Something

Anything.

That's what I wanted to write about. Even if it's only because haven't written about that precise topic in quite some time, and I find this exercise to be useful in boosting my productivity. Or that's the hope, at least. Otherwise, I'll probably just sit around feeling like I'm producing the exact opposite:

Nothing.

But Nothing really doesn't get the praise it properly deserves, now does it? Its integral form, zero, is the fundamental basis of all mathematics, and the entire state of modern politics can be summed up as two sides treating every topic as a part of a zero-sum equation.

Whatever.

I can't draw up the mental interest to focus any train of thought into a full fledged discourse, so I'll just let this ramble on. Wandering prose, unless prose is supposed to be some type of poetry, in which case this'll just be rhetoric.

I could probably chalk it up to boredom. If I was more dramatic, I'd be liable to chalk it up to something more ominous sounding, like depression. If I was a bit more full of myself, maybe I'd chalk it up to something more existential and fanciful, like hyperconsciousness. Maybe I'm all of those things, but I'm too committed to being noncommittal to snatch up one of those terms. To declare. To settle.

Is it really settling, though, to settle on reaching for something of grandeur? Even something as spectacular as, say, deciding to travel to the moon, carries the stigma of "settling". Why not travel the earth? Why not learn how to fly in one of those spacey squirrel suits? Why not keep all your options open? Even if keeping your options open means that you only ever dream, couldn't you try to make the case that a thousand unfulfilled dreams can carry the same weight of one properly realized, if only for the romanticism of it all?

Probably not. They make motivational posters against stuff like that, and famous people get paid to be quoted saying things that discourage against that. I'm sure Michael Jordan, or Steve Jobs, or Ghandi, or someone influential like that made a career out of talking people out of not doing anything, probably.

But still.

Being bored, or depressed, or hyperconscious, or whatever, gets a bad rep. Probably not hyperconscious, since that sounds entirely too pretentious to not be thrown around by people who think entirely too much of themselves. But the others, negative emotions, or even the express lack of positive emotions, a state of blankness; nobody wants that. Nobody wants you to be like that. They all want you to be a cheery, productive member of society. It's what's "best" for you. Mostly because they say so. Or because it says so; society, that is. That amorphous blob of shared consciousness that simultaneously tells you that it knows what's best for you while imploring you to embrace your own individuality and ignore others telling you that they know what's best for you. You're the one who truly matters in the equation. Society says so.

Hell, they've even got me buying in, that's why I wrote this damned thing. "I find this exercise to be useful in boosting my productivity". And I even just quoted myself from a paragraph I wrote, like, thirty minutes ago. I really am the only one that matters. Society was right all along, thank God I stopped listening to it. Now that I'm productive, I can go on being cheery, like all of society's other members.

Good.

That was fun.

C

I woke up...

And I was still breathing.

That's all the motivation I need.

C

This Might Be Random, But...

I don't believe in randomness. Despite that, a central tenet of my daily philosophy is "shit happens", which is essentially embracing the randomness and unpredictability of everyday life. It seems contradictory, and that's because I set it up to seem that way; otherwise this would be boring as hell to read and write, douchebag. Stop picking nits. 

"Shit happens" vs "Everything happens for a reason" is a debate that has raged on over the ages, albeit under different names. And the debate probably hasn't "raged on" so much as these two differing viewpoints on life have each crossed everyones mind at one point or another. 

On a macro level, people who seem a bit more uptight and fatalistic tend to fall into the "everything happens for a reason" camp more often than "shit happens", and vice versa for people who are more laid back and lackadaisical. This is most plainly visible whenever something tragic happens and extremist groups attribute it to being "the will of God", or something like that. I would try to think of an example of when "shit happens" people make a fuss, but lackadaisical people tend not to make fusses. I'm sure you can think of an example if you try, champ. 

On a  micro level, people tend to attribute positive events to "everything happening for a reason", and negative events to "shit just happening". Get into college? Of course you did! You put in the time, effort, and kept yourself out of trouble;  now this is just your hard work paying off. Everything happens for a reason, you know! Did your ice cream fall on the floor? Don't worry, it's not your fault. It's windy out, and they really should make those cones easier to handle. Shit happens, man. "

It sounds a bit meaner when you flip the two: Get into college? That's cool, I guess. They probably picked you at random or something. They might've even given you a spot over someone who deserved it more, but who knows. Shit happens. Drop your ice cream? Of course you did. You were holding the cone like a jerk-off. Why didn't you face south to shield yourself from the wind? Everything happens for a reason. 

It's probably equally as accurate to assume that people tend to classify big, life altering events under "everything happens for a reason", and minor occurances as "shit happens", regardless of positive or negative impact. Didn't get that big job you interviewed for? Don't worry, something better will come up. Everything happens for a reason. Found 20 bucks on the floor? Good for you, must be your lucky day. Shit happens, and sometimes that shit is good shit. 

It makes sense, though, doesn't it? If something big goes right or wrong in your life, it probably has something to do with the work you did or didn't put into it. If something small happens to break your way, it's a lot easier to chuck it up to good or bad luck and keep on moving. It's a way to simultaneously feed your ego and keep it in check. You got that job because you worked hard and deserved it, not because you happened to get interviewed after the manager had taken his daily shit and xanax break. You found that 20 because you happened to be in the right place at the right time, not because you just watched that guy get jumped and saw that the robbers forgot to pick up that last bill before the cops came. Knowing when to factor in randomness is a quaint way of keeping yourself peacefully at the center of your own universe. 

What's that? Oh yeah, I don't believe in randomness. 

Every story you've ever heard essentially boils down to one of two conclusions: right place, right time; or wrong place, wrong time. What about the other possibilities? Right place, wrong time; and wrong place, right time? Well, those don't end up turning into stories, because nothing happens. Life goes on as usual and no fuss is made over it. It takes a lot of circumstances coming together for an event to be notable. Multiple unseen forces have to coalesce, the stars have to align, and everything has to break the right way for you so that your soufflé doesn't pop, or deflate, or do whatever the hell soufflé's do. If it all breaks right, you get your soufflé all crisp (they're crisp, right?) and tasty, just like you planned. Everything happens for a reason. If your asshole neighbor decides to randomly fire his machine gun in the air just as your souffle is coming out of the oven? Well, tough cookies, now you have a flat soufflé. Random shit happens like that sometimes. Except it wasn't random, even if you didn't expect it. Your neighbor had been planning to let his AK spray at 11:47 AM that Sunday for two weeks now. Everything happens for a reason. 

Those unseen forces that have to coalesce? Well, just because they're unseen doesn't mean they don't exist. You may not be able to account for all or any of them, but that doesn't make them any more or less real or significant. When you flip a coin in the air and call heads or tails, you probably feel as though you're combining two random outcomes: whatever you decide to call, and whatever side the coin lands on. One event is more predictable than the other; you may always call heads during a coin flip. The other feels like it's completely up to chance. It's not. What side the coin lands on is a direct function of a multitude of factors: how strongly you flipped the coin, where your thumb was placed on the side of the coin, how far the coin has to go before it hits the ground (or your hand, or whatever), the wind blowing through the room, the weight of the coin, how dirty the coin is on either side, and the list goes on and on. The same is true for any event that you would describe as random. There are variables and scales out there to quantify anything and everything that ever happens, randomness is just what happens when we can't or don't account for all or enough of them. 

Theoretically, you could measure all these variables, draw up ridiculous equations, and accurately predict anything you want, ever. 

Practically, what's the point? 

You don't need to know everything to know what's right or wrong, and trusting your gut will take you a lot farther than you think. (Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it at length in his book, Blink; of which the remainder of this paragraph will essentially be a recap) That's essentially the point of having a subconscious, the ability of your brain to process large amounts of data and variables before you even realize it, so you don't have to break out an abbacus every time you go to choose your breakfast cereals. Even still, with all the information that's processed without you even realizing it, there's still too much information for us to process, and the end result of events is eventually labled as "randomness". Eventually we accept that there is too much information and too much going on at once to predict or control much of anything and we stop calling it randomness, and we start calling it life.

Randomness is life. Life is randomness. 

So, I'm saying that I don't believe in life then? 

No, although I concede that I haven't done the best job of clearly setting up my point. But hey, this is my blog, so screw off, douchetard. Randomness was just a proxy I used to address the two conflicting schools of life philosophy that I've encountered over the years, "Shit happens" vs "Everything happens for a reason". Rather than finding a happy cop-out solution that falls somewhere in the middle, I've come up with a solution that embraces both extremes:

Shit happens, but not by accident. 

Everyday we are faced with the fact that there is much more going on in the universe than we can properly and efficiently account for, giving rise to the concepts of randomness and luck. At a slower rate, we are met with the gratification and reaffirmation of that which we can control; putting in hard work to make progress, developing a sound process towards achieving a better life, reaching goals and hitting milestones. The two sensations feel different enough from each other for us to learn to not associate one with the other, but really they're more like two edges of the same sword than two sides of the same coin. They work in unison with each other at every moment, whether we realize it or not. 

It's easy to see this unison in one of the examples I listed above, combining the hard work you had put in preparing for an interview with the seemingly random luck of having your interview scheduled after the manager puts himself into a good mood, which he probably has scheduled at the same time every day, thereby decreasing the randomness of the event. But the same applies to smaller events. Consider the example of finding a 20 dollar bill. What at first seems like you stumbling onto someone else's misfortune is really just a product of your walking schedule lining up with whatever wind patterns and muggings that took place to get the 20 dollar bill there at that time and place. It seems random, but that's only because you couldn't predict it, and that's mostly because you didn't have all the numbers, and thats definitely because you had bigger things to worry about. But it was going to happen, whether you paid it any mind or not. 

There's a train of thought in quantum physics that a friend and I discussed once in passing (aren't we fancy, talking about quantum physics and stuff on the train?). I don't remember all the details (aren't we fancy, talking about quantum physics and stuff while drinking on the train?), but it was something related to Schroedinger's uncertainty principle and taking into account all of the possible paths a molecule could've taken to reach it's current position (I swear we're not that pretentious all the time. But then again, if you find that pretentious, screw off). Basically, when trying to calculate such a thing, you realize quickly how much information there is to take into account, which is why quantum physicists are the ones who usually try to rationalize that stuff, not drunk guys on trains. The other thing you realize when putting the data together, is that there is usually a reason that the molecule took the path it took, and that the slightest of factors could've influenced it one way or another, but the path it took ultimately ends up being the most logical one. Randomness starts seeming a lot less random. 

Unltimately this might all not add up to much. Control what you can, accept what you can't, learn to tell the difference between the two. It's a life lesson we all have to learn one way or another, and you've probably heard it a million times over before I broke it down as such. There are plenty of things you can't control, and knowing that probably won't help you control them. But there are plenty of things you can control, maybe more than you had realized initially. Something's controlling them, right? Why not you? How can you tell the difference between the two? Don't ask me. I'm still figuring that out myself. 

C 

I wrote this at 3 separate times, on 3 separate days, in 3 separate months.

  "I'm currently in the process of finding myself."

I think I first heard that phrase, or some variation of it, on some show like Real World: New Orleans, way back before I had a grasp on what either reality tv or the "real world" was. 

When first I heard it, all those years ago, it sounded stupid. Years later, but not too long ago, it still did. 

The concept of "finding one's self", at least from a physical standpoint, is exceedingly simple nowadays to those in control of their senses and faculties. Unless you've been kidnapped and transported somewhere, or gotten lost and/or stranded, the dilemma of determining ones location on earth can usually be solved with a quick glance at a GPS or a survey of ones surroundings. Congratulations everyone, you've officially learned how to find yourself!

Even back in the mid-nineties, you knew that people in the process of "finding themselves" weren't waiting for satellites to determine their coordinates. I knew it then, and I know it now, but it still seemed like a conundrum that didn't warrant much speculation. 

If you want to know who you are, the easiest way to figure it out is to remember who you've been. Where have you gone, what have you done, what have you seen? What is the résumé of your life? You were the only living person who was around for the entirety of it (save for conjoined twins, and like, babies, I guess), so unless this is a movie ( or an unfortunate circumstance) and you have amnesia, just spend some time scanning your memory banks, come up with a synopsis of your life so far, and bam! You've officially found yourself. Time to pack it up and go home, folks. We're done here.

But it's not that simple, is it? It's true to an extent that you are but an amalgamation of your actions and experiences thus far, and that your thoughts and actions going forward are a result of what has previously shaped and conditioned you to think and do so. Like Bill Parcells said, "You are what your record says you are". It's logical, it's sensible, it's fair, but it's a bit... damning isn't it? Almost oppressing? Borderline suffocating even? Sure, it works well when reflecting on positive times and successes, but what about the mistakes and the failures? They're as much a part of your definition as your triumphs. And by now even this is starting to get cliched, leading up to a big "you just have to accept your past and move on"  moment of solemn understanding. And that's fine, have that, and high five yourself for it, because you deserve it, champ. Your past is your past, and it will always in some way define you, whether positively or negatively, but to what extent are we defined by our past as opposed to what we intend to do with our future? We'd probably all agree that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, that our actions and judgments in the present are representative of the balancing act between past experiences and future expectations that go into our decision making; it's the neat rational message that sends everybody home happy. But as nice as it sounds, it usually doesn't work out that way, and things always end up being a lot sloppier in practice. 

Consider this: would you let a porn star teach your kids' kindergarten class? Instinctively, most of us would say no. Porn and children are the last two things that anyone should ever consider mixing, in any way, shape, or form. Fine, but what if it was an ex-porn star? And a pretty famous one at that? I think that most people would still be inclined to say no. But why? Porn isn't illegal, and kids certainly (hopefully) don't watch porn, so it would really only be awkward for some parents or older siblings with some less than sparkling internet search histories. Convicted felons aren't allowed to vote or hold certain jobs, and for good reason, but does the same apply to ex-performers who made their money and name off of what people like to watch when no one's around? I won't belabor the discussion, as some great points are made in this piece, and even if you can find reasons for or against it, that's not the discussion I'm here to have. 

The topic above, and the ensuing rage-filled debate that it spawned, is an example of what happens when someone's personal past doesn't line up with the public perception of what their future should be, and how the fallout can expose our decision making processes as alot sloppier than we'd think them to be.

Some of these transitions are easier to accept than others. It makes sense that an ex-pro athlete would go into sportscasting,  or a singer would (try to) go into acting, or that a successfull businessman would go into politics. We've seen these things before. For that same reason, we wouldn't be completely shocked if a doctor decided to become a lawyer, or if actor wanted to be a govenor, or if, say, LeBron James wanted to take a crack at playing pro football. 

But the above example is different, isn't it? We're talking about kids here! They shouldn't have to be stuck in a classroom with someone who gave up a far more lucrative and glamorous (I guess) profession in order to be around them. What if she forgets where she is and walks in naked one day? What if she teaches them the ABC's using dildos instead of pencils? What if she teaches them that (gasp) sex is okay?! 

I'd like to think that we're all smart enough to agree that if someone wants to teach kindergartners, they know what is and isn't appropriate for kids to be around. 

I'd also like to think that the real debate isn't over the character of the parties involved, but in the clashing of two worlds that we find wholly incompatible, and the resulting mess challenges our assumptions of how much of an indicator a person's past is of their future. We tend to compartmentalize groups of people: athletes are athletes, doctors are doctors, celebrities are celebrities, and assholes are assholes. We make connections from one compartment to another, based on what we've seen before and what we've come to accept as a logical progression. There's nothing wrong with that, it helps us to make sense of all the information in the world. So when someone tries to jump ship from one compartment to another, it makes us uneasy because it confuses things, and life can be confusing enough as is. We spend our whole lives trying to make sense of the world around us, and to adjust to its demands, so when the something relatively simple happens to challenge the assumptions we've labeled as conclusions in our head, we're quick to deny them, and we're quick to be outraged. 

Think about how relatively insignificant it is that a former porn star would want to be a teacher, or that someone with visible tattoos would want to be a doctor, or that two people of the same sex would want to get married. We're not asking the question of "is she qualified to become a teacher", "how did he do on his MCATs", or "are they in love"; by and large, all the public outcries that meet these issues are really asking "do these two categories really mix?" or "are these categories supposed to mix?", and our gut reaction is often no, because they don't make sense to us.

Therefore, to an extent, the process of finding yourself has as much to do with how society chooses to view you as with how you choose to view yourself. 

As to which process is more complicated or important, I'm not sure. We're taught, in every form of media from fairy tales to mass advertising, that the latter-- how you choose to view yourself-- is of the utmost importance. "You can be whatever you want to be", whether it be a teacher, a lawyer, or even a porn star. But you can't be more than one....well you can, but just not at the same time.... or at least not in a certain order... because that would be wrong... for the kids' sake and all.... but definitely don't forget to teach them that they can be whatever they want to be.... as long as they haven't done porn yet.

The porn example is a little extreme (emphasis on 'a little', there's a lot of amateur porn out there, and I'm sure if one were to search hard enough, they'd be able to identify some unusual suspects in front of the camera), and I've belabored it a bit, but it illustrates the point: despite what they tell you, inner beauty isn't all that matters. 

Perceptions matter, appearances matter. With so much information readly available and bombarding us at all times, we make decisions and judgements based on perceptions more than we care to admit. Appearances can skew perceptions in ways that aren't always in line with reality. A millionaire dressed as a bum gets treated like a bum, and a bum dressed like a millionaire gets treated like a millionaire. Appearances matter because perceptions matter. I would expound this stream of thought more thoroughly, but seriously, this post is already taking forever. 

The irony of all this is that in writing a blog post about finding oneself, I've completely lost the point I had in mind when I started writing this. If I had to pick a takeaway, I'd say that everything is a two-way street in life, and that whether we like it our not, we have less say in finding ourselves than we think. So there, stop reading. 

Sports, Again

 As a former athlete, I sometimes struggle to understand the role of the media in sports. The blame for these struggles falls mostly on my own shoulders. At my current age (23), I'm just old enough to remember the pre-Internet era, but young enough to have witnessed the technology boom, and have lived most of my life in the information age. I understand that as recently as 15 years ago, the sports media landscape was vastly different than it is now. There was no blogging, no twitter, no fan websites. From what I glean, this meant that in order to get exclusive scoops and interviews, journalists had to be there, often following athletes around and possibly traveling with them. Back then, most anything an athlete had to say was relayed by a journalist through some media source, which often added some context to the quotes and ideas. Though I can't confirm, I'd imagine that artistic (or journalistic) liscence existed to a greater degree, allowing skills and talents to shine through, leading to media and journalism legends being created based on their ability to deliver powerful stories. 

Times have changed. 

Due mostly to the 24 hour media cycle, everything has become a story, everything is labeled as food for thought or topic for debate, even when it's painfully obvious that media outlets are grasping for straws in hopes of a ratings uptick or more pageviews. I might not like it, but I understand it. Everyone has to make a living, as a consumer of the product, I'm mostly at peace with what the market for information has become. But a part of me, the former athlete referenced above, still can't wrap my head around it completely, which is somewhat ironic considering that athletes are the fuel that keep the vehicle of sports media going. 

I played football in high school and college, not at a major D1A (FBS) program, but D1AA (FCS) so I wasn't exposed to the level of media exposure that athletes at larger programs experience. I also wasn't a prominent player on my team, in terms of having to answer to reporters, or receiving much recognition outside of my teamates. Maybe I don't understand the spotlight because I've never been in it, and I'm just projecting my ideal hypothetical Self into the place of others, which always leads to skewed criticism. 

Regardless of all that, I've been inside the locker room, I've put in the time, I've made the effort, I've felt the despair of defeat and the joy of victory, I've held hands and prayed with people I've called my brothers, I know what it is to be on a team. I know that what goes on inside locker rooms can't readily be understood by outsiders. I've read media and press reviews of teammates and the team in general only to come to the same conclusion: These guys really don't know what they're talking about. Positive or negative, no piece of text could really capture the feel and aura of a team. What goes on in the locker room and what goes through the collective heads and hearts of the players is often an experience completely independent of how that group is portrayed to the outside world. Maybe I'm letting nostalgia cloud my judgement, but where the media fits into that equation isn't still quite clear to me. 

That might be part of the allure. Trying to package an indescribable ennui and presenting it to a public that largely won't ever get a chance to experience it. Bringing the money paying fans closer to the athletes that they celebrate in their available time. Connecting fans emotionally to teams, connecting teams to cities, birthing stars and superstars, creating legends and crafting legacies. As far as that goes, I'm again mostly at peace with what sports media tries to accomplish. 

The more I write, the harder it is to pin down where my issues lie. It all makes sense on paper. It's a machine, maybe not finely tuned and smoothly operating, but a machine nonetheless. 

And--what?! It didn't fucking save any of those last 3 paragraphs I wrote? Are you fucking kidding me?

Whatever-- abridged version. Athletes are the fuel of the machine, whoms goal is ultimately to make money. Sports media are a branch of the machine that exist solely to generate revenue in the form of news cycles that amp up interest, and therefore financial support, for the teams. So why do athletes owe it to the media to grant insight into their inner workings, knowing full well that it could lead to a negative response due to biased reporting? Because at the end of the day, the media is working to make the team money, which makes the athlete money. Unless you're an NCAA athlete, where the revenue you generate from your sport is commensurate to someone having scored really highly on their SATs (not to demerit the worth of academic scholarships, but the immediate revenue generated by top performing athletes for the institution often outweighs the same contribution from top students, which, in the interest of fair compensation, I find to be wrong). 

That's the short version, if you were hoping for something longer, you can thank this crapp. (Get it? Crap + app?... Ok I'll stop)

The Miracle of Childbirth

I have an unnatural fear of pregnant women. Well, to be clear, it's less of a fear and more of a heightened sense of trepidation. And it only involves trains- that's what makes it unnatural, I guess. To be completely specific: I only have a heightened sense of trepidation regarding pregnant women as it pertains to the amount of available seating on a subway car.

Clear yet? No? Ok, how about this: I really dislike it when I have a seat on a crowded subway train and a pregnant lady gets on. I dislike it so much, that every time I'm sitting on a crowded train, I break out into a heavy sweat and vomit as we approach a station due to the crushing anxiety I experience at the prospect of a woman-with-child boarding my car. Alright, it's actually not that extreme, but the sentiment still stands, and the reasons as to why I feel this way boil down to this:

Pregnant women should ALWAYS have a seat on any form of public transportation. Always. Without exception. Unless there's a scenario where a train or bus has more pregnant women than seats (like, you know, when they all get out of the national pregnant ladies who dont have cars convention), there is no reason for an able bodied person not to offer their seat to a pregnant woman. Well, one could probably find a reason for anything, but as a general rule of thumb, pregnant women should always be able to find a seat on any form of public transportation. I could get into the logistics of that thought, but I'm sure you can figure out the thinking behind that one. No holier-than-thou nonsense, just common sense sprinkled in with some common courtesy.

So back to my fears. 

For some background on the situation, I've lived in New York my entire life, having spent the majority of the past 5+ years in Manhattan, so I spend my fair share of time on public transportation. In that share of time, I've come to realize what anybody realizes after 20 seconds on a rush hour train: seats are like gold. The difference between having a seat and standing on a crowded train is equivalent to the difference between running a marathon and driving 26.3 miles in a limo, except people actually choose to run marathons and nobody ever chooses to stand on the train. The competition for open seats can be fierce, with small Asian women often trying to torpedo their way into open spots, and older hispanic and black women giving off heat-vision-like stink eyes in an effort to shame any younger patrons into veering away from possible butt receptacles. There's sometimes the random sympathetic figure such as the shopper who definitely wishes they still had a shopping cart, the overworked mother/parents with all of their small children in full force, or the kindly old lady/gentleman who looks like they might tip over if the train moves before they're expecting it to. The situation can be further exacerbated by the presence of homeless people sleeping in the corner seats, and just how large their smell (and/or crazy) radius is, but for the most part those are the biggest hindrances to finding a comfortable-ish seat on a train. I used to succumb to them all, being the model citizen that I am, but in being the actual person that I am, there are times when I become impervious to all open seat blocks. I box out the small Asian women, I ignore the stink eye (or shoot one right back), I assure the old folks that I'll (try to) catch them if they fall, I tell the shoppers that they should've used their money on a cab, and I let the small children platoons know that this is only the beginning of a long life of standing on trains. I'll even sit next to a smelly homeless person and engage with them in conversations if need be. If I'm really in a mood to sit, nothing can stop me... except ...for... a pregnant woman, and if you need a reason, see the preceding paragraph. 

All that being said, it's not often that I go into sit-or-die mode. It usually takes a combination of being dehydrated, exhausted, and in some amount of physical pain- making me something of a sympathetic figure in my own right, for me to decide that finding a place to sit takes precedence over all social protocol. On these rare occurrences though, the same sequence always seems to take place. I'll find a seat among a sea of sympathetic figures and old stink-eyeing women, and be at peace. But then, after one or two stops, the train will approach a station and I'll see her- the bane of my existence- the pregnant woman standing in front of the door closest to my seat. She'll board and look around, and of course me, the least obviously sympathetic figure who had just denied other sympathetic figures access to a resting spot, will be the only suitable candidate to give up their seat. So I'll get up and stand, in agony, while the rest of the train relishes the fact that I've finally received my comeuppance, while they all proceed to take the train to or past my stop, ensuring that I can never even contemplate sitting anywhere but the floor, because that's how life always works, without exception. 

I have a recurring nightmare where I've just finished playing 5 hours of a sport that combines basketball and MMA fighting  (I call it fightsketball) without water breaks, on cement, in shoes that offer no arch support (which is a major issue for someone with flat feet). I'm not visibly injured, but I've definitely been pushed to my limit, and am extremely relieved to get on an empty subway car. I get on, sit for two stops, then it happens. I see a sign that reads "New York Welcomes the Annual Old Pregnant Train Enthusiast Convention" and the train pulls into a station filled with old pregnant women armed with the meanest stink-eyes this side of the Mississippi. They all get on. They all look at me. I shed a tear and stand up. They all sit. There's a crazy homeless man in a corner seat making his best effort to cover the floor of the train in his urine. The train moves. The train stops between stations. We spend the rest of eternity stopped there "due to train traffic in front of us".

This situation is very possible in New York City. This is a very real fear. They don't know where I live, but they know when and where I have to take the train to. They coordinate amongst themselves. They're after me. I swear it. 

But besides all that, this is the first post I've written on my fancy new iPad, so forgive me if there are more errors than usual (which is zero). 

Or don't. 

C

Tuesdays

Tuesdays suck. The traditional maxims for the work week are "Thank God it's Friday" (TGIF), "Thirsty Thursday", Wednesday as "Hump Day", and... whatever cliche negative connotations people attach to Mondays. To my knowledge, there aren't any sayings or nicknames associated with Tuesdays (maybe I'm just ignorant, though), and I think I've come to figure out why: Tuesdays suck.

I'm a little over a year into my post-college single working man's lifestyle and I find various reasons to keep myself busy in the evening and be tired at work the following morning, but I've found that Tuesday seems to drag along much more slowly than the other 5 days of the week, and to figure out why, I've broken down the days of the week in no particular order.

Friday: It's the weekend. Even if nothing pops up at night, there's always sleeping in on Saturday morning to look forward to. Good times.

Monday:  It's supposed to be the worst day of the week, but it's really not. If you had a great weekend, the memories are still fresh enough on Monday that you're still riding the wave of good feelings-- keep that in mind. If you had a terrible weekend, you have a brand new week ahead of you with plenty of helpful distractions lined up (i.e. your job). If it was neither, you probably got plenty of rest so there's nothing to complain about. A typical weekend usually falls somewhere between those limits, and your left with either plenty on your mind on Monday or plenty of rest to get yourself going. Also, Monday Night Football and even Monday Night Raw for those of us who enjoy being entertained, scripted or otherwise.

Thursday: It's practically the weekend, so usually you can either start planning for Friday and beyond, or you can start planning on how you're getting through you're hangover at work on Friday. Even if you're not into that lifestyle, Thursday's typically a great night for TV: Louie, Wilfred, The League, quality stuff. Also Thursday Night Football for anyone with NFL Network.

Wednesday: The aforementioned "Hump Day". The high point of the work week in the sense that it's all downhill after Wednesday, as in downhill towards a life of debauchery and poor decision making, as in the weekend either starts tomorrow or the day after. Heck, some places let you get the weekend started early with specials like dollar beers every Wednesday, so Wednesday is generally nothing to pout about. Which of course brings us to...

Tuesday: Far enough from the previous weekend that the wave of good feelings is probably long gone, and far enough from the upcoming weekend that there's no real need to start making plans or getting excited about anything. Not much on TV. If you live in a big enough city, you can probably find something to do on a Tuesday night, but if that's the case, you could probably find something to do any night. Probably ideal for a gym day, but there's really no day that can't be a gym day if you can afford to make the time for it. Tuesday just kind of sits there, twiddling its thumbs while the rest of the week finds ways to be interesting or attention grabbing. Dragging its feet while most of the working world (those with conventional Monday-Friday schedules) gets ready to proclaim how happy they are that Wednesday is here, which means Wednesday is almost over, which means the week is almost over, which means the weekend is finally here, mimicking the excitement of clumsily tinkering with a bra strap as you go for second base. No one gets excited over Tuesday. That would be like getting excited while tinkering with a bra strap that was still on the rack at Wal-Mart. It's almost sad in a lonely, under-appreciated and undervalued way....

But, if talking about Tuesdays leads you to sad depressive thoughts about the loneliest, least fun day of the week, do you really need more proof of how much it sucks?

People

The rise of the internet and the subsequent information age have given rise to more than a few social phenomena. I'm no anthropologist, so I won't get into most of it, being that the intricacies of what actually constitutes a "social phenomenon" are probably beyond my current scope of knowledge. What I have gleaned from my time on the internet, especially the time spent looking through comment sections on various sites, is that millions of people use the web as a forum to spread and share their opinions and thoughts. It seems everybody has an opinion that they consider to be insightful and unique, and they are often eager to express those views, even if their view is just agreeing with another view that was previously mentioned. If you've ever peeked at a comment section on some type of informational article, then you know that these aren't exactly groundbreaking observations. What you probably don't know, is that these observations actually have very little to do with the point of this post, it was really just a convoluted intro/segue into what I really wanted to get at. So if you were hoping I would go off on a highly vitriolic, ultimately hypocritical rant on the trolls of the internet, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, but genuinely happy (and a little befuddled) that you're reading my blog.

Anyway, I wanted to get into one of the ideas I mentioned, the thought that everyone has a separate, insightful, and unique view on anything and everything. It's not a crazy idea, is it? Especially since everyone's special in their own way, right? Eh, I guess, if you subscribe to that kindergarten-esque school of thought. I won't deny that it's impossible for any two human beings to have faced the exact same circumstances in their lives (there's always a variable, location, number of siblings, financial, always something), and by that logic you could very well argue that everyone is special and not be wrong. But as social creatures, humans tend to fall into categories. Hipster, nerd, jock, cosplay enthusiast, whatever, there's a classification for just about every pattern of thinking and acting that exists. So while your kindergarten teacher didn't really lie when she told you that everyone is special, chances are that nobody is as special as they think. "Alright", you're thinking to yourself, " that sounds a little cynical and pessimistic. I mean, I'm sure that I'm one of a kind. If not that, I'm at least one in a million, and that's still pretty damned special". And I'll take your word for it, actually, I'm glad that you think you're one in a million, because that's the whole god-damned reason I wanted to make this post anyway, it just took me two paragraphs to get into it. Let's play a numbers game!

As to not antagonize anyone who might be reading this (hah!), I'll start by classifying myself as one in a million. Lucky me, right? Sure. You'd probably have to search long and hard to find someone else like me, nameless subway performer. Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on earth, so for a person who's one in a million, such as myself, that means there are approximately seven thousand people out there who are just like me. Still, seven thousand people spread out across the globe could get pretty sparse in stretches, so lets assume that all seven thousand of my doppelgangers are spread out evenly, with one for every million in each nation. So, Adele, let's say that you wanted to find someone like me (in retrospect, this post would've been a lot shorter, and probably more entertaining if I had gone with "Someone Like You" as the focal point, rather than the roundabout, nonsensical way I went about it. Oh well, its too late to change now) in the USA and its population of about 300 million, you'd have a pool of about 300 candidates to choose from, provided you could find them. Assuming the 300 of me are dispersed evenly across the nation, according to province, not population density, you can expect to find about 6 of me in each of the 50 states. So, to have a realistic shot of finding someone like me, you'd be well served to go to either a small state (New Jersey, Rhode Island, Hawaii), or a state that isn't very densely populated (anywhere in the Midwest, I guess).

So I guess I haven't done a great job dismantling this whole "everybody's special" notion. Sure it doesn't sound as fancy as "one in a million", but six of you for every state in America is still a pretty good individual to populace ratio. So now lets assume that everyone is one in a million, since no one is likely to admit that they're anything less than special. As per our previous math, that would indicate that there are about 7000 different types of people in this world, and at least 300 different types in America. And this is where my argument stops being an argument, and starts being an abstract conjecture. Are there really seven thousand different types of people in this world? Of all the people you've met and interacted with, can you really file each of them away into seven thousand separate categories? Or three hundred even? Maybe its me, maybe I'm too dismissive and don't take enough time to appreciate the differences between folk, but I feel like fifty would be a hard number to get to. Of course, that number largely depends on your search criteria, so you could likely classify people seven thousand different ways if you sat around and thought about it long enough. Or based it on latitude and longitude or something.

Maybe I'm just being cynical when I think aloud that people aren't as special as they think they are, or maybe I'm on to something. Not quite sure, but it made me think, and that's a good thing, right?

C

Salt

I've been in a pretty pissy mood lately, so I've decided to write a pretty pissy post. I'm going to attempt to flesh out an epiphany of sorts that I had a while back. Admittedly, this realization came to me while I was in a pissy mood, so it may come off as a bit salty, but I've also found myself to agree with this point in non-pissy moods. It may not be necessarily groundbreaking, but it holds some merit nonetheless, and is stated as follows:

Seventeen year old's are pieces of shit.

I know, sounds harsh, but I really don't mean it to be as condemning and condescending as it appears. It's not to say that seventeen year old's are detriments to society and inherently evil, but more to say that seventeen year old's are just generally shitty people... I'm not really making a good case for this "not condemning and condescending" thing, am I? Alright, how about this.

It's not their fault that their shitty. It's just the way things are. Seventeen, or basically whatever year that you're a senior in high school, is just the prime age for shittiness. It's not done out of malice or spite, but out of the sheer lack of experience and knowledge of how not to be shitty. Consider the social position of a typical seventeen year old: too old to be treated as a child, yet too young to be considered an adult. That's a prime recipe for shittiness. The world is infinitely more complex than a child can comprehend, and seventeen is right about the age when people start to figure that out.

Remember learning how to play basketball? (Or guitar, or anything, really) Remember how you were generally shitty at it until you got a feel for how to dribble and shoot? Or even if you were a natural at it, dunking on fools since day one, do you ever remember noticing improvement in your game as you worked at it? Being able to read defenses better, seeing passing lanes more clearly, making decisions more quickly? It's pretty safe to say that anyone who's ever tried to learn how to play basketball, became less shitty of a player as they gained more exposure to the game. The same basic principle applies to seventeen year old's, sure they're shitty, but it's mostly because this is the first time they've ever held a basketball.

Let's say someone gets their drivers license at seventeen and their parents manage to get them a car. They know how to drive, they're pretty good at navigation, and they're a pretty safe driver, so everything's set, right? Well what about gas? A large part of their previously free spending budget just got taken away by one of the realities of owning a car, so either they can find ways to expand their budget, or they can learn to manage what's left of their budget and adjust their lifestyle accordingly. For some seventeen year old's, the former option is as simple as asking for more allowance, which can to more of a financial strain on the family, and for others it means taking on more hours at work, which can affect other areas of life such as academics or socializing. The latter option (managing a reduced budget) may include cutting back on things such as eating out, going to movies, or ordering hookers. But that's easy, everyone knows cars need gas, and that's usually something people take into account when considering a car. That's also just the tip of the iceberg. The minutia of having your own car can include simple things like keeping the car clean, closing the windows at night, learning where it's best to park in certain areas, knowing not to park behind your dad's car when he has work in the morning, knowing to leave your keys in an accessible place in case someone needs to move or use your car (at home), checking your tires, monitoring your oil levels, keeping in mind how much weight you're carrying in the car, and remembering not to hit people. It can all add up pretty fast, and that's still just one aspect of your daily life, and a seventeen year old is bound to be shitty at some aspects of it before they learn how to manage it all.

I know, some seventeen year old's are probably out saving  baby goats in Zimbabwe or something, so maybe my original claim that seventeen year old's are pieces of shit was taking it a little too far. I guess a more accurate statement would be that seventeen year old's are shittier versions of their adult selves. That's usually the case as I see it, anyway. I'm sure some people find ways to be shittier versions of themselves as they get older. But even as I look back on my seventeen year old self, I find that I was pretty shitty at being me. People around me probably haven't noticed some grand transformation, but rarely in life do things magically get better all of a sudden. Progress is usually a road traveled upon, not a room entered (that was kind of a good metaphor, no?). So generally, as people become less seventeen years old, they become less shitty people.

The caveat to that rule is that you don't become less shitty just by breathing for more consecutive days, you actually have to work at it. American society has a pretty nice deshittifier that they like to call the school system. Yeah, I know the education system is flawed and needs major improvement and all that noise, but the concept of being in school has value beyond what is being taught in the classes. Did you ever notice that all kids are a little weird? Maybe not in a "we need to get him checked out" kind of way, but just little reminders here and there that they've only been doing this life thing for a short time. You may not consider their actions to be weird, but if you run into a twenty five year old who has the social awareness of a twelve year old, you instantly classify that as amiss. The mindset of a child is very different than that of an adult, even if the only difference may be the capacity to understand what is expected of a person. Institutions such as school and sports help us realize and understand those expectations, and our reactions to them shape how we're perceived by society. Learning subjects such as math and history serve their purpose, but learning to function in society is an equally valuable experience.

This is starting to run long, and I'm losing focus, so I'll wrap it up. If you're seventeen, you're shitty, at very least relative to how not shitty you'll be one day. It's not your fault though, the world is set up for you to be shitty at seventeen, it's normal and expected. It is, however, your job to learn how to not be shitty. So do that. Twat.

C

New York and Sports

New York is arguably the biggest market in sports. To be honest, it's not really much of an argument. The only other city that holds a candle to New York in terms of revenue opportunities, media coverage, and whatever the hell else goes into classifying a city as "big market", is Los Angeles, and they don't even have a professional football team (of which New York has two), and seeing as how football draws in more revenue than any other sport, I think that gives the edge pretty handily to New York. And besides, its New freakin' York. No, I haven't checked the facts or done the research, but it seems pretty logical, doesn't it? (Update: I still haven't checked the facts or done the research, but New York is definitely the biggest market in sports. I was too lazy/tentative to make that claim previously, but it seems pretty silly in retrospect. Feel free to disregard the previous paragraph.)

Either way, I'm not writing this to prove New York's merit as the biggest market in America, this post is about the sports themselves in New York, so any dissenting opinions or facts you might have (you, oh contentious imaginary reader) can twiddle their thumbs while I get on with this.

In New York sports, most things come in twos. There are the Giants and the Jets, the Yankees and the Mets, and the Rangers and the Islanders. The exception to this dichotomy exists only in basketball, and only for the time being, with the Knicks being the only New York pro basketball squad until the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn. With different sports teams sharing the same town, the expected result is that the different fan bases must also share the same town, leading to all sorts of cross-town rivalries and bad blood. This is true to an extent in New York, but is generally hamstrung by the varying degrees of success experienced by each team. The Yankees have been vastly more successful than the Mets, making it understandable that young sports fans will tend to become Yankees fans. The same can be said, to varying degrees, with the Rangers vs the Islanders, and the Giants vs the Jets. Usually, even when one team is clearly better than the other (ha, Jets fans), there exists bickering and trash talking between squads, as unfounded as one side's claims may be.

The Knicks should be immune to this though, right? (Lets discount the Nets, 1. for the sake of this argument, and 2. because they're the Nets) Wrong. Knicks fans take the high road and find ways to argue amongst themselves. New York has always had a reputation for having generally sports-savvy fans, and it resonates as a source of pride within the city, but comes with its set of repercussions. Everybody's a critic. Everybody's a pundit. Everybody knows we should have done X instead of Z, that we should have zigged instead of zagged, and, most importantly, everybody knew this was going to happen. "Called it". This isn't particularly new or exclusive to New Yorkers and the Knicks, but at some times the arguments can escalate to the point where it may seem that there are two different teams in question.

 I know it sounds as if I'm just complaining about other people complaining, and I am, to a degree, but I'm actually largely unaffected by all this. What's the point of watching sports if you can't make an opinion and voice it? Everybody loves imagining themselves as the owner, general manager, coach, or player in question, and why not? It's half of the fun. Nobody wants to pay to sit around and watch a bunch of millionaires play a sport that the rest of us play for free if we're not allowed to be upset about a team's shortcomings. By that same logic, there would be no reason to be happy about a team's success. Everything's bigger in New York (screw off, Texas), why wouldn't the critics be?

So I'm fine with all that, go ahead and voice you're opinion. You're entitled to it. It's like having your cake and eating it too. But seriously, who the hell would have cake and not eat it? That might be my least favorite popular analogy of all time.

What I find particularly interesting, and rather confusing, is the concept of the "true fan" versus the "bandwagon fan". Everyone knows bandwagon fans are annoying. They jump on to your team's success like a remora onto a shark and then fall right back off at the first sign of distress. Sickening. They weren't there when you were in tears over your teams ineptitude, so why should they get to bask in the glory of your teams undeniable might, right? It doesn't matter if they were preparing for an interview, on a date, or in the hospital with a loved one, or just generally weren't into basketball at the time, if they weren't devastated by the way the '99 NBA Finals turned out, they are officially no longer allowed to be Knicks fans. Ever. Period.

 It doesn't matter if they just recently started playing basketball and decided to root for the local team, if they have a relative on the team, or if they just got out of jail and decided to follow sports instead of burn down forests. If you don't fit the strict qualifications of a "true fan", then you're not allowed to claim stake in our team's success. You don't know the name of the twelfth man on our bench? Get out of here. Can't name our leading charge taker from last year? Pathetic. You were too busy volunteering at a hospital to catch last night's game against the worst team in the league? You sicken me.

I think you can see the point I'm trying to get at here (well maybe not you, Sheldon). A fan is a fan. Some are die hard, some are casual, and like everything else in life, the extent to which someone derives happiness from a team's success varies from person to person. Sure, bandwagon fans can get annoying and in extreme cases, infuriating, but so can "true fans" in the same context. Think about it, are you really so invested in your team's fortunes that you'll get upset at someone else for being happy along with you? Aren't they taking your side? Does it really diminish the moment that much for you, that you have to go out of your way to admonish someone else for whatever marginal amount of pleasure they're getting from the situation?

Maybe yes and maybe no, but this is starting to get a little to preachy and ranty for me, so I'm going to cut it at that. It's entirely possible that none of this is exclusive to New York, and happens in every town, but I'm from and live in New York, so I can only speak to what I know.


C

Angular Velocity

So that last post started off alright, but ended up being a bunch of moral pontificating goo, so let's try something else.

I was reading an article on Cracked.com (a humor website I frequently visit) a while ago regarding the theoretical difficulties associated with time travel. There were a bunch of interesting points, but the one that stood out to me had to deal with the correlation between space and time. Depending on how much Discovery Channel you've watched out of boredom in your life, you may (I was going to write "may or may not", but seriously doesn't saying "may be" or "might be" automatically imply that the opposite can be true? I guess that's for a different post) be familiar with the widely understood notion that the universe is expanding (or contracting, whatever), with galaxies and such moving throughout the void in all directions. So what was proposed on Cracked was that should we actually devise a way to travel back in time to, say, the same spot 20 years ago today, the time traveler would likely find him or herself in the middle of space, since the earth would not have reached that point in space yet. So the solution would likely be extensive calculations, and charting, and blah, and blah, and blah, and that's not the point I'm getting at.

What I am getting at is that we're all moving. All the time. Whether you're sitting still, or being trapped in a block of ice by some evildoer, despite being completely motionless, you, along with the rest of the planet and everybody on it, are always traveling across some distance in space as the earth rotates around its axis, revolves around the sun, and orbits some massive black hole in the center of the milky way or whatever.

The reason we're not constantly holding on for dear life is the same reason you can walk around on a moving train car without being Spider-man. There's some scientific name for it, but it escapes me, so basically it's that when on board an object moving at a constant velocity, you can pretty much move freely relative to that object. The same applies to skateboards, cars, and airplanes. Trouble, from a balance standpoint, only arises when the object accelerates (or decelerates, which is just accelerating in the opposite direction), that's when you should consider holding on for dear life. As a quick aside: that would make for a half decent movie plot, either the earth starts accelerating and no one knows why, or some villainous scheme is hatched to accelerate the rotation of the earth. Buildings would fall, there would be floods, storms, the whole shabang. I'll keep that in mind, but it's all besides the point.

The point to take from that is that despite your personal action or inaction, you always have some velocity relative to a stationary point in space. An object at rest has a velocity of 0 on earth, but in terms of the universe has a velocity of 0 + the Earth's Velocity. Simple enough, right? Well, no, since it's really a matter of angular velocity, acceleration, centripetal force, gravitation constants, and a whole bunch of other physics variables. But I'm no physics major, so for the sake of this post I'm going to stick with velocity. If anyone ever reads this and happens to know a bit about physics and wants to call bullshit on this whole thought process, go ahead, I'm just throwing ideas out here.

So we're all moving, all the time, so what? Well where this becomes interesting is when you take into account that velocity is a vector, in that it has both a magnitude and a direction. Going 35 mph north east is the same as going -35 mph southwest, moving at a high velocity in one direction is the same as moving at a low velocity in the opposite.

This comes into play when considering the whole expanding universe thing that I previously mentioned. For simplicity's sake, let's say the Earth is traveling, along with the rest of the galaxy, eastward at a speed of 5 mph. Now lets say you decide, while on earth to drive westward at a speed of 20 mph. While you've increased your speed by 20 mph on earth, you've actually decreased your speed relative to the rest of the galaxy by 15 mph. Again, the way the universe moves is much, much more complex than that, but it's interesting to think that depending on the direction you're facing while walking, you may actually be decreasing your velocity in the universe.

As I've mentioned, I'm no physicist, not even close. A lot of this is probably so wrong that Newton's ghost is plotting his revenge, and after typing it out, I don't even know if the logic of it all is sound (Or maybe it's all right, and I've just made some kind of ground breaking discovery! [Definitely not]), but it was an interesting thought nonetheless. Now that I look at it, it probably would've made more sense and had been easier to explain using airplanes, but oh well. It's fun to flex the old brain muscle from time to time, even if the brain isn't a muscle and what you're thinking is very probably horribly incorrect. So...uh, yeah.

C

Se7en, Fullmetal Alchemist, and the Perfunctory Nature of Man

So here we go for this whole blog thing, time for my first non-introductory post! Judging by the page views, approximately no one has stumbled upon this page, and I kind of like it like that-- for now at least. I was considering making this post some take on the Linsanity phenomenon with a race angle (you know, like EVERYONE else is doing), but I'm not for all that zeitgeist-y stuff. Maybe I'll get back to that at a later date. For now, I'm just going to write about an off-hand, outside-the-box type topic that I thought up before falling asleep. I sort of imagine this as being a shorter version of a paper I wouldn't have minded writing in college, if I didn't abhor literary research so much. Thankfully this isn't being graded, so no sources needed, just throwing thoughts out there like a monkey flinging crap at a wall, then trying to make sense of it like some type of monkey poop analyst. Yeah. Let's just get started.

Last night I happened to catch 90% of a movie I had been searching a while for: Se7en (or Seven), starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The movie was released in 1995, and I had heard some things about it, but mostly made sure not to look it up or watch bits and pieces, as not to spoil any twists or the ending (I really hate when that happens). So after getting home from work, I noticed I had only missed the first 15 minutes of a TNT airing and decided to hop in, figuring I would have only missed introductions and trivial matters. The movie didn't disappoint. I'm no critic, but I thought the plot was great, the acting at least slightly above average (Pitt was meh, at best), and all that other junk that goes into movies was good enough to discourage me from flipping the channels during commercial breaks. I'll try not to ruin anything for anyone who hasn't seen the movie (and miraculously found this blog), but the story focuses on two detectives (Freeman and Pitt) as they try to solve a string of murders by a serial killer (some guy, who I'm sure is famous, but whose name I don't know off hand) whom bases his murders on each of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Envy, Pride, and Wrath. Each of the murders is gruesome in it's own right, from forcing an obese man to literally eat until he dies, to making a model (I think) choose between calling for help and living without a nose or overdosing on sleeping pills and dying before anyone can see her without her beauty. As far as being most cringe-worthy, the lust murder takes the cake, and almost by a long shot. But more than being incorporated for pure shock-value, each of the murders invokes trains of thought and serve as cautionary tales regarding the dangers of our modern world, where it is often easy to access and indulge in such vices. (Geez, I feel like some sort of preacher already, on to the next paragraph). At the end of the movie, the murderer reveals his ultimate plot, which also serves as a giant middle finger to the detectives, and really sets it apart from your run of the mill detective movie/ thriller.


After watching the plot resolve itself with a semi-expected, but still satisfying twist at the end, I got to thinking about one of my favorite anime series of all time: Fullmetal Alchemist. The story of FMA revolves around two teenage brothers in a world where it is possible to alter the physical construction of matter (like say, turn a pile of junk into a working clock) through the science of alchemy, and comes in two iterations: Fullmetal Alchemist--which was the first to air on TV-- and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood--which was released after the manga reached its conclusion in Japan. Brotherhood is not a continuation of FMA, but rather takes place in its own separate universe. (I won't link to the second one because the plot is seriously too good to allow someone to just read about it on Wikipedia. Seriously, watch that show. If not, you're an ass and I hate you). The two series feature mostly the same characters and basic plot, but the later version includes many more twists and turns, as well as involves a much larger scope and a much more detailed background. So yeah, the second one is better, in my opinion (and anyone else who isn't a turd). So what's the connection to Se7en? Well, besides both being awesome, FMA and brotherhood both also use the seven deadly sins as a main theme. The main group of antagonists of the series were creatures known as homunculi, or fake humans more or less. There were seven of these creatures, each which bore a human resemblance most of the time, and each was named after, you guessed it, one of the seven deadly sins. Predictably, the homunculi tended to go about their evil ways in a fashion that was in some way tied to their name and the deadly sin it represented. Lust took the form of a beautiful women who mostly tried to seduce her way into getting evil done, Gluttony was a ravenous, impish-looking character who was mostly concerned with his next snack (people!), and Greed generally wanted a lot of stuff. Between the two series, the homunculi take on different iterations and personalities (Sloth and Wrath are arguably the two best characters in Brotherhood, but are relatively forgettable in FMA), but the motives generally remain the same: do evil stuff that's related to their sin-name and tied into some intricate overarching plot that's unbeknown to the viewer and protagonists.

So let's tie these together! I've already spelled most of it out, both works used the seven deadly sins in connection to some overarching theme or plot, simple enough. More interestingly, both works used the seven deadly sins as major plot points and/or characters as a means to shed some light on the human condition. As with the murder victims in Se7en, each of the homunculi in both FMA iterations ends up becoming a victim to the principle vice it associates itself with. The extents to which these sins are carried out are so extreme that the characters associated with them begin to transcend conventional protagonists and antagonists, they become the sin itself. Gluttony from FMA doesn't eat because he's hungry, he eats because that's all he is motivated to do, all he can do. The fifth victim in Se7en isn't a woman so vain she couldn't stand to live without her beauty, as soon as she takes the pills she is vanity. All are examples of what can happen when you leave one aspect of your personality unchecked for too long. The take home message here is obvious; either don't sin in excess, or don't sin at all, and you won't end up being a casualty to your own actions. Since a four year old could probably come up with that sentence in less convoluted wording, I'm going to try and dig a little deeper, and that's where "the Perfunctory Nature of Man" comes in.

For one last little bit of background, no, I didn't watch Se7en and the FMA/Brotherhood series and think to myself, "Man, there seems to be a lot of perfunctory ish going on". Up until a few days ago, I only knew of the word perfunctory in a passing, I've-heard-it-used-in-context-before-and-wasn't-confused-so-I-guess-I-know-what-it-means sense. My knowledge of the word would likely have remained as such, but the other day I woke up mid-train-nap and the word was on my mind. Was it some sort of sign? Unlikely. It was probably more along the lines of my brain doing some random cycling while I slept (brains do that, right?) and me waking up just as it was trying to remember every P-word I've ever heard. A few more seconds before or after and the word might have been completely different (yeah, I know what you're thinking). Regardless of the possibilities, it was what it was and I had the word stuck in my head so I looked it up on my iPhone. Perfunctory more or less means programmed, but in a more human, just saying "Hi, how are you" as an automated response, as opposed to really caring, kind of way. The types of interactions you have with coworkers or neighbors when you run across them while handling your daily business. Good word to know, probably interchangeable with polite in a lot of contexts. Anyway, back to the issue at hand. We've got this all set up pretty nicely, so let's try to finish it off cleanly. That's what she said.

 The seven deadly sins weren't chosen at random out of a hat, and there's a reason no one really disputes them (unless I'm missing some larger, probably stupider debate). They seem to sum up pretty nicely the spectrum of different ways someone could go about doing bad things, drug addiction can be seen as gluttony, violent acts obviously go under wrath, and ignorance and bigotry can be filed under sloth and pride. We're all human, and we're all susceptible at some level to all of this, so what keeps us from eating ourselves to death and hurling rocks at each other? That's where society comes in. By establishing a set of rules to govern our day to day existences, which of course vary from culture to culture, we're conditioned from a young age to avoid the recesses of the ugly side of our nature. Movies like Se7en and shows like FMA/Brotherhood play a part in reminding us why these rules exist. This isn't to say that all of us are naturally predisposed towards violence and lust and lack any capability for virtuous acts, but better safe than sorry, right? Better a society of people absentmindedly saying hi and bye to each other than one where douchebaggery and violence goes unchecked, right? Worth thinking about next time you get annoyed by all the "fakeness" and messages being pushed by the media.

That conclusion royally sucked. I started writing this on a Tuesday and finished on a Friday, and lost more and more focus with each passing day. I ended up just throwing a bow on that half-formed fetus of a composition and hit publish. But hey, at least there's a lot of room for improvement.

C

My name is Country and this is my blog.

 I feel like sort of a hypocrite for making one of these. Not that I've ever publicly admonished blogging or don't read any blogs, but I've just never been one for the whole "sharing" phenomenon that's taken over the world (seemingly) due to the rise of social networking services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. I have both a twitter account and a facebook page, but more often than not I find myself debating other whether to deactivate one, the other, or both. I've found twitter to be a combination of comically useless and relentlessly boring, but I still have an account, just because, I guess. Facebook on the other hand tends to serve a purpose from time to time. Whether it be semi-creepily seeing what friends-gone-by have been up to, or making an event to organize a fantasy football league, the 'book has proved useful enough times for me to be able to justify keeping my account active, at least for the time being. But back to the point--why start a blog? To be simple and plain about it: I want to work on my writing. Despite being a massive procrastinator who always came close to missing deadlines (a few of which were missed, and badly), writing papers was more or less an enjoyable experience for me in college. Now that I've graduated and have a job that requires absolutely no writing, I've decided it's a skill that I'd rather not have whittle away. I recently got my writing fix by writing weekly updates for my 10 man fantasy football league, but after 17 or so posts (of which maybe 12 were read by possibly 3 other people), the season ended and I went back to that whole non-writing lifestyle that I just mentioned.

If you're reading this, then thanks! If you're reading this and wondering why I decided all of a sudden to start blogging on a random Friday in February, then even better! The biggest impetus for this blog was an article I read yesterday (an equally random Thursday in February) titled I Think I'm Musing My Mind by Roger Ebert, who had lost his ability to speak while battling cancer. It was a pretty good article, and I'll link it below, but to sum it up, he found that while he wasn't able to speak verbally, by writing more and more in his leisure time, he was able to communicate better. So basically, the point of this blog is that I want a piece of that pie (no homo?).  I've been told that communication is the key to life, so there's no reason not to try to be better at it, right?

So basically here's how I'm going to try to run this: This isn't going to be a blog where you find out about what I did this past weekend, or who I saw on the train the other day. It's also not going to be a blog where I write about something obscure and meaningless that I saw, that sent me off into some artistic rift about our place in the universe and all that nonsense. It's not going to be about how things are coming along, what I'm into, or even who I am. As a matter of fact, I'm going to try my hardest to keep anything about my personal life out of this. I'll probably end up making vague references to where I'm from, and some part of my previous life experiences, but if this works out the way I'm envisioning it, one would be able to read through this blog without ever knowing anything concrete about my personal life. In fact, this title entry is the last time I intend on using anything more than one letter to represent my name. So take that, sharing, you asshole. That being said, I'm not fully versed in the way of a blog, and don't know the chances of someone random chancing upon this, so in all likelihood, the only people who'll ever read this will be my friends, and will know exactly who I am and what I've done. So what's the point? Like I said before: get better at writing. Pay attention, asshole. What will I write about? Who knows? I may never post again. I might write about current events, or something interesting or funny I thought up one day. This isn't supposed to entirely make sense, so I won't try to make it. And if you're waiting for me to write something cool and artsy that leaves you with a an interesting thread of thought on your mind before I sign off, then f*ck off.

I'm going to go eat lunch.

C

Oh, and here's that link :
Ebert- I think I'm musing my mind