In what was perhaps the longest labor day weekend of my life, I:

- evacuated Baton Rouge
- sheltered from Gustav back home
- celebrated a cheerful, subdued birthday with my family
- stressed out about my job, my apartment, and my friends, all of whom have been adversely affected by the storm
- picked up a lot of storm debris

My family came through the storm well. The house suffered no damage, only a few trees down in the yard, and - we never lost electrical power - a hurricane first in my lifetime.

As to my room in Baton Rouge, well, I know it has very little to no damage although power is out and may be out for a few more days (weeks?). Hopefully the girls are taking it in stride, as I have no way of knowing since I can’t reach them by phone. I know they are safe, but that is all.

I’m off of work till Monday, which means I’ll have to take vacation or lose wages, neither of which I really want to do. Sitting around here in L-town hasn’t been a blast either, but I’m trying to keep my morale up by reminding myself how lucky I am to have hot food, a shower, gas, and electric lights.

One thing I haven’t mentioned on this blog is that I haven’t been playing any guitar for about a month now because I sort of hurt my hand at work and then practiced too much until I was having some hand pain just sitting around doing nothing. I stopped playing completely for four weeks starting when I went to Chicago (another thing I haven’t blogged about) until now. I tried to play a bit yesterday and guess what? Still painful. I think I may have some kind of tendonitis.

Related to the no-playing issue is my shoulder which I’ve dislocated a few times and which has been hurting recently. I need to go to the doctor to get it checked out, and I have a feeling that it may have something to do with my hand pain as well - like maybe some tendons are messed up or something.

It’s coming up on a year since the awful car crash that messed me up for months this time last year, so I’m not thrilled about having doctor issues popping up right now. Fortunately, these are manageable, treatable problems, pretty small beans in the big picture. But I just needed to complain to the internet about them.

So, despite my birthday, this has been (for me and everyone I know), a really stressful couple of days. My housing situation in power-less BR is unknown, I’m missing wages, I can’t play music (#1 pastime), I’m worried about my friends, and my shoulder hurts!

But I’m safe with my family, I have food, water, shelter, and creature comforts. And I’m 24. Getting off to a rough start this year, but I’m much tougher than a few aches and pains and a hurricane.

PS - Misery loves company. I welcome complaints in the comments below, esp. hurricane related ones.

i’ve started my last semester as an undergraduate. there’s no need for me to repeat the same things i say every semester about school. i have no more sweeping generalizations to add to this long, long tale of my college career. i’ll tell you about the new classes that i’m in.

EE 4240 - Linear Circuit Design
When I was a freshman, this class was one of those that i saw in the course catalog at the tender age of 18, deciding right then and there that this class was my end goal. It sounded like the keystone in the glorious academic arch that i was going to build. I was anxious to get through all of the mundane classes and uninteresting electives to get into this one. We have yet to really delve into the subject matter, but as i’ve discovered from the first week of class, the outlook is pretty dismal. The details of its failure to live up to my expectations are, to my readers, wholly uninteresting. I am, to say the least, disappointed.

CSC 1254 - Programming in C++ II
Programming is something that, as a geek, is under my requisite list of skills. I like to program. I find efficient code to be something beautiful and elegant. The writing of such code is virtuous in my eyes, like logic to a Vulcan. The Vulcans, by the way, would have written the best code ever. Anyways, the last time that i’ve written in the C++ language was around 5 years ago. I picked it up quickly as a freshman taking Programming I at Mercer, and then when I transferred to LSU, couldn’t seem to fit Programming II into my ambitious class schedules until now, the very last semester of my undergraduate life. A lot of proverbial water has gone under the proverbial bridge. Meanwhile, the professor is a small old lady who “teaches” by constantly posing questions to the class, and then when no one answers, replies with “What are you thinking! Data structures! It’s obvious!” This class has long assignments and strict grading guidelines. I’m not a fan.

Philosophy 2025 - Bioethics
Now here’s a class that i thought, as a general education requirement (GE), was going to look, act, and feel like a GE. Easy. Mildly informative, at best. I was wrong, once again. I’m very conflicted about this class. This is my first philosophy class, and i’m reading these obtuse articles and theoretical discussions about morality and ethics. While i’m absolutely incensed by some of the notions that i’m reading of, i happen to be at just the place in my academic career where i’m doomed not to care enough to do anything about it. Let me explain. I’m such a beginner to this whole philosophy thing. Apparently, when you’re studying philosophy, you have to begin at the very beginning of philosophical history (in the West, that’s usually Greece). Then, you can use the names of those ancient people to describe the world around you now. You can only then start to talk about things like Neo-Platonic, Kantian-meta-ethical theory. Everybody’s philosophy can be compartmentalized. So, when I’m reading some philosopher’s terribly biased and jargon-filled literature, from the standpoint of someone who hasn’t been “enlightened” by “classical” philosophy, i’m completely infuriated with the audacity of their speech and the superiority in their tone. Perhaps its just these few articles that we’ve started with in the course, but every time i read something that rubs me the wrong way, i have to stop and enumerate all the ways i think the author is at fault. Now, for the problem: normally, this would probably be a healthy learning experience, contributing to my academic success in the course. However, like i have said before… this is gen. ed. requirement… and it’s far too late in the game for me to pursue any sort of philosophy study so that i can even begin to attack their flaws. I have no inclination to do the reading, nor the time left in college to take all the introductory courses. I am armed only with my particular worldview, a loose grasp of the appropriate language, and the strong desire to get the hell out of school.

EE 4450 - Distribution System Design
Quite possibly the most practical class at LSU for entering the job field. Taught by an industry professional, an engineer who owns and works at his own consulting firm, not a professor. His emphasis is on teaching the applicable skills and mindset that can immediately be used and built upon in a lifelong engineering career. He makes sense, speaks plainly, and basically embodies the kind of teacher that you always wanted.

Those are my classes. i am going to be involved in many things these next few months. by october i’ll have gone to a lot more job interviews and will be deciding on a full-time position, studying and taking the FE (professional engineering) exam, trying to keep up with my classes, and always working in my off-time as computer-repair tech.

when i graduate…

and i’ll just leave that ellipsis there forever, like a paragraph that is staring bittersweetly into the future. because thats the way i feel.

Lots I’ve wanted to write about the 2008 Summer Games (the opening ceremony, the occasionally bizarre coverage strategies of NBC, how I miss the clarifications of my old gymnastics girlfriend), but haven’t.

Here’s more quotage instead:

“Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.”

Thomas L. Friedman (8-24-2008)

Taj Mahal on the blues:

“The blues is like compost. You put in all the garbage that happens to you in life, and like a garden, the music produces something beautiful.”

Jon Stewart on the Georgian-Russian conflict:

“Oh, War! It’s just God’s way of teaching Americans geography!”

My thoughts are after the brief quotes. Reader be warned though, the first short quotation is graphic.

From John Vidal:

I have seen hell, and it is indisputably on Rinca Island in Indonesia. This Komodo dragon-infested spot is where three British divers who got caught in a rip tide washed up last week. Far from being “misunderstood” reptiles who only “occasionally” attack humans, as my G2 colleague Jon Henley described them afterwards, the Rinca dragons engage in what must be the vilest animal practices ever witnessed by man. I met three particularly nasty ones last year. We had walked past a few harmless-looking dragons sunning themselves in the bush or lurking under the stilts of houses, and were not beyond thinking we could be friends when we reached a water hole. A large buffalo was lying on its side, clearly having been brought down by two 6ft dragons and one that was even larger. The three reptiles were crawling over it, and during the next 24 hours they proceeded to eat it alive.

The first dragon had grabbed it by its testicles and was starting to chew its way into the body from below. The second dragon was slowly forcing the buffalo’s head open and was going down its throat. The third was, as they say, going in the back door. To make an already grisly scene far worse, the whole slow-motion kill was being conducted in deep mud. After a few hours all was black - apart from the blood that occasionally bubbled up from the muddy depths, the white saliva that sometimes oozed from the buffalo’s mouth and the bright, flickering forked tongues of the three dragons, which were forever darting around. Slippery things slithered slowly over other slippery things until it was hard to tell whose tail was whose, where one body started and another stopped and who was doing what to whom. The smell was fetid, the heat intense. Every so often the buffalo shuddered and tried to rise. Was it really still alive? We watched from a few feet away, our guide armed only with a stick, transfixed and disgusted like us. Our stomachs heaved. The buffalo continued to twitch.

We left and returned several times; each time the horror was more complete. The next day, two Americans told us that the three dragons had got deep inside the buffalo, which was still twitching.

And this from Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation:

“Yunghalm relates that he saw in Java a plain far as the eye could reach entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a battlefield; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, five feet long and three feet broad, and the same height, which come this way out of the sea in order to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs (Canis rutilans), who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off their lower armour, that is, the small shell of the stomach, and so devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. Now all this misery repeats itself thousands and thousands of times, year out, year in. For this, then, these turtles are born. For whose guilt must they suffer this torment ? Where fore the whole scene of horror? To this the only answer is : it is thus that the will to live objectifies itself.”

And finally Werner Hertzog:

“Of course we are challenging nature itself, and it hits back, it just hits back,
that’s all. And that’s what is grandiose about it and we have to accept that it’s much
stronger than we are. Kinski always says it’s full of erotic elements. I don’t see
it so much as erotic, I see it more full of obscenity … And nature here is vile
and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and
asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just
rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that
is all around us. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn’t call, doesn’t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts.”

All this in response to an argument with a friend about the “beauty, intelligence, nobility, and grace inherent in the natural world”.

I don’t deny that nature cannot be those things, but is certainly not inherently those things. Indeed, as the authors above argue, the opposite is often more true.

When I look into the eyes of an animal, even the human animal, I do not see any inherent qualities - I see a deep ambiguity, a vast unknowing.

While I don’t think one should go around contemplating all the incredible amount of suffering that goes on in the natural world everyday (indeed, that would make day to day living difficult and an optimistic life impossible), I do think we should think on it now and then.

As for myself, I don’t fully accept Hertzog’s thesis that “the moon is dull” - I find it too nihilistic, too philosophically unproductive. At the same time though, I do tire of talking to people who want to simply deny that the world is a very difficult place simply because they do not have the internal fortitude to stomach the idea.

I’m testing a new plugin, and posting these photos from BBQ at Danielle’s at the same time!

You know the catchy music they play in the teaser for the movie Wall-E? From the first time i heard it, i thought it was great. I thought at the time that it was part of the film score, written especially for the pixar film. But then, I heard the same music, characterized by the three-note half-step sequence, in another preview of some sort, this time some for some sort of girly situational comedy. First, i thought that the sit com totally ripped off Wall-E. But i figured, at that point, that the music was actually an older composition that caught the attention of music directors for two completely different features. Recently, i saw the movie Brazil, a 1985 sci-fi film. Or, if your name beings with “Wiki” and ends in “Pedia”, its a dystopian black comedy. Whatever. The movie itself is quirky and fantastic, in my opinion, and sure enough, it has its own cult following. Very early in the film, there is a scene in which the camera moves quickly through a bustling office, and what do you know, that SAME fully-orchestrated up-tempo three-note sequence is coming out of the speakers. At this point, i’m convinced that this music, wherever it came from, is very high on Hollywood music directors’ go-to lists for “busy, excited working theme music”.

So this music has been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks, and i’ve been meaning to find out where it really came from. Thank God for the internet. I tried asking people if they knew where that music came from, and all i get is blank stares. “Do you know that theme music they play in that movie trailer that’s like dum dum dummmm, dum dum da-da-dum… no?” It’s impossible to convey the actual piece of music with just your mouth, because the music has so many great elements that make it unique. It’s not just the 3 notes in sequence, its the building chords behind the sequence, the latin percussion, the crescendo of it all.

The music, as i have found out, is really just a very small beginning of the piece “Aquarela do Brasil” aka Brazil, written in 1939. The movie Brazil that i saw earlier used this song, translated into english, as the main part of its score. The song was recorded a bajillion times in a bajillion ways by everyone, usually as “Brazil”: Django, Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Chet Atkins, Arcade Fire (i know!), etc. The part that got my attention isn’t even prominent in most versions of the song, just the orchestral version as far as i know. Chasing down the origin and uses of this song has taken me so many different places because it’s used so much.

Now i want to show you this:
“Aquarela do Brasil” Samba Cartoon

This 8-minute Donald Duck cartoon comes from Saludos Amigos, a 1942 Disney cartoon with 4 segments, the finale of which is linked to above. This cartoon, the first use of the song in films (by Disney, no less, 66 years before Wall-E), is awesome. It struck me as fantastic even apart from the fact that it uses “Brasil”. Maybe i think its so great because i’m the kind of person that thinks films like Fantasia are the best use of animation ever created. A cartoon that centers around music is a worthwhile cartoon. So many elements present in that cartoon are no longer used in today’s attention deficit disorder sugar-high cartoons. Donald, decked out in his sailor garb, an american icon, digs this Portuguese-speaking stranger. We watch as they take a short stroll through colorful latin-american culture, including everything from Samba music to cigar-smoking and fine local liquors. Cartoons can’t get away with any of that these days, and if they do, they probably were created to appeal to a more mature crowd in the first place. Of course, what do i know… maybe the old Disney toons from the 40’s weren’t for the kids either, showing a suited Walt smoking a little cigarette in his office as he introduces his lovable characters.

Anyways, the next time you hear “Brasil”, you’ll know where it came from.

I hear there is this batman movie out, and everyone seems to like it. In fact, world, this is your advanced notice not to tell me about how **OMFG TEH NEU BATZ FILM POWENS***. Seriously. It’s like I’m in a George Romero movie where I’m the only living human who has yet to bask in the glory of Christian Bale in a dark rubber suit.

Which is not to say that I’m not going to see it. Just, patience world, patience.

Also, and I’m sure I’m not the first to wonder this, why did Joel Schummacher’s batsuit have nipples, but batgirl had oddly shaped pasties? What gives?

Other things I’m not enjoying and wish to hear less about:
- the soul-crushing economic DOOM that awaits the western world
- other people’s “totally awesome” summer vacations
- dogs

I’m sure after I take my up-and-coming break from work, I’ll be feeling better about all of the above. Oh, and I’ll have finally seen Batman.

No doubt I’m late to the game on this one, but I just discovered garfieldminusgarfield today.

I do still read garfield in the local fishwrap from time to time, if only to bask in its utter banality and non-humor. Now though, like so many things in life these days, someone on the internet has found a way to make it all better.

Last weekend I attended the wedding of my two close friends, Sarah and Adrian. The service was beautiful and the reception was a fantastic time - I really couldn’t have hoped for anything better for two people who truly deserved a great wedding.

Naturally, after a night of non-reflective dancing, and drinking, and general good-times, I found myself thinking over the following the next day:

1 - In some ways, being married is like being single. Both are commitments and both are in some ways non-negotiable. I found it sort of strange that the people who could change dance parters at will were the married guys (who are already taken) and the single guys (who are well, single). Since I fall into the latter category, perhaps my perspective is somewhat skewed on the former category, but personal bias not withstanding, I think wedding receptions prove the old maxim that “some commitment is better than no commitment”. Following this line of thought, one could say that dating is a kind of pseudo-commitment that could be terminated by either party at any time. That kind of ambivalence towards the future makes dating, I think, more inherently unstable than the married or single options. Hence, my new love maxim “commitment is freedom”.

2 - Unrelated to the wedding, I’m having all kinds of personal anger issues these days. My emotional reaction to everything from finding my housemate in the bath when I need to take a shower (small problem) to my love-hate relationship with my now almost year-long “temp” job (bigger problem), to my grandfather’s death (biggest problem), is to get mad. And seriously, I’m not a person who gets mad about anything. The good news is, though, that I’ve chosen to look at this emotional sea-change as a good thing. I’m embracing my anger, but I’m also trying not to take it too seriously.

3 - Somewhat related to point 2; I’ve discovered that a good way to overcome personal obstacles is to declare whatever problem I’m having a goal. For example, when I forget to buy groceries for supper the next night, all I have to do is tell myself that I was trying to set a “cooking challenge” to see what I can make with the 5 ingredients I have left in the pantry! Instant success! I think more people would be happier if they approached difficult circumstances in this way (look at the president - he’s been doing this for 8 years and he’s all smiles on TV!).

4 - I’m really neglecting this blog - so much so that I now number different ideas within a single post. It’s pathetic really. I’ve got a lot to write about, seriously. And I want to share. But I just haven’t been in the mood - I blame the weather.

5 - One thing about my life now, post-college, is that I know how to really ENJOY the things that I like and how to really AVOID the things that I don’t like. That part of adulthood is proving useful.

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Jacob Riis

another summer solstice has come, as my sensory data confirms. i look outside where the smoldering sun heats the chrome and metal on my car. a glowing thunderhead rolls away, and it smells like wet concrete and fresh cut grass from the afternoon rainshower. I will go home and hear and the cicadas begin their chorus in the thick damp air. a summer evening of light, the sky’s glow that stretches deep into the night hours.

my job right now is both satisfying and frustrating. I have a couple things i am working on that are actually interesting and fun, but the majority of my day is utterly boring and dumb. all i want to do is go back to summer scout day camp where we’d shoot bb guns and throw water balloons and go on the nature trail and stuff.

at least i’m not in school for the summer.

So i upgraded my blog software to WordPress 2.0, and it looks a little different on the administrative end of things. However, everything should work about the same for you folks.

Here’s some photos from my recent trip to Florida!

“nothing seems any different than before, but i’m sure everything is much better than it was.”

seen in a comment thread on slashdot. hularious. this is what life can feel like sometimes.