Rhythm and Gravy

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don’t crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true of false, gleaned from one’s parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child’s exodus from the parental nest, sooner of later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants.

–David James Duncan, The River Why

Today, our founders were all out of town, leaving their desks completely unprotected.

I’ve started going back to judo practice. For now, I’m skipping the ろんどり (”rondori”, or sparring) because my shoulder is not 100% just yet, but even so I’m so out of shape that I feel nauseous most of the time.

Am hoping this goes away, as am annoying myself.

Anyway, the shower afterwards felt great. I find it easy to forget that enjoyment often comes from contrast. If I don’t work out, a shower is just a shower. If I wasn’t working hard, a vacation wouldn’t mean much. If I had never felt lonely, I wouldn’t appreciate much the nice things people sometimes say.

I have a friend who is doing her Ph.D. research on well-being, and I don’t pretend to understand her work but I do remember that she once told me about the result of a massive survey she helped with. They found that a sense of well-being was uncorrelated to the amount of enjoyment in one’s life, but was highly (inversely) correlated to toil and hardship.

I sometimes feel like I’m slowly but surely wearing myself down. But that’s okay, isn’t it?

Joe Bar is three blocks up the hill from me. They serve good coffee, wine, wifi and crêpes — that is to say, the place is just giggly enough to repel all but the most fraudulent of hipsters.

This photo was taken using an eight-second exposure from across the street.

A project: starting today, one photo per day, for a month.

I call this one “Pioneer Square Smokestack; Olympics.” Taken from the dizzying heights of my friend Erica’s parking garage.

The holidays happened. I didn’t come in first, but I was far from last place, so I feel like they were a success overall. Amy was home for a week, and we had a very Sprousey Christmas, after which we played nerts. Went up to Crystal with Bryan and Michaele for a backwoods cabin New Year’s. Had an absolutely bluebird day on the mountain. Played more nerts.

Grew a beard. Then, removed same. I may grow it again (rumor has an “Abe Lincoln on the Mother!@$% Moon” themed bachelor party in the works for later in the summer), I may not.

Synapse landed a big contract to re-engineer, in very little time, a failed project for some big-name company or another and put me on the project, so I’ve been working on my CRT tan quite a bit lately. The more I work there, the more I love my job at the little company with the big heart that just may grow up into something very special.

Starting to work out vacation plans for early spring, hopefully involving snow. Suggestions welcome.

Apparently, not really into using subjects in sentences lately. Hoping this corrects itself soon, as am annoying myself.

If you find you’ll be in the Seattle area on Sunday evening, please do stop by my place to sample some nice wine from bladders and spigots. This will serve as my excuse for bringing together diverse friends and coworkers, making some noise for the neighbors, and make that final push to get the last load of boxes out of the apartment. If that’s not enough, there will also be old jazz records played and cornbread served. We’ll get started 7pm-ish. Please let me know if you’re going to make it so’s I can buy enough!

Online Defamation Law establishes that the elements of libel (when the plaintiff is not a public figure) are

1. a publication to one other that the person defamed;
2. a false statement of fact, which is understood to be both (a) being of and concerning the plaintiff, and (b) tending to harm the reputation of the plaintiff.

Unfortunately, while provable truth is a valid defense, a statement is considered libelous if is possible to be taken as an assertion of fact; i.e. it doesn’t have to be provably false. So, all I can say here is that the past few weeks I’ve been frustrated, sad, and angry, and I’ll save my words regarding the plaintiff (my sister’s ex-husband) for a non-publishable medium (”Feeling too chipper? Want vitrol?” Dial 1-800-ASK-JAKE).

It being tough to go out and be social, I’ve been trying to distract myself with the media — books (Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck), and Netflix (Bottle Rocket, Cashback, Heroes, Delicatessen, This is Spinal Tap). But a wise character in a movie once said, “if you don’t make it yourself, it isn’t fun. It’s entertainment.” So, yesterday, I took Uncle Synapse up on his offer to run around in the woods and shoot my coworkers with paintballs. Running around the woods like a chipmunk on acid screaming and yelling and getting all muddy: nice. Shooting coworkers: meh. Welts: not so nice. Props to Dylan for wearing his drum major costume to play.

I’ve been putting my new Netflix subscription to good use. I think that watching Heroes on “real” TV would have driven me nuts; it keeps you constantly fired up to see what happens next. It’s bad enough when an episode ends, or worse, when you finish a DVD and have to wait for the next one to arrive.

I just made it through season one, all too quickly. The ending was unfortunately anticlimactic, given how much it was built up, but with the strength of the characters and the general feel of the show, it didn’t matter too much. Heroes manages to bring together most of what I’ve ever liked about comics. They do a great job of with settings which have the surreal feel, but retain their realism, as if they hired set designers from both Sin City and Driving Miss Daisy. They avoid the traditional “underwear pervert” superhero. Instead, their heroes are conflicted, confused, disillusioned, or (in the case of Masi Oka’s Hiro) inspired by their powers.

Of late, graphic novels are starting to make printed comics hip (as opposed to “popular”) for the non-nerds. This show seems to be doing that for TV.

For a sci-fi novel, there’s not much sci-fi in this book (one ambiguously immortal character named root being the exception). Cryptonomicon could be better classified as nerd-fi. It speaks to Neal Stephenson’s talent that my decidedly un-nerdy, quasi hipster cousin is loving it — it’s just a really good yarn, in which the nerdy characters are in touch with their bad-ass sides, the bad-ass characters are in touch with their nerdy sides, and the protagonist gets the girl.

I re-read it for what must be at least the fifth time last month, and it’s managed to stay engaging, which places it way up there with my all-time favorites.