I have to start getting ready soon. I have a doctor's appointment at 4pm (a real doctor! Not just a psychiatrist who gives me happy pills). Last Thursday at work, I pulled a muscle in my upper back. It steadily got better over the next few days, but yesterday, I assumed that it was 90% better, and wasn't particularly careful when lifting bikes and such. Today, it hurts so badly that I can hardly move. I've been sitting here in the computer chair with a heating pad against my back all day (not that 'sitting here all day' is anomalous). I'm hoping to get some painkillers and muscle relaxants from the doctor.
So, I have a few minutes to blog before I take a shower. I'm sure you're familiar with the saying: 'you can never be too rich or too thin'. Google lists 5,250 mentions of this phrase (including those where 'rich' and 'thin' are swapped). Needless to say it's a big part of american culture.
I think richness and thinness are cultural values. However, they are cultural manifestations of deeper, perhaps cross-cultural impulses, illustrated in a new phrase: 'you can never be too powerful or too sexy.' it's easy to conceive of a society where richness and thinness didn't map directly to power and attractiveness, but in this society, they do. Clearly I need to go to the gym. Also, if I went to the gym, I wouldn't be as prone to these muscle and joint injuries that are creeping up on me a lot more as I age.
Now, the question is: how do I get rich? 1) win the lottery. 2) rob several banks. 3) capitalize on one of the things I'm good at (writing, guitar, visual art). The problem with the third option is that those endeavors tend to be all-or-nothing -- one tends to find among artisans either millionaires or bums. I could go get an MBA in finance or something, but frankly it'd be a lot easier and pleasant to kill myself.
I think I'll search the web for 'get rich quick'. To google's credit, the top few sites give information on how to avoid 'get rich quick' schemes, or at least present a skeptical view of them. However, the 'google ads' on the side are the real article.
I could consider myself attractive if I wanted to. I would be, in places like africa and india, which are still stuck in a 'food-plenitude implies prosperity' mindset, because for the most part there, it still does. Then, all I'd need to worry about would be power. I just saw the movie 'red dragon', where the 'red dragon' seeks out and claims his power by killing a lot of people. So, clearly, I have to move to india and become a serial killer. Apparently, there have been a few indian serial killers.
The problem is, I might rapidly become thin if I didn't have any food, and I might get caught by indian authorities. So, there goes my attractiveness and power. However, if I could just avoid getting caught, I could go to india and be attractive there, with my great bulk, and then when the scarcity of food ate into it significantly and my subcontinental appeal wore off, I'd go back to america and reap the rewards of slenderness. Then, once the excess of caloric foods here ballooned me once more and I was no longer attractive by american standards, I'd fly back to india. Of course, all the while I'd be stacking bodies in my basement on homes on each continent, thus taking care of my power-needs.
Universal guidelines to attractiveness notwithstanding, and whether they do or do not actually exist, these cultural guidelines (fat man in india, thin man in america) are mapped directly to wealth: in india, if you're fat then you can afford twinkies to eat all day. In america, if you're thin then you can afford health club memberships and healthy foods. So really, all that there is is power. Attractiveness is a paper tiger.
But I'm not so sure -- people aren't entirely cerebral creatures just yet, and there are some visceral body responses going on. For instance, I don't think fortune hunters who seek out and marry very old, crippled, fat, deformed or ugly millionaires are genuinely attracted to them. On the other hand, it may be that the love of money starts to get confused in the fortune-hunter's little brain with love for the benefactor, and this leads to genuine sexual satisfaction, since sex and love are totally inseparable anyway.
If I had to pick two things that were all-important, I'd pick 1) sex and 2) power. Of course, per my earlier suggestion and brilliant quote ('the whole of human culture is a footnote to fucking'), the only reason we need power is so that we can propagate our genes and reproduce more effectively than our peers. Power is a paper tiger.
Might sexiness and powerfullness somehow be the same thing? A general glow of 'goodness', 'competence' or 'success'? Maybe something like that?
I keep forgetting that our only evolutionary advantage (besides long-distance running) is the ability to adapt and think our way through a new and changing environment. Maybe there will be a day when power and fucking really don't matter so much. But that day is certainly not now -- now, I'd like to be thinner and richer. Next time: is civilization generally getting better or generally getting worse?
Ironically, one day after posting my driver education blog about vehicle mirror adjustment and use, my rear-view mirror fell off. I talked to the shop manager at an auto garage, and he told me that I would be charged $30 to have my mirror reattached. Instead, I bought an adhesive kit for $3 at an auto parts store. Fucking mechanic bastards. The only catch is that I will have to wait until the temperature is at least 50F before I fiddle with the epoxy. Oh well; that shouldn't take too long here, below the mason-dixon line and in the CO2-warmed late winter. In the meantime I've adjusted one side-mirror as far in as possible to approximate a rear-view mirror image. I'll be cranking my head around to check my blind spot for a while.
I got a new watch at wal mart, as promised. On that day I also got some socks, underwear, and t-shirts. It was a big day.
02/24/2005 | 0380CKCRD WAL MART GERMANTOWN MD | $6.24
There's my watch purchase, as it appears on my bank statement. Pretty cool, eh?
Here's a quote from an article (i know it was already slashdotted -- don't give me any shit). Michael gorman, the american library association president, is speaking:
Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.
Yeah, that's about right. An acquaintance once told me it was obvious that I didn't read books, and that from my writing he could tell that my source material was 'random facts and paragraphs'. I don't know how seriously I should take this; it's not clear that this person wasn't making this statement only because he knew it be the case, rather than deducing it from my writing style.
Maybe I don't write in a very academic style, but this doesn't mean I have nothing to say. I don't provide any sources because, for the most part, all of my writing is in the 'rant' genre. Another, nicer way to say it would be that it's personal philosophy; my observations on the world. I don't quite know how I'd provide references for this. I've written a couple of blogs that are more 'fact'-based or essay-like (the taboo of the human bite, the obesity-poverty corelation), and for those I do cite some web references, untrustworthy as those may be.
I'm starting to worry that I'm too shut off and disconnected from the whole of human thought because I do all of my reading and writing on the internet, and have done so for 3 years. I'm certainly not very well-read, as in 'books'. As gorman asserts, what I do read is sucked off of web pages in skimmed snippets; fragments of ideas, which I piece together to form my own thoughts. I can see how this approach might in fact be hetter for a creative person, but who am I to argue with the ALA?
Essentially, I'm concerned that my brain has molded around the internet and its style of presenting information. Perhaps one day I will read books again, but I can never get in a comfortable reading position, I have trouble holding them still, and I always lose my place.
One more thing: I don't like bob marley.
Furthermore, I don't feel that I should have to apologize for not liking bob marley. Bob marley is one of those people I'm not allowed to dislike. If I don't like him, I'm a racist, uncultured, closed-minded, fascist, unmusical, etc. Well, motherfucker, let me explain something to you: my ear, my ability to discern pitch, follow multiple contrapuntal melody lines, identify and name chords, and differentiate timbres, is VASTLY better than yours. I can hear a difference of a few cents between two frequencies -- the accuracy produced in my ear rivals the accuracy of the needle on a guitar tuner. The way I hear music is NOTHING like the way you hear it -- you and I are in different worlds, aurally. Believe me when I say 'bob marley sucks ass.'
Well, in reality my position has nothing to do with hearing the music, or the aesthetics of said music. I just don't like people, and enjoy shitting on their parade. More on that later.
For some reason, bob marley fans like to assume that no-one but them likes bob marley, and that they're performing some great act of social defiance by playing it, when in fact EVERYONE likes bob marley. This 'rebelling in unison' is probably the most distasteful behavior I observed in college -- 200 kids slinking around the art building with eyebrow rings and green hair, growling about 'the mainstream'.
I came to realize that the world is basically structured this way: culture is divided into subcultures; there is no 'mainstream' culture, just as there is no standard accent of american english. While a subculture might oppose other subcultures in some specific way(s), they are themselves comprised of hordes behaving identically. One such horde is the horde that loves bob marley; it's a horde in the midst of which I find myself a lot.
The main reason I don't like bob marley isn't primarily because his music bores me and annoys me, but because I'm fucking sick of hearing his name, and because I'm expected to like him. His music is ok -- certainly not superb, but not horrendous. It's nothing that I would go so far as to hate in a world of pure aesthetics. However, such a world does not and cannot exist. I don't like bob marley mainly because so many postmodern whining hipster-brats like him, and then write off anyone who does not like him as an inferior human being. Furthermore, the hipster-brats think that they are special because they like him, even though it's plainly obvious that there are thousands of other hipster-brats, often in the same room, who also like him.
I wonder how many of the brainless zombies who profess to love bob marley actually like his music, and aren't swept along with the progressive tide of youth energy. University bookstores all sell bob marley posters; I'm sure some freshmen just buy them to stick up in their dorm without ever having heard bob marley before.
Anyway, fuck bob marley -- his lyrics are just stupid, and is music is simplistic folk ballads supplemented with that irksome little reggae beat, which sticks a triplet into each major beat in 4/4. This is supposed to be wildly romantic and mysteriously charming.
I am perfectly willing to admit that the principal reason I don't like bob marley is because other people like him. People are likely to decry this stance as being affected or ungenuine. But let us dispense with the idiot romance that there is some pure realm of aesthetics that isn't culturally determined. Everything you love for its beauty: food, art, music, literature -- is largely based on external influences. There's no such thing as 'pure aesthetics.'
I used to struggle with ideas of 'trying to be different' and 'being different naturally', and worry that my actions were being determined by the tide of society rather than purely inspired by some realm of ideas aesthetic notion that didn't exist to begin with. I don't think most have a sense of just how crucially important culture is in shaping what they do, what they love, what they think, and what they are. A human being apart from culture wouldn't be a human being at all.
Whether you go along with the tide of some subculture, oppose it, or pick some other option, the whole of your self is still being determined by this culture. It's impossible to escape external influences of humans, their social structures, their history, and their language.
So, it's ok to be different for the sake of being different, and in this case fucking despise bob marley, since there's no such thing as some noble pure aesthetic to guide us. 'nevermind what other people think -- just focus on what you like' is a nonsensical sentiment. What we like is utterly determined by what other people think.
Bob marley sucks.
For the first time in 14 years of driving, I've properly adjusted the side mirrors on the car I'm driving. In the past, I'd always angled them too far in, huddled defensively against the window, so that they reflected a good chunk of the side of my vehicle. Adjusted this way, side mirrors show almost exactly the same image as the rear-view mirror (below).
I'd been driving with useless side mirrors for 14 years, and it showed when I changed lanes -- I'd crank my whole head around to check the enormous blind spot between directly behind my car and directly to the side of it, because there was no other way to see those areas (on both sides of the car). But no more. For some reason, I recently got the idea that I might try angling my side mirrors some other way -- I pushed them out as far as they would go (below).
This turned out to be perfect. Now, as an object passes off the frame of my rear-view mirror, moving to the right or left, it then passes into the frame of the respective side mirror. Then, as the object passes out of the frame of the side mirror, it moves into my field of vision (below).
My side mirrors are angled as far out as they will go, and I'd even like them to come out a little further. As they are, I've minimized the blind spot between my side mirror and peripheral vision to a few feet -- smaller than any car-length.
They never taught me this in driver ed.
My watch has become slow. I think it needs a new battery.
I got my watch for about $6.00 (probably $6.24, which is $5.99 plus Maryland sales tax) at a wal-mart a few miles away. I would get a new battery, but it's probably going to be cheaper just to get a new watch. My watch had all the features upon which I have come to rely: stopwatch. Alarm. Date/day of the week. Light. Water-resistance. Accuracy. Of course, now that the battery has gone, accuracy is no longer on the list, which is why I must seek another watch, possibly today or tomorrow. I think tomorrow.
I'm a big proponent of digital watches, like arthur dent, the prototypical member of the human race in _the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy_. Douglas adams mocks this stance, but I remain defiant: digital watches are great.
The functions on a digital watch have become permanently bonded to my brain, a process that started when I was 8 or so and got my first one. Back then, digital watches were still considered to be sort of cool (especially calculator watches, which I never had).
The alarm is probably the most useful function to me -- I use it as a memory augmentation device (and sometimes a wake-up device). I guess these are the two intended purposes of an alarm. If I have some appointment I don't want to miss, I'll set the alarm. Sometimes I even do it a couple of days in advance, and suffer some extraneous beeping on days preceding the appointment.
At one point, I'd devised of a brilliant scheme where I'd have a symbol in my day planner, probably a bell, with something written next to it (let's say 'brush your teeth'). Then, when my watch alarm went off at 2pm and I had no idea why, I'd go look in my day planner and see the bell, which referred to the watch-alarm, and next to it the command to brush my teeth. In reality, the alarm going off is enough to notify me of upcoming events, and I don't need the bell-symbol in the day planner. But I think it was a good idea anyway.
A problem arises when there is more than one obligation per 24-hour period. At that point, I have to cue my memory to re-set the alarm after the first one sounds. I understand that watches are made with multiple alarms, but they don't fit my wal-mart budget of $6.24.
I use my stopwatch to time stuff. Timing stuff comes in handy once and a while, such as when cooking food in a conventional oven. Then I have to remember to check my watch every few minutes to make sure the time hasn't gone over, but that's not really a problem. Also, there are digital watches (i used to own one) with stopwatch countdown timers that you can set, and that will trigger an alarm when they reach '0:00'.
I never know what date or day of the week it is, and need this function (date/day of the week display). Maybe if I didn't have this function, I would keep better track, but that's a slippery slope that leads down to the philosophical (although not practical) negation of my whole argument that 'digital watches are better', so I won't go there.
I MUST HAVE the light. This is incredibly useful. I could frankly do without the date and stopwatch with some adjustment period, but along with the alarm I NEED TO HAVE the light. Sometimes one wants to check one's watch when it's dark. Enough said.
I MUST HAVE the water resistance. I like to shower without removing my watch. Maybe I would get in the habit of removing it if it were a delicate timepiece, but who needs to complicate their life like that?
I should also mention the fact that I lose my watch a lot, and that a $6.24 loss is a comparatively small deal.
I often brag to people that the cheapest digital watch is more accurate than the most expensive rolex. This is true, provided the battery is functioning; circuits are more reliable, and work with more...well...clockwork-precision than do gears and hands and such. This is not to mention that for $6.24, you also get a stopwatch, alarm, date, water-resistance and light.
I guess I really don't need the phenomenon of deliberate ignorance of the practicality and low-cost of digital watches explained to me; watches with hands on them look nicer. But it doesn't take a foucalt to take notice that this aesthetic, like any aesthetic (except maybe facial beauty), is culturally determined. Why are sweeping hands and a gold finish more attractive than a blinking liquid crystal display and black plastic?
This is a no-brainer, but I'll mention it anyway. Money -- electronics have become cheap. They require less manufacturer-effort than do moving parts. Expensive things are more desired because they're an indication of power, so people now shit on digital watches. I guess they didn't use to so much, back when they were new and cool and possibly significantly more expensive, but now that they're sold at wal-mart for $6.24, people hold their noses in the air as they pass a display of digital watches, and call them 'ghetto' or 'po' or something like that. They've become a mark of poverty.
Digital watches aren't entirely ignored -- there are some people who recognize that they're simply more practical, and wear them for this reason, cost notwithstanding. I won't mention the hipsters who wear them for 'so uncool they're cool' reasons -- this is just too dark and depressing a phenomenon to acknowledge. But the group people who realize that digital watches provide better service to the wearer than do hand-sweeping watches is significant. Also, they're cheaper. Why NOT buy a digital watch? The only way I can explain it is with a diagnosis of mass hysteria.
I gave a bike a brake tune-up yesterday. I thought it might be a good idea to make sure the wheel was free of irregularities, which may have been responsible for some of the calipers' rubbing against the rim, by tightening and loosening spokes where appropriate. Before I started on this sub-project, it was mentioned that when a repair ticket reads only 'brake tune-up', all a mechanic is to do is adjust the brakes themselves. 'wheel true-ing' is a separate repair ticket-item, and performing it when it's not specified costs the shop money in the form of labor-time. To complicate the issue, it was also mentioned that if a wheel's being 'out-of-true' *significantly* affects the brake calipers' ability to clamp down on a rim evenly, then sure -- a wheel true-ing might be considered part of a brake tune-up.
It's possible that as part of a brake tune-up, wheel true-ing should always be included. But then, the problem becomes: where do you draw the line? When does a mechanic stop repairing interconnected subsystems on a bike? Without some demarkation, a brake tune-up could very easily slip into a complete overhaul, replacing any and all damaged parts and costing the shop quite a bit of money.
The issue here is the interconnectedness of subsystems, and the way capitalism plays with this interconnectedness (not very nicely, as you might imagine).
When one subsystem is sick, repairing it means that other subsystems need to be adjusted as well. The behavior of one subsystem is affected by the behavior of others, and indeed it's impossible to draw a clear line between any two subsystems. For example, the brakes, when properly adjusted, need to fall on a straight wheel rim. If a rear wheel is badly bent, then the attached cogs will rotate unevenly, and chain won't shift properly.
I'm sure there are better examples, but I'm really knew at bike-repair.
In practice, one subsystem might not affect another very much, or even significantly. Theoretically, all that exists is one and we can't alter one 'thing' without affecting another 'thing', since the 'things' are really all of one universal substance to begin with. However in practice, it's quite possible to eat a container of humus without affecting the orbit of saturn 'significantly.' but it is affected, albeit immeasurably with the precision of our current toolbox. A similar situation exists if we consider a bicycle to be our universe; even though every subsystem is indeed interconnected, one can, for example, adjust the brakes without (measurably) affecting the seat-post.
But theoretically, and to immeasurable precision, there aren't any subsystems on a bicycle -- there's only one bike, which is either functioning well or functioning poorly. Although obviously some subsystems are more interconnected than others, it's impossible to COMPLETELY reduce poor functioning to a single (or a few) subsystem(s), and it's likewise often difficult to correct a bike that's not working well by actively restricting repairs to that (those) subsystem(s).
The impossibility of repairing a bike by dividing it up into brakes, wheels, tires, rims, chains, etc, and then fixing one element while deliberately ignoring other interconnected parts is a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all being, and the problems the western mind sometimes has comprehending it.
Like a bicycle and all of its subsystems, the universe is interconnected, and it's impossible to alter one thing in it without affecting another thing. Thus, the concept of 'thing', or individual, discreet entities, becomes a bit muddled, or is even necessarily thrown out altogether.
Eastern philosophy tends to do a better job at appreciating and comprehending the one-ness of all existence than does western philosophy. In the west, we have a tendency to divide things up into categories or objects, name these objects, and treat them as isolated entities in order to control them and predict their behavior. This constitutes a sort of outdated, newtonian view that was prevalent in western science, and has only recently begun to be undermined by ideas and discoveries in quantum mechanics. However, the western mind is still, for the most part, stuck in a newtonian frame -- it takes philosophy, which largely consists of metaphors drawn from science, a while to catch up.
I should mention again that someone farting in calcutta doesn't measurably affect someone's shoe-buying decisions in kansas. It's this insignificance, and the western mind's willingness to draw a line between 'significant' and 'insignificant' that has made it such a powerful tool.
While the eastern philosophical mind might tend to note the continuum of significance and throw out altogether the possibility of erecting any boundaries and laying down any categories, the western philosophical mind might be too eager to do so. But, in scientific and every-day practice, we can often discard interconnectedness as 'not significantly affecting results.'
No one is going to notice if, for example, the pedals on a bike aren't precisely adjusted to compensate for work done on the chain. In fact, adjusting the pedals would put them out-of-wack, because we don't have the ability to detect the chain-adjustment's effect on them, and we certainly don't have the ability to adjust the pedals to the infinitesimal degree necessary to compensate. If we tried to do so, we'd vastly, vastly overcompensate; we're better off just leaving the pedals alone.
This is why science works so well in the face of 'everything is one': in practical terms, it is possible to draw a line between this and that without perceivable effects, even though the concept of 'drawing lines between this and that' is, in the purest theoretical sense, by definition impossible.
It's also interesting to think about the way capitalism exacerbates this problematic approach to subsystem-repair. In a bike shop, customers are charged for a 'brake and gear tune-up', a 'tire and tube replacement' or 'headset repair.' repairs are necessarily divided up, because they need to be mapped to set prices. If all repair tickets read 'generally make this bike work well, tweaking and improving the interactivity between all subsystems', then some people would end up getting a far better deal than others, as it would be impossible to predict shop time-expenditure or replacement parts required.
Money and its arithmetic is a discreet, quantitative system, one that necessitates hacking up of interconnected systems, like bicycles, into component parts.
The utopian bicycle repair shop (UBRS) would handle things differently. Of course, the UBRS could only exist within a utopian society, where people weren't always trying to harvest as many dollars as possible. Here's a scenario at the UBRS:
Customer: my bike isn't working right. It just feels sorta iffy.
Mechanic: ok, leave it here, and I'll get to it eventually. Maybe try calling back tomorrow to see if it's done. It might not be, but it doesn't hurt to check. It'll be done someday.
Customer: sounds good.
(note that diagnoses, price and done-date were not discussed. Contracts were not signed, and forms were not filled out. The customer leaves his bike behind.)
(the mechanic takes it out for a test-ride, and notices that the brakes, crank, and front derailleur seem out-of-wack. He takes the bike back inside, and starts in on those subsystems, but ends up replacing the chain, overhauling the bottom bracket, replacing the pads, and replacing the brake-arm springs as well as tuning up both transmission and brakes. He trues both wheels, cleans and lubricates everything, and ends up re-cabling the bike.)
(these aren't extraneous, bonus repairs, but rather necessary in not only 'making the bike work right', as the customer requested, but also in repairing those initial malfunctioning subsystems the mechanic noticed on his test-ride. In order to make those specific subsystems work properly, other subsystems need to be tweaked. The mechanic fixed the bike.)
(the next day...)
Customer: hi, I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I'd check to see if my bike got fixed.
Mechanic: yeah, it's working better now. I did a bunch of stuff to it, put on some new things, etc.
Customer: hey, thanks. What do I owe you?
Mechanic: well, since this is utopia and my shop doesn't need to stay in business, why don't we enter into a permanent symbiotic relationship where we help each other out to the degree where our very ego-boundaries become confused, and madness ensues?
Customer: sounds good.
That was pretty silly. In reality, I would like to see bike repairs tend a little more in this direction, and be a bit freer with labor. I would also like to see customers not be quite so tight with their money and unwilling to pay a little more than expected if new problems come up, which they inevitably do.
When new problems come up, a mechanic can 1) stick to the estimate and work around the problem as effectively as possible, or 2) just fix the damned bike (the whole of the bike), and either absorb the additional cost, which isn't good for the shop, or pass the addition cost on to the customer, which isn't good for repeat business (not to mention a violation of contract).
Estimates should be more general than they are. People should trust each other more (as they necessarily cannot when everyone is trying to grab as much pie as possible), and not get so freaked out about money. The contract system, which makes sure the pie-grabbing arrives at a barrier on either side, smacks of dishonesty and awfulness. One should just focus on doing work right and with care, and on enjoying the results of this care.
I blame the money economy for helping to create, along with the western-newtonian mind, a situation where things (not limited to repairs) don't quite work properly. Each party is interested in holding on to as much money as they possibly can, and our subdividing minds, along with our price-tag machines that mete out individual stickers, can only deal with subsystems as existing in a vacuum.
After my last confused screed on gun control, I think it's time to start a new page and relegate those ramblings to the archives.
I realized something today: it's not that I want sex; my sex drive is actually really low. It's not that I want a girlfriend; girlfriends aren't worth the trouble (xmas, birthday, valentine's day, anniversary, 'going out', arguments, loss of privacy, etc). What I want is simply to be desired -- wanted, found attractive, and thought-about. Considered, really; I would like to be considered.
At UMBC, when I was thin and in good shape, girls (and guys) were interested in me. I was often approached, and I was happy, even though I turned everyone down. What made me happy was not real opportunities, but rather the knowledge that I was desirable. It didn't matter whether I actually followed through; in fact, I preferred not to. As I mentioned, I have a low sex drive and don't really enjoy relationships (I've had largely bad experiences with them). All I wanted to know was that there were people out there who found me attractive and who were interested in me physically, mentally and romantically.
It's sentiments like these that make me think I have a very feminine brain; most men probably don't worry about feeling desirable, but rather endeavor to have as many orgasms via warm lumps of flesh as possible.
In order to become desirable, I would have to lose roughly 75 pounds, dress better, smile more, and leave my house more (hang around on my front lawn).