version.

I'll be interested to see the faces of the Christmas/Easter Catholics this Christmas when the mass gets going.  Will they worry they've walked into the wrong building?

Epicurus on Happiness (and Shopping)

Did you enjoy your retail therapy, America?  Did it make you happy?  I would guess not in the long run.  Gift-giving and charity are supposed to bring joy, but sadly Black Friday is becoming increasingly about getting a great-priced HDTV for one's self.

Almost five years ago, Christmas 2006, I was home and bummed having ended a long-term relationship.  Flipping channels, I came across Alain de Botton's Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness on PBS World, right at the beginning of Socrates' episode.  It was a heaven-send, and greatly consoled me through the pain I was feeling and brought be comfort.  It was so good, that I stuck around for the next episode in the series, featuring Epicurus and his perspcription for happiness.  It was a different subject-matter, though similarly helpful:

The issue is this: we want, for example, friendship, which everyone agrees brings happiness.  Knowing this, advertisers display a group of friends laughing in camaraderie around a television.  The implied subtext is that if we had that TV, we could have parties, and the socialization and good cheer that comes with them.  So, we buy the television as a means to an end: friendship.  Epicurus reminds us that if we want friendship, the television isn't necessary.  Moreover, if the TV was ever necessary for those others to be spending time with us, then as our mothers would agree, they were never really our friends.

So, most of our problems are due to that we're confused on how to attain happiness.  Friends are free, or they should be.  I found Epicurus's philosophy encouragingly optimistic and accessible.  Part 3 of Epicureanism's simple Four-Part Guide for Happiness states:

What is good is easy to get...

Also from the video, I found it interesting that a wealthy devotee of Epicurus had plastered a local market with reminders of such teachings.  What if everywhere in our local malls were posted: "Go ahead and buy, but it won't make you happy".


------------------------------
Incidentally, the documentaries are based on de Botton's excellent book, The Consolations of Philosophy, which I borrowed from Norwalk's public library the very next business day.  Stumbling across that documentary was an awakening and I count it as a turning-point in my life.

The Time Costs of My Thanksgiving Television

About five years ago I gave up cable TV and never looked back.  I've saved hours on my life, countless brain cells, and upwards of $50 each month, so let's say between $2,000 and $3,000 - oh Jesus - and counting.  Between Hulu.com, ordering entire seasons through Netflix, and the TVs at the gym I still manage to get a satisfying programming fix.  About ten TVs play simultaneously at the gym, and I'm always revlived to confirm that there really is nothing on aside from Law & Order episodes and a seemingly daily marathon of Kim Kardashian's wedding, which even her divorce isn't stopping.

My mother still subscribes to cable, and when I visit during holidays it's a chance to catch up on what I've been missing (for some reason when we watch together the intersection on what everyone can tolerate is HGTV renovation shows).  Fortunately, during the holidays there are always lots of good movies.  Since Wednesday I've watched four classics: Gone with the Wind, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Godfather last night.  Although The Godfather is really really good I found I increasingly dreaded the coming commercial breaks.  This was especially due to these very bad Walmart commercials that kept playing.  Often during the same commercial cycle Walmart took out multiple Black Friday ads.  The more I watched the more annoying they became.  I covered my ears to avoid the torture.  I felt I was being brainwashed.

I don't usually watch so much TV, and I wanted to figure out how much of my life I was giving up to commercials to watch these movies.  The metrics are easy.  Take a typical sitcom, slotted 8-8:30 (30 minutes) which is well-know to only be about 22 minutes of programming.  Nothing is for free, and so even analog users "pay" to watch the shows by sitting through 8 minutes of commercials (cable users pay twice, via commercials and cable bills).  In a sense, each minute of commercials "buys" 1.4 minutes of sitcom programming for the viewer.

I calculated the minutes of movie purchased by each commercial minute for the four movies I'd watched.  The slotted times were easy to remember or look-up from yesterday's TV listings.  In terms how that time divides into movies and commercials, I discovered that when you enter [movie name] running time into the Google search bar you are given an estimate of the film's running time, pulled from wikipedia.org, amazon.com, fairly reliable sources.  Of course there could be further editing for TV, but I ignore that for now.

The results are below.  The abbreviation "mb" stands for number of "minutes bought" of the movie by each minute of commercial.

• Gone with the Wind: Slotted for 300 minutes, Run Time 222 minutes - 2.8mb
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: Slotted for 95 minutes, Run Time 83 minutes - 6.9mb
• Miracle on 34th Street: Slotted for 120 minutes, Run Time 96 minutes - 4.0mb
• The Godfather: Slotted for 240, Run Time 175 - 2.7mb

Longer movies are clearly much more time expensive - The Godfather was 2.5x more so than Snow White.  Each minute of commercial break during Snow White bought almost seven minutes of movie.  My interpretation is that longer movies allow the advertisers to fit more commercials in.  There's no volume discount here.  On the other hand, a minute of 30-minute sitcom commercials only buys 1.4 minutes of programming, the most expensive of all.  A more complete analysis would account for more characteristics - all else equal, programming with more desirability (perhaps prime-time sitcoms vs. cable movie reruns) should be more time expensive.  There is also already an existing price mechanism in how much advertisers pay for the privilege of airing commercials - it would be interesting to see in what cases that cost is shirted to viewers or borne by advertisers.

Lastly, the quality of commercials was not accounted for here, but makes a big difference, too.  The Walmart Black Friday commercials last night were particularly tedious, and unfortunately more frequent.

Holiday Overlap

When Santa Claus arrives at Herald Square later this morning in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, it represents the utmost visual concurrence of two holidays.  It is simultaneously both Thanksgiving and Christmas in the most natural sense of the intersection.

In the holiday season we rapidly progress from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's, without well-defined delimiters.  Cashier isle magazines have already been changed to their Thanksgiving issues before Halloween even arrives.  Fortunately Halloween and Thanksgiving both contain elements of harvest festivals and so the blend is natural.  I view pumpkin pie has having the greatest cross-over appeal.  It is a kind of final stage of the pumpkin cycle - evil Jack O'Lanterns redeemed into sweet dessert.

Much has already been said of Christmas creep.  I think it nothing to hear Christmas music in the malls mid-November.  But now Christmas has increasingly cannibalized November, so that preparations for decorations in stores have begun before I've even put my pumpkin out.

I endeavored to identify items with a foot in both Halloween and Christmas.  I thus present, to the best of my knowledge, the overlap of Halloween and Christmas:

• Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas"
• B-Horror film "Jack Frost"
• The Ghost of Christmas Future
• Sexy Santa, Ms. Claus, or Elves costumes
• The song "Linus and Lucy", featured in both the Halloween and Christmas Charlie Brown specials
• Late October in many stores

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Phaedrus' Pharwell

And on the final day of the Olympics, I leave you with another Greek's farewell blessing...from Plato's Phaedrus...



Socrates: "Dear Pan and all you gods of this place, grant me that I may become beautiful within; and that what is in my possession outside me may be in friendly accord with what is inside. And may I count the wise man as rich; and may my pile of gold be of a size which only a man of moderate desires could bear or carry.



Do we still need anything else, Phaedrus? For me that prayer is enough."



Phaedrus: "Make the prayer for me too; for what friends have they share."



Socrates: "Let's go."

Born on Third, Thinking They Hit a Triple - And Those Born Outside the Ballpark

I’ve realized I’ve been flaunting a lot recently with the theme of unrealized potential. I’d like to do a little more with that today. A couple weeks ago, Matt Bai wrote the article “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” for The New York Times Magazine, with the section:

Elijah Cummings, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an early Obama supporter, told me a story about watching his father, a South Carolina sharecropper with a fourth-grade education, weep uncontrollably when Cummings was sworn in as a representative in 1996. Afterward, Cummings asked his dad if he ad been crying tears of joy. “Oh, you know, I’m happy,” his father replied. “But now I realize, had I been given the opportunity, what I could have been. And I’m about to die.” In any community shadowed by oppression, pride and bitterness can be hard to untangle.

Cummings’ father was referring to a deliberate and intentional oppression. What about circumstances where people are never allowed to develop to their potential simply given the conditions of the environment which they were raised into? Many of the great thinkers were born into wealthy families – the common interpretation was that the capacity for higher through was exclusively hereditary, ignoring the obvious (and in my view probable) alternative that wealth set-up an individual for further greatness in the event a genius emerged.

Maybe in an isolated tribe in the bush, there exists a human with – or at least the potential for – incredible genius, with the ability to make breakthroughs that might ameliorate the conditions of mankind. Yet that genius remains untapped, simply because of the circumstance this person was born into, isolated and never connected to the rest of society. Instead of curing cancer, reforming government justly, or solving the energy crisis, they spend their days flinting tools from stones.

During the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, as the Palestine delegation entered the stadium, the commentators identified one athlete as a swimming and commented that the there isn’t a single Olympic-sized pool in all of the terretories. Imagine a country without swimming pools – maybe there’s a natural-swimmer there greater than Phelps that never had a chance to discover what he might have been.

It's True, It's True!

Henry Cejudo, the 21 year-old U.S. wrestler who grabbed gold in Beijing was the hero of his event, but 12 years ago in Atlanta, Kurt Angle won gold and later made the transition to the WWF, lecturing crowd of the philosophy of his 3 i's: Intensity, Integrity and Intelligence. You could see the technical finesse in the simplest of his moves. But moreover, he was undoubtedly the funniest wrestler. He would make fun of the local sports teams, especially when there was a scandal in the news: "unlike Darryl Strawberry, the only thing I'm addicted to is gold" or telling the Boston crowd if only they followed his three I's, they might actually be able to win a World Series. More broadly he would parade around ridiculing the stereotypes of wherever his visited (such as threatening calling INS to the crowd in San Diego):

• And just like so many other cities in this great nation, Greensboro, North Carolina doesn't' have the most intelligent people in the world and nor will they ever.But, just like the old song goes: two out of three ain't bad, so if you stick with the intensity and the Integrity, you'll do just fine.
• Virginia is for lovers, provided those lovers are not from the same family
• (In D.C.) Like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. The Big Show is a big waste of talent. And Like Abraham Lincoln, I'm honest almost to a fault. If the Big Show had my 3 I's, then maybe he wouldn't be such a big disappointment and like Marion Barry, actually I'm nothing like Marion Barry and shame on you for reelecting that guy.
  I'm the European Champion. But I realize down here in Texas, not a lot of people know where Europe is. But hey, hold on a second, its not your fault. Actually its your educational system here in Austin Texas. It is. But once I win that belt, not only do I promise to entertain, but I promise to educate you as well."
• I used to think the only good things to come out of Canada were maple syrup and Michael J. Fox, but I was wrong.

He often mocked his fellow wrestlers: "Down here, I see a 7 foot tall 340 pound bag of muscle who hides behind a mask and doesn't speak a word and why, because he lacks integrity and he obviously lacks intelligence. Sure he has intensity. There's no doubt about that, but that can only take you so far, Kane."..."Maybe if you spent a little less time crying over spilt milk, and a little more time drinking it like me, you'd finally be a winner"..."I just want to say to everyone that, even though I suplexed an eighty-two-year-old pregnant woman, I am still a role model for children, not to mention elderly people as well." His very best commentary very knowingly poked fun at the ridiculousness of the WWF:

• (On Scotty 2 Hotty's "worm") If your Olympic Hero were to use the Worm in the 1996 Olympic Games, it would be so embarrassing to all the other athletes - and our country, mind you - that the USA would have finished behind Guam.
• ...not to mention our former tag team champions lost their titles after my good friend Christian was hit in the genitals with a hockey stick by a midget! I mean enough is enough."
• (To "Justin Credible") You know... when one speaks your name very fast, it just sounds like just incredible
• (To "The Undertaker") Undertaker, if that is your real name..."

Life needs more Kurt Angles'...

In Scott's bedroom is a Polaroid picture of my brother (he was probably about 11 or 12 at the time), Angel's huge arm is around him. We were both fans and I - a freshman in college at the time - told him about a visit Angle was making to Trumbull mall, so Scott went, excited to meet his hero. Angle came to him when his back was turned, and the picture was taken just after Scott turned around. He looks so happy in the picture. When times were rough for him, and especially the night he died, I always wonder if he looked at the picture. I also think of the picture - the younger, happier version of himself - looking out into the room at him, silent witness to whatever misery might be going on.

But thank you for taking the picture with him, Kurt Angle. It meant - it means - a lot to me.

Supermom

The Today Show ran a segment this morning about Olympic moms. I can picture the scene in the stadium. It's before the match; as mom spit-mousses her son's cowlick down, she catches sight of her rival, thinks of their many brutal encounters. Her expression cools and eyes narrow: "Run along and play, Billy....Mommy's gotta go to work..."

Bronze Badge of Courage

Walter Dix won a bronze medal in the 200m track and field; he originally placed fifth but a double disqualification - two runners stepped on the lane lines - moved him up to third place.

When he heard the news, his response was something akin to: "but I still lost..."

It's actually a horrible way to win a medal: someone else's screw-up. Deep down he could believe he only won on a technicality - two other runners were really faster than him, and even if any advantage from stepping on the line was accounted for, they still would have had faster times. I wonder if silver medalists promoted to gold after a doping scandal wonder if, even with the drugs, the disgraced athlete really was better. Even if they cheated, perhaps if they didn't cheat, the outcome would have been the same - to receipt of the gold medal is a lie: the cheat should have it. The holder doesn't deserve it. I wonder if these thoughts stir in the promoted-gold-medalist's mind late at night.

The first wrestling medal I ever won was 3rd place...out of three in the weight class. It was the worst feeling - like getting an award for sucking.

It's a funny story now, but I pretended to be sleeping the whole bus ride home. I hid that medal in my drawer: I always hoped my first medal would be a source of pride. I wonder if medals won by others' disqualifications are displayed or hidden?

Biased Sample

On the MARTA there's a commercial that regularly runs displaying a "typical" time at Harrah's Casino. Wow! I should really go...the gentlemen win every bet they make and moreover find no shortage of beautiful women casting seductive glances their way.

China similarly is casting a polished - and from what I've heard, deceitful - image of the country to coincide with the games. Like the China pavilion at Epcot. Weren't people calling these the genocide Olympics? Did impressive opening ceremony choreography just displace the uncomfortable realities in our minds?

Never Say It's Over: Forever's a Long Time

Here I am, at 27, starting school in the fall. 10 years ago I certainly never thought I'd be here now. How many summers did I say it was my last summer working at Stew Leonard's, only to return the next fall? I was back at cashier after earning my master's degree. How many times did I think I'd never talk to a certain person again, even ten years ago, not predicting Facebook and all the ways to reconnect again. I've learned to never say never, because the rest of my life is a long time, and a lot can chance that I would never imagine.

A shout-out to Oksana Chusovitina, 33, the gymnast I previously mentioned who took home the silver last night on vault in gymnastics. I'm sure there was one day when she thought she'd never do gymnastics again, and here she is, the second-best in the world (and personally I thought she should have gotten gold - the first place winner had bad landings...).

Sunday Secrets

One of my favorite things to do each Sunday is read the secrets at PostSecret. I finally thought of a secret to send in (i.e., I realized something about myself that I want to be a secret)...when I have some time I'll do some arts n' crafts and make a postcard...stay tuned - I won't say which one it is but I'll post if it's accepted...

One week left of the Olympics, and this blog's postings, though it, like the Olympics, will return...

Lightning Bolt

Usain Bolt is fastest man alive, after yesterday running the 100m in 9.69 seconds.

The guy’s name is Bolt – he was always destined to be fast, with a cartoonish inevitability, like Captain Hook ending up with a hook or Remus Lupin becoming a werewolf.

It brings to mind the very self-aware Spiderman II’s great line (via J. Jonah Jameson) which I love: "Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds?"

Swimming for a Cause

On the Today Show this morning the conversation was not about Michael Phelps: The Swimmer but Michael Phelps: The Millionaire. The claim is that with the money he is/will make he will never have to work again. Well, MC Hammer and Mike Tyson probably thought at one point the money would last forever – though Phelps isn’t living such extravagant standards. No pet tigers.

I’m so fiscally responsible that if I won the lottery I’d never run out of money and so would never need to work again…but I’d want to. It’s the boredom, you see.

They talked of Phelps starting a foundation as those with too much money often do. One person interviewed said he will probably want to spread the gospel of swimming: promote a sport that has done so much for him. “The Michael Phelps Center for Kids Who Can’t Swim Good…Yet”. Poetic irony would be a protégé of Phelps breaking his record one day – Phelps knowing the record would still be standing if he never while the former PhelpsPhan stares him down with a defiant rebelliousness: “now the student has become the teacher… “ What I do agree with is their claim that Phelps is probably inspiring a new generation of swimmers.

At least in the short-term.

I’ve certainly been planning to cross-train in the pool, and watching his races makes me think what good exercise it would be; it’s pushing me to get in there quicker. But I’m easily malleable like that. Watching gymnastics in the 1990s, I would run around my house doing summersaults. Yet, when I feel that cold water my interest in swimming will experience shrinkage – and the youngins’ watching the games now have Wii, so how long will it last? I thought I might want to go into politics after staying home sick one day watching the movie “Dave” on TV. It took a year of Advanced Placement Comparative Politics and half-semester of undergraduate political science to make me realize what a dry boring topic it was, just invented for phonies to fill their egos. But I digress. If Phelps inspires many, and only a few stick with swimming, then at least some will have found a calling, and that’s a beneficial multiplier effect we cannot deny.

The Dream Team

It's August 14th, 6 months since Valentine's Day...and six months 'til Valentine's Day!

For those of you playing the field, I offer 20 Beauties of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I'd give them all a gold...oh yeah!!!

What's My Age Again?

Sometimes people lie about their age to make themselves older. 16 year-olds lie to get into R-rated movies. 17 year-olds lie about their age to buy cigarettes, 20 year-olds lie about their age to buy liquor, and 13 year-olds say they’re ten years older when they dial phone sex lines. Many of the living world war veterans are only still alive because they lied about their age to go war in the first place. Half of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team is lying about their age to be eligible to compete (I wonder if down the line there will be a Marion Jones-type exposé where the team is stripped of their gold medals when evidence emerges a number of them were too young – youth is the new steroids).

Sometimes people lie about their age to make themselves younger. Usually this is people who don’t want anyone to know how old they are. This doesn’t make much sense to me, because it should all be about appearance – is anyone ever surprised when a morbidly obese person admits they’re 400 lbs? They weren’t hiding any secret by not giving the weight away. You look how you look, and will disclosing one’s age suddenly make others notice wrinkles they wouldn’t have already seen? Perhaps there’s a biasing effect; maybe getting numerical clue does focus one’s observations.

At what age range are you honest? Maybe you’re never always honest, because age is very relative, and you might want to nudge the number as certain way as company changes. Personally, at 27, I feel very old and out-of-touch around teenagers yet young and naïve around middle-aged people.

Brown and Rotten Banana, Watching the Olympics

Suddenly I feel old watching the Olympics, because most of the competitors are younger than I am. In 1996 I was younger than everybody. In 2000 and 2004 everyone was about my age, but now in 2008 mostly all athletes are younger than me. My heart is heavy thinking how that boat has sailed.

But maybe there is hope for me. As I mentioned, Dara Torres is setting world records at 41 and over the weekend I saw Soviet-born German gymnast Oksana Chusovitina at 33 competing in a sport dominated by 16 year-olds (and would be dominated by even younger girls without recent restrictions imposing 16 as the minimum age for competition). There’s an article about older Olympians in today’s New York Times: “Age Is Little Match for Money, Science and Effort”. The article cites scientists who argue there’s no scientific basis for athletic peaks having to be in the early 20’s; that mundane time constraints such as employment preventing training requisite to be an Olympian limited potential much more than age-related physical deterioration.

I’m aware that I’m evaluating my Olympic potential based on my age rather than my lack of athletic ability. I think the reason for this is that deep down I don’t really care about being in the Olympics; instead, I’m haunted by the feeling that I missed out on many simple aspects of childhood, adolescence, and teenage years. I’m unable to let go of that loss and seeing 19 year-old gold medalists reminds me of my own unhappiness at 19. Sometimes I worry I will sabotage my own children’s emotions, because else the happier they are the more miserable I will be.

I never really cared about sports, but it’s the social connections I felt I never had that naturally seem to accompany athletic aptitude that I think is at the heart of the matter. Because of risks I never took, all I see are the opportunities I missed and I wonder about what might have been if things were different. Although most of the time I’m cripplingly under-confident, there are other times I think could have had, or might have had, much more to ever offer than I got the chance.

I found my muse yesterday, and if I were to write a poem, the metaphor I would use for myself is fruit that went bad on the grocery stand; something ruined and wasted that never had a chance to be tested (or tasted). A banana or mango that was never picked up or overlooked which would have been fresh produce but instead turned to brown rot and was thrown out by grocery clerks, or what would have been mouth-watering baked bread that ran its expiration date out sitting on the shelf.

National Heros

I think the there's disease of irrational nationalism; countries designate granfalloons only...

- But - I have to admit, I felt the pride swell last night when our boys in Beijing laid the smackdown on a trash-talking Frenchman

Jason Lezak took Alain Bernard to school...

USA!!! USA!!!

An update (in case you missed me)

I’m back, by the way. Let me update you on the priorities (God, country, family, school, and wrestling):

I found a church close enough to me to attend on Sundays: Our Lady of Lourdes. I had known about it but didn’t think I was welcome (I’m sorta shy and create nonexistent obstacles for myself) because it is an African-American Catholic church – whatever that means – which precludes me. It turns out that I certainly am welcome (it’s the most welcoming parish I’ve ever been to) and if it’s African-American that’s in name only; the priest and probably over 50% of the congregation are white.

Barack Obama is the presumptive democratic candidate for president. Whoever was nominated was probably always going to win, solely by virtue of being a democrat. I like him better than John McCain – so I’ll vote for him – but I like him less than I did in November. I got really jaded and disillusioned during his campaign against Hillary Clinton and continue to become even more apathetic during his adjustments to intended policy in the campaign against McCain. Unfortunately, I am voting for him now more as an alternative than as an ideal. I think he’ll be good for the country, but I’m a little cautious and wary. As I should be – he’s a politician.

My grandmother and (mom’s brother) Uncle Jim have died. My grandmother died just at the end of December, fittingly ending the crappiest year ever. Uncle Jim died unexpectedly of a stroke in April. When my mother was in Maryland for the funeral, my brother stole thousands and thousands from her, then tried to take out a car – a Lexus(!) – in my name. Police were called and he’s fighting a felony, and I still don’t know where that money was used for. Mom is being a mom and wavering on her anger towards her, and he’s mooching off her concern. I won’t trust him again until I learn exactly what was going on; he says it won’t happen again and that I should believe him – that request insults my intelligence.

I found a dissertation topic. It involves health economics, which I randomly fell into and now must learn; but it does also involve urban. If the poor are spatially mismatched from jobs, are they similarly mismatched from consumption opportunities? And what’s the most common consumption trip?...probably grocery shopping. Access to healthy foods as a problem is understood in the public health literature but not examined in economics. I’m also examining broader sprawl-obesity links: my hypothesis is that sprawl increases requisite travel time, reducing leisure time available for exercising or eating healthily.

My one disappointment (and only failed New Year’s Resolution) is that I didn’t sign up for the July 4th 10K. But…it’s never too late. Dara Torres is setting world records when she’s 41, and I won’t be too old at 28 to run for under an hour…

The plan is to keep the posting up for the duration of the Olympics. First post was opening ceremonies, last will be – yes – closing ceremonies.

Enjoy me until the 24th…

Mausolevm Dentvm

I didn’t make it through the Parade of Nations during last night’s (Olympic) Opening Ceremonies. The dances and fireworks prior to the procession were very cool, but once you’ve seen half the countries you’ve seen the other half. I (correctly) guessed I’d see the torch lighting eight times before I left the apartment this morning, so there was no need to stay up.

Early to bed, early to rise, and being up early enough allowed me the wonders of local news. I’m sure I could find more hick-ish even further out, but prior to the 8 o’clock hour I chanced upon a crusty lady detailing her local shopping experiences with show and tell. She began expounding the cuteness of a baby tooth holder – let me go over this, I’m talking about a baby bone holder! What the body naturally sheds to be worshipped like some relics of a saint?

I think it’s disgusting. Though, I hear parents get excited over their infant’s poop.

But baby teeth bring up unresolved emotional issues for me; I never lost all my teeth – naturally. I was 13 and had only lost the upper-two on top – I had to get four pulled in one session to get braces. If I didn’t look like a beaver with two big front teeth and all baby teeth on top before, I certainly looked like a freakish beaver afterwards with two big front teeth and nothing else. I remember sitting in the cafeteria that next day, probably alone (middle-schoolers are not kind to those with physical “defects”), gumming my pizza.

My real point is that I really got screwed* by the Tooth Fairy. How often friends would shove dollars into my face, bragging about their earnings. Just a dollar is a lot when you’re 10. Comfort that my babies would one day fall out sustained me through those episodes. Instead, I ultimately lost only those few naturally – plus you have to consider the natural losses that I swallowed. Did I look to see if the teeth had come out? {well, I won’t tell…}


*Instead of “screwed” I wanted to say “gypped”, but then reflected on how that would be insensitive to gypsies.

One World, One Dream

Today – and currently taking place – are opening ceremonies of the 29th Olympiad. For reflection, I offer a cynical Greek’s perspective on athletes’ societal worthiness – from the opening of Isocrates’ Panegyricus:

Many times I have wondered at those who first convokes the national assemblies and established the athletic games, amazed that they should have thought the prowess of human bodies to be deserving of so great bounties, while those who had toiled in private for the public good and trained their own minds so as to be able to help also their fellow humans when the apportioned no reward whatsoever, when, in all reason, they ought rather to have made provision for the latter; for if all the athletes should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap the benefit who are willing to share his insight. Yet I have no on this account lost heart nor chosen to abate my labors; on the contrary, believing that I shall have a sufficient reward in the approbation which my discourse will itself command, I have come before you to give my counsels…

Under a Star

The stars are beautiful in Norwalk. Although an urban area, there must not be as much light pollution (there are more trees here; maybe they block the light?) because the stars are noticeably more visible. OK: they would be of course better in the rural country, but just being able to see them is sufficient. In the city, I'm only able to see a gray mass in the sky, and so going home and actually being able to identify Orion and the Pleiades of Taurus is treat enough for me.

Friday night, in the hot tub, I saw a quick streak of light moving quicker than an airplane. It lasted about five seconds, then stopped. I want to believe it was a shooting star - the first I ever saw. It's plausible - it was moving much quicker and not blinking, unlike the other air traffic in the area. It also disappeared, perhaps as a meteor would, burning in the atmosphere, but perhaps it traveled behind an unseen cloud. To find out it was only a plane would be be depressing - I've never seen a shooting star and want this to be authentic! But because I can't check flightpath, I'll never know (the idea crossed my mind!). So there will always be lingering doubt. It's very religious, in a sense...I'll never know if "it" was true, I certainly want it to be, and hope it is.

Incidentally, I did make a wish, but I can't tell you what it is or it won't come true...


I'll be ending the blog for at least three weeks; school requires my fullest attention. It's been fulfilling to record additional thoughts, stories, and moments. Perhaps I'll continue over winter break.

The Return to Atlanta

Atlanta airport's intra-course hallway features a collection of African art. I was walked through the exhbit this afternoon on my return from Norwalk rather than the tram because (1) I like the walk and (2) I need to work off that pie I've been shoveling the last two days.

As I rode past on the Jetsons-style moving sidewalks, I watched an elderly lady viewing a piece of art while her grandson (I'm assuming) played in back of the sculpture The art itself: some Zimbabwean had carved a marble man complete with marble buttocks in the back where the little boy way playing. While the grandmother was admiring the sculpture from the front, the little boy was in the back fingering the marble man's marble buttcrack, poking at his marble butthole!

That's some pretty fucked up shit. I looked around expecting shocks of horrors or at least disapproving frowns, ideally from a group of nuns. However, the hall was empty - no one saw but me. That's how these things always go.

Sadly, my butt-themed afternoon didn't end there. Upon my return to the house, I found 20% remainder of dried poop on my floor, evidently someone did a halfhearted job of cleaning up. I really hope it was dog-poop but my landlord's sloppy Irish relatives are visiting, so who knows.

More sadly, after I cleaned up the dog poop, I changed into my older sneakers, and instantly felt a cool wet sensation as I put them on my feet. Yes, the dog/drunk relative had also peed in my closet, over my sneakers and bag of dirty laundry. So: Laundry time! I don't know if it's OK to put sneakers in the laundry machine, but I did it anyway.

A Many and Varied Family Tree

Our ancestors number like the stars in the sky, and the grains of sand on the beach...

We have two parents, four grandparents, either great-grandparents, etc. Continue backwards twenty generations and the level is*1 million* people across (Actually, 1,048,576). This is a mathematical fact, 2^20. Assuming each generation is thirty years, this coexistence of T.J.-generators occurred circa 1400 A.D.

I informed a girl friend a small region of medieval Europe existed solely to create her and that it was a lovelier product than any renaissance art. I give you permission to use that one if you want.

I envision this city of 1 million strong, going about, weaving cotton, escaping Black Death, coming together to produce me as some sort of civic project. It really does shrink the world.

Even more mind-blowing: On an educational adventure to The Fernbank Science Museum a month ago, I learned that mammals evolved from reptiles (specifically, "synapsids"). Creationists have enough problems with "Jesus was not a monkey"....but a lizard? It would make their head explode.

I find it fully plausible that humans evolved from an apelike ancestor, but I've always stopped there in my mind. I realized reading that diorama caption that I've never mentally gone further down the evolutionary history trail. We've been shown illustrations of tiny rodents scurrying around in the shadow of dinosaurs, but in childrens' books this is treated as if they sprung from the dirt. It makes sense we'd come from reptiles...what else is there?

The worst movie ever, Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, had it right. Humans evolved from dinosaurs.

Giving Thanks, 2007

This past year, 2007, was likely the worst year of my life, and today I'm asked to give pause and thanks for all that I have received, to recognize how blessed I am. It's like: Thank you sir, may I have another?

Yet I think about the first Thanksgiving, where the Pilgrim fathers were literally thankful just to have survived! Just living another year was cause for celebration.

I am surrounded by everyday conveniences the pilgrims would have considered miracles: grocery stores, central heat, and modern medicine. What was November 22nd, 1657 like for Norwalk's residents? They weren't watching the Macy'd Thanksgiving Day parade, shuffling to the Norwalk High-McMahon football game, or planning tomorrow's shopping spree. They were likely out in the cold, starving and hoping to come across a wild turkey just to be able to eat - nothing was promised to them that evening. Goodman Bettswood was likely stalking game on the very spot I'll sit down to eat my fattened bird, or which disposing of leftovers will be a problem (ha! That's our problem!...leftovers!). I'm not sure if my Bettswood image is accurate, but in my fantasy his hat has a buckle on it. "Pilgrim style".

Perhaps I'm naive for expecting a world where eighteen year-old brothers don't die, girlfriends don't dump you for matters superficial, money never creates a worry, and graduate school studies never get off-track. As bad as this year has been, it has certainty jerked me to reexamine my priorities. And that, perhaps more than anything, is what I should be thankful for. I'm twenty-six now, and the sooner the better I realize what is really important.

Bank Irony

I received a notification from Citibank this afternoon via the United States Postal Service altering me that my paper-less bank statement is available for viewing online.

Let me say that again: I got a letter, a snailmail letter, telling me that I could view my paper-less statement online...the service I requested to cut down on paper!

They might as well have just sent me the fuckin' statement...

My head hurts...

Breaking Rule 1: (Talking about "Fight Club")

Freshman year of college, my homosexual, sandal-and-sock-wearing English course classmate suggested I see Fight Club for an interesting discussion in modern male gender identity. It took eight years, but this morning I finally caught up to the movie.

It started out pretty rockin'. The last half of it was of this weird cult involvement, but I still have it four stars on Netflix.

I especially liked the commentary on how formulaic our lives have become. Go to college. Get a job. Get married. Buy Ikea. Drink Starbucks. None of this has anything to do with hunter gatherer instincts, as the movie points out. Fighting for the disconnected men was a way to reclaim something primal and basic.

Starting a fight club is only one solution; there are others. Much better would be Thoreau's suggestion to simplify our lives. If we no longer believe the advertiser's claim that we need "X", we won't need to work the extra hour required to generate additional wages sufficient to buy "X", and then we have reclaimed that hour's labor time in leisure. With that hour, then, Thoreau would suggest a walk in the woods, but there are other possibilities. Social interaction would be mine (and Epicurius's).

Maybe I was a bit drawn in, though. watching the fighting made me want to knock heads a bit. But my ideal was the safety of a wrestling mat. The movie ultimately made me realize I was a wimp. I'd pull every punch, afraid I'd break my hand. I'd quit as soon as my nose was broken. Could I pull out a tooth and then shrug it off?

I feel like such a momma's boy. But it's the timing: I'm home for holidays and I'm getting a babied-treatment I never had even when I lived here. It's not that I'm feminized: or am I rationalizing?

Pareto's (Term Paper) Principle

Vilfredo Pareto observed that eighty percent of Italy's wealth was owned by twenty percent of the population. Various 80-20 regularities became umbrellaed under what is known as the Pareto Principle. Stew Leonard, Sr. applied business policy: when eighty percent of profits originates from twenty percent of your items, you should only sell those items. Tangentially, let me add that Pareto was a fascist and Stew Leonard was crooked tax cheat.

I can bang out the bulk of a term paper in one day, then I always spend a month tweaking it. This might supersede the Pareto Principle; I think it might actually be closer to a 90-10 ratio (90% of the time on the last 10% of the paper). As I rearrange paragraphs, and move a third page section to page five, suddenly page four doesn't make sense anymore. And so more rearranging is required as the composition dominios into non-chronological nonsense.

Returns are diminishing. I'm at the point of spending an entire afternoon to only accomplish a two paragraphs rewrite . But it has to be done; it's just a slow process to chisel raw conscious thought of the first day's effort into something can can be passed as a graduate school term paper.

Or it could be a matter of work filling time allotted. I should just put the paper down and print it out. Most likely the professor won't marvel at the beauty of my prose, just skim it and give me a B. But I wonder if one day I'll be forced to resurrect the paper, and I won't want to be embarrassed when someone else reads it more carefully - I alone have to answer for what I write.

Yet, there's always time to revise down the road; certainly I'll become a more mature, experienced writer. And so, as I think about getting my papers out to work over the Thanksgiving holiday, I'll be reluctant to give eighty percent of my vacation to something which is ultimately below twenty percent of my life's importance.

Blogging: A Fall First

...And I'm back, by the way. I promised I would be. Let's say yesterday through next Saturday. Unless time is Norwalk strips motivations so much that I don't bother to turn on the computer.

But enough of that, let me catch you up: when I left you it was 75 in Atlanta, tomorrow it will be 72. Not much has changed.

I had visions of having the dissertation drafted by now; I'm still working on ideas. Other professors are always floored to hear I don't have an advisor yet, who they say would help me develop an idea. The problem is I don't have an idea to approach them with - I wouldn't want to go into their office and just sort of stare at them. It's this tricky catch-22 that they haven't thought through: no professor, no idea; no idea, no professor.

I haven't been mugged yet in my neighborhood. But I'm walking home a new way to aid that.

UConn football is a Top 25 team this year; was a Bottom 25 most previous years. Eric is probably kicking himself for leaving.

A Family Visit and a City Explored

I love my Uncle Jim and Aunt Ann. They came down to visit today on the way to visit Jennifer in Florida. With them today a did bunch of things I might otherwise never would have:

1. Did the CNN Studio Tour - Total rip-off. It was the weekend and no live news was taking place. But at least I can now say I did it.
2. Max Lager's American Grill & Brewery - I'm 26 years old and tonight is the first night I sat down at a bar. I felt so adult to "sit at the bar". They had Budweisers; I had a Coke.
3. Ray's in the City seafood - The Parmesan-crusted scallops are excellent if you ever visit. The dinner was absolutely delicious. Uncle Jim confused mouthwash in the bathroom with hand soap and provided a continually humorous story for the course of the evening (and a minty-fresh smell). In his defense, why the hell was there mouthwash in the bathroom?
4. Hilton Lounge - Provided beautiful views of the city. I asked for a hot chocolate. The waitress asked how old I was. I asked what type of hot chocolate she was serving me (actually, I needed to be 18 to enter the lounge). We talked about their taking me on my first and only casino trip, trips to Riverside (now Six Flags New England), mentioned memories with Scott (although this made me depressed at the loss, rather than joy in recalling a fond memory). Ultimately, it made me understand how important family is to me, how lucky I am to have people in my life so supportive and nonjudgmental (yes, we talked about Becca earlier that afternoon). A lovely end to an amazing day.

It was truly a treat. I strangely feel guilt at having relatives who love me so selflessly. I don't deserve it; I've been so blessed. Thanks, guys.
-Your Nephew.