I can see this being spun as a "civilization and its discontents" kind of thesis. The gist is that the amount of stressful decisions we make depletes our ability to exercise self-control in other areas. So, if you spend all day making tough decisions at work, you will be less likely to go home and force yourself to make healthy decisions. And that is a result of the fact that decision-making is depleting, and using up all your energy making choices means that you've exhausted your self-regulatory resources.
My friend Doughboy, who just called from Thailand yesterday, once said the following to me in a Home Depot, as we stared at a wall jampacked with more types of brackets than we had ever seen before:
"Right now, I wish we lived in one of those peon countries where you are given a government-issued bracket, and you just need to make that thing fit."
I'm not sure if I remember that statement because of his use of the word "peon" or if it's because I was relieved that he - a handy guy who should be comfortable in a Home Depot - was as befuddled as I was.
In any case, there you have it. Whenever possible, try not to be The Decider.
30 April 2008
They scheduled our interview!
We just received the notice! Which is both exciting and scary. Scary because if they don't believe us, I can be arrested and deported instantly - exciting because, well, it's forward progress. All the same, if you stop hearing from me around July-ish, you'll have a good idea what happend.
The Internets are full of cautionary tales and notes about what we can expect. I think this lawyer's blog and this rambling post give a pretty good idea of the kinds of questions we might get. I've heard this described as somewhere between "utterly demeaning" and "completely horrifying." No matter which was you cut it, it's pretty obvious that we are going to have FUN.
27 April 2008
new layout
I just picked a new template. I felt it was weird to have open space on the right with all the text packed on the left side. It made me feel dizzy or something.
Also, working on expandable posts to reduce clutter. But that's not a today project.
Also, working on expandable posts to reduce clutter. But that's not a today project.
Three Days (not by Jane's Addiction)
I.
I go to the office on Friday, though I am not quite ready for it. It's my first appearance there since the email has gone out to all staff, since the "unpleasantness," we might say. My only reason is really to show my face and to have people see me in a relatively good mood, but I know from the minute I wake up that it's a bad idea. My timing is off, I am hoarse from yelling too much at the basketball game the night before, and my allergies are acting up in terrible ways.
Getting dressed is an ordeal. I didn't get the invite until it was relayed to me at the end of the previous night, and I can't decide on what is appropriate attire. I don't want too formal or too casual, and I struggle even to make it out the door. Then, every time I make it a few feet out the door, I remember something I've forgotten to bring or something I've forgotten to do before leaving, so that I'm fifteen minutes later than I wanted to be by the time I get going.
My hopes for a quiet entry are dashed when I bump into two smokers outside, who see me parking in the visitor's spot - "hey there, mr. visitor!" I run upstairs but quickly realize that I don't know where I'm supposed to go - where is my base of operations? Certainly not the office I used to occupy. Instead, I try to see as many people as I can before I face the conference room where most of the staff are enjoying a free breakfast courtesy of Mr. Omelette. I have reassuring encounters before making my way down there, but none of the nervousness dissipates. I just have to make it through a few minutes of a breakfast before I head back upstairs for a quick meeting, and I am so glad, for once, to have a meeting to look forward to.
When I finally do make it into the conference room, I have all these flashbacks to the high school cafeteria. I haven't shaved in well over a week, but I've hardly managed to grow a beard. I just look like shit, is all, having convinced myself that I ought not to shave before coming in to work for some weird reason (I figure it's something I can make jokes about, I tell myself it's a move I make to align myself with Deshawn Stevenson, and I also feel like I've made it a week and I might as well try to go for two weeks without shaving, if I can, to find out for sure whether I can in fact grow a beard or not.)
I agonize over where to sit, whom to avoid, whom to favor. My appetite is completely gone at this point. A couple of good friends make a point of coming over near me - something for which I'm still grateful in the same way that I am forever grateful to Catherine McPherson for inviting me to be her lab partner in chemistry on my first day of high school in the United States. Months later, as I began to appreciate the social hierarchy of my high school, I realized what she had done, and it was only a few years ago, at our ten year reunion, that I finally had the chance to thank her for it. I hereby thank my seatmates this past Friday - hopefully you know who you are. And I did thank some of the people there for making the situation as non-awkward as posisble, but as someone says later, "Um, that was totally awkward." Fair enough.
The meeting and my final rounds go smoothly, reassuringly so. I plan to maybe make it back for an all-staff meeting, but I am told this is not legally advisable. So instead I go home, clean the kitchen, go for a short run, and actually run the oven through a complete self-clean cycle. I meet Ms. Abstract Citizen halfway back on her walk from work, and she is bubbling over with good news, good stories. We have a nice evening until one of us notices a commotion outside - it looks like a gaggle of good samaritans has stopped someone from breaking into a car, though one of the car's windows is smashed. The police are called and we follow the story from our perch. Coffeemaker is set to autobrew at 8 a.m.; we drowse off, in anticipation of the last photography class.
II.
Saturday morning and we are off and running. The car's stereo stops working somewhere past Fessenden on Reno. We are not sure why, but it has gone silent. We are the first to arrive, and our class is somewhat diminished. Mother-and-daughter don't show, among others. We compare shots from last week's field trip, and we find surprising shots from unexpected people, and blah shots from people who we expected to take only great shots. We are out by 12:30, and stop by the Bethesda Bar Crawl to see some familiar faces before heading home.
That evening, we decide to make it a night of guilty pleasures, which usually begins with a couple of burgers and an order of fries from Five Guys. As we are leaving, we notice a suspicious character slowly eyeing up the cars on our street. Harkening back to the incident the night before, we decide to call the police. Our white-guilt conversation is short: are we profiling someone because of skin color? No, we are concerned about his behavior. He is slowly walking down the street, looking into the backseats of cars, checking to see whether doors are unlocked, and apparently stashing something for later. The 911 call is smooth, and they promise to send a car over to check it out. They call back shortly thereafter to say that the individual who had spent the past 45 minutes walking up and down our block was nowhere to be seen once the police arrived.
By the time we are ready to go to bed, the temperature still hasn't dropped to a comfortable point. It is hot outside, and people are acting strangely. In the song "9th and Hennepin," Tom Waits says, "Everyone is behaving like dogs." So, again, we spend a good 45 minutes watching life on Columbia Road at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. Every time a car tries to force its way into a spot that is way too small, I wait for the car to make contact with the cars on either side - if the contact is severe, I yell out, "Hey, that's my car!" I love doing that. An SUV in particular - maroonish - kisses another car's bumper, and then simply revs its engine a little more, hoping that the additional two feet of space it needs will be yielded by a little more gas. After I yell, the driver zips off, and then parks illegally at the end of the block. A few minutes later, we see parking police issuing the car a ticket. Sweet justice.
It's time for bed. Fan set in the window, we bemoan our lack of control over the central heat/air conditioning in our building. With the windows open - even with a fan running - the agitation of Columbia Road gets amplified into our bedroom. Buses shift into third gear and then abruptly slam on the brakes at the foot of our bed; drunk people laugh and stumble out of our closets, make phone calls on our pillows; and from inside our dresser drawers, we hear cars honking, temporarily drowning out whatever bass-driven song of choice emanates from their open windows. Spring time gives people a kind of fever, and I both love and hate it. I am buzzing as I try to fall asleep, thinking about basketball once again, thinking about my phone call to the police, trying to stay alert for the sound of broken glass.
III.
I hear a car revving its engine. I hear the car braking. I hear scraping. I hear "FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!" a few times over (like background singers, David Berman would say, those curses come in threes.) Then I hear a distinctive sound: muffled shouts, dull thuds. "FUCKING N------!" from someone who sounds Latin American. "FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU" from someone who sounds like the target of the previous epithet. A few female cries, and again, the dull thuds of fists or something harder colliding with flesh. This all takes place over about ten seconds. I open our window, run for the phone, dial 911. 12 hours ago, I had never intentionally dialed 911. Now I have called twice in the space of 9 hours. It is 4 a.m., and already birds are chirpring. I was telling Ms. Abstract Citizen just the other day that birds are dumb, they have no idea when the sun is actually going to rise. The dispatcher finishes my sentence - "fight at..." "19th and Columbia?"
A few minutes later, sirens and police cars converge. I hear voices amplified by those megaphone-type things on cruisers. It sounds as though order has been restored. I am buzzing once again. Sunday is officially shot.
When we come to, it is almost time to start getting ready for the game. I try to have a good feeling about the game, but I don't. I know it will be an awful few hours, but I talk myself into feeling optimistic. R, my beer guy, insists on making the beers free for the second game in a row. He says he is pouring smaller cups and that I shouldn't worry about it, though I tip him accordingly. The Wizards insist on living and dying by the three even when it's not working, even when they are clearly better served by going inside and drawing contact. By the time Gilbert misses the final shot and the loss is official, we are completely deflated.
On the bus, riding back, I have flashes of the plane ride after France beat Brasil in 2006. Then too I was so disgusted with myself and my team that I did not even feel ashamed to be wearing a jersey. I thought about it for a second, concluded that losers ought to wear appropriate gear, and left it at that.
All I can mutter, every few minutes, is "Those motherfuckers." I am not sure if I am referring to the Wizards, the Cavs, or the louder-than-expected Cavs fans who were in the building. "Witnesses" to a shitty marketing campaign. My best trash talk during the game is, "I hope your state loses more manufacturing jobs!" It's petty and unfair, and I instantly regret it, but I was at wit's end and I will at least own up to having said it.
The rest of the day is a gray rain mess. I realize that I never decided whether I am partial to a particular spelling of the word - "grey" or "gray." By now, I should have a preference, but I just don't and I can't summon the energy.
We eat chili, Ms. Citizen bakes cookies. I am angry at myself in a teen-angsty kind of way - angry that I let myself believe that a win today was possible, that I fought against my better judgment (which is to assume that God's ongoing hatred of me means that any team I support ought to lose precisely when it means the most - which would be today.) Ms. Citizen is ready to throw all the bums out, and I'm almost angry enough to agree.
But mostly I am tired of feeling like nothing is ever decisevely lost: it just sort of trickles away until you have to get up and leave, without even having been given the satisfaction of a resounding defeat. Winning may be impermanent, but losing is hardly even a reality - losing is more like spending several hours in a state of denial until, at some point, you just sort of open your eyes and realize that the possibility of a victory is gone.
No one is told that they have failed at their ambitions, even the stupid ones - like growing a beard. One day you simply look at all of it put together and say to yourself, "I cannot grow a beard. I ought to shave all of it off." It's not like you look in the mirror, see something on your face, recognize it as a non-beard, and call it a day; it's more like you look in the mirror day after day and fail to see a beard. Eventually you realize that the non-beard will never become a beard. The difference sounds subtle, but it is also soul-crushing. It is like saying to yourself, "We have lost, and now it's time to go home, and if we don't have the common sense to recognize that, no one will even care."
Tomorrow is Monday. I am not sure what for, exactly, but I am eager.
I go to the office on Friday, though I am not quite ready for it. It's my first appearance there since the email has gone out to all staff, since the "unpleasantness," we might say. My only reason is really to show my face and to have people see me in a relatively good mood, but I know from the minute I wake up that it's a bad idea. My timing is off, I am hoarse from yelling too much at the basketball game the night before, and my allergies are acting up in terrible ways.
Getting dressed is an ordeal. I didn't get the invite until it was relayed to me at the end of the previous night, and I can't decide on what is appropriate attire. I don't want too formal or too casual, and I struggle even to make it out the door. Then, every time I make it a few feet out the door, I remember something I've forgotten to bring or something I've forgotten to do before leaving, so that I'm fifteen minutes later than I wanted to be by the time I get going.
My hopes for a quiet entry are dashed when I bump into two smokers outside, who see me parking in the visitor's spot - "hey there, mr. visitor!" I run upstairs but quickly realize that I don't know where I'm supposed to go - where is my base of operations? Certainly not the office I used to occupy. Instead, I try to see as many people as I can before I face the conference room where most of the staff are enjoying a free breakfast courtesy of Mr. Omelette. I have reassuring encounters before making my way down there, but none of the nervousness dissipates. I just have to make it through a few minutes of a breakfast before I head back upstairs for a quick meeting, and I am so glad, for once, to have a meeting to look forward to.
When I finally do make it into the conference room, I have all these flashbacks to the high school cafeteria. I haven't shaved in well over a week, but I've hardly managed to grow a beard. I just look like shit, is all, having convinced myself that I ought not to shave before coming in to work for some weird reason (I figure it's something I can make jokes about, I tell myself it's a move I make to align myself with Deshawn Stevenson, and I also feel like I've made it a week and I might as well try to go for two weeks without shaving, if I can, to find out for sure whether I can in fact grow a beard or not.)
I agonize over where to sit, whom to avoid, whom to favor. My appetite is completely gone at this point. A couple of good friends make a point of coming over near me - something for which I'm still grateful in the same way that I am forever grateful to Catherine McPherson for inviting me to be her lab partner in chemistry on my first day of high school in the United States. Months later, as I began to appreciate the social hierarchy of my high school, I realized what she had done, and it was only a few years ago, at our ten year reunion, that I finally had the chance to thank her for it. I hereby thank my seatmates this past Friday - hopefully you know who you are. And I did thank some of the people there for making the situation as non-awkward as posisble, but as someone says later, "Um, that was totally awkward." Fair enough.
The meeting and my final rounds go smoothly, reassuringly so. I plan to maybe make it back for an all-staff meeting, but I am told this is not legally advisable. So instead I go home, clean the kitchen, go for a short run, and actually run the oven through a complete self-clean cycle. I meet Ms. Abstract Citizen halfway back on her walk from work, and she is bubbling over with good news, good stories. We have a nice evening until one of us notices a commotion outside - it looks like a gaggle of good samaritans has stopped someone from breaking into a car, though one of the car's windows is smashed. The police are called and we follow the story from our perch. Coffeemaker is set to autobrew at 8 a.m.; we drowse off, in anticipation of the last photography class.
II.
Saturday morning and we are off and running. The car's stereo stops working somewhere past Fessenden on Reno. We are not sure why, but it has gone silent. We are the first to arrive, and our class is somewhat diminished. Mother-and-daughter don't show, among others. We compare shots from last week's field trip, and we find surprising shots from unexpected people, and blah shots from people who we expected to take only great shots. We are out by 12:30, and stop by the Bethesda Bar Crawl to see some familiar faces before heading home.
That evening, we decide to make it a night of guilty pleasures, which usually begins with a couple of burgers and an order of fries from Five Guys. As we are leaving, we notice a suspicious character slowly eyeing up the cars on our street. Harkening back to the incident the night before, we decide to call the police. Our white-guilt conversation is short: are we profiling someone because of skin color? No, we are concerned about his behavior. He is slowly walking down the street, looking into the backseats of cars, checking to see whether doors are unlocked, and apparently stashing something for later. The 911 call is smooth, and they promise to send a car over to check it out. They call back shortly thereafter to say that the individual who had spent the past 45 minutes walking up and down our block was nowhere to be seen once the police arrived.
By the time we are ready to go to bed, the temperature still hasn't dropped to a comfortable point. It is hot outside, and people are acting strangely. In the song "9th and Hennepin," Tom Waits says, "Everyone is behaving like dogs." So, again, we spend a good 45 minutes watching life on Columbia Road at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. Every time a car tries to force its way into a spot that is way too small, I wait for the car to make contact with the cars on either side - if the contact is severe, I yell out, "Hey, that's my car!" I love doing that. An SUV in particular - maroonish - kisses another car's bumper, and then simply revs its engine a little more, hoping that the additional two feet of space it needs will be yielded by a little more gas. After I yell, the driver zips off, and then parks illegally at the end of the block. A few minutes later, we see parking police issuing the car a ticket. Sweet justice.
It's time for bed. Fan set in the window, we bemoan our lack of control over the central heat/air conditioning in our building. With the windows open - even with a fan running - the agitation of Columbia Road gets amplified into our bedroom. Buses shift into third gear and then abruptly slam on the brakes at the foot of our bed; drunk people laugh and stumble out of our closets, make phone calls on our pillows; and from inside our dresser drawers, we hear cars honking, temporarily drowning out whatever bass-driven song of choice emanates from their open windows. Spring time gives people a kind of fever, and I both love and hate it. I am buzzing as I try to fall asleep, thinking about basketball once again, thinking about my phone call to the police, trying to stay alert for the sound of broken glass.
III.
I hear a car revving its engine. I hear the car braking. I hear scraping. I hear "FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!" a few times over (like background singers, David Berman would say, those curses come in threes.) Then I hear a distinctive sound: muffled shouts, dull thuds. "FUCKING N------!" from someone who sounds Latin American. "FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU" from someone who sounds like the target of the previous epithet. A few female cries, and again, the dull thuds of fists or something harder colliding with flesh. This all takes place over about ten seconds. I open our window, run for the phone, dial 911. 12 hours ago, I had never intentionally dialed 911. Now I have called twice in the space of 9 hours. It is 4 a.m., and already birds are chirpring. I was telling Ms. Abstract Citizen just the other day that birds are dumb, they have no idea when the sun is actually going to rise. The dispatcher finishes my sentence - "fight at..." "19th and Columbia?"
A few minutes later, sirens and police cars converge. I hear voices amplified by those megaphone-type things on cruisers. It sounds as though order has been restored. I am buzzing once again. Sunday is officially shot.
When we come to, it is almost time to start getting ready for the game. I try to have a good feeling about the game, but I don't. I know it will be an awful few hours, but I talk myself into feeling optimistic. R, my beer guy, insists on making the beers free for the second game in a row. He says he is pouring smaller cups and that I shouldn't worry about it, though I tip him accordingly. The Wizards insist on living and dying by the three even when it's not working, even when they are clearly better served by going inside and drawing contact. By the time Gilbert misses the final shot and the loss is official, we are completely deflated.
On the bus, riding back, I have flashes of the plane ride after France beat Brasil in 2006. Then too I was so disgusted with myself and my team that I did not even feel ashamed to be wearing a jersey. I thought about it for a second, concluded that losers ought to wear appropriate gear, and left it at that.
All I can mutter, every few minutes, is "Those motherfuckers." I am not sure if I am referring to the Wizards, the Cavs, or the louder-than-expected Cavs fans who were in the building. "Witnesses" to a shitty marketing campaign. My best trash talk during the game is, "I hope your state loses more manufacturing jobs!" It's petty and unfair, and I instantly regret it, but I was at wit's end and I will at least own up to having said it.
The rest of the day is a gray rain mess. I realize that I never decided whether I am partial to a particular spelling of the word - "grey" or "gray." By now, I should have a preference, but I just don't and I can't summon the energy.
We eat chili, Ms. Citizen bakes cookies. I am angry at myself in a teen-angsty kind of way - angry that I let myself believe that a win today was possible, that I fought against my better judgment (which is to assume that God's ongoing hatred of me means that any team I support ought to lose precisely when it means the most - which would be today.) Ms. Citizen is ready to throw all the bums out, and I'm almost angry enough to agree.
But mostly I am tired of feeling like nothing is ever decisevely lost: it just sort of trickles away until you have to get up and leave, without even having been given the satisfaction of a resounding defeat. Winning may be impermanent, but losing is hardly even a reality - losing is more like spending several hours in a state of denial until, at some point, you just sort of open your eyes and realize that the possibility of a victory is gone.
No one is told that they have failed at their ambitions, even the stupid ones - like growing a beard. One day you simply look at all of it put together and say to yourself, "I cannot grow a beard. I ought to shave all of it off." It's not like you look in the mirror, see something on your face, recognize it as a non-beard, and call it a day; it's more like you look in the mirror day after day and fail to see a beard. Eventually you realize that the non-beard will never become a beard. The difference sounds subtle, but it is also soul-crushing. It is like saying to yourself, "We have lost, and now it's time to go home, and if we don't have the common sense to recognize that, no one will even care."
Tomorrow is Monday. I am not sure what for, exactly, but I am eager.
24 April 2008
things that never cease to amaze me
One minute, I am pulling the last trash bag out of its box and putting it in the trash can. The next minute, I am taking the box that just a second ago held that bag and putting it in the bag. Their roles and functions have been completely reversed in fractions of a second.
I think what amazes me about this is the fact (a) I'm not exposed to much in the way of excitement these days and (b) that it had never occurred to me that objects go from being useful to being trash in the blink of an eye.
Then it occurs to me that (b) is almost a general rule. We may only perceive it gradually, but basically, things are useful one second, and useless the next. It always happens in the blink of an eye. So what sticks out here is the fact that this isn't just an object that has outlived its usefulness. That box's function was to convey the very trash bag that will become the box's coffin. It has to sting a bit. Not only have you outlived your usefulness, but when the sentence of your obsolescence is handed down, you are put inside of the thing you held just a second ago.
I want to say this is analogous to something else, but I can't imagine what. I think about it every three to four months, which is to say, whenever we run out of trash bags. I am only mentioning it because it has consistently intrigued me for a couple of years now.
I think what amazes me about this is the fact (a) I'm not exposed to much in the way of excitement these days and (b) that it had never occurred to me that objects go from being useful to being trash in the blink of an eye.
Then it occurs to me that (b) is almost a general rule. We may only perceive it gradually, but basically, things are useful one second, and useless the next. It always happens in the blink of an eye. So what sticks out here is the fact that this isn't just an object that has outlived its usefulness. That box's function was to convey the very trash bag that will become the box's coffin. It has to sting a bit. Not only have you outlived your usefulness, but when the sentence of your obsolescence is handed down, you are put inside of the thing you held just a second ago.
I want to say this is analogous to something else, but I can't imagine what. I think about it every three to four months, which is to say, whenever we run out of trash bags. I am only mentioning it because it has consistently intrigued me for a couple of years now.
Sea snakes
Says Trevor Corson:
[from The Zen of Fish ]
How eels themselves have sex has been the subject of great curiosity. No one ever saw them mating. Aristotle concluded that they spontaneously arose from mud. A Greek naturalist society in the second century AD decided that eel sex must involve a lot of rubbing, and that mucous must be the eels' sexual fluid. Sigmund Freud's first assignment in medical school was to discover where eels hid their testicles. He couldn't find them.
In the 1890s, European scientists came closer to solving the mystery of eel sex by studginy 'glass eels.' Glass eels are miniature, oceangoing eels. They are transparent and look like little shard of glass. The scientists discovered that glass eels are actually just baby freshwater eels. Mysteriously, the glass eels all seemed to be swimming toward Europe from some distant point in the sea.
An obsessed Danish biologist named Johannes Schmidt launched expedition after expedition, sailing deeper into the Atlantic on each journey. The glass eels he caught were smaller and younger the farther he went. In 1922, after eighteen years, he finally discovered where they were all coming from: the Bermuda Triangle.
As far as scientists can tell, all American and European freshwater eels are born in or near the seaweed-filled Sargasso Sea, in the Bermuda Triangle. After hatching, the baby eels leave the Sargasso and start swimming. They don't stop until they reach their destination. That desintation could be a river in Iowa or a river in Germany. The journey to Europe can take a glass eel two or three years to complete. Relative to body size, it's the equivalent of a human swimming to the moon.
Asian eels do the same thing, except in the Pacific. They're all born at one place in the Philippine Sea, and from there they journey to rivers all over Asia.
Adult eels live in their freshwaer homes for eight to ten years, some much longer. They eat until their bodies contain nearly 30 percent fat, and toward the end of their lives they slither back to the sea to mate.
As they leave freshwater, their digestive systems dissolve and disappear. They will never eat again. Like salmon, they survive by digesting their own fat, and after that, their own muscle protein. Scientists assume that they return to the Sargasso and Philippine seas to mate, but to this day no one has witnessed eels spawning, and no one knows how they travel so far without food. In human terms, it's like having just one chance at sex before you die, but you have to swim from the moon to earth - without stopping to eat - to get it. No wonder the Japanese consider eels an aphrodisiac.
[from The Zen of Fish ]
23 April 2008
Photography class
We are running late in the routine way in which we run late: good intentions, last minute confusion, and finally, a half-walk, half-run to the Dupont metro. It's a Saturday morning that feels hand-crafted, and I quickly realize that I will probably be warm in my jeans, shirt, and Caron Butler jersey (it is, after all, the day that the Wizards are opening their playoff series against the Cavs.)
In my current situation - which is to say, as a housebound recluse - I suddenly remember that riding the metro on the weekend is hellish. I'm not one to routinely complain about tourists because I'm actually happy to live in a place that people want to visit. So, when I complain about the idiotic Oklahomans or wherever they are from on the train, let the record show that I am criticizing them as individuals for their idiocy, not as tourists.
In any case, we realize that we will actually make it to Union Station, where our photography class is assembling for this field trip, on time. Our class is an eclectic mix: there's the gregarious Southern Belle who can't figure out the relationship between her aperture and the brightness of the image, never mind the fact that shutter speeds are often discussed as denominators, meaning that the bigger numbers mean a smaller amount of light passing through said shutter. She never finds herself on the right side of whether she needs to increase her shutter speed or not. There's Mr. Technique, who I take to be Scandinavian as a result of his height. His name also includes a "J" that is pronounced like a "Y," and his "V"'s occasionally sound like "W"'s. If you've ever heard Jens Lekman speak, this guy is pretty close. Mr. Technique has no time for general information - he wants to discuss gear exclusively. Preferably using acronyms that highlight how much consumer research he has done, but that's neither here nor there - it's a universal gearhead personality trait.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Technique gave the best answer to the question of why we were taking the class, posed by the teacher on day one: "I would like a more conscious control of my images. I would like great pictures to be a result of deliberate intent rather than a random combination of settings that I cannot explain." I'm right there with you, buddy.
We also have a mother/daughter team, and Ms. Abstract Citizen had these two figured out by the end of our first class: it's a classic case of mother-wants-to-be-her-daughter. Daughter, who is maybe 13, was clearly dragged to class in spite of the fact that, for the next 8 years of her life, she will only be taking candid pictures in bars and dorm rooms using a point-and-shoot. The most elaborate need of Daughter's will be eliminating red eye from pictures where everyone is doing a shot together, and her second biggest need will be remedied by image stabilizing cameras. Mom repeatedly makes reference to taking pictures of birds at their Eastern Shore home, so it seems that Mom must own a couple of nice coffee table books and would like to emulate some nature shots contained therein. I noticed, during week two, that they both probably get their nails done together - I'm assuming Mom makes daughter do it with her, and then Mom picks the same color as Daughter (assuming that the color Daughter has chosen will make her look younger.)
Ms. Abstract Citizen's guess is proven right, by the way, when Mom's cell phone rings and her ringtone is a Shakira song. I believe Mom sees Daughter primarily as a fashion consultant or some sort of cultural barometer, a pendant with which to stave off fannypacks, Crocs, and pleated jeans.
Our Teacher is a short man of Lebanese descent; very nice guy, very intelligent, often (but not always) a good teacher. In any case, he is interesting to me and important to these events, so he merits a mention. Also worth noting is the fact that he has betrayed a slight liberal bent at times - for example, noting that a picture of the Jefferson memorial framed by a U.S. flag in the foreground is the "kind of chest-thumping patriotic image" that most artists consider a meal rather than an aesthetic end. There are other folks in the class, but they are all too normal to merit being singled out - suffice it to say that they are the people that we enjoy talking to, but not necessarily the people we want to talk about.
We are starting from Union Station, walking around the Capitol, to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress and, eventually, to the Mall, where we expect to see the beginnings of an Earth Day concert crowd. Before we have even left the roundabout in front of Union Station, Our Teacher has antagonized the Southern Belle by making a joke about Guantanamo. Something about how picking a tulip from the grounds of the Capitol would likely put someone like him (ie, currently semi-employed dyed-in-the-wool liberal who happens to be Lebanese) in Guantanamo. Southern Belle takes her opening - "Oh, Club Gitmo?"
He snorts, surprised - "Do people other than Rush Limbaugh actually say that? Ok, well, yeah, I'm sure the weather is nice if you're outside. I guess I could see that." Southern Belle lashes into a minutes-long explanation of how she and her husband have a friend who is a military lawyer or something similar, and who has visited the prison to confirm, as we all suspected, that the conditions at Guantanamo are actually quite posh. She goes on to mention the fact that the real story is how the prisoners get to treat the guards.
I intentionally avoid the conversation because I can hear Our Teacher's internal monologue, and I'm guessing that he is debating whether Southern Belle is familiar with the concept of habeas corpus or not. He puts an end to his side of the conversation by conceding that he hasn't been there, but that he doesn't think that running a prison like Guantanamo is the kind of business the U.S. government should want to get into.
It is, as I mentioned, an artisanal day, one of a kind. I am finding myself profoundly uninterested in the subjects around us, but I am jealous of Ms. Citizen when she gets up close to the metalwork on a vintage Harley, metallic and pristine in the bright sun. We do draw the interest of the Capitol Police, who find excuses to stay near us and cast nervous glances in our direction. Our Teacher shares a story about a colleague who had to erase his entire memory card after taking a picture of some nearby buildings, without realizing that it is apparently illegal to take pictures of the windows of federal buildings. Is it? I think DCist gripes about this kind of stuff a lot.
The Supreme Court is being power-washed (joke: "Well, it does need a scrubbing, but I'm not sure this kind of cleaning is going to accomplish much") so we are unable to get too close. The Library of Congress holds some interesting possibilities, especially the statues in the fountain at street level. From there, we start making our way to the Mall, and catch our first glimpse of the police in full riot gear.
There are dozens of them. Nowadays, you are never sure whether this has always been the case, whether it is something that is only now always the case, or whether something truly unique is going on. Pope Ratzinger has left; there are no WTO/IMF/WB type functions going on; and so we are left to assume that the police is there for the Earth Day crowd, which seems incongruous, unless there is the chance that a round of hackeysack or a game of ultimate frisbee might get really mind-blowingly intense (and not in that good way.) Asking around, we discover that there is a neo-Nazi rally scheduled to take place shortly. Neo-nazis!
What a country.
Our Teacher makes a joke about how he couldn't imagine that riot police would be necessary to handle an Earth Day concert crowd, and Southern Belle dives in again: "Haven't you heard of eco-terrorists?" He snorts, again. It's a good snort. Guffaw-ish snort. I want a snort like his because it's not old-man-ish...more childlike and enthusiasitc.
He replies, "Uhhh, I guess not. I spend more time worried about those actual terrorists." She continues, "Well, those are the people who want to use environmental policy to strangle capitalism." Just like that. That kind of phrasing - which is widely mocked for its rhetorical excessiveness - is readily available to her, just sitting on the surface of her mind, waiting to jump out. Impressive.
I want to correct her, to point out that people who urge the adoption of environmental policy are usually not terrorists but rather lobbyists, politicians, and special interest groups, just like the people who want to change laws about guns, taxes, and health care - that this group, like any special interest group, wants to marry their agenda to profit, sometimes through the free market, sometimes through governement subsidies, and that therefore their ultimate goal is to make their agenda friendly to capitalism, while the phrase eco-terrorists, as it is used by law enforcement, is usually applied to people who want to blow up SUV factories or disrupt logging operations through violent means. But it's not that kind of day for me.
This is where we start to lose a little bit of steam. I point out that the rally might be scheduled to coincide with Hitler's birthday, which is the following day. Why do people always look at me funny when I happen to know the exact date of Hitler's birthday? We think there are probably some intriguing photographic possibilities if we stick around for the rally, though we know that almost all of us in the class would fail to meet the neo-nazi criteria of "American." And yet, here we are, a ragged asortment of the many shades and faces of what the new America will look like, sauntering through the nation's capital. I start looking at people I see on the mall, trying to guess whether they are there for the neo-nazi event, for Earth Day, or neither. And for the first time, I understand what people mean when they say that they feel sorry for the KKK and other racial-purity agitators. They have already lost, of course. They are clinging to some anachronistic idea of America, and they will continue to be forced into the margins of a country that is ever-growing, ever-browning, though some of us like to think of our brownish skin as being more olive-toned than brown. They are quaint and out of place, and so irrelevant that it is hard to see why we should even feel threatened.
At the Hirshhorn sculpture garden, we take our last shots as yellow clouds of pollen swarm around us. Our memory card is full. We never see the nazis - just families, kids flying kites, dogs running and groups of people dressed to match each other, people wary of losing their group, just like at Disneyworld. None of the groups are homogenous, and they are perhaps united by little more than what unites our group: our common denominator is that we all wear devices worth hundreds of dollars strapped around our necks, and we all have some kind of desire to capture and frame something unique, something worth holding onto. Buses converge near the Capitol, and we assume they are bringing the ugliness. Ms. Citizen wonders about the depth of their gene pool. I nod, and mention how I love the fact that the ACLU will defend their right to march. I'm glad they will march, actually.
My thoughts are leaving the greenery and the bronze, though, and turning to the basketball game that I am missing, where millionaires will be competing against each other for a few seconds of highlight reels on Sportscenter. I wonder if anyone on those buses secretly loves the NBA and hip hop culture; I wonder if they lust after latinas in their isolated communities. I wonder about their co-workers and neighbors, and I wonder if their children will ever find peace in the real world. We leave the bright colors behind us as we get on the metro, eager to scan through the memory card later and re-visit the sharp hues and fuzzy backdrops of a very strange morning.
In my current situation - which is to say, as a housebound recluse - I suddenly remember that riding the metro on the weekend is hellish. I'm not one to routinely complain about tourists because I'm actually happy to live in a place that people want to visit. So, when I complain about the idiotic Oklahomans or wherever they are from on the train, let the record show that I am criticizing them as individuals for their idiocy, not as tourists.
In any case, we realize that we will actually make it to Union Station, where our photography class is assembling for this field trip, on time. Our class is an eclectic mix: there's the gregarious Southern Belle who can't figure out the relationship between her aperture and the brightness of the image, never mind the fact that shutter speeds are often discussed as denominators, meaning that the bigger numbers mean a smaller amount of light passing through said shutter. She never finds herself on the right side of whether she needs to increase her shutter speed or not. There's Mr. Technique, who I take to be Scandinavian as a result of his height. His name also includes a "J" that is pronounced like a "Y," and his "V"'s occasionally sound like "W"'s. If you've ever heard Jens Lekman speak, this guy is pretty close. Mr. Technique has no time for general information - he wants to discuss gear exclusively. Preferably using acronyms that highlight how much consumer research he has done, but that's neither here nor there - it's a universal gearhead personality trait.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Technique gave the best answer to the question of why we were taking the class, posed by the teacher on day one: "I would like a more conscious control of my images. I would like great pictures to be a result of deliberate intent rather than a random combination of settings that I cannot explain." I'm right there with you, buddy.
We also have a mother/daughter team, and Ms. Abstract Citizen had these two figured out by the end of our first class: it's a classic case of mother-wants-to-be-her-daughter. Daughter, who is maybe 13, was clearly dragged to class in spite of the fact that, for the next 8 years of her life, she will only be taking candid pictures in bars and dorm rooms using a point-and-shoot. The most elaborate need of Daughter's will be eliminating red eye from pictures where everyone is doing a shot together, and her second biggest need will be remedied by image stabilizing cameras. Mom repeatedly makes reference to taking pictures of birds at their Eastern Shore home, so it seems that Mom must own a couple of nice coffee table books and would like to emulate some nature shots contained therein. I noticed, during week two, that they both probably get their nails done together - I'm assuming Mom makes daughter do it with her, and then Mom picks the same color as Daughter (assuming that the color Daughter has chosen will make her look younger.)
Ms. Abstract Citizen's guess is proven right, by the way, when Mom's cell phone rings and her ringtone is a Shakira song. I believe Mom sees Daughter primarily as a fashion consultant or some sort of cultural barometer, a pendant with which to stave off fannypacks, Crocs, and pleated jeans.
Our Teacher is a short man of Lebanese descent; very nice guy, very intelligent, often (but not always) a good teacher. In any case, he is interesting to me and important to these events, so he merits a mention. Also worth noting is the fact that he has betrayed a slight liberal bent at times - for example, noting that a picture of the Jefferson memorial framed by a U.S. flag in the foreground is the "kind of chest-thumping patriotic image" that most artists consider a meal rather than an aesthetic end. There are other folks in the class, but they are all too normal to merit being singled out - suffice it to say that they are the people that we enjoy talking to, but not necessarily the people we want to talk about.
We are starting from Union Station, walking around the Capitol, to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress and, eventually, to the Mall, where we expect to see the beginnings of an Earth Day concert crowd. Before we have even left the roundabout in front of Union Station, Our Teacher has antagonized the Southern Belle by making a joke about Guantanamo. Something about how picking a tulip from the grounds of the Capitol would likely put someone like him (ie, currently semi-employed dyed-in-the-wool liberal who happens to be Lebanese) in Guantanamo. Southern Belle takes her opening - "Oh, Club Gitmo?"
He snorts, surprised - "Do people other than Rush Limbaugh actually say that? Ok, well, yeah, I'm sure the weather is nice if you're outside. I guess I could see that." Southern Belle lashes into a minutes-long explanation of how she and her husband have a friend who is a military lawyer or something similar, and who has visited the prison to confirm, as we all suspected, that the conditions at Guantanamo are actually quite posh. She goes on to mention the fact that the real story is how the prisoners get to treat the guards.
I intentionally avoid the conversation because I can hear Our Teacher's internal monologue, and I'm guessing that he is debating whether Southern Belle is familiar with the concept of habeas corpus or not. He puts an end to his side of the conversation by conceding that he hasn't been there, but that he doesn't think that running a prison like Guantanamo is the kind of business the U.S. government should want to get into.
It is, as I mentioned, an artisanal day, one of a kind. I am finding myself profoundly uninterested in the subjects around us, but I am jealous of Ms. Citizen when she gets up close to the metalwork on a vintage Harley, metallic and pristine in the bright sun. We do draw the interest of the Capitol Police, who find excuses to stay near us and cast nervous glances in our direction. Our Teacher shares a story about a colleague who had to erase his entire memory card after taking a picture of some nearby buildings, without realizing that it is apparently illegal to take pictures of the windows of federal buildings. Is it? I think DCist gripes about this kind of stuff a lot.
The Supreme Court is being power-washed (joke: "Well, it does need a scrubbing, but I'm not sure this kind of cleaning is going to accomplish much") so we are unable to get too close. The Library of Congress holds some interesting possibilities, especially the statues in the fountain at street level. From there, we start making our way to the Mall, and catch our first glimpse of the police in full riot gear.
There are dozens of them. Nowadays, you are never sure whether this has always been the case, whether it is something that is only now always the case, or whether something truly unique is going on. Pope Ratzinger has left; there are no WTO/IMF/WB type functions going on; and so we are left to assume that the police is there for the Earth Day crowd, which seems incongruous, unless there is the chance that a round of hackeysack or a game of ultimate frisbee might get really mind-blowingly intense (and not in that good way.) Asking around, we discover that there is a neo-Nazi rally scheduled to take place shortly. Neo-nazis!
What a country.
Our Teacher makes a joke about how he couldn't imagine that riot police would be necessary to handle an Earth Day concert crowd, and Southern Belle dives in again: "Haven't you heard of eco-terrorists?" He snorts, again. It's a good snort. Guffaw-ish snort. I want a snort like his because it's not old-man-ish...more childlike and enthusiasitc.
He replies, "Uhhh, I guess not. I spend more time worried about those actual terrorists." She continues, "Well, those are the people who want to use environmental policy to strangle capitalism." Just like that. That kind of phrasing - which is widely mocked for its rhetorical excessiveness - is readily available to her, just sitting on the surface of her mind, waiting to jump out. Impressive.
I want to correct her, to point out that people who urge the adoption of environmental policy are usually not terrorists but rather lobbyists, politicians, and special interest groups, just like the people who want to change laws about guns, taxes, and health care - that this group, like any special interest group, wants to marry their agenda to profit, sometimes through the free market, sometimes through governement subsidies, and that therefore their ultimate goal is to make their agenda friendly to capitalism, while the phrase eco-terrorists, as it is used by law enforcement, is usually applied to people who want to blow up SUV factories or disrupt logging operations through violent means. But it's not that kind of day for me.
This is where we start to lose a little bit of steam. I point out that the rally might be scheduled to coincide with Hitler's birthday, which is the following day. Why do people always look at me funny when I happen to know the exact date of Hitler's birthday? We think there are probably some intriguing photographic possibilities if we stick around for the rally, though we know that almost all of us in the class would fail to meet the neo-nazi criteria of "American." And yet, here we are, a ragged asortment of the many shades and faces of what the new America will look like, sauntering through the nation's capital. I start looking at people I see on the mall, trying to guess whether they are there for the neo-nazi event, for Earth Day, or neither. And for the first time, I understand what people mean when they say that they feel sorry for the KKK and other racial-purity agitators. They have already lost, of course. They are clinging to some anachronistic idea of America, and they will continue to be forced into the margins of a country that is ever-growing, ever-browning, though some of us like to think of our brownish skin as being more olive-toned than brown. They are quaint and out of place, and so irrelevant that it is hard to see why we should even feel threatened.
At the Hirshhorn sculpture garden, we take our last shots as yellow clouds of pollen swarm around us. Our memory card is full. We never see the nazis - just families, kids flying kites, dogs running and groups of people dressed to match each other, people wary of losing their group, just like at Disneyworld. None of the groups are homogenous, and they are perhaps united by little more than what unites our group: our common denominator is that we all wear devices worth hundreds of dollars strapped around our necks, and we all have some kind of desire to capture and frame something unique, something worth holding onto. Buses converge near the Capitol, and we assume they are bringing the ugliness. Ms. Citizen wonders about the depth of their gene pool. I nod, and mention how I love the fact that the ACLU will defend their right to march. I'm glad they will march, actually.
My thoughts are leaving the greenery and the bronze, though, and turning to the basketball game that I am missing, where millionaires will be competing against each other for a few seconds of highlight reels on Sportscenter. I wonder if anyone on those buses secretly loves the NBA and hip hop culture; I wonder if they lust after latinas in their isolated communities. I wonder about their co-workers and neighbors, and I wonder if their children will ever find peace in the real world. We leave the bright colors behind us as we get on the metro, eager to scan through the memory card later and re-visit the sharp hues and fuzzy backdrops of a very strange morning.
What is mistaken for closeness
My crude understanding of two very basic genetic concepts:
Mitosis: A process of cell division and replication where cells may identical copies of themselves to replace dying ones. This is how non-reproductive/germline cells reproduce - essentially by photocopying their genetic code into a new cell.
Meiosis: A process of cell reproduction where two different cells contribute a haploid of half of their genetic code for the formation of a new cell. This is how reproductive cells combine to create new cells and ultimately new organisms.
So when Andrew Bird sings that "we are all basically alone / despite what his studies have shown / what's mistaken for closeness is just a case for mitosis," he is probably bemoaning the fact that often two organisms come together and fail to create something new, opting instead simply to replicate the existing structures on which they previously relied.
Mitosis: A process of cell division and replication where cells may identical copies of themselves to replace dying ones. This is how non-reproductive/germline cells reproduce - essentially by photocopying their genetic code into a new cell.
Meiosis: A process of cell reproduction where two different cells contribute a haploid of half of their genetic code for the formation of a new cell. This is how reproductive cells combine to create new cells and ultimately new organisms.
So when Andrew Bird sings that "we are all basically alone / despite what his studies have shown / what's mistaken for closeness is just a case for mitosis," he is probably bemoaning the fact that often two organisms come together and fail to create something new, opting instead simply to replicate the existing structures on which they previously relied.
Growing true
Ctitrus does not grow true from the seed:
[From Oranges by John McPhee.]
In Florida, most orange trees have lemon roots. In California, nearly all lemon trees are grown on orange roots. This sort of thing is not unique with citrus. With the stone fruits, there is a certain latitude. Plums can be grown on cherry trees and apricots on peach trees, but a one-on-one relationship like that is only the beginning with citrus. A single citrus tree can be turned into a carnival, with lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, kumquats, and oranges all ripening on its branches at the same time. Trees that are almost completely valueless for their fruit seem to make the most valuable rootstocks.
[From Oranges by John McPhee.]
19 April 2008
18 April 2008
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"You have gestures"
Christine Kenneally on a study by Tomasello that aimed to determine differences between how humans and other primates use gestures and language:
[from The First Word - The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally - the passage above is probably my favorite fascinating tidbit in a book that's full of fascinating tidbits.]
The answer, he believes, is that humans are particularly cooperative in the way they communicate....In many theories of evolution, human altruism is treated as an anomaly. But Tomasello thinks of it as an evolutionary strategy that has served us incredibly well.
...
Tomasello and his colleagues' gesture work demonstrates both a continuum that connects human and ape communication and signficant differences between them. In our evolutionary history some individuals must have been born with a greater inclination and ability to collaborate than our common ancestor with chimpanzees. These individuals were more successful and bred more offspring with those characteristics, Tomasello said. What we have evolved into now is a species for whom an experience means little if it's not shared. Chimpanzees took a different path. In their communication, there is never just plain showing, where the goal is simply to share attention. While they do share and collaborate and understand different kinds of intentions, they dont have communicative intentions.
...
Tomasello's conclusions resonate deeply with observations made by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh...[who] worked with two apes called Sherman and Austin. The apes successfully acquired many signs and used them effectively. There didn't seem to be anything odd about their language use until one day they were asked to talk to each other. What resulted was a sign-shouting match; neither ape was willing to listen. Language, worte Savage-Rumbaugh, 'coordinates behaviors between individuals by a complex process of exchanging behaviors that are punctuated by speech.'
At its most fundamental, language is an act of shared attention, and without the fundamentally human willingness to listen to what another person is saying, language would not work. Symbols like words, said Tomasello, are devices that coordinate attention, just as pointing does. They presuppose a general give-and-take that chimpanzees don't seem to have. For this reason, Tomasello explained, "asking why only humans use language is like asking why only humans build skyscrapers, when the fact is that only humans, among primates, build freestanding shelters at all...At our current level of understanding, asking why apes do not have language may not be our most productive question. A much more productive question, and one that can currently lead us to much more interesting lines of empirical research, is asking why apes do not even point."
[from The First Word - The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally - the passage above is probably my favorite fascinating tidbit in a book that's full of fascinating tidbits.]
13 April 2008
The Plan
While I have an embarrassing amount of free time on my hands for the next few months, I aim to help myself reach a critical mass in terms of writing and output so that this becomes a regular staging area. Maybe it'll sink, maybe it'll wear floaties. Maybe it'll be irritating, maybe it'll earn some chuckles.
Either way, here's hoping I can win the battle against all the worst blogging tendencies. Thanks for taking a minute to look at it, whoever you are...
Either way, here's hoping I can win the battle against all the worst blogging tendencies. Thanks for taking a minute to look at it, whoever you are...
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