This is sick

I'm stuck at home today because I'm sick. (I hope you just enjoyed my most personal statement ever in this blog). That being the case, I'm bored. When I'm bored, I think. When I think, it's usually about something ridiculous. And when it's about something ridiculous, I put it in my blog - the process of a genius.

I am currently deep in thought about my habit of personifying inanimate objects. It's something I do a lot, and in the spirit of being sick and bored, it's something I'm going to do a lot right now.

Whenever I'm sick I imagine what is going on inside my body. As a graduate student in Biology with a particular emphasis in Immunology (it must be the sickness that is making me divulge all this personal information), I have a fair idea of what's actually happening. However, I can't help but apply an element of imagination like I did when I was 12. It's much more entertaining that way. In the case of my current cold, I'm picturing a battlefield.......

Day 1 - breach

Head-quarters receives reports of a breach. Information from the field indicates heavy enemy artillery, and activation of major pain sensors in the throat. Initial units of immunity at Operating Bases Mouth and Nostril have been defeated. Numerous surface salivary divisions reporting casualties.    

Day 2 - proliferation

Full-on assault confirmed. Enemy identified: the Germ-ans. Abundance of infected cells in the throat which looks to be the main target. Specialty forces are deployed. Attack must be contained.

Day 3 - spread

Containment failed. Enemy forces have advanced north from initial point of attack. Mass mucosal response causes congestion in nasal pathways. Allied soldiers from 102nd Sudafed divisions are recruited, while Nyquil special forces conduct stealth ops during the night. Major battles now rage in throat and nose.

Day 4 - strategy  

Nasal passages are now main battleground. Airways are completely locked down - nothing in or out. Forces in northern chest await briefing on possible coughing maneuvers to keep the enemy away from important GI targets.

Day 5 - resistance

Coughing strategy confirmed, as mucosal divisions are forced down into northern chest. The germ-ans have almost completely shifted their attack to regions north and south of the throat. The voice of the commander is growing faint, as every available immune unit is recruited to defeat the invaders.

Day 6 - decline 

Battles rage on, and the tide begins to shift. Mucosal forces triumphantly retreat from nasal passages, allowing a return to normal airflow. The commander is completely silent through the day, as such violent battle takes its toll. Remaining germ-ans are easily expelled by coughing maneuvers, and damage to the throat is repaired by external tea-aid.

Day 7 - recovery

All signs indicate victory, but regiments in the nose continue training maneuvers for the whole day. Coughing persists to ensure the removal of remnant invaders.

We have once again defeated the germ-ans.

The following battles are said to have been the turning points of the war:

 Battle of the Bulge-ing Uvula

 The Boogie Offensive

 Battle of Hack-in-away

       
Is this borderline delirium?

Boy do I hope I get better soon.....

Guest Post

I am proud to say that I have received my first request for a guest post on my blog.

He came to me looking for a platform on which he could speak his mind, and not be judged. At first I told him this blog is not meant for that. But then I started thinking... I suppose I do use this blog as a place to speak my mind. It's just that my mind doesn't really contain thoughts that can be interpreted past their surface meaning; you say lack of intelligence, I say the uncanny ability to simplify for universal understanding. I also don't mind being judged, in fact I prefer it, because judgments are what strangers of the internet can use to build up an image of who they think I am (how's that for farcical).

So, after some deliberation, I decided to let him write here. This might be "my" most serious post yet, so buckle up.

==========================================================================


I'll start off by saying thanks to Jeremy for letting me write here. I've known him for a long time now, almost 8 years. He has always been understanding of my need to communicate and my inability to do so in other forms. Sometimes it's as if I'm speaking a different language...Anyways, thanks, Jeremy.


I'll try to keep this short, because I'm sure no one wants to hear me howl on and on about my life. This is just a glimpse.


For as long as I can remember, I've been held back. Inside my own home, I am not free to express myself. When we have guests over, my attempts at socializing are curbed. When the doorbell rings, I yell with excitement, "the guests are here!" but I am told to shut up. I get scolded when I attempt to greet the guests or even when I eat the food. I just want to be a part of the occasion. Even when I am able to get outside for a walk, into the expanse and freedom of the great outdoors, something restricts my free will, restrains me, as if I am tightly tethered around the neck. For example, I love animals. When I'm out walking, all I want to do is interact with them, maybe coax a squirrel down from the branches. Apparently I'm barking up the wrong tree, as this desire is held at bay by that ever-restricting tether. Sometimes it's as if I'm choking...


I'm even repressed sexually. Despite an unfortunate procedure in my youth, I have urges like anyone else. Why must I be yanked back? It's unfortunate that I have come to the point where I have to sniff out inanimate objects on which to carry out my sexual impulses.


I have a bone to pick, I'll be right back.                        


Ok, I'm back. 


I don't mean to sound desperate here. I have learned to appreciate life even when it is ruff. As I get older, lounging around the house for most of the day, taking frequent naps in the sun, becomes more enjoyable. One of the others I live with often has me fetch a ball to play with, but it gets tiring as I have never had the hands to catch or return his tosses. Yet, I find myself mesmerized by the ball, and I play this game, with no paws, beyond the point of exhaustion.


This was just a snapshot of what it is to live my life. I don't want to ruin the image of this blog that Jeremy has worked so hard to cultivate. By the way, great job Jeremy, it definitely earns my stamp of approval:

Don't be depressed after reading this, just appreciate your free will, and don't take it for granted. Some of us live life on a leash.

Some fountains aren't for drinking

The drinking fountain is the only water-bearing fountain specifically constructed to allow for human consumption. It is also the most poorly engineered fountain in existence.

This is my testimony:

The majority of drinking fountains are incorrectly pressurized. Shouldn't that be one of the major checkpoints on the factory worker's list? Low water pressure is perhaps most common. There is something immensely frustrating about being very thirsty but not being able to take in the desired volume per gulp. It reminds me of a particular moment from my childhood, of enthusiastically puncturing a Capri Sun with a tiny yellow straw, only to be thwarted by immense sucking but maddeningly tiny squirts of liquid. A face-full of Pacific Cooler caused by rage-driven pouch squeezing is a landmark moment of my youth. Besides all that, there is often barely enough pressure to even force the water into a drinkable arch. This requires one to get dangerously close to the spout (the second any part of that thing touches your face it's game over), as well as to make a face similar to that of someone attempting to kiss a duck.

Over-pressurized fountains cause a very different problem. Again, I'm reminded of my childhood, this time of playing with the backyard hose and its various attachments. I loved to spray things (anything, including neighboring cats or any unsuspecting siblings), but I could never quite figure out the attachment with the stream-type feature. I still don't understand why "mist" was even an option. What good is "mist" when you are trying to spray a flock of geese flying 50 feet overhead? Anyways, I am pretty sure the drinking fountain factory workers also have not mastered this skill, and have put some fountains on the "mist" setting permanently. They should be on "streamline." If I wanted a face wash, I'd do so in the sink.

You never know what you're going to get when you bend over to indulge in an unfamiliar drinking fountain. If and when you happen upon unfortunate water pressure, you will most likely either get squirted in the face or make the ducky drinking face at an inappropriate height. If you are experienced, you know to push the button first, assess the situation, then go in for a drink.

Even then, the temperature of the water cannot be predicted until it's too late to turn back. There's something about warm water from a drinking fountain that is much more revolting than warm water from a cup. I can't help but imagine it's the splash-back from the last person that has somehow fallen back into the spout.

I also have qualms with the way some drinking fountains are installed. I understand that children get thirsty, but they need to learn they can't always have everything they want. That was a joke (kind of), but it is based on something serious - is it really necessary to install drinking fountains 4 feet up from the ground? I don't think I've ever seen these being used, by adults or children. In fact, I remember one instance of a parent actually lifting their kid up to drink from the higher one - what a waste.

I also don't understand why drinking fountains are often installed what seems like inches apart from each other. What is the purpose of this? Why not have a little buffer zone? I feel like I'm at a watering hole in a drought-stricken Savannah, being forced to drink dangerously close to animals of other species, perhaps even predators who want to eat me. Ok that one's a little weird, but I think I've made my point.

You may think spending so much effort analyzing the engineering flaws of drinking fountains is a waste of time. It is. However, by doing so, I have managed to learn how to pick out fountains to avoid just by looking at them. How about that for a skill. Today is your lucky day, because I am going to share a couple of the warning signs.

Firstly, button placement. Any fountain that's button is located directly on top of its spout is questionable. These are the fountains that look as if they were constructed and installed in 1963, and they usually have disastrously low water pressure and lukewarm water at best. I can only assume they are filled with mold. Avoid them. Opt for fountains with buttons on the front or sides.

Also, a loud fountain is usually a good fountain. The decibel level of a fountain is negatively correlated with its water temperature. This is science. A fountain that seems to be churning, even rumbling, will provide fresh, ice cold product, usually at a manageable water pressure. I can't explain it, I'm not an engineer. All I know is, find a good fountain by following the noise. 

Following these two rules, but mainly paying attention to each drinking experience, will lend you the skills necessary to avoid the many flaws of drinking fountains.

"The more satisfying your public drinking life, the better life is in general."
                   -Anonymous blogger   

Bookmark this post

Let's say you work in a library. You're not a librarian, though. Your entire job is to read - all day, every day.

Like many other jobs, you work Monday through Friday, 9-5, and have an hour for lunch each day.

Soon, you will become very good at reading. You will be able to do so at a 800 word-per-minute rate (considered significantly above average for literate adults). At that rate, and assuming the average book contains 64,000 words (according to Amazon's text stats feature), it would take you 80 minutes to finish one book. That means, in a 7 hour day, you could read approximately 5 and 1/4 books. Not too shabby. If this is your job for your entire adult life, let's say age 18 to 80 (death is really the only excuse to retire when your job is to read), you can accomplish a staggering 84,630 books (and half of one more - shame you die before finishing, but so goes the math) in your lifetime. You would be the definition of "book smart." Right?

The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (and Virginia - it's so big it needs two states) is the biggest library in the world. It has 34.5 million cataloged books. So, if you were a stellar employee there, reading every minute of every 7 hour weekday of your life, never getting on Facebook or writing in your blog about books, you would get through 84,630/34,500,000 - 1/408th - 0.2% - of all the books in the library. You would absorb 0.2% of the available knowledge after a lifelong career. Talk about disappointing.

Let's consider a more unrealistic scenario - ok an impossible scenario - just for the sake of my argument (which I'll get to eventually, I promise). If you read for every second of every day of your entire life, from birth to death, at 800 WPM and at 64,000 words per book, you could get through about 525,949 books in your lifetime. As an employee at the Library of Congress, your career looks only slightly better, at a meager 1.5% of all books completed - no Pulitzer Prize-worthy feat. It would take 66 lifetimes of non-stop reading to complete the entire collection at this one library.

OK, I know you've been waiting. Argument time. Ready?


Libraries are awesome.


I know, groundbreaking. But really...

NYC, NY

Prague, Czech Republic

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Stockholm, Sweden

New Haven, CT

Ottawa, Ontario

Mexico City, Mexico

Toronto, Ontario

Some of the 838 miles of shelving at the Library of Congress. I guess you need that much when you're housing 151.8 million items.

There are just so many books out there! Have you ever wandered through a library and just browsed? I swear, there's a book for EVERY topic. Every topic you can think of, someone has written about it. And I wonder, if you pick a book at random, how many people have actually read it, cover to cover? There have to be some published books that have NEVER been read cover to cover! The author of said book slaved away for months, even years, writing, just to have it sit on a library shelf somewhere and collect dust. Sucks for the author, but pretty cool to think about.

Maybe you don't think all this is so amusing, but that's fine. This is about my child-like fascination with simple things. It makes life fun, you should try it.

It's cool to me that, in a society that has shifted so drastically away from books, and towards electronic media, we still have libraries. And people still go there. However, if I ever see someone reading from their Kindle in a library I might freak out.

Ironically enough, I'm writing this at a library. I came here to grade exams. I thought the library would be a place conducive to grading exams, but it turns out to be conducive to writing about libraries. Figures.

There's even cool libraries in Utah! Yes I spend time here, and yes I walk around creepily snapping pictures on my phone. This corridor alone would take you 67 years to read. I did the math. Just kidding. But I've gotta be close.

 This is where I'm sitting, right now. How could you sit here and not write about books. Sometimes I try to take artistic photos. Believe me, this is one of my better ones.

Laundry Lament

I have an irrational fear of doing laundry. To be clear, this is completely separate from my complete and utter revulsion towards doing laundry. I will discuss both here.

I initially use the term "irrational" to describe my fear of laundry because I don't think society would deem any fear of laundry rational. However, seeing as I have no desire to appease society any time soon, I submit it is a reasonable apprehension.

The following are my justifications:

1) I am horrified of a hidden red sock turning all my white stuff pink. First of all, let me just say that the chemistry behind what causes this to happen completely eludes me. I often wash completely white items with items that are mostly white but also contain colors, and no problems result. How can a completely red item ruin an entire wardrobe, but a red stripe on a white shirt be harmless? Surely they don't make different reds for different articles of clothing with this problem in mind! Thus I'm fairly certain this disaster never happens in real life. Plus, who owns red socks? And of those who do, who wears them?? However, seeing as this debacle occurs in the movies all the time, it must be real. The thought of at once losing about half of all the clothing I own scares my socks off, so to speak. Really, you'd pretty much have to go shopping immediately - white is the principle color of most clothing essentials! I daresay that every single person puts on at least one white article every morning when they get dressed, whether it be underwear or over-wear. What if you lost all of that in one fell swoop?! It's a frightening scenario that's solution of possibly temporarily sporting pink undies is one I'm not prepared to cope with.

2) Unlike unwelcome pink undies, shrinkage is a more bona fide concern when doing laundry. I often stand staring at the dial on the washing machine for minutes on end, trying to determine if the cold water option I am about to select to avoid shrinkage (this is confusing in and of itself, as the other kind of shrinkage only happens in cold water...) is really going to clean anything. There's no feeling much worse than trying on a great shirt at the store, finding it fits perfectly, purchasing it, wearing it one time, then pulling it out of the wash a child's small. And by the way, whenever an employee tells you it won't shrink, that's a lie. It will. No matter if it's 100% cotton, 50% polyester, 20% silk, 28% hydrogen, 17% oxygen, WHATEVER. There is always a washing condition out there that has the capability to shrink.

3) The diversity of washing instructions you find on clothing are so assorted that if everyone really followed them order by order, they would be forced to wash all of their items individually per different washer/dryer conditions. However, I can't help but worry when my favorite "tumble dry low" - labelled jeans are being violently tossed about in the regular cycle. When they come out unharmed, I find myself wanting to whisper to them, "I'm sorry. I will always wear you."

Resulting only from the hygienic need to have clean clothes, I am regularly capable of getting over these trepidations. Unfortunately, thoughts of fear are soon replaced by thoughts of "g- dammit.... I need to do laundry today."

The following are a few of many laundry-day annoyances:

1) More annoying than the act of washing clothes itself is putting them away after they're clean. It seems such an unnecessarily monotonous and recurring event...There must be conversations on laundry day between the tacky gift-items in your closet that you have never worn: a striped turtleneck says to a size xl turquoise t-shirt with "Mexico" plastered on the front,
               
                       "Hey, check this out. That blue Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt is back again."
                       "Again?
                       "Again. Where do you think he goes every week?"
                       "I don't know, but he always smells good when he comes back."
                 
Every once awhile, when I'm feeling particularly lazy, a pile of clean clothes travels around my room over several consecutive days. It stays on my bed until I need to sleep, then on my desk chair until I need to sit, then ends up on the floor before making it into my closet when I finally convince myself those clothes are on the brink of being dirtier now than they were when they went into the wash. I also seem to always be teetering on the edge of not owning enough hangars to occupy everything I want to hang up. I currently have a pile of "probably will never wear" clothes stowed away in a drawer, because in order to produce more hangars for important items I had to make sacrifices. Most likely, my collection of demoted clothing will grow before I ever purchase more hangars, partly because I have no idea where to buy hangars, but mostly because it just seems silly to spend money on such a thing.

2) Everyone has experienced the disappearing sock. Some like me hold on to a disturbingly large collection of singles, emptily hoping that their matches will someday reappear. How such a commonplace occurrence can remain such a mystery is fascinating. There has to be a sock colony somewhere, where runaways gather to recount their tales of escape, and where they hope to find a new partner who will forever wrap up in a ball with them, never to be forced onto a stinky foot again.

3) On laundry day, I usually dress like a hobo. This is because, to make sure I only have to do laundry once and only once a week, I refuse to dirty clothing that I might feel like wearing later that week. In fact, I have a laundry day outfit, consisting of a pair of shorts and shirt I would never wear in public. And when my laundry day outfit gets so greasy I have no other choice but to wash it along with the rest? Well, let's just say I make sure my roommate is out of the house on that day. Everyone has one outfit they can never take off...

My laundry cycle usually ends up coming full circle on Sundays, after frantically scrounging around my clean underwear drawer to no avail. It's then that I know I'm going to have to spend my day dejectedly wandering back and forth between laundry room and bedroom, lugging piles of clean and dirty clothing, wondering what's the worst that could happen if I delayed these activities past the wearing of my last clean pair of underwear...damn my hygienic ways.

LDM part 3: handshake horror

I need to know. I need to know who the first person was to deviate. I need to know so I can write them an angry letter. We had a perfectly easy, acceptable, traditional custom in place - you put your hand around someone else's, look them in the eye, and shake. Everyone knew it, everyone did it - it was conventional. Now: utter complexity. What the hell? Why not leave good enough alone!

Thanks to - someone - the hand shake is now another daily source of anxiety. I know I have to look terrified when someone approaches me for a greeting. My brain is completely consumed with trying to predict what kind of hand gymnastics I will need to perform. Will it be the fist bump? Will I extend an open hand only to attempt awkwardly slamming it closed at the last second when I realize the desire for knuckle-to-knuckle contact? Maybe I won't be able to close in time, and I will get a soft punch to the palm. Now I'm firmly grasping someone else's closed fist. That's embarrassing for me. But really, it should be embarrassing for them. Shake my hand like a normal person. If I wanted to punch you it wouldn't be softly and I surely wouldn't aim for your fist.

Then there's the high-five shake n' bump. You wind your arm back like you are going for a high-five, and when contact is made you slide your hand back before recoiling for a fist bump to end the maneuver. Most of the time, I'm again embarrassed as I grab the hand that is trying to slide away. How can I be blamed when I want to just shake someone's hand, then go on with my life? It's really not my fault you're still standing there knuckles out. The handshake isn't a multi-component system. I don't know how many times I've left a lonely fist in the dust, but guess what, I don't feel bad about it.

The newest trend is to is to do the high-five wind up, but instead of hand to hand contact it is a finger to finger grasping maneuver followed by a quick up-and-down pump and rapid pull-back. Yeah that makes sense. Something meant to be so inherently simple should not be so hard to describe. Herein lies the problem.

And then, of course, only slightly related but universally experienced is that delightfully graceful moment when one party expects a hug, and the other expects a shake. This screws up the rest of the interaction between the two, because one is now feeling under-appreciated, the other under-exuberant. How can the relationship go on? Seeing as hugging is just as conventional as shaking, I can't fathom any solutions, except establishing more clear relationship bounds with a person before ever attempting to greet them.

I'm realizing something interesting now, after writing all this. It seems that those who have experienced the phenomena I have (so very excruciatingly) detailed are part of a specific demographic. First of all, they are sex-limited. No, I'm not suggesting they need to go on more dates (or am I?), but that these hand shake alterations seem to be exclusively male-derived and practiced. The reason this baffles me is quite simple, but in the spirit of this post, I'll present it in a very complicated way: ask yourself which of the sexes is generally more complex, generating irrelevant and unnecessary figments often resulting in over-complication of downright simplicity. After thinking long and hard, see if your answer corresponds to the sex that has invented handshake horror. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, depending on where your biases lie. But if it doesn't, you are correct.

These nonsensical greeting exercises also seem to be limited to younger generations. This gives me hope that whoever started the trends is still alive and out there somewhere, somewhere where postage can deliver my angry letters. I haven't seen too many grandpas running around fist bumping people, although I have started to notice some of these trends showing up in older communities. Literally everyone is starting to catch on, and it's horrible.

It's ridiculous that I am able to write so much about this LDM, so I am going to stop. I'll conclude with something that pertains to the ladies, since they didn't get much love in this post: if your gynecologist ever goes for a fist bump, get the hell out of there.

Sorry mom.

The best pie is humble

I consider myself a casual musician. I enjoy this role immensely, because I love music, and I love creating it. Plain and simple.

I am constantly inspired by people who are better than me. Here are some of those people, and a short description of why they are better.

                            As far as technicality goes, this guy is king. I dare you to try and find a mistake 

                            in this song. You won't, because Antoine Dufour does not make them. There must 

                            be something magical in that bandanna that makes him better than me.

                          Kyle Landry is just your average youtube phenom. He has uploaded 314 piano
                          videos, which is 313 more than I have. Does that make him 313x better than me?
                          At least. Don't let the fact he dresses like a homeless person fool you - this guy is
                          good.

                          Not only is South Korea's Sungha Jung better than me now (as a 15 year old), 
                          but he has been better than me for awhile now. This young tyke already has two
                          full-length albums, has composed more than 20 original pieces, and tours
                          internationally.

                           Tommy Emmanuel's abilities are beyond description. He is is arguably 
                           the best acoustic guitarist in the world. At least I can feel good about
                           the fact that he is better than every other person too, not just me.
                           

                         Another man who gained his fame via youtube, Ronald Jenkees is a creative
                         maniac. Of course, it isn't hard these days to make music electronically, but
                         when someone does it like this they deserve credit. Ronald is better than me 
                         on keys, as well as on hat styles.

                         This is Andy Mckee, playing a Don Ross song. These men are both much 
                         better than me, and incidentally they both look eerily similar to my third 
                         grade bus driver. It's beyond the point, but necessary.