The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on October 6th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I’ll often describe myself as a “born-again agnostic”.  That is, i had a relatively strong faith in a Christian religion at one point but had some sort of awakening in which i began to seriously question.  Now i’m at a point where if there is a god, i believe it doesn’t matter.  It shouldn’t determine one’s sense of morals and ethics and it shouldn’t influence how people treat other people.  There’s much more to that i’ll save for another post, but for the purpose of this post i’m going to declare that this week i’m an atheist.

Not only that, but unlike my sister, i don’t believe in ghosts.  I don’t think aliens try to contact us.  I don’t believe in the truth of palm readers and fortune tellers.  I hate astrology.  Over the weekend, i’ve come to the conclusion that i believe in no supernatural occurrences whatsoever except one.  I have a rock-firm belief in the curse of the billy goat.

And i realize now that it was foolish and naive of me to believe that the curse has something magical to it.  The curse is that the Cubs won’t win.  Period.  The curse isn’t going to let up after 100 years of futility.  The curse isn’t cute like that.  The curse is evil and cynical and no matter how the stars align, the curse wins.  This article, written by a Cardinals fan about the Cubs’ fall, outlines everything that had come together this year to beat the curse.  And despite all of that very substantial alignment, the curse won.

The Cubs had a spectacular season.  They won almost 100 games.  They sent eight players to the Allstar game.  Then they played three of the worst games imaginable.  They even played one history-making game in which every starting infielder recorded an error.  They were awful in their three post season games.

I surprised myself Saturday night.  I didn’t watch the game.  I recorded it and because i was expecting the worst, as soon as the Dodgers scored, i stopped watching and flipped to ESPN to see the final score on the ticker.  I didn’t want to watch the whole game if it ended as i thought it would.  And despite how much i expected the Cubs to lose, when i realized that they truly had, i was floored.  The Cubs had so much and had done so well that the three games against the Dodgers seemed completely polar, almost to the point of surreality.  I was sick to my stomach and i was depressed.

And today is the first i’ve been able to really talk about it.  Today is the day i begin my recovery and prepare for next year.  Thus is the life of a (quasi-) functioning Cubs fan.

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Posted by Steve on September 18th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I was going to take a picture of my naked shoulder for this post, but decided instead to just describe what’s inked there.  It’s a spiral and some rectangles.  The rectangles all have the property that the ratio of the length of any longer side to the corresponding shorter side is the same as the ratio of the longer side plus the shorter side to the longer side.  That ratio is 1.6180339887…  The spiral is inscribed in the rectangles and has a lot of mathematically and naturally interesting properties.  It’s called the logarithmic spiral.

I paid someone to carve this into my arm

I chose that tattoo because i adore math and like the ideas represented by the rectangles and the spiral.  17th century mathematician Jakob Bernoulli also had a minor obsession with the spiral.  In fact, he requested that after he die, that spiral be engraved on his grave marker.  Unfortunately for him, the actual spiral that ended up there was the Archimedean spiral.  I’m just glad my tattoo artist followed instructions better than Bernoulli’s engraver.  Permanent spiral representations of self can be a tricky thing.

Not the intended spiral

Last weekend Annalise and i saw another permanent spiral representing the vision of artist Robert Smithson.  He made a rock jetty that spirals into the Great Salt Lake.  He chose (i assume intentionally) the Archimedean spiral for his art.

The second most artistically interesting spiral in this post

Another artist that used the idea of something circling around and around, getting closer and closer to some destination (in this case insanity and suicide) is Trent Reznor.  Nine Inch Nails significantly put themselves on the map with their concept album The Downward Spiral.  As far as i know, Trent never said which spiral he had in mind to describe his character’s descent into madness.  I’m going to predict that it’s the logarithmic spiral since that would imply a more dramatic slide.  The Archimedean spiral would still indicate closing in on madness, but not getting exponentially closer.

See the cat?  See the cradle?  See the spiral?

So there are some spirals to be aware of as you’re flying out of control or being flushed down the toilet in life.  Did you know that in the southern hemisphere, water actually flies out of the toilet when you flush it?  They have no respect for spirals there.

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Posted by Steve on September 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock…
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock…
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock-

“Whaaaaat?” Asks a groggy young man in pajama pants and a Jethro Tull, Aqualung tee shirt as he opens the door.

The man, interrupted before his final blow - fist still in the air, hands said Tull fan an envelope and then turns and walks away without a word.

The Tull fan opens the envelope and extracts the letter.  In ridiculously neat handwriting is the following:

I’m sorry to inform you, the recipient of this letter, that you have died.  Your soul is due in Hell at precisely 2:30 pm Mountain Daylight Time today.  Take the number 12 bus from the corner of Main and Fifth South at 2:05 pm.  Do not delay.

Yours Truely [sic],

Satan

“Goddammit,”  says the Tull fan out loud, “And on a Monday to boot.”  He gets dressed and now sports blue jeans and a Thick as a Brick shirt.  The one with the newspaper article on it.  He calls the transit authority hotline to make sure the bus is running on time.  Almost Mussolinish, the lady replies.

The Tull fan grabs his jacket and leaves the house.  He’s decided to walk the two miles to the bus stop to get some air and clear his head before his diabolical bus ride.  Before he gets too far down his street, he encounters a strange sight.  One he’s not sure he would have noticed before, when he was alive.

On this very suburban sidewalk sits a small table with a checkered table cloth.  On top of the table is a chess board with a game already underway.  Kneeling at one side of the table is an old man in a black robe with a very long beard.  The Tull fan is reminded of Led Zeppelin’s fourth (Zoso) album.  Across the table from the old man, sitting in a child’s rocking chair, is a Wilson tennis racket.

Clearly the tennis racket is winning.

“Why don’t you take his queen with your knight?” asks the Tull fan.

“Why don’t YOU take HIS queen with YOUR knight?” repeats the Zeppelin character but with the obviously-implied change of inflection.

“I see what you mean,” He didn’t.  But he continued anyway, “But, what if my knight is swordless?  What if my knight is impotent?  What if my knight is not an L away from his queen and it ends up taking me several moves to get there?”  This last question seemed - although the Tull fan could not say why - to be the most relevant question.

“Then you cheat.  You simply change the rules.  Move your knight diagonally, nobody’s going to stop you.”

The Tull fan decides to cease taking chess advice from someone losing to sporting equipment.  He proceeds on down the street.  At the end of his street, he turns right onto Main street.  He’s traveled approximately two-thirds of the total distance from his home to the bus stop.

As the Tull fan is walking down Main Street, nearing his bus stop, he comes across another strange scene.  He sees a man having sexual intercourse with a toaster.  The toaster is unplugged and seems rather disinterested.

From purely altruistic motives, the Tull fan says, “Maybe you’d get a better response if you plugged it in?”

The man stops thrusting and considers.  After a few seconds he finds the end of the cord and inserts it into a nearby electrical outlet.  Immediately the toaster comes alive.  Sparks start flying, the sound of sizzling and shocking is almost overwhelming and the man with part of his body inside the toaster collapses and dies.  The power goes out all over the block.

Postmortem, the appliance-philiac stands up, his toaster still hanging limply in front of him.  He sighs and glares at the Tull fan.  Then, abruptly, he turns and heads down the street towards the bus stop at the corner of Main and Fifth South.  Clearly, he’s done this before.

At last the Tull fan reaches the bus stop and sees the aforementioned characters also waiting for the bus.

“Did you die when you lost that game of chess?”  Our hero asks the Zeppelin character.

“Yes, of course.  One always loses his or her life when he or she loses a game of skill to an inanimate object.”

The Tull fan decides that this just doesn’t make any sense.  He turns around and heads home as he hears the squeaky breaks of the bus pulling up to the stop.  He doesn’t turn around to see, but he hears the door open and the toaster clang against something as the two men get on.  The bus door closes and the bus leaves.

The Tull fan goes home, puts on A Passion Play, and falls back asleep.  He’s determined never to take for granted again the verity of being informed of his death by post.

4 Comments

Posted by Steve on August 27th, 2008 in Uncategorized

I’ve written before about confirmation bias from a more negative, or cynical perspective.  This fascinating article about the practice of noticing touches on some of the same ideas but from a much different (and more useful) angle.

I’ve noticed in my own life that i don’t notice nearly as much external (potential) stimulus as i would like to.  With my studies in math and my over-the-top introvertedness, i’ve spent way more time in my own head than i should have and than i think is healthy.  And not nearly as much time on the outside world.  That’s why this blog of mine is so erratic and so rarely interesting, because i’m a terrible analyst of what’s going on out there.

But, occasionally against my better judgment, i’m working on it.

I’ve often wondered if time that is noticed is any different than time unnoticed.  In fact, i’ve been working (inconsistently) on a novel about someone that can consciously control how fast time seems to be going by just by controlling how much attention he’s placing on it.

A very limited example is the following idea:  When i’m aware that i’m driving in such a way as to conserve as much gas as possible, is my gas consumption any different than when i’m driving exactly the same but not aware of it?  On the surface, i’d argue that it is not any different.  However, on a quantum level, observing something can have relatively dramatic effects.  The obvious example is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (measuring the momentum of a particle makes its location uncertain and vice versa), which has been stretched (arguably too far) to philosophy.

A more obscure and more dramatic theory is that of observing dark energy with the potential of the quantum zeno effect.  Essentially, the idea is that by observing dark energy more closely and more frequently, we might be drastically shortening the lifespan of the universe.  C’est la vie.

So there are my escalating thoughts on observing and noticing and the destruction of the universe.  My hope is that just by documenting this some good will come from it.  In the article i mentioned earlier about noticing, they recommend a practice of describing somewhere (e.g., a blog) something that one has seen or experienced earlier in the day that he or she hasn’t shared with anyone yet.  The practice itself is supposed to open more eyes to experiences.  How dangerously apropos.

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Posted by Steve on August 21st, 2008 in Uncategorized

Ahem…  My Rhapsody Channel, i think it’s about time that we sit down and talk about our relationship.  Don’t act surprised, Rhapsody Channel, i’m sure you knew that we were headed to this point.  You must have seen this coming.  And now here we are.  Let’s just get it over with so we can both be more comfortable with the relationship.  I know you have some issues with me as well, this will not be a one-sided conversation.

It almost seems as though you don’t listen to me anymore.  I rate song after song after song but you are so set in your ways that you just keep playing the same stuff over and over again.  I feel that our lack of communication might bring this relationship down.  And i don’t think either of us want that.

I know we didn’t exactly start out on an idyllic foot, My Rhapsody Channel.  It was no secret that i came to you when My Yahoo Channel went defunct.  But i don’t want you to feel as though you’re a rebound product.  Think of it more as, i just hadn’t found you yet.  Granted, you took some getting used to, but i really feel as though we quickly became comfortable with each other and progressed for a while almost synergistically.

That is, until lately.  It seems as though for the past few days every other song you’ve chosen has been either Tool, Nirvana, or Mudhoney…  Rhapsody Channel, i don’t really know how to say this, so i’m just going to come right out and ask…  Are you depressed?  Would it kill you to play some Donovan or Polyphonic Spree every now and then?  I think it would help you feel a lot better.  I know when i’m down, i put on one of your Surf Rock channels and those Pet Sounds get me feeling groovy in no time.

This is a little awkward, but does this have anything to do with Pandora?  Because, i swear, that was a one time thing.  I was lonely one night, Rhapsody Channel, and you were down with “server issues” so i found comfort in the music of another service.  If anything, that only reaffirmed my commitment to you and i promise it will never happen again.  Pandora means nothing to me.

Rhapsody Channel, do you realize that we haven’t heard Sex Pistols in two months?  Two months is a long time to go without Sex Pistols.  And don’t claim that you’ve had a Van Halen, because i know that isn’t the case.  If your Van Halen won’t go away for two months, you should probably see somebody.  Anyway, if you had been listening to me, you would know that i’ve rated Van Halen as “Never Play Again”.  You can’t use that excuse anymore.  We need to look at the real issues.

Maybe it’s my fault.  I know i’ve been sending mixed signals by rating The Moody Blues so high but Bread so low.  But Rhapsody, you have to look at it from my perspective.  To me, those are two very different bands.  Just because i like the Moody Blues so much doesn’t mean that i’m going to love Seals and Crofts or The Carpenters.  But once again, i’m afraid i’m going to have to point the blame back to you .  Your rating system leaves a little to be desired.  I’ve had no choice but to rate Henry Rollins the same as Stephane Grapelli even though my feelings for those two artists are very different.

Anyway, Rhapsody, i’m glad we’ve had this talk.  I feel like we’ve covered some good ground here and come a long way.  And i hope that in the future we can take this relationship to the next level and try some new things like Opera and, if you’re up to it, some Funk.  I have a funny feeling that you and me and George Clinton could some day make beautiful music together…  So to speak.

Good talk, My Rhapsody Channel, good talk.

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