A modern evil

Namely, caffeine. Last week, I undertook an experiment. It seemed to me that caffeine was becoming more of a habit (usually in the form of soda or tea) but that it was having an overall negative effect on me. You all know what I'm talking about. I get my fix, feel great for a while, then round about 11am I start feeling like my head is full of silly putty. So I take another hit, feel fine for a couple hours, and then spend my afternoon trying to pretend that I understand the words coming out of other peoples' mouths. The alternative was just to up the ante, but I'm worried about this:



The results are in, and I highly recommend it. Seriously, my life it better without that shit. Now I only drink caffeine after 6 pm (still a useful keep-me-up for the evening, and somehow I don't get the brain-death like I do during the day). Also useful as a laxative, of course.

Enough said

I haven't used this blog much to promote any agendas, but this just struck me too much. Ken Starr is an asshole and these people are so real. The whole issue of marriage rights is often in such abstract terms, but in the end the tide turns on things like this. These are real people with real families. Enough said.

Courage Campaign

Revelation of the day

Pickles + goat cheese = crazy delicious

Believe it.

Babies are crazy

This be some crazy shit. If found myself drawn into this saga thoroughly. Good mental health break.

Introductions

A chain Facebook note has put unbearable pressure on me to post a "28 things you may or may not know about me" list. I'm posting it here instead. Enjoy.

1. I love pickles more than pretty much anything. Specifically Clausen Dill Minis (with or without extra garlic). I hate sweet pickles though.
2. People often object that pickles are not a valid favorite food. If forced, I will tell you that my favorite non-pickle food is spaghetti. Observe:
3. I have been to 41 states. Every state except Connecticut , Vermont, Maine, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Alaska. I would like to visit all of these at some point, except Oklahoma. That state is pointless.
4. I have never been to Europe. This is something I'm pretty embarrassed about.
5. The reason I haven't dealt with this travesty is that I got hooked on snowboarding a few years back. So now my travel money goes to that. I haven't decided yet whether this makes sense.
6. Until recently I had a beta fish. My roommate moved to Australia and left it with me. I named it Reggie but he died last week. This probably had something to do with me being bad at life.
7. Talking about politics is lame and annoying.
8. I'm a complete junkie for politics. Like hours per day disappear to this shit.
9. I am known far and wide as a shitty driver, with good reason. I've never gotten a speeding ticket, but I've had 5 at-fault accidents. When I tell people how much I pay for car insurance, the reply is invariably "Holy shit." Either that or "Sweet baby Jesus."
10. I don't really like the Facebook. Sometimes this makes me feel like an outsider.
11. My mom has always had this weird disdain for salt. I grew up under the impression that is was wildly unhealthy. As a result, I never once put salt on an item of food (unless a recipe called for it) until about a year ago.
12. My very low sodium consumption results in me not retaining any liquid, so I have to pee like 12 seconds after I drink anything, alcoholic or otherwise. Or anyway, that's what I tell people is the cause of my pregnant-woman bladder.
13. I eat out a lot and feel guilty about it all the time.
14. I'm a damn good cook and want to do it more, but I work too much and so I'm lazy. So if you want someone to cook for you, just ask. I will be stoked.
15. When I was 17, I enrolled briefly at the United States Naval Academy. Drinking was not allowed there. After two months, I transferred to the University of Wisconsin. Drinking is all we did there.
16. I work for a software company. No, that does not mean I can fix your computer.
17. I hate wet socks. So. Much.
18. Allow me to elaborate. I keep a spare pair of socks at my office, principally as insurance against the very minor chance that the socks I'm wearing get even slightly wet.
19. I secretly want to have very carefully matched and fashionable outfits. Instead I have like 20 t-shirts that I wear in various mostly-random combinations with two pairs of jeans. This seems to work well.
20. I listen to music approximately 37 hours per day. My tastes are divided pretty evenly between heavy metal, hip-hop, nerd rock, and roots/folk rock (or in rare cases a combination of these). Hip-hop is the big deal right now. Common especially.
21. My favorite band is The Mars Volta. I have three framed concert posters on my wall from this band, and each probably decreases my chances of getting laid at any particular moment by about 30%. You do the math.
22. I have the ability to dislocate my shoulders at will. Do not ask me to do this, because it is intensely painful. Unless you're into that, I guess. I probably won't though unless you have boobs.
23. My favorite part of a woman is her waist. Mmmmmhmmmmm.
24. I have read Ender's Game at least 15 times. I once read it 5 times in a row.
25. On a related note, I recently cried at the end of The Road (by Cormac McCarthy). I really want to read it again (or maybe 15 times), but I keep putting it off because its so upsetting. The book is seriously fucking badass.
26. Returning to nerd-dom, I've read The Wheel of Time fantasy fiction series (grand total of about 5000 pages) 4 times. Then the author died of a weird blood disease without finishing the series. Fuck.
27. I was serious when I mentioned before that I love pickles. I drink pickle juice on a fairly regular basis (especially during or after drinking, it being the only real hangover cure).
28. I used to be a dog person and looked upon cats with mild disdain. Then I was introduced to these little buggers, and I'm completely and totally hooked:

Life improvements

Last week I made a minor purchase, a 7 megapixel digital camera. In high school, I worked at a camera store in Golden Valley. At that time I had a Nikon N60 SLR, which was my most prized possession, but I really aspired to a digital camera. These were not brand new at the time, but they were pretty cutting edge. And by cutting edge, I mean that a 3 megapixel (that's right) Nikon digital SLR cost....wait for it...2 geezles. Yeah. Oh, and they could store like 43 pictures, which was hot.

Well anyway, last week I spent way longer than I needed to at Circuit City. Although I am notoriously terrible at making these sort of consumer-product decisions, this time it was not my fault. As you may know, Circuit City is going out of business (my friend Nick emailed us a link exactly 12 minutes after this article was posted with the subject "Buy shit NOW!!!"). Well in their news release, Circuit City's VIPs blame market conditions and tightening credit terms for their demise, but I have a different explanation. How about that their employees are fucking stupid??? Hm? This camera I was looking at said something about "Smile Capture Technology," which sounded intriguing. So after looking around expectantly for an employee (unsuccessful), I wandered over to the nearest counter, where a 16 year old wearing a red shirt to match his face was busy picking his nose, and asked for help. This kid stared at me blankly for about 7 seconds, nodded vaguely, and walked into the back room. About 17 minutes later, this gangly (but comfortably 20-something) dude comes up and asks how he can help me. Hopeful, I asked him if he could explain this "Smile Capture Technology" to me. My mistake. Grabs the camera, pokes around in the menus for a good minute, and then declared smugly, "Well it's technology that captures smiles." Seriously. No, I'm not kidding. Exact words. I don't know how to portray a long and dumbfounded pause here with any impact. Oh. My. God.

So anyway, this guys was on me like butter on bread for the next 30 minutes while I unnecessarily pondered a more expensive option (an unfortunate side effect of disposable income). I think he was autistic. I did my best to ignore him, and eventually settled with great agony on this fancy little number. The pain was worth it. Cybershot + Picasa = Crazy Delicious. My life is better because of this device. I always want to take pictures, but my SLR is too big to drag around, and denies me immediate gratifications. So now I am more creative (or anyway, I have an outlet for whatever creativity I have), and my bank is only slightly lighter. Upon hearing this tale, the aforementioned Nick made exactly the same purchase. Good choice dude.

I recommend that everyone do the same. You will sleep better and get 99 virgins. True statement.

Whenever and wherever

The world speaks in the most remarkable and surprising ways. I got on a plane this afternoon and started writing about authenticity. I hadn't gotten to it yet (before this thing happened), but what I had in mind was how much I've been stressing, more and more lately, about figuring out what I'm "supposed to do." This sense that life is slipping by and I'm wasting my time. But the insight that I wanted to write about was that this whole mentality is perhaps missing the point precisely. We are letting life slip by precisely when we live "forward," like this, when the future (the not-now) is more important than the now. Even when I am not planning for the future, still I am not in general living now. My time away from work feels so much like placeholders, like "something to do." I think I have been increasingly aware of this phenomenon in recent months, yet I don't know what do otherwise. The moments of living should be the rule rather than the exception, and yet they are unusual. I think back to a hike Kathleen and I took this summer out past Middleton. That was so great, but not because of the particular place or event, but because we were exploring. I look back on this and think, "I wish I could do that sort of this more often."

What I crave (what all of us crave), is creation or exploration (are there other things I'm missing?). I think we get paralyzed because both of these seem so big. I dream of a job where I can do one or the other, as though this is the only format in which such endeavors are satisfying. What I wanted to write about was this insistence that my job is the key to living authentically. That if and only if I can figure out the right direction for my entire life will I be living right, will I live authentically (as opposed to the superficiality in which I generally find myself). Many of us seem caught up in this. Even those I would consider very authentic, like Kathleen, struggle with this desire to integrate living and working, and this frustration when we can't have the whole thing (when the integration is not complete). But maybe that's the wrong approach. I'm going to say provisionally that it is definitely not the right approach. That instead we can just create and explore (or do whatever else is right for you) whenever and wherever we can. Nothing revolutionary here, I suppose, and yet who of us is doing this? No one I know.

So this is what I was thinking about, how to bring these things into my life. How in this new year I want to make my job just a job and do a lot more living in the rest of the space.

Resolution #7 - Create or explore something new every day.

And then I sit down next to this woman on the plane. She's reading a book full of pictures and essays and quotes, all with little "assignment" notes underneath. Like "Assignment 52: Take a flash picture underneath your bed" below a page of dust bunnies, long-lost socks, and annoyed felines. Fascinating stuff, and I'm so enthralled that she catches me looking over her shoulder (yes, I'm a classy guy, I know). Well it turns out she's an artist, and artists sort of have to appreciate voyeurism. So she's very nice about my awkwardness, and insists that I take the book for a while. The book is called Learning to Love You More," and there's a website too. They put up these "assignments" (or others submit them) on their website, and then visitors post their efforts. The book is a collection of these projects.

So I will try to do one of these a day (unless I stumble upon an independent option). I recommend that everyone do the same.