Approaching Crymax

I mentioned the hater on my blog to Taylor tonight and I realized that no one else besides Chris really knew about him either. Take a look at the comments on my fantastic post, "Her Feet Are Infested With Tar Balls" from July 23, 2008. This was a great post right in the middle of my first great blogging age.

I'm not really interested in getting into a big fight with this guy personally, but I will say that I think it's a little hypocritical to be calling me out for acting superior and sophisticated. Anyone who's calling someone out is implicitly saying that they themselves are superior to that person.

I know that it's natural for people to feel superior to their surroundings and people around them, but I also think that it's the right idea to have. I think it's almost a given. It's like a logical necessity for me to think that my thoughts are better than yours. If I was of the opinion that your thoughts were better than mine, I would just agree with yours. But I don't, so I obviously think mine are better. The trick is not being a jerk about it. And not thinking you're infallible I suppose.

I've been doing way too much blogging this winter break. I don't know man, I quit doing this stuff like once a month. I keep coming back to this question of why I do it. One of the frequent answers I come to is that I enjoy entertaining the idea that all of my friends will read my blog and be so impressed with how deep I can be and how great a writer I am and how cool a person I am. So pretty often I get sick of being that person and I retreat to a more private journal. The problem is that about once a month, I remember that I do want people to think I'm cool/deep/a good writer, so I cave into myself and try and put it on display. Unfortunately for my ego, I think I've pretty much rid myself of the delusion of being a good writer. That's not really surprising though because I don't think I'm good at anything. Seriously, it's weird.

I still think I'm about as cool and deep as anyone would ever want me to be though, so I hope I've convinced you.

The Final Countdown

So for all of you who have been lamenting my lack of blogs that don't know already, the last month had been dedicated to a revolutionary blogging project called Salad Days. Salad Days was meant to be a massively collaborative effort among bloggers to create a space that would lend itself to unbridled, contributive dialogue. Essentially it was a forum where bloggers of all kinds could inject their ideas into an environment of conversation. Unfortunately this dream never really took off. I don't know what the problem was, it must have something to do with not creating the environment well enough. The relevant point is though, blogging is back in full force.

I've said this before, but finals week is definitely my favorite part of college. The whole finals week vibe can either be amazing or life threatening, it's all about time management. The key to mastering finals week is planning everything out weeks in advance. Spacing out big projects and setting daily goals. This creates a win win win situation by letting you get all your stuff done and never feeling like you should be doing more work. The reason finals week is so awesome is that as long as everything is planned out, it's all totally predictable, so you never really have to worry about doing anything more than you already know you have to. The result is this overwhelming sense of control, the feeling that you have everything handled, and the week belongs to you. Will to Power.

It's times like these that I really do love living off campus. I'm really just sitting my living room right now with Timm, listening to Bob Dylan and letting the day slip away. Solid stuff. There is some great drama though, it's not all fun and games. Probably the biggest issue right now in our house is the lack of anyone cleaning the kitchen. Our kitchen right now is a total mess, there are dirty dishes everywhere, there's food in pots on the stove, no one's swept/mopped the floor in forever, it's a definite sty. We've had this problem all semester and about two months ago, there was this little movement to divide everything up with a chore list. There was a note posted above the kitchen sink asking for people to sign if they thought it was a good idea. That note went up two months ago, Ian just signed it today, that's the only signature. I think that maybe some chores of the kitchen should be divided like that, but definitely not dishes. I don't exactly do a lot of cooking here, and the cooking I do doesn't ever take more than 4 dishes, so I feel like if dishes were divided up evenly, I would get majorly screwed, doing way more dishes than I ever actually use. We do have a dishes problem, but it's a problem that can be solved by greater accountability, bugging people who leave their dishes in the sink. That's my solution anyway, communal regulation of the self. I'm sure this problem will never be solved anyway.

Viva

Modern Latin America is really ramping up these days. It's easily my favorite/second favorite class. Probably favorite actually because there are more cute girls in it. Anyway, we talked a bit today about the Cuban Revolution and I don't think I really appreciate the way it was presented. For those of you who don't know, the Cuban Revolution is the one in the late 1950s that facilitated the rise of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. There's this huge college movement these days that supports the revolution because of all of the good it did for the nation. And it did do a lot of good for the nation in some ways. Literacy went up a bunch, health care greatly improved, women gained more rights, land was redistributed more evenly and all the things like that. But the cost was a communist state.

Now, ideologically, I don't have a problem with communism. It's an alternative form of economy/government, and it's important to remember that the United States is more socialized than we all like to admit. Especially in regards to this health care movement. What I do have a problem with is the idea of a nation suppressing the rights of the individual. The way all the communist states I can think of have been run is with massive censorship, restricted travel and regulated employment. This translates to a government that won't allow me to speak out against it, won't allow me to leave the country, and will proceed to tell me where I need to perform my profession. On the point of regulated employment, the reason health care was improved so much is because the government would literally reallocate physicians and medical personnel. As a Doctor, I might have an office in Havana, right in the city, but then the revolutionary government could march in and tell me that I have to take my practice into the rural farmlands. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to move out there.

As I said, I don't have a problem with the idea. In part because I don't think it works, I suppose. But I really don't have a problem with the idea of nationalized health care. I agree that there are certain things that a person can expect their nation to provide. Education is one of them, it has been in this country for something like 150 years. Health care is another one. I like the idea of a nation that looks after the health of its citizens. But there are also parts of my life I don't think the government has the right to control. What I say and what my opinions are is one of those. Where I go, is really the most fundamental one I think. Everyone always gets up in arms about censorship, but I'd say that restricting international travel is much more egregious. If I don't like the way the country is operated, I should definitely have the right to leave it. Forcing me to stay is a state policy of kidnapping. In my opinion. The jobs issue is kind of on the fence. Part of me says just to leave it up to me to get a job, that's something I can handle. But I'm sure that's just a factor of me living in the US. I don't find it too hard to envision a person getting mad at the government because there aren't enough jobs, I mean, who else are they going to get mad at?

I don't want you all thinking that I'm a patriotic nutball who hates governments that aren't American. That's not true at all. I easily think that a benevolent monarch is the best form of government there is. I wouldn't even really mind life under a dictatorship. The United States isn't actually a capitalist State, we live in a mixed economy. There's much more federal regulation of the economy than there would be under a true capitalist regime. Do I really care if my electricity is nationalized? No, I wouldn't care, as long as they don't screw it up. Living in a country that takes care of those things wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I mean, if I can leave, that's fine. I might be able to go and see what it's like in different type of nation and see which one I like best. If I lived in revolutionary Cuba and was able to leave, maybe I would live in the US for a year and decide that it wasn't actually as good as I thought it was and I enjoyed life in Cuba more. It just seems like, if you've got a country with a bunch of people who are yearning to leave, you're doing something wrong.

Black Mirror

Ok, so, I've got Veckatimest rolling. I started off with Two Weeks so that was good. It's been pretty downhill from there. Currently I'm on Hold Still. It's true that this doesn't really say much though. Some of the best albums are completely horrible the first time you hear them. Wincing the Night Away was that way for me. As were all three Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums. So I guess we'll see how it comes along.

It's Winter in Salem, in case you couldn't guess. I just got back from night practice at about 12:45 at night. Yeah, it's pretty late. But even worse, it's freaking cold these days. I live like a mile away from campus, so it's probably the chilliest bike ride I'll ever make all the time. It's ridiculous. I'm really starting to wonder why I ever moved off campus. Seriously, a part of me really misses living on campus. It's pretty much where the action is. Campus is pretty much the heart of college. Living in a big hall with all of your friends, staying up late in the dorms. You people don't know how lucky you are to be able to wake up 10 minutes before class and get there early. Parties are a breeze. Going across campus to party and then come back when you're done, crash out on your twin sized bed and wake up at 1 the next day and go to brunch. Those were the days man. Partying when you live off campus is a major hassle. The only parties you'll ever go to are also off campus so you're biking all around the city at all hours of the night. We live pretty far away from campus too, so if we were to go to a party that's equally far away from campus in the other direction you can completely forget about leaving with anyone.

Don't get me wrong though, there are certainly some things I really like about having a real house. First of all, it's extraordinarily cheaper. If you care about money that's pretty cool. Living by myself, yet in a house with a bunch of friends is pretty much perfect. There are plenty of easily accessible common areas, so there's never that weirdness about going into someone's room. Quick side note on going into people's rooms: Does it ever make you guys uncomfortable to go into someone's room? Like, just to have that knowledge of a kind of power shift when you're in someone's room, you can never really relax you know, it's like you're always a guest. I don't know, something like that. Anyway, common rooms, like the kitchen and living room, great equalizers. If you drink, living off campus is really a better way to drink than living on campus. You don't ever really have to worry about getting busted, you don't have to hide the beer in your room, all of that stuff.

What would really be great would be living in this house, just one block away from campus. There's a severe lack of solid housing really close to campus. I'm not really sure why that is, I'm sure it's a pretty complicated reason. There are always campus apartments, but there's just something about your own house that feels really good. Makes you feel adult and stuff. Who knows anymore.

My Love is a Life Taker.

Taylor's getting on my about blogging more. Can't disappoint the fans. Too late.

I guess the reason I don't blog very much is that all the stuff I'm into right now is stuff that I know no one wants to read about. It's not like there's nothing going on in my life, or that there isn't really anything important happening to me, it's just all a bunch of lame stuff that I know you people don't care about. In case you were actually wondering, the amount of thinking about Ultimate I do every day could fill 5 blogs. Continuously. I'll take you on a little tour of how me writing about Ultimate would go.

We have our first tournament of the year this weekend. It's going to be pretty scary. We perenially do pretty poorly at tournaments, we've never really been that good of a team. On the other hand, we have a lot of talent this year, and we look better than we have in a long time. I guess we'll find out how it goes this weekend. We have a lot of veterans, but we also have a lot of new people on the team too. It looks like we'll be taking about 20 guys to this tournament, kind of a lot of people. The problem is that they all want playing time, and for about 6 of them this will be their first tournament, so one of the things we're struggling with is how we're going to manage how people get to play and stuff like that. When I say we, I basically mean me and 2 other guys, Timm and Ian. I could pretty confidently say that the three of us are the leaders of the team this year. I don't know how many of you knew that about me, but I'm a big part of the team leadership this year. Anyway, the conflict arises not merely out of the fact that we have a bunch of guys that want to play, that wouldn't be a problem in itself, just divide playing time evenly, or let it be a free for all. The problem comes in when they're not all very good and we kind of want to play well in our games. How do you make a competitive line while giving your new players some time as well? Definitely the question of the weekend. Of course this whole question comes about because we're all insecure about any of our lines' ability to actually score on these teams. In the end though, even if we lose all our games this weekend, it will be a good learning experience for the team. The goal I suppose is just to let it not be too frustrating for people who think we could do better.

Your tour's over, proceed to the exits located on all sides.

I don't know man, if it's not Ultimate it's drinking and stuff, and if it's not that it's pretty much the same old shit about me not feeling like I'm being productive enough. Sometimes I fee like my blog is just one big fucking Mad Lib. Ok, so today I really tried to _________, but I couldn't because of ______ maybe next time I'll try _________. This paragraph follows the formula exactly.

I guess you really have to figure out what you're blogging for. Chris asks me this all the time, I think in an effort to get me to realize it myself. And the answer is I don't know. The list is kind of a long one. I like writing, I want to be a good writer, I like feeling like people are reading things I write and laughing/thinking/admiring. It comes down to something pretty simple I guess, whether you're blogging for yourself or blogging for your readers. It's a tough question to answer. If you say you're blogging for your readers you sound like some pompous, egotistical idiot who's elevating himself to some kind of 'blog to serve' bullshit. But then if you say you're just blogging for yourself, I mean, then why aren't you just keeping a private journal right? Who knows anymore.

Words and Dreams and A Million Screams

Mid Semester is here. Hooray. The stress and urgency of midterms is through and we can all finally start thinking rationally about the semester again. Also, in case any of you had forgotten, it's my B day on Thursday. Rock on. If you ever want to know what being in a bar is like, feel free to ask me on Thursday. That is, if I can remember! Am I right?! No. I'm wrong. I can think of at least 5 things I would rather be doing than blacking out on a Wednesday night.

One of them is Grizzly Bear. I don't know what to think about this new band on the scene. Part of me says that their success is largely a derivative of fellow animal band name Fleet Foxes, plus the sense that Grizzly Bears have some kind of positive iconic value. On the other hand, I do like bears. The Grizzlier the better. I guarantee you that in Alaska, there's a mixed drink called the Grizzly Bear. Hopefully you can order it extra Grizzly. I'm pretty sure they just add more Grizzle. Maybe I'll try out their new album if I get enough adamant comments about it on this post.

On another musically related note (pun), I've got some severe questions about vinyl. I don't get the appeal. I mean, I understand that vinyl seems cooler. And I understand that you seem much cooler if you have things on vinyl. I think that's mostly because you get to say the word vinyl so much more. But I don't understand what the true advantage is. The rumor is that, like, records sound better, better fidelity or whatever. But it's definitely a fact that every record I've ever heard played in person has a much lower sound quality. Is it just me? Mm, maybe it's because the only vinyl albums I ever hear are old albums so the quality sucks anyway? I really don't know. But I feel like digital is probably the best quality a person can get. That's why they digitally remaster things. Whatever that means.

Red Wine With Every Meal. And Absinthe After Dinner

There are 18 tabs open in my Google Chrome right now. This is one of them, the other 17 are news articles. The road to intelligence is paved with awareness.

Man, ever since I was talking to Chris, I feel like I need to clarify a few things from my last post. I'll admit that there were tones of arrogance, naiveté, and immaturity. There were a lot of tones in that last post. Very tonal. But behind all of the ridiculous, narrow minded, stubborn rhetoric lay a specific point. I was in my Intellectual History class today, and we were talking about Marx and Engels' views of Communism, and we talked about what it would look like, and we analyzed the texts and we tried to flesh out what the authors were thinking. Through the course of our class discussion we painted this picture of how a Communist society would operate according to the literature. What we didn't do in that class period is talk about whether or not they were good ideas. We got the ideas going, we were true to the texts, but we didn't talk about the consequences and we didn't talk about the flaws. And we shouldn't have. The class is not called "A Critique of 19th Century European Intellectual Thought", it's called "European Intellectual History of the 19th Century". The emphasis of the course is focused upon understanding these thinkers in their own time, in the context of their era. Not in the context of our era.

Basically what it comes down to is that I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to examine history apart from my own biases. I don't want to have to take my thoughts out of the equation of historical study. The main tenet of historiography these days is that you're trying see the past as it was. That's the big idea behind historical thought: the past as it was. I'm not interested in that stuff. I'm not interested in devoting my career to trying to present one portion of history as purely as I can. Because I don't care about the past. It's interesting, but it's only interesting because I live in the present, and that's what I care more about. Not the past as a function of the past, but the present as a function of the past.

As soon as you start analyzing the past and applying it's ideas to the present, you're doing philosophy. In my opinion at least. I think I know some historians who would disagree with me, but as far as I'm concerned, as soon as you're forming an opinion on the present, you're doing philosophy. And that's what I'm interested in. Again. I don't want to be in a position that forces me to quell my opinions in the interest of "accuracy", I'd rather be in one that celebrates them.

I can't wait for Joel's next unintelligible comment.