The Kindness of Strangers

Wow, this past week has been totally nuts. With the exception of one casualty (the details of which I will defer till the end of this post, to heighten the suspense), it was awesome too.

I promised pictures, so here they are.

So last Friday I submitted this paper that I’d been writing for a long time. It was an epic ordeal, and as recently as two nights ago I had a dream about it (which is especially notable, since I almost never remember my dreams). Anyway, that night I took the redeye to Boston and slept about 2.5 hours since I was so wired. I managed to grab some more sleep at William’s place, and then it was time to go to Jess and Cy’s wedding. The wedding was great, of course for the usual reasons of seeing tons of friends, and two in particular on the most important day of their lives, but also because it was unorthodox in several cool ways. For instance, the ceremony was short and very sweet — apparently in Massachusetts, each citizen can officiate one wedding a year (how cool!), and Jess and Cy had longtime friend snafuuu officiate, resulting in a really heartfelt ceremony.

This week happened to be spring break, so I extended my stay in Boston till Wednesday. I spent the next few days hanging out with various friends and just having a great time. Wing and Jen hosted a great brunch at their new place; it was probably the nicest place I could imagine having to watch UConn lose a horrible game and bow out of the tournament. Grant and Matt and his friend and I did a trivia challenge that night at the local bar and won, which was cool. The next day I made it over to work (IBM) to say hi to the guys and get some foosball games in before having dinner with Ben. I also had a couple of hours to myself in a mall, so I bought a pair of jeans. While trying various jeans on, I had the brilliant idea of taking a picture of myself in each pair so I could remember what they looked like. Of course, my lack of common sense became immediately apparent when I tried to decipher which jeans looked better in my camera’s tiny 1.5″ screen. Haha. Tuesday was especially fun, as I said a big “screw you” to my hip injury and played soccer and basketball and threw a football around with James and Grant. It also marked the first of two days (yes, two) this week in which I had pizza for both lunch and dinner. It sounds really gross now, but damn, it was good then. These kinds of awesome things happen when you hang out with just guys.

I flew back on Wednesday, and had about 24 hours to do my taxes (succeeded; I owe a buttload to California) and get the rest of my life in order (failed) before things picked up again. Then it was off to Jonathan’s birthday. We went out to dinner (where I got this great “deer-in-the-headlights” pic of Jonathan) and then went bowling. Yeah for small-town activities!

I got back at 1am… and woke up at 4:30am to head out to Tahoe with Matt, Joel, and Ray, who’s in town for the weekend from Chicago. I was pretty nervous since these guys are pretty skilled on the mountain (especially Joel, mountain climber extraordinare, and New Mexico state downhill biking U-18 champion, who casually mentioned how double black diamonds are “easy” when he’s on skis; he snowboarded that day), and this was my first time skiing in nearly 15 years (and even then that was on a tiny “mountain” in the town over from mine in flat Connecticut). I also had no gear, so Joel lent me the stuff he used to wear circa 1988. To some (read: me) it looked great; to others (read: everyone else) it was hideous. They were playing tons of 80s music on the mountain, so Joel had a good time ribbing me all day.

Anyway, my fear of destroying myself going down the mountain and ruining the day for everyone else was luckily misplaced. My innate sense of balance saved my ass once again, as it always seems to do in esoteric endeavors like climbing, biking, and, apparently, skiing, but never does in the sports I actually play regularly, like ultimate and soccer. I only spilled twice all day, and soon we were tearing down black diamonds (amusingly illustrated below by the guys). The vistas were gorgeous and the day was beautiful and I quickly bought into the thrill veering just in and out of control. The only thing I’ve done in this genre of excitement that’s more fun is downhill biking, which is about 10x more insane and correspondingly more dangerous. I’ll definitely be back on the slopes again. I may have to start selling crack to afford it, though.

After a full day’s skiing, we drove back home, stopping along the way for a gargantuan meal at In-n-Out.

We got back at around 9pm last night, split up to shower and de-grossify, and met again at 10:30 to head out to a party. Goodness. The party was automatically a success because at one point the DJ dude put on Freezepop’s “Science Genius Girl”. Money.

Today, after a dentist appointment at the unbelievably ghettified “Western Dental”, I went with Naveen to gather supplies for our camping trip to Death Valley next weekend. I fully anticipate it being a ridiculously awesome trip, but I’ll have more on that in another entry if all goes well. Anyway, despite the fact that I’ve convinced myself that I don’t really care about money and that I’d be perfectly happy giving much of it away, I seem to be an inveterate consumer. Check out this awesome sleeping bag I got (with my cell phone placed alongside for comparison):

It’s so tiny! And it weights 1lb12oz, less than a full Nalgene bottle. I was also going to say it only cost $129, but I think that’s a lot of money in a different context. It’s funny how camping — an activity in which you’re sleeping in a tent, walking around on foot, and eating granola bars — is ostensibly cheap but in reality ass-expensive.

After blowing money on outdoorsy stuff, I met up with a bunch of friends to play basketball. Ray represented for Chicago and basically cleaned up. Then we all retired to my place to watch the Illinois-Arizona game, which is probably one of the top 10 basketball games I’ve ever seen. I guess it helped that we all wanted Illinois to win. I also had pizza for lunch and dinner today. This was definitely unplanned (as was the first time, I swear!), but when you have ten guys at your place watching ball, there are few acceptable options.

So that’s my last week in pictures. I think I’m going to have to face the real world again tomorrow — my todo list is a mile long. There’s a lot to be done before I head out to Death Valley on Thursday ;).

(The casualty: my camera’s LCD screen, and by extension, much of my camera. I dropped it on the slope once when trying to take a picture. Doh! I can still take pictures and zoom but I can’t change any options or see any of the pics I’ve taken. Now I have to send it back and I’ve heard Minolta’s service is terrible.)

Sorry for the lack of updates. Things are very busy now. I will be very happy on Friday night, after I’ve submitted my paper.

Here is my new recursive definition of recursion: “Recursion Enables Creation of Universally Reviled Sentences, Including One Now.”

As you can tell, I have no life now. Hopefully I’ll be resuscitated this weekend. Then I’ll be back next week with a real entry and some nice pictures. And no new songs, thank your lucky stars.

This is another insubstantial entry. It’s going to consist of music, mostly. I have this paper deadline soon, and after tonight I’m basically not playing any instruments for a couple of weeks, so I did some minor recording. Here is a simple, sad, and above all angsty song I wrote late one night last week and recorded on electric guitar and bass:

Do You? | lyrics

Forgive the singing. It’s supposed to sound haggard :). Also, Umesh’s girlfriend Kate inspired me to get a mandolin a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always wanted to play the mandolin, and she pointed out a super cheap one in a music catalog I got — $60 for the mandolin, a gig bag, and some chord books!

It’s a beautiful instrument, although I think I could break it with my pinky if I’m not careful. Of course, owning a mandolin isn’t equivalent to knowing how to play one, and I’m pretty bad. However, I wrote a little ditty (with words). I haven’t had time to record it (and likely won’t for another month at least… and even then it’s behind several other songs in the queue), but here’s a little instrumental clip, recorded on my laptop’s mic:

Hillside Step clip

The percussion noises are another track of me doing hand claps and foot stomps and thigh slaps. The thigh slaps hurt! Haha… I think I need some Weight Gainer 3000 or whatever. Oh yeah, and some mandolin lessons.

Also, I forgot how beautiful the Cry Cry Cry cover of the Nields song “I Know What Kind of Love This Is” really is. Give it a listen.

On a depressing note (hah), a while ago I reaggravated an old hip injury, and made it worse really. I’ve been going to physical therapy once a week, and doing rehab stretches every day. I’ve been feeling better, and last week I played soccer and it definitely felt somewhat healed. Then yesterday during our soccer match, it came back with a vengeance. I could hardly walk, and had to limp home. Auggghhhhh. So frustrating.

As usual, I’m too lazy to write about something substantial, although I have a couple of ideas brewing. Maybe next time.

Allow me to repeat my request for browser typo fixers. It would be so easy for a web browser to check your URL when you type it in, and automatically fix common errors like “.cmo”, “.eud”, “wwww”, etc. I’m sure I’m not the only one who makes such mistakes. Also, if you keep a browser history, it could check for name similarities, and fix typos like “www.vangaurd.com” instead of “www.vanguard.com”. How come no one does this already?

This past 12 month period was clearly the greatest sports year ever for fans in Connecticut, and, you might argue, the greatest year ever for any set of regional sports fans. Two Super Bowl titles, a World Series Championship and the greatest comeback ever in the history of baseball, and two NCAA titles for the Huskies, the state’s beloved college team. Has anything better than this ever happened, anywhere?

Have you ever tried to buy shoes online? I do occasionally, since sometimes I know exactly what kind of shoes I want (I’m an ASICS freak, for instance, and I always play indoor/turf soccer in Sambas). There seems to be this weird conspiracy among online shoe sellers, even those that apparently have independent brick-and-mortar stores: they all seem to sell shoes out of the same warehouse. They have exactly the same options in terms of shoe size and color. Even weirder, their prices differ slightly, and they have marginally different shipping offers. Actually the shipping cost is exactly the same, but some offer free shipping for $79 orders and over, and others $99 and over.

Say you want to buy a pair of Adidas Gazelles. The following stores all have only sizes 7.5 and 8. MC Sports offers it for $45 but everyone else lists $50.
Amazon
MC Sports
Dick’s Sporting Goods
City Sports
SportMart
MVP.com
Modells
The list goes on, too. I guess it’s just cheaper to consolidate. I wonder who arranged all of this?

I played some ping pong with my friend Percy this past summer at Microsoft, and during the last few days of our internship, I recorded us playing with my digital camera’s video feature. I promised him I’d edit all the clips (maybe 45 minutes worth) into one kickass video, but I’ve been way too lazy, moreso once I found out how incredibly boring it is to edit video. Here is a sample though:

Sorry it’s in WMV, but I don’t feel like buying movie software…
Haha, what a bunch of geeks we are. I love it.

One final thing: when you buy a food product in the United States, it is required to state, among other things, its caloric content. As far as I know, this is measured by putting it into a bomb calorimeter and measuring the amount of energy released in kilocalories when you explode it. But I’m not sure how much this has to do with how your body digests food. An extreme example is a gallon of gasoline: it has like 30,000 Calories, but I’m guessing if you drank it, you wouldn’t get that much energy out of it. More realistically, I imagine there are some foods that have the same number of calories, but differ in how many Calories your body can actually extract from them. Or is this not true? (It would be pretty incredible if your body could somehow metabolize all energy.) If it is true, it seems like calorie counts could be a lot more accurate than they are now.

Hey, so I went to a couple more concerts recently, and I’m about to buckle down and work hard so here’s an entry for you.

Last Thursday I saw Modest Mouse. Their lyrics are pretty crucial to the overall enjoyment of their music, but unfortunately the vocals were muddy so the show was a little disappointing. Then on Saturday a whole bunch of us went to see Luna (basically, mostly people to whom I’ve transitively introduced Luna over the years). They’re one of my favorite bands, and they’re breaking up after this tour, so it was a somewhat bittersweet show…. my last chance to experience Dean Wareham’s inimitable lyrics and singing style, Sean Eden’s great solos and general zaniness… and oh yeah, Britta Phillips, clearly the hottest bass player in rock and roll. And she was the singing voice of Jem! Sigh.

Anyway, so what else… oh, I’ve been making a number of mixes recently, for some reason. I think you can safely say that a band is really good if you can put together an 80-minute CD of their best songs without a single dud on it. This is surprisingly hard to do. Oh yeah, also, you know how media players and stuff have this playback mode that no one uses where they play the first 10 seconds of every song? Well, there should be a “mix” mode where they play back the first and last 10 seconds of every song, so you can figure out how the songs flow from one to the next.

Bizarrely, LJ-buddy Feng (f18225) and I both had our website ideas (hers, mine) co-opted (down to the URL!) recently, and it got me thinking about how the ol’ Internet has done a pretty powerful thing.

Before the web, it was really hard to grasp the essence of large numbers. For instance, the United States has 280 million people, and that number is so staggeringly huge that we just store it away without really understanding. Sure, there were little aphorisms like “that means that there are 280 people who are one in a million” or something, but that’s nearly as meaningless. Expressing large numbers in terms of smaller ones (“X many books laid end to end would reach around the world Y times”, etc.) doesn’t really do the trick.

The closest I ever got to understanding large numbers was when I went to shows by small bands way off the mainstream radar and touring far away from home, and still saw a couple hundred other fans there too — the world was big enough to allow for this many people in this particular region to appreciate this obscure set of CDs.

[Edit: Another informative experience is watching professional sports, specifically basketball and football. How often have you seen a 6’8″ person? It’s the kind of thing that’s so rare that it happens once every few years in real life… and the NBA stocked with guys that tall.]

With the web — and search engines — though, man, you get a real sense of large numbers in terms you can understand. You get a peek into the minds of web content creators, a small subset of the 600+ million or so web users (maybe a third, max). This is the kind of thing that is just impossible without this technology of simple publishing and dissemination. It’s amazing. It lets you translate a large number into a measure of uniqueness, which is somehow much more palatable.

So how big is 200 million? It’s big enough that our two web ideas were a) also conceived by some number of other people and b) of those people, some decided to actually make web sites about them (a non-trivial undertaking) and c) of those people, at least two picked the same URLs we thought of and actually and did it. Or: it’s big enough that all of the words “occupational”, “integrate”, and “ski” — three words chosen totally at random by me — occur on over 7000 different pages.

Etc., but you get the picture. That’s a big number. I wish I could do this topic more justice; I just feel like it’s a direct benefit of the web that’s worth appreciating. So when I see a stat like “there are 500 million cases of malaria worldwide each year”, I’ll try not to store it away as some huge number that doesn’t inspire any response. Among those 500 million people is an amazing range of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, impulses, talents, creativity, and humor. A couple of visits to Google is enough to verify this.

I finally finished recording another song. I wrote it mostly last summer. At the least, this one is a lot better than the last one I put on here. I hope you like it.

How I Stay Safe | lyrics

I’m slowly getting better at this. I’m still trying to figure out how to get the vocals and acoustic guitar to sound like they do live — they’re still a little dead and shrill. The problem might have to do with the tiny mic I’m using (courtesy of my brother):

(It’s clipped to a CD case.) Apparently you can get good vocal mics for some large amount of money. Eventually I’ll invest, I guess…

One good thing is that I got to use my new baby, a Fender Five String Jazz Bass. I got it used for a great price.

And what the heck, here’s a picture from my bedroom window today:

Note the open window. It was just wonderful today — a cloudless sky, t-shirt temperature. The blizzard pics from back east seem so foreign.

The week of New Year’s I spent with my family near Cancun. It was relaxing, refreshing, and beautiful.

Here are some pictures, mostly of my family, Mayan ruins, and the resort at which we were staying. The Mega bar was a major obsession; my sister and I probably had about 10 each while down there. My favorite picture is the beach shot after the crocodiles; it actually took me some time to set that one up. I’m still pretty woeful at taking good pictures, though. Hopefully I’ll continue to improve with time.

In addition to lounging around, playing beach soccer and volleyball, and swimming, I did a lot of reading: America: The Book (good but not outstanding), Word Freak (about professional scrabble players; fun), Cyrano de Bergerac (awesome), a collection of short stories by the Russian author Gogol, and now I’m halfway through A Confederacy of Dunces, which I’m enjoying but doesn’t seem quite as good as all the insane reviews make it out to be. The Gogol stories were sometimes frustrating and sometimes hilarious. My favorite story was “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”. Anyway, the stories struck me as ones that my high school friend Peter Yacavone would love (although he’s actually probably already read them). I wanted to email him about them, but we’ve been out of touch for a couple of years (so his college email address is dead), and he’s not on any of the social networks. I can’t believe that I can’t find him in this day and age! Any ideas?

——-

I’m still wrestling with the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis. I’m not sure what to write about it, so perhaps I won’t — certainly some experiences are best kept private, especially by an unskilled writer like myself. If you haven’t donated yet, you might want to consider it. In fact, Maya sent me an astoundingly well-timed music video that illustrates this point: go here, and click on “World on Fire”. It’s definitely one of the best videos I’ve ever seen, and I promise it’s worth your time to watch it. (Of course, it was made well before the earthquake.)

Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?

[Edit: Or watch the video in QuickTime here: http://www.worldonfire.ca/]

The world can be a very frustrating place at times. Part of me — the part that loves good novels and mushy movies — would like to think that each small trial carries with it a lesson about how the world works. The rest of me — the part that usually wins out in the end — figures that such events are essentially random, and alter my view of the world only slightly. (This is, no doubt, a self-fulfilling view.)

However, to the relief of all parts of me, I invariably find that there is a lesson to be learned each time: of how I can better deal with frustration and anger. Narcissist that I apparently am, I use the whole world to learn about myself. I’ve got a long way to go, I think, but I’m getting much better. Eventually I’m going to have a zen-like grin of glee permanently plastered on my face. Everyone will think I’m crazy — but then who cares, because I’ll be so happy and at peace! Yesss.

Anyway, these past two weeks have been an awesome whirlwind of seeing old friends again: Louise, Andrew, Brian, Joy, Jeff, Josiah, Leland, Andrew (another one), Michelle. I was a bit discombobulated at times, mentally flitting between various eras of my short, inconsequential life, but of course the best friendships are the effortless ones, those in which personal histories are largely irrelevant… you sit down and start talking and immediately have a good time.

It would be remiss to post an AJ journal entry without a semblance of a rant. So here’s one. Why do hotels never provide complimentary toothpaste? I recently stayed at a very nice hotel that had, among other things, three complimentary vials of body lotion and — I kid you not — a telephone installed next to the toilet, presumably so you could do your business while doing your business, if you get my drift, har har har. However: no toothpaste. Of course, having experienced the non-toothpastity of hotels many times before, I had brought my own, a ratty little tube from which I squeezed out the last mole or two of paste. I shouldn’t have to do this… I shouldn’t have to worry about the cap accidentally unfastening in my toiletries bag and the ensuing flood of Crest gumming up my electric razor and rendering me, well, crestfallen, especially in a hotel that charges more per night than a McDonalds employee makes in a week and a half. I know that hotels often allow you to call down to the front desk for toothpaste if you’ve forgotten yours, but that’s like going to a restaurant and having to ask the waiter for a fork. Everyone uses toothpaste. So I say: ditch the complimentary shower caps, nail files, makeup applicators, and one of the three hand towels, and give me some ADA-approved lovin’. Thanks.

Here’s another desultory entry for you. I’m finally done with the semester! The last couple of weeks have been really fun and really tiring. It was my birthday the Wednesday before last, and many people were kind enough to remember. A prolonged birthday celebration combined with various other social outings, a final project, and an extremely addictive and exceedingly long book trilogy I’m reading = yadda yadda yadda, I’m tired today. This week looks to be just as jam-packed.

Happiness is understudied. If you imagine life as just a series of decisions, what’s the best way to live it? A simple and universal metric for making any decision is to weigh the options in terms of the change in expected happiness over your lifetime that will result from each option, and pick the one that makes you the happiest.[1] This is a remarkably simple philosophy, and one that I’ve been weighing for the past couple of years.

To clarify, this decision procedure does not advocate hedonism or selfishness; by using the word “happiness”, I’ve sneakily encompassed all aspects of what you value. For instance, it very well might make you happier to donate to a charity than to not; you might feel better about helping an old lady cross the street than just watching her, even though you do it anonymously and for no reward. Even if you grudgingly have to go save your irresponsible friend from another sticky situation, you probably do it because the alternative — shirking the responsibility yourself — is even less appealing.

I’m not sure how convincing I am here (I’m writing in a big rush), so if you don’t buy this argument, let me know and I’ll flesh it out some more!

Okay, so it’s likely that you already unconsciously apply this metric when making decisions. I’d like to advocate making it as conscious as possible. Instead of saying, “buying product X will save me $50, and that’s good” or “that new 5 megapixel camera takes great pictures!” or “I can’t believe X screwed me over again; I’m going to get back at him”, try to actively quantify that in terms of how much happiness it’s going to bring to you…. of course, many people have advocated this; it’s nothing new. However:

So assume that I’m thinking in this context. How do I make my decisions? How do I decide if I should spend my vacation reading up on a topic that’s always interested me, or hiking? Any decision in this framework is predicated on your happiness function: something that takes in a course of action, and spits out an estimate of how happy it’ll make you. The more accurate this function, the better your decisions will be (and the less you’re likely to regret them). What’s amazing to me is: a) how inaccurate our built-in happiness functions tend to be (see below) and b) how little research there is on what really tends to make people happy. This seems to be the single most fundamentally important question people ask themselves, and yet we’re spending all our money building missile-defense systems (and funding computer science research, haha). Of course, people are very different (which is why some people choose to help the old lady and others don’t), but we’re all human, and it seems likely that, as with other aspects of human nature, our happiness functions overlap in many places. Let’s start widespread studies about what makes people happy! (Or, at least, what makes them think they’re happy, if there’s a difference there.)

Here are some relevant links:
People are bad at estimating their future happiness. People tend to exaggerate the impact of a decision in terms of its expected impact on their happiness. Signs of a bad happiness function! Of course, it’s very plausible that we’re biologically set to mispredict happiness, as that will probably keep us motivated. I wrote about this a while ago.

What does make us happy? A good bit of empirical happiness research. Read it to see how you should spend that raise you just got…

If you search on NewsDog, you can find some more…

Eek, I would like to ramble more but I have to leave soon! (I wrote the rest of this entry first.)

[1] I really mean “the integral of the change in your happiness” — the total amount of happiness you gain. This favors options that make you happier for longer, which makes sense. For instance, right now you have two options: live your life as you do, or go on a coke-fueled binge until you O.D. and die. This second option will likely make you very happy, but only for a short period of time (before you die prematurely). The first option may not be as exhilarating, but the total amount of happiness you derive from it — over the full extent of your natural life — most likely makes it a more appealing candidate. (However, this theory does suggest that very old people should go on cocaine-fueled binges, rather than waiting for a sad, drawn-out death. I’m not sure that this is such a terrible idea.)

Does the jury system make sense? Metallica’s, … And Justice For All happened to be sitting on my desk the other day, and it reminded me of some thoughts I’ve had about the jury system. A couple of years ago, I had a really interesting conversation with my friend Caterina while hiking up Half Dome in Yosemite. She was studying to be a judge in Italy. It turns out their legal system is quite different from ours with respect to trials: decisions are made by judges, rather than by a jury of normal citizens. The decisions are fully documented by the judges and are peer-reviewed for bias or inaccuracy.

At first, this struck me as bizarre, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Here are some of the flaws (that I think are) present in the jury system:

• Jurors probably don’t know the law very well. I certainly don’t. Each juror has to be informed of the nuances of the law — and is then expected to apply it correctly, with little or no prior experience. A trial judge presumably is well-equipped to apply the law.
• Jurors are more susceptible to trickery. Good trial lawyers seem to be known for their persuasive powers, their ability to convincingly humanize or demonize the defendant, their knack of “touching the hearts of the jury”, or whatever. If it’s a matter of interpreting the law and the evidence, then this kind of stuff should not be a part of the process. Granted, there is a lot of subjectivity in law, but I’d rather trust a professional who is aware of and resistant to the persuasive tactics of lawyers than ordinary people who have no such defenses. (It seems to me that, in theory, the outcome of a trial should not be a function of the quality of the lawyers arguing it.)
• A jury is also more susceptible to corruption. All you have to do to prevent a guilty verdict is to get a single juror to adamantly stick with “not guilty”, forcing a hung jury. I imagine it’s a lot easier to bribe a single juror — often pseudo-anonymous and protected — whose life only tangentially relates to the trial at hand, and who has very little accountability in the end result, than it is to bribe a judge whose entire career stands to be ruined.
• Jurors have other lives. We are required by law to serve as jurors, often at great personal cost and inconvenience, and with little compensation. I’ve never actually been in a real jury, but I imagine that as a result there is probably some pressure to get a trial over with, which might lead to some rash judgements.

Of course, there are problems with the judge-only system, too: are the judges elected or appointed? Can we design a peer-review system that’s transparent enough to root out bad or corrupt judges? etc. But I think the current system has enough flaws that it’s worth considering.

Anyway, I have jury duty next Monday, so I may get to see how things go first-hand :).

Cal’s football season. My friend Tom is expecting me to rant about the recent BCS fiasco, and who am I to disappoint someone who actually reads this blog? Here’s the background: Cal (Berkeley) had its best football season in about 50 years, losing only one game — and that one, a nailbiter decided by one bad possession, was to the number 1 team in the country, USC. Yet Cal ended up fifth in the country in the BCS rankings, just narrowly missing out on $10 million and a chance to play in the Rose Bowl. Here’s my take on the situation:

Cal should have been fifth. Perhaps to make a point, Cal didn’t run up the score on some of its opponents, a tactic traditionally necessary to rank highly in the BCS. Then they complained about getting a bad ranking. This is dumb. Either you play by the rules of the system, however foolish, or you make a statement (as they did), and then deal with the consequences. Unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways. Also, by the end of the season, Cal’s receiving corps was totally devastated (its last good receiver broke his leg in the last game) and thus Cal really wasn’t as good a team as it was earlier in the season. Dropping from fourth to fifth seems acceptable in this context. (Of course, even then, the fact that “according to a Sports Illustrated report, three writers — from Fort Worth, Dallas and Austin — changed their fourth-place votes from Cal to Texas in the final AP poll” [from here] pisses me off.)

The two real travesties, then, are: first, there are four “real” BCS bowl games, which you might think should include the top eight teams in the nation. Cal is in none of them. That’s crazy. Second, J. J. Arrington had an unbelievable season — clearly better than the other Heisman RB candidates — and wasn’t even close to winning the Heisman — mostly because of the idiotic practice by the sports media of picking preseason Heisman candidates and hyping them up all season, even if better players surface along the way. Grr.

Okay, this is going to be one of those long, rambling, soporific, multi-segmented entries. Sorry. Maybe I’ll bold a part of each segment so you can find those that catch your fancy.

Mispronounced words. Remember when you were growing up you’d mispronouce some words, because you’d only read them and never heard them said? That happened to me a lot, at least. I had some classics: “awry” (aw-ry), “misled” (missle-d), etc. I thought I had gotten over that phase for the most part, but I just found another gem: “biopic”. I thought it was bi-op-ic, as in biopsy and biology, and of course it’s really bio-pic, as I learned on the plane flight back east for Thanksgiving. Luckily, about half the friends I queried (the ones who, like me, don’t watch E!, I imagine) were also duped. Amusing, though — and I’d be interested to hear any good ones you’ve had!

I feel better now. Recently, a life decision I had made several years ago came back to haunt me, and until this last week it was far and away the the decision I’ve most regretted making (as much as I’ve tried to justify it morally). Anyway, some friends in Boston pointed out that several good things — wonderful things, really — occurred because of that decision, events that are really incomparable on the scale I was using. Long (and totally vague) story short, it really hit home that our lives are complicated and intertwined and my decisions may affect others in ways I can’t possibly fathom. In the end, it made me feel very happy.

Reunited with the green shirt. As a poetic (well, prosaic, really) coda to my odes to green shirts found here and here, my mom reunited me with my missing green shirt when I was home last week. Wahoo! Unfortunately, it’s a bit rattier than I remembered.

Other home activities. My parents got me hooked on Six Feet Under, much as they did with the Sopranos when I went home two years ago. We watched most of the first season, and now I’m buying back into my brother’s Netflix account just so I can get the remaining DVDs ;).

I also played some piano at home, which reminded me of two things 1) how much I suck at piano and 2) how much easier it is to explore various harmonic constructions on a piano, where you can just think about the notes and play them, than it is on a guitar, where you have to struggle to come up with a fingering that’s attainable by humans, and not just 18-fingered creatures from Alpha Centauri.

And I read. Ooh, I’ve been reading some good books lately…
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway, which I found ultimately very good and depressing, although several of my friends claim that they found it incredibly uplifting.
Positively Fifth Street, James McManus. McManus was sent to cover the World Series of Poker and the coincidental murder of one of its founders for Harper’s. However, smitten by the poker bug, he used his advance money ($4000) to earn his way into a $10000 seat in the tournament, much to his wife’s dismay. But he’s a skilled amateur player and ended up doing amazingly well. It’s a fun read, and has gotten me hooked on poker recently. Also, in another coincidence, the people accused of the murder were just acquitted this past week.
The Living Planet, David Attenborough. He’s one of my favorite nature writers. A fascinating book.
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Tad Williams. One of the best fantasy series ever, and some fun brain candy. I’m just digging in now (it’s about 3000 pages or so).

Thanksgiving, Lake Tahoe. I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday of the year, because it actually means something and it’s not quite as overloaded with consumerism, cynicism, and greed as the other major holidays are — no gifts, no cards, and few platitudes. Also, I usually get to see most of my friends and family in one fun-filled week! During H-Y weekend I hung out with a bunch of college friends, which was great. I was only there for 24 hours so I didn’t get to see everyone, but I did get to meet some new people like Feng!

Home was great too, although I missed my high school friends by a day. Next year I’m getting my ticket well in advance so I don’t have to fly back at weird times.

On Friday, after travelling for 20 straight hours from Cheshire, CT to Hartford to Phoenix (three hour wait since my plane arrived just after my connecting flight left) to Oakland to El Cerrito to Route 80 East, I arrived at Lake Tahoe to spend the weekend with some IHouse friends. It was awesomely fun, and also quite ridiculously beautiful. Here are some pictures:

I meant to give the vacation a perfect ending by seeing Pinback at Bimbos. They’re super fun live, and Umesh liked the CDs he heard me play so he wanted to come too. Unfortunately I hadn’t gotten tickets in advance since I didn’t know when I was coming back from Tahoe, and when we got there we found out that the show was sold out. Doh.

Misinformation. Have you seen this report that claims that red states are more generous than blue ones? Specifically, Mississippi is the most generous state in the U.S., and the New England states are at the bottom. I’ve seen it mentioned several times in the last couple of weeks, and I feel obligated to point out that it’s totally bogus. Thank you for your time.