Razor

Battlestar Galactica: Razor with Stephanie Jacobsen, Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff. A nice little expanded universe piece with a lot of exposition and back story added. Overall nicely done as usual. The Pegasus flashbacks were pretty much everything I wanted answered and it seems the first Cylon War flashbacks were actually miniepisodes they aired on TV. The guy they got to play the young Bill Adama did a really good job of getting all the mannerisms and speech patterns of the regular character. Another positive note on the series in general is their writing of very powerful female characters, which is a rarity I think in many shows. I mean, sure you might have had a couple here and there in different series (and they tend to be annoying and bitchy anyway) but to have so many in one show is pretty unconventional. I'm going to assume no one who hasn't already seen it who reads this blog intends to watch, but SPOILERS:
I thought it was an interesting move to make Admiral Cain a lesbian and I'm not sure what to make of it. In one sense it's good because there's been this lingering question of how homosexuality is viewed in the BSG universe and if one of the characters in the series would come out. I think deliberately addressing that and making a big deal about it would detract from the plot they already have. And trying to guess if someone's secret is that they're gay or a Cylon would be too distracting, so just getting that out of the way in Razor was a good move. On the other hand, I think it's a bit of a cop out that she's a lesbian. It plays back to the female combatants thing where women are seen as more cold blooded in combat than men even when both are committing the same deeds. It's because women are supposed to be sympathetic, kind and nurturing and to find that they are capable of the same atrocities as men is very disturbing. But if Cain is a bull dyke then obviously she's not a real woman and therefore it's no surprise she could do all those terrible (male) deeds. That said, since one of the things that supposedly pushed her over the edge was the realization that her love has been manipulating her and exploiting her trust in order to destroy the ship, it would have been difficult for any of the male Cylons to have made a convincing partner for Cain.
Another thing I wonder is if Cain was really like that the whole time. The writers are good about letting you decide for yourself how a lot of things should be interpreted rather than tell you how it is and make people that don't see it feel dumb. They make it seem like she is a bit austere but basically a nice enough person and her hardness was really just an act. But after watching Dexter (the show about the serial killer who hunts serial killers) I wonder if all of her emotions were just faked. She didn't care about casualties or murdering civilians or other officers, her single focus was hurting the Cylons back. It didn't matter if the tactical value of the target was minimal, she wanted blood. She clearly never thought in the long term, like how the human race would continue with just the dwindling crew of the Pegasus as the gene pool. She could never let her true colors show previously because a sociopathic admiral would be drummed out fairly quickly, but with absolute power she didn't need to answer to anyone. Additionally, she was betrayed by the one person she actually did care for and the only one who might have tempered her monstrous tendencies. As Bill Adama pointed out the only thing that kept him from doing some terrible decisions was the fact that he'd have to look his son in the eye and explain himself.

Anthrapology

It occurred to me the other day, now that I have my finals done (and kicked each of their asses) this was a very depressing semester in terms of classes. I don't know how anthropologists can be so optimistic when what we learn is so disheartening. In fact I'd say the one class that had a positive message was my Honors thesis and I wrote the damn thing. Never mind the fact that my adviser sent it back with the first four pages in red. Aside from the knowledge and understanding one gains from a class, I think there's a message or moral that accompanies each class as well. Like the GenEd psychology class I took last year definitely had the message "Don't believe everything you think" or maybe "Don't blindly go along with the crowd". My Exobiology course made us walk away with the message "There are almost definitely aliens and they probably don't want to kill us". Not as inspirational as one would like but for something we know nothing about it's pretty optimistic. This semester the messages seem to be: "Basic impulses of human nature are genetic and people are genetically predisposed to not like 'others'." "Poor people will live miserable lives and only the rich people (who don't care about the poor anyway) have the power to change that." "If you try to help people in developing countries you'll end up inadvertently helping wife-beaters and warlords and give people you're trying to help a new means of committing suicide." "Utopian experiments always fail because of human nature." "There will always be people to take advantage of the kindness of others."
I mean, fuck, where do you go from there? The only option seems to be to rewire human genetics to get rid of selfish, spiteful tendencies, but I'm not a fan of tinkering with human instincts. I don't agree with this negative assessment and I'm kind of hoping it's just a fluke that I took all downer classes and that the opinion of the anthro department is not so dim. The way I see it, humanity has slowly but surely been improving itself for the past 10,000 years. I mean sure we gave up being egalitarian (we think) nomads to become a hierarchical society with a horrible diet that created disease wherever we went. And yes, we've only relatively recently increased human life expectancy to higher than what it was before we invented agriculture, but look where it's gotten us: we can finally explore the unknown possibilities of existence and search for answers to how and why the Universe is the way it is instead of just saying "God did it." I'd say the amount of cruelty in the world has reduced since the past. The quality of life for many people has increased and the means to help people is greater than it has ever been. The only trick is to raise people in such a way that our advancements actually mean something. Don't be cruel, don't be selfish, don't be stupid. How that's accomplished globally I have no idea. I will say, though, if anthropologists can see all those negative things about the human condition and still be optimistic that they can change the world then they're the best people for the job.

I know it might be wrong, but I'm in love with Grendel's mom

Beowulf with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich. I appear to be in the minority, but I actually enjoyed the movie. It's not some wonderful, eternally quotable movie for the ages (not that the original Beowulf is quotable either), but I was entertained. It's enough of a departure from the original that it gets in trouble with the purists, though I think it's better than the original story. There's always a critic, I suppose: people who claim there was no plot or that the acting was poor on one side and the people who wanted it to be more like the original story with one dimensional characters killing monsters over and over. Beowulf was a more likable character in this than the original, where he just seemed like he was nothing but a braggart. I didn't see what the curse they kept referring to was, though. I mean right up until Grendel's mom cancels their little deal, Beowulf had it pretty sweet. He gets to be rich, powerful and remembered for all time (nice little meta-reference there) and all he has to do is have sex with Angelina Jolie. Aside from perhaps some feelings of sleeping with the enemy I didn't see where the catch was. The Old English was fun to hear and the fans of the original were even more excited about it. I was also excited to learn afterwards that some of the characters in Beowulf are buried in Gamla Uppsala in the big funeral mounds. It's been a long time since I've watched a 3D movie, so seeing the movie in 3D was a rare treat, as well.

Beardy McBearderson

After three months with facial hair I've come to note some odd things. First off, it's easier to get used to seeing yourself with a beard when you're actually growing it than getting used to seeing yourself when you shave it off. Secondly, there's a weird dichotomy in people's opinions on facial hair. For example men will praise and sometimes admit to jealousy of my facial hair but afterwards say they think the clean-shaven look is better. This might just be polite praise to any change they notice, though there's always the occasional partygoer who notes, "You shaved. That was a mistake." Women are divided on the facial hair issue more consistently, they either like it or they don't. There doesn't seem to be equally approving of beardedness and nonbeardedness. I was rather surprised by the number of women that did like it, though; girls sometimes asked if they could touch it. There were even some women who were opposed to facial hair and actually liked it when they saw it. The vast majority seem to prefer clean-shaven, though. Personally I don't get it, real women like masculine traits like height, muscles, etc. and a beard is nothing if not manly. The only concern which I will accept as legitimate is having their face rubbed raw by making out with a bearded man and only one woman noted that as a reason for not liking beards. Otherwise she, in fact, approved of the look.
I did learn some interesting things about having a beard, both about myself and people:
-Long sideburns do not work on me, not that they work on most people, but there are some that can make it work.
-There is a weird camaraderie among bearded men, my example is when I was explaining the reason for switching from a full beard to a goatee (technically a Van Dyke) was due to a shaving accident and two guys chimed in with "I hate it when that happens!" The guys who didn't have facial hair were then left with nothing to add to the new conversation.
-I may need a new hairstyle now that I'm clean-shaven. The glasses, parted hair and full beard made me look nerdy, but in a professional, very anthropological way. Same with the goatee, but to a lesser extent. Clean-shaven I just look like a nerd and I think now strangers take me for a pushover.
-I was surprised by how much maintenance goes into facial hair, you have to keep it trimmed and neat looking or it'll grow over your mouth. And not that you'd notice so much in the summer, but now that it's getting colder, a beard keeps your face warm. It's like a built-in scarf. -Since the oils that your skin produces to keep your hair healthy-looking are actually going into the beard instead of sitting on your skin, acne is reduced tremendously. With a full beard I had like one zit a month.

Depending on what my future whims might be, I might grow beard out again. Especially if I'm going to grad school back East, cuz I hear those winters are pretty damn cold.

Your move!

Robocop with Peter Weller. I of course have seen this movie many times before this post but because it is such a good movie I am compelled to review it. Why is it so good? Because it's gritty, darkly satirical and just plain awesome. There's no dichotomy of good and evil; the creator of Robocop is a ruthless entrepreneur who celebrates his success with hookers and cocaine. Incidentally, his death scene, which I had completely taken out of context as a child, likely shaped my attitude on drugs: the man snorting cocaine out a a prostitute's cleavage gets shot in the legs and blown up with a grenade. More effective message than anything DARE ever taught. Robocop fights all forms of crime: robbery, rape, murder, drug trafficking, corporate crimes, he does it all. What's more, you're made to hate each villain well before they're oh so gruesomely killed. There's never any ambiguity in his reasons for killing them. He only uses enough force to complete his mission and he always waits for the bad guys to initiate hostilities, "Your move, creep." Though his tactics are extreme you can never say anyone was a victim of police brutality at the hands of Robocop. Then again, he never misses. I think it's also interesting that while some people would had to have claimed police brutality against him, because he's not human he cannot be personally tried for it. And if that technicality were ignored he wouldn't be protected by city lawyers but by OCP. Their expert legal team would defeat any case filed against him. So the instrument of good is protected from the litigious by an evil corporation. That's just cool. Which brings me to the reason why this movie is unique: the bad guys hardly ever come close to winning. They didn't follow the formula of the powerful protagonist being indestructible at first and only later in the film do the bad guys discover his weakness. Robocop has no weakness, except Directive 4. Even when pitted against the superior strength and firepower of ED-209 he's barely scratched. It takes a whole precinct of cops armed with armor piercing rounds to just slow him down. And even then that's the good guys turned against him that do the most damage. That's why, among other reasons the sequels weren't very good. The unique thing about Robocop as a superhero was that he actually was so powerful he couldn't be defeated.
I watched this movie because I was in a pissy mood, and as always it cheered me up. You wouldn't think it a feel-good flick, but it made me feel good.
Finally, out of curiosity, I checked out how the Spanish and French dubbed ED-209 sounded and to my amazement the French one actually sounded scarier than the Spanish one. Which is saying something considering he just sounds like an angry power droid.

Bastards

So we got burglarized on Monday. They took my laptop, the backup hard drive, my camera and pretty much every single electronic device they could get there worthless hands on. By pure chance I had taken my mini flash drive to school with me and because my adviser wanted sample writing all of my college documents were on it. Had I lost that, I would have lost everything. My resume, grad school data, all my data on my thesis, I would have been irrevocably fucked. Also, by pure chance, there was a drive image backup of my laptop at my parents' house from late January. So instead of losing every song, game and photograph I ever owned in the past three years I only lost about 10 months worth. Now, I was considerably more emotional on Monday than I am today but some of my attitudes are still the same. I am not absolutely ruined as I had initially thought, so things are looking up, somewhat.
Also, while I was and still am thoroughly pissed about losing all my stuff, I regard the loss of the GameCube, all its games, my MP3 player etc. as inconveniences. I've never been particularly attached to material things, I suspect that's why I'm difficult to shop for. But the loss of my laptop and camera are much more than material things. I could not email, print nor even type up a paper due the next day. I lost all the photographs I had taken since the last drive image. As a student my life depends on access to a computer. Photography is my hobby, and without a camera or place to store my photos I'm deprived of something that brings me joy. They also took the tape recorder I was using to get interview for my final project in one of my anthro classes. More than material things, these were tools and storehouses of knowledge. They made off with about three grand worth of my stuff, you'd think they'd at least have the goddamn common courtesy to leave me my backup hard drive.
Which leads me to my next point. While I generally agree with the Swedes on economics and some social and legal points, I feel they're too forgiving. Granted, no system works in every environment and the Swedish system works pretty well for them, but rehabilitation does not work in the US. It can work in Sweden because they're culturally and economically more or less homogeneous and any aberrant behavior is just that, aberrant. It's uncharacteristic and as such can be trained out of them. In the US, there's such socioeconomic diversity and differences between subcultures that rehabilitation is impossible with anything short of brainwashing. You are the person you're going to be for the rest of your life by the time you're 18. After that, you can't correct a learned culture and outlook on life. Case in point is in Philippe Bourgois' book In Search of Respect where in one section he documents the attempts of crack dealers who grew up in East Harlem to enter the legal job market. Despite their best efforts they are incapable of adjusting to this different culture and occasionally in frustration steal from the company to get back at them. Bourgois notes that they were often victims of discrimination but most of the time it was their own damn fault that they couldn't keep a job.
What's my point? You can take the lion out of the jungle but you can't take the jungle out of the lion. You cannot rehabilitate a culture that happens to be incompatible with our own. (Then again, it's not like American prisons even try to rehabilitate prisoners so I may not be 100% correct.) So what's the solution? On Monday I would have said kill them. If you believe society functions like an organism then individuals who wish to maximize their success at the expense of others are essentially cancer cells. The body is full of single cells that all used to be individuals but all banded together for mutual benefit. Still, they used to be individuals and every so often they'll behave like individuals and act only in their own self interest. This happens all the time and its your body's job as a whole to destroy these cancerous elements, so it's not unlike a government trying to stamp out crime. But eventually the body cannot do this as well as it used to and cancer develops, hence why it's not normally a disease of the young. You could make a similar case with planned utopian communities that are seamless for a few years or even decades, but eventually the individualistic traits of the members emerge and the society decays.
Still, we're not cells and killing people for having a different culture, even if it is injurious to everyone and can never be unlearned, is inhumane. So my solution is this, send these prisoners overseas to developing nations. Make them dig trenches, harvest sugarcane, and other awful jobs people have to do over there. Give them good, nutritious meals, of course, I'm no Stalinist. The profits of their labor of course go to the locals who would have had to toil themselves for a meager wage. We won't have them do all the work for the locals, that would foster dependency, but give them a break. Let them regain their strength, accumulate wealth and live for more than work. Once you have a society which is healthy, wealthy and has time to spare, they can prosper. And there is little chance for survival for the prisoners should they escape; without medicine they'll succumb to malaria or other diseases, they can't blend into the society if they can't speak the language, if the locals have a hard time getting food, they'll have an even worse time. And these cultures are much less forgiving of murderous, thieving outsiders should they get caught...
So there you have my social plan to help developing nations, fix our overcrowded prison system in the US and make use of drains on society. And hell, maybe it'll rehabilitate the scumbags after all.

Only time I wish the Earth had been eaten

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with Lawrence Fishburne and no one else worth a damn. This one actually was worse than the original, I didn't think it was possible, but I'll be damned. At least they didn't make it as blatantly bad with product advertising as they did in the last one. I hate all the characters, with a special emphasis on the Human Torch, though the Invisible Woman almost won the annoying contest. Enormous plot holes are the thing that got to me the most. Like, say, why do they need to keep the team together if you can combine all their powers into one person and have them be much more effective than the four of them? Also, his name is Von Doom and he came back from the dead, what more evidence do you need that you can't trust him? Why didn't the Invisible Woman spy on him instead of confronting him like a moron? And lastly, if the Silver Surfer can destroy Galactus that easily, why the hell did he wait all that time serving him when he could have just taken the job of herald and then turn and kill him right then and there? I will give them points for making Galactus a bit more ominous than a giant human in a silly helmet. Normally I hold off on spoilers but this one isn't worth my restraint.

Darwin

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen. A required reading for one of my classes, but a decent read nonetheless. You learn all about Darwin and his personal life and his reactions to the scientific world around him, and dispels some of the myths about his beliefs and motives. We all agreed that after having read about him, we would not have wanted to be his friend. Even though he was chronically sick his whole life, he never went to visit anyone unless it was a tangible benefit to him, his friends were all people who could help him advance his career and he missed the funerals of his father, his favorite daughter and Lyell, the man who made Darwin's career. Not to mention the fact that his reason for marriage was that a wife would make better company than a dog. The man never committed to anything unless he absolutely had to, once he was put into a situation he performed admirably but he had absolutely no gumption. Had Wallace, who was a totally awesome, albeit chronically unlucky guy, not sent Darwin his ideas on evolution to be forwarded to Lyell, Darwin would never have gotten around to publishing his own theory of evolution. Another interesting tidbit, not in the book but provided as background by the professor, was that while Darwin would say he didn't subscribe to Social Darwinism, he never stopped or corrected people who twisted his theory. And since he came from money and from how he interacted with those of higher and lower classes, he kinda, sorta did believe in Social Darwinism. So the bottom line seems to be Darwin was a smart guy, but a total prick.

In one of my other classes, Sociobiology and Evolution of Cooperation, we're talking about the evolutionary benefits of altruism. Which leads to one of my least favorite debates of all time: is there really such a thing as altruism? I mean, if you derive any measure of satisfaction or reward for an (huge, pseudo-intellectual finger quote gesture) altruistic act then it really is a selfish act and that means there is no such thing as altruism. Basically, you would have to utterly hate doing something, but do it unhesitatingly and never derive any benefit from it, directly or indirectly no matter how distant in the future that possible reward might be. So in that case, yes altruism does not exist because it would be utterly counterintuitive and stupid. But for the rest of the world that doesn't subscribe to that stupid philosophy altruism does exist because it means giving without any outside reward expected in return. If you do a nice thing for the sake of it and you happen to be rewarded for it that doesn't make it any less altruistic. Nor does feeling good about it make the altruistic act selfish, any more than it's OK to steal from someone as long as you feel bad about it while you're doing it.

Babble

Babel with Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and assorted foreigners. An alternate title for this film is "Stupid People Doing Stupid Things", I get the message (I think) the director was trying to give. In our globalized world the deeds of people thousands of miles away have drastic effects on the world we know. It's a message I can approve of but something about the film just didn't stick right with me. Maybe it was the fact that virtually all viewers needed subtitles since the likelihood of someone being fluent in English, Spanish, Japanese and Moroccan are slim. It smacked of the pretentiousness of a director who thought making a film almost exclusively in foreign languages would make him (and the film) seem worldly and intelligent. Also, one can't help but notice the odd unintended moral of the story: the carelessness of Mexicans, Arabs and Asians end up in the near death of beautiful and innocent white Americans.

In other news, I went to a career presentation at the U of A for the Foreign Service. I went in with an open mind but didn't think the program would ultimately appeal to me. But after the presentation I'm giving it some serious consideration. It's a hell of a lot more exciting (and lucrative) than the Peace Corps, which I had also considered joining, and as a diplomat I'd get better accommodations than a thatch hut on an anthill. They mentioned something to the effect of four years of service would finance grad school and pay off student loans. I'd learn languages of the countries I'd be sent to and interact with cultures on diplomatic missions. If I hypothetically made a career of it I could retire at 50. The only problems I see with this is a lack of autonomy; I go where they need me to be and I stay there from anywhere to weeks or years. Which means sure I could get a request to be stationed in Sweden approved then 6 weeks later, "Oops, we need you in Gambia." Also, they said one of the jobs is to explain US foreign policy. Now does that mean I have to advocate Imperialism or just merely diplomatically explain it to the locals while mentioning I personally disagree? There are some places you're not allowed to take children, or even one's wife. That, combined with moving every few months or years to foreign lands might get lonely after awhile. I never got a chance to ask about that part. The diplomacy and traveling bit sounds pretty sweet, and quite compatible with my goals of being an anthropologist. The hang up, as I gather is true in all jobs, is choosing higher pay or higher autonomy. Also, I wonder if doing one for a few years and then doing the other later would impact my chances of getting either job? Would the universities want to sponsor a former government pawn, or would the US government consider someone with potentially years worth of international contacts too great a security risk? Hmmm, things to consider....

Húmedo

The Labor Day trip to Mexico went quite well. Aside from the fact that the first night was so oppressively hot and humid. I have never been in a natural environment that disgustingly sweltering. This of course made going to the clubs all the more interesting. As if drunk girls weren't already predisposed to take off their clothes, in the club it was so hot everyone was taking their shirts off. For those of us that decided to keep our shirts on for modesty's sake, after a little while it looked like we had jumped in the ocean. We were so drenched in sweat we had to leave our shirts out to dry the next day. Also, the clubs, like one would expect in Mexico, were rather seedy, but thankfully not as terrifying as I have heard they can be. The stripper they hired at one club they were filming and projecting onto a giant screen so everyone could watch. Yeah, that was kinda gross. Plus who knows what kind of diseases the drunk frat boys got from her when they were grinding with her.
One interesting side effect of all that profuse sweating was no matter how much free beer and shots we took we never got more than a little buzzed since we sweat it all out. Another unfortunate, but slightly amusing, discovery is that in Mexico all mixed drinks are made with tequila. Kamikazi? Red Bull and vodka? Rum and coke? All made with tequila. One thing we did learn was that amid all the putrid rotgut tequila they were serving at the clubs they also had the smoothest, tastiest tequila any of us had ever encountered: Agavero. As it turns out it's actually a tequila liqueur, which would explain its unique taste. I would also like to thank the gentlemen who bought us those shots, as it takes a special kind of awesome to buy not just for the girls but the guy they're with as well.
The condos we stayed at were simply amazing; beautiful view of the ocean, spacious and such comfortable sofas. The air conditioning was also quite lovely, so lovely in fact that it led to brown outs several times during our stay. The water was quite literally like bath water. To be honest, that first day it was not very refreshing to swim in the ocean. It was almost the same temperature as the air. The water was fine later in the trip, though, good enough for all of us to go swim to a random buoy and prove how out of shape most of us were. In fairness, however, that was the longest I have ever swam in my life.
The trip back was notably long, it took us four hours to get across the border the line was so long. Thankfully we left in the late afternoon so we were in line at night. The other group left before us and were caught in line in the middle of the day. Their car overheated and they were stuck in line with no AC for three hours. The weather really was out to get us the entire trip, but holy crap was it awesome.

Words of the Day:
feckless-ineffective; incompetent; futile.
bathycolpian-Having deep cleavage; deep-bosomed.
and just to be fair: callipygian- having well-shaped buttocks.

The inebriated young man's efforts to woo the pulchritudinous, callipygian and bathycolpian girls proved feckless.

Super?

Superbad with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. I'm not sure what to say about this one. I liked The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up a lot but this movie didn't quite do it for me. The first third of it was awesome and I liked the last part of it too but for some reason the big middle section sort of fell flat. I could tell it was trying to be funny but it came across as the kind of funny reserved exclusively for telling not-funny-at-the-time situations. Which is exactly the kind of situation they were in, but again, as you're watching it it's not funny at the time. Nearly everyone else I spoke to liked it a lot, so maybe it was just lost on me. Since I was never one to go out and party in high school all of the "oh, man that is so true!" moments were lost on me.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The previous two movies made by the same guys were funny and definitely had a moral to the story. This had a message (the crazy high school life really isn't/wasn't what it was cracked up to be) but it seemed to emphasize that at the expense of the comedy that the film is billed as.
One thing I must laud the producers on is their focus on reversed roles in their movies. In the 40 Year Old Virgin it's the man that is sweet and innocent and the women who are making purely sexual advances on him. In Knocked Up it's emphasized that the female role is partially responsible for her accidental pregnancy as opposed to it being exclusively the dumb, horny man's fault. In Superbad, the sweet girl the main character has a crush on turns out to be the aggressive one; the hot, popular girl hosting the party turns out to not drink and isn't interested in popular, hot jocks. Even among the male characters the traditional roles are discarded. The fat kid isn't the meek sidekick but the confident and vulgar leader of the group and the nerdy kid is actually the most resourceful and street smart among them.

Ants

I've always had a love/hate relationship with ants. For a time in elementary school we conducted campaigns against colonies, drawing them out and smashing them daily until there were hardly any workers left. But you could never get rid of them entirely. We knew there was a queen that we couldn't reach, but we thought we might be able to seal their colony shut with glue and rocks. But obviously that doesn't work. No matter what we did, they'd always come back. Once I realized that, I developed a respect for them and would study them as empirically as an eight-year-old on lunch break could. One such very scientific study involved comparisons between the red ants and the black ants, whose only visible difference seemed to be their color. Same size, same build, but common lore had it the red ants were more ferocious and and a more painful bite. The experiment consisted of collecting equal numbers of red ants and black ants, shaking the container and pouring them in the same enclosed space together. As I recall the red ants won, though it wasn't a fair match; the red ants ganged up on individual black ants.
I have a feeling that if my everyday experiences with ants were with South American or African ants, I would have just hated them outright. There's something about a river of ants that eats anything in its path that doesn't inspire the same kind of grudging admiration. The ants at Collier Elementary couldn't be kept down, they persevered, they were the underdogs. Those ants are just bullies. And then there are these ants. Nothing about this ant sounds good, it's apparently used in an initiation ritual into manhood. Like the guy said, "Why is it that things that make you a man tend to be such dumb things to do?" I'd prefer a slightly more practical test of manhood, something more Spartan.

Beyond Bread

Saturday was my last day at Beyond Bread. Unlike Sunflower Market I really did enjoy working there, despite the inevitable stupidity of people. I don't want to work in a restaurant again for precisely that reason. Thankfully the idiocy was limited primarily to customers and the occasional coworker and not the managers, which again, is more than I could say about Sunflower. I didn't learn as much about humanity as I did with my first job, but important lessons can still be drawn from the experience. Some of these might not be lessons so much as rants, but oh well:
-Passing the anti-smoking law in Arizona really helped get rid of the most unpleasant coworkers. Within a week of that passing the mean, dessicated, beady eyed spinster, the creepy, fish-faced,-alleged pedophile and the irritatingly flamboyantly gay drug addict all quit or were fired. Funny how my upbringing indirectly taught me that smokers were bad people and I fought against that generalization for years, yet the worst people at work all just happened to be smokers. I felt vindicated, but I'm still trying to fight that prejudice.
-Beyond Bread seems to hire two main types of people: beautiful young girls and creepy and/or lecherous men. There's more variety than that but the trend is readily visible and puzzling. On top of that there's a division between the Front of House and the Sandwich Line. The FoH people tend to be the attractive, charismatic and polite type while the Sandwich Line tend to be the foul mouthed, rude and surly type. There are exceptions to every rule, of course.
-Every semester I try to give sorority girls the benefit of the doubt; maybe they're not as dumb as we all think, maybe it's all an act. And every semester I'm angry at myself for questioning my own senses. I'm sorry, they really are dumb and as polite as they pretend to be with their smiles and upward inflections? they are rather inconsiderate. I have a long list of stories I could tell, but I'll just give you this one: after an agonizingly long and confused and needlessly complicated order they declare how they must be the worst customers in the world (they're not, sadly) and that I should get a tip for putting up with them. They proceed to pay and walk off with a "'annnkyou!" and leave no tip. I don't mind not getting a tip, really I don't, but if you basically tell someone you'll give them a tip because you know you've been difficult and you don't tip them at all, you're a total bitch.
-Some things to remember are: Beyond Bread does not have pastrami. Nor does it have potato salad. Nor does it have a soup/salad/sandwich combo. They have menus by the front of the entrance, please take two seconds to locate them. The sides are (please remember this): chips (they are called Beyond Bread Crisps on the menu. This is admittedly confusing as they are not chips of bread but simply house brand potato chips) baked Lays, baby carrots (they are raw, why would you have cooked carrots as a side?) or for an extra fifty cents pasta salad (totally worth it) or vinegar slaw (wouldn't be worth it if it were free). If you're going to order half a sandwich, let the cashier know that part first, not last.
-Getting free pastries night after night on the closing shift sounds great at first, but the novelty wears off soon. Or at least it should.
-Do not complain about how fat you are while you take home multiple pastries a night each night for a month.
-The highly volatile and eccentric people they hire at Beyond Bread are, as the managers pointed out, the good ones. "You should see the ones we turn away!" Now there's an unsettling thought. And on a related note, don't ask for a job application reeking of alcohol. Also, don't answer "Why do you want to work here?" with "I'm really desperate for work! Please! I'll work anywhere!"
-If I find the people who seem to enjoy deliberately defiling public restrooms, I will stab them in the eye (I strongly encourage you to do the same). Seriously now, what reason is there to pee on the floor, crap on the side of the toilet or wipe your snot on the walls? Assholes.
-Ending on a high note, customer stupidity or mere oddness is the greatest source of entertainment there is at work. From people ordering Montezuma's Revenge and Gordy's Godzilla to a bowl of Gestapo and the Eat Me Out salad. The last funny story I heard was regarding a certain young, blonde, beautiful and shapely customer. Usually she only comes in with a very rich older man and of course he pays for their meal. But the other day she came in by herself and when she paid with her credit card the cashier noticed her name: Tyndall Tsunami. The first thought that went through her head (bless her sweet little heart) was that she must have married him because of his last name. She seemed very unaware of how much that sounded like a porn star name. I Googled it (how could I not?) but found nothing. I'm also left wondering why you would have your stage name on your credit card.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I have been puzzled by several people's notions of regret and reconciliation with the past. Though nothing has recently incited this posting, I feel I've digested the matter sufficiently to venture an opinion. There are those that say they do not regret any of the things they have done in the past because there's no point in dwelling on the past, or that if it wasn't supposed to happen it wouldn't have, or frequently that they do not regret because the experiences made them who they are today. While these are all well and good means of coping with one's ignoble past deeds (and I believe any rationalization that works is better than sullenly obsessing over one's mistakes) I wonder if people apply that type of reasoning beforehand. Something along the lines of foolishness begets wisdom, which I can hardly disagree with since I know several people with colorful pasts with a wisdom beyond the ken of my own stuffy self. That said, such wisdom does come at a cost of happiness and if the idea of regret even enters one's head it was probably not something altogether pleasant.
But just because someone went through such an experience does not necessarily make them wiser. There are some who do knowingly things against their better judgment and later claim the ordeal was worth it because now they know why it was a bad idea. This logic baffles me; it's as though they decided to hit themselves in the face with a hammer knowing full well that common knowledge says that's a painful experience, then after hitting themselves in the face with a hammer declare that the experience was worthwhile because now they know exactly why people always say, "Don't hit yourself in the face with a hammer."
There's also the issue of what everyone else will think about them. Now common belief holds that we shouldn't care what everyone else will think about our actions. In the literal sense this is true; we shouldn't worry what everyone will think, but I have yet to meet a single person who does not alter their behavior based on what some will think. At any rate, whether or not you decide to feel (or at least tell people that you feel) regret is contingent on how you think people around you will react. In the realm of, say, sexual experiences, if you knowingly enter the situation and can reasonably expect the experience to ultimately be negative or humiliating you have two options. You can either regret doing something against your better judgment and have people think you're a fool for doing it in the first place (as I admittedly just did in the previous paragraph) or you can adopt the "No regrets!" attitude and have people think you're either a slut or a womanizing pig. So the choice ends up being, do you want to be thought of (by yourself as well as others) as stupid or rakish?
Moving away from specifically sexual regret, people still have different concepts of regret, or at least different from how I would qualify or define it. I think people who claim they have no regrets think that it means constant sullen brooding over some past action they wish they could have done differently. I would qualify regret at its most basic as when you wish you could have made a different decision given the information you had at the time (hindsight is always 20/20, after all). For example, I sometimes wish I had made more of an effort to have a more socially eventful freshman year of college. But had I had a really great time that first year, I would have likely felt I had too much to lose by leaving the country for a year. So in that instance, I do regret not doing something even though that nonaction ultimately resulted in the amazing experience of studying abroad. On the other hand, though, doing something like being needlessly mean to someone at some point ultimately made me the person I am today. But if I hadn't done that would it really have made such a profound difference in who I am? And if it did, who can say whether it would have been an improvement or not?

Rotten Grapevine

One thing I have come to learn is that second hand accounts of people are inherently unreliable. This may seem like a pretty obvious statement but there's more to it than you'd think. Typically the person being talked about (person B) is a friend or loved one of a friend or loved one (person A). We have never met person B, or possibly only met briefly, as a result the only impressions we get of this person are from other people's (person A's) accounts of them. So if our friend is upset at this absent person, that's going to color our perceptions about them. Rarely does one just bring up person B and go on about their virtues, it tends to be that person B has angered or upset person A and A is now venting. If this happens enough, all we know about person B is that they seem to be a total jerk and have no redeeming features. Then when we voice this opinion to person A they instantly defend person B claiming we've got them all wrong and they're really a good person. We will tend to be skeptical of this since we've never heard anything resembling that sentiment before. We lack the ability to forgive person B's flaws since we have no counterbalance to all this negative info. This both blinds us and gives us clarity on the true nature of person B; we have obviously never met them and have no way to judge their character as a whole. We might, in fact, like them just as much as person A does if only given the opportunity. On the other hand, since we are not friends with them we are immune to their charms and may see inexcusable behavior for what it is and not be duped into ignoring it.
Will knowing any of this prevent you from making judgments about people you have only heard about? No, of course not. The ultimate outcome of that is when, through differing accounts, I thought that Frank's friend Connie was literally three different people. With that in mind, remember until you actually meet them, you only know half the story.
Except for person C, they clearly suck.

On Rain

The rains have finally come to Tucson and as always their much needed water also brings mayhem and destruction. I ended up stranded at work for about 2 hours when the rain all of a sudden poured down in a mighty deluge obscuring all vision and rendering umbrellas and windshield wipers useless. I would have been SOL in a car so riding home on my bike was literally suicidal; aside from the high winds and raindrops that feel like little fists, the Tucson bike lanes double as storm drains. But it gets better, the woefully inadequate drainage system meant that the sidewalk was also submerged after a few moments. One of my coworkers regarded my reluctance to bike home in those conditions as foolish, claiming "a little water never hurt anyone". This was of course before some poor guy tried to bike across the street and was knocked down by a wave from a semi.
That aside, when you're not stranded because of the rain or suffering from power outages, the monsoon season is an amazing spectacle to behold. The awesome power of the rain itself is astounding, as is its quick and brutal nature. It unleashes its might upon the earth, uprooting trees and turning major streets into impassable rivers, then stops as quickly as it started. It may even rain heavily while the sun is still shining brightly, or the rain may pour relentlessly on one side of a house while the other side remains utterly dry.
I have been in over twenty countries and about ten states but I've never encountered rain that smells as good as here. Even the sound of rain isn't as good as it is here. Everywhere else is used to it, the grass and trees expect the rain and take it for granted. In the desert, the very ground rejoices in creaks and hisses as it slakes its thirst. Though it is blessed with overabundance it cannot consume all the water at once and the rest is washed away where it will all be soaked up by the desert floor many miles away. Other places are frequently visited by rain clouds which gently and delicately shower the landscape. Rarely is there lightning or thunder in these places. Thor was the mighty lightning god of the Vikings but he clearly never displayed his true strength in Sweden. His arsenal can, however, be realized in Tucson where giant arcs of lightning stretch across the sky and bombard the ground relentlessly while thunder rumbles around you constantly; each clap replaced by a new one before subsiding. In these moments, all the science of lightning and the dry safety of one's home is forgotten as the storms instill awe and humbling admiration of the forces of nature.

Mystery and Horror

The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Eriksson. Murder mysteries are not my cup of tea so I can't really compare it to anything else in the genre, but overall it was a good read. The main reason for me reading it in the first place was because it takes place in Uppsala. There is that nice subtle satisfaction of being able to visualize exactly where one of the characters is in a certain scene. Little things like the person who found the body lived in Feifei's apartment complex or the killer walking past the theater where I saw Harry Potter. That didn't happen nearly as much as I had expected, though, since most of the story takes place in the industrial sector of Uppsala which is evidently very shady and dangerous (by Swedish standards, I assume). The reason I never spent much time there was because it was literally on the wrong side of the tracks; I almost never ventured south of the train station except for my residence permit or capoeira. According to the book there are two Uppsalas: the academic, clean one (where I spent almost all my time) and the uneducated, brutish and gritty side full of immigrants and thuggish high school dropouts. That said, I do kind of wish I had made time to go visit the southern part of Uppsala, just to appreciate the town I love that much more. But anyway, the characters were an interesting bunch, again they live in an Uppsala I am not familiar with though the personal issues they dealt with were much like those of the Swedes I did talk to.

The Descent with Shauna Macdonald and Natalie Mendoza. Ah, now here's a good horror movie. Gets you with the gore, the jump factor of monsters suddenly appearing, the psychological terror of the situation and it leaves you wondering what actually happened at the end. Props to the director on all counts. Now as for the underlying themes and messages in the film, one can go on and on in many different directions. I'll just throw in my opinion that the fact that it is an all female cast is very important especially when considering the mostly male monsters they are fighting. But rather than going for the beeline militant feminist "men are monsters and women are trapped in a man's world" theme I think it warns against this very concept. When it becomes a matter of life and death, the women become more and more monstrous themselves until their own behavior and actions become worse than the monsters they are fighting (who are, from their perspective, only trying to survive against hostile creatures in their home). It's not unlike the question of whether or not female combatants are really more vicious than their male counterparts or if it's only because of the contrast of the peaceful, nurturing female archetype.
I also must mention the blooper reel was quite funny, particularly since you don't get many funny moments in horror movies. Had I watched the opening bit of the blooper reel before the rest of the movie, I would never have been able to take the monsters seriously.

And two interesting facts:
-the MVD at Broadmont can give you a new driver's license within ten minutes of you walking in the door.
-Cops on bicycles use their handcuffs to lock their bikes.

Evolution's Starfish

Blindsight by Peter Watts. Yet another excellent read from one of my favorite authors. The plot and concepts would be scary on their own even if Watts hadn't done his homework and based nearly all of it on real data. The book is a bit dense in the technical jargon and I admittedly had to read it with my browser on Wikipedia just so I could figure out what the hell the characters were talking about. The thought that went into some of the ideas that were very prevalent in the book is surprisingly detailed and the exposition of one aspect in particular is so fascinating in and of itself that it might merit a movie.
There were aspects to it that reminded me of Ian McDonald's Evolution's Shore, (which I regret not having written a review of) particularly the notions about alien thoughts and some aspects of the physiology, not to mention the whole unstoppable alien thing. But whereas McDonald's story is cautiously optimistic, Blindsight has a burningly calm pessimism which can only be described as 'Wattsian'. Just as a final comparison, I enjoy how Watts described the aliens, even though he laments how he "crapped out on the whole unlike-anything-you've-ever-seen front" as opposed to McDonald's once-too-often claim that the aliens were utterly indescribable.
There were a couple of interesting parallels to the Rifters trilogy which make me wonder about what Peter Watts is like in person. I suspect he secretly wanted to be a psych major in college given the degree to which the plots and character development in both the trilogy and this book hinge on cutting edge theories about the mind. He especially seems to like sociopaths. If Watts is as pessimistic as his writings suggest I would probably not be able to stand an intellectual discussion with him, which is rather saddening. Lastly, according to his website's timeline, Blindsight does not take place in the same continuity as the Rifters trilogy. But the settings are sufficiently far apart chronologically where it could be possible. Not to mention there's a single, wonderfully sly quote that hints that they might be part of the same microcosm.

Randall can kiss my ass.

Transformers with Shia Labeouf and Peter Cullen. The naysayers will say nay and forever hate upon Micheal Bay for sins of the past, but I liked this film a lot. The action was definitely not lacking in any form, the balance between human screen time and robot screen time was struck rather well. The only major flaw I can see is the lack of character development of the Transformers, especially the Decepticons. Now granted, Megatron has never been the most subtle and complex character, but a deeper look at his personality would have helped quite a bit. The plot was not as shabby and hard to follow as some people think (I am referring to Slate who guffawed at how unnecessarily obvious the expositions were and then complained about how they didn't know what was going on) but it is entirely independent of previous Transformers franchises so you don't have to be a fanboy to get what's going on. There were several things I did not expect which happened in the movie, namely the human body count, which as Keith pointed out was simply unheard of in previous Transformer incarnations. I was pleasantly surprised by how not helpless the humans were in the movie. Seeing A-10's and F-22's duking it out with Decepticons was pretty sweet, I gotta say. Yes, there were some cheesy lines thrown in that were very blatant nods to G1, but if they weren't there you'd secretly wish they were. It is a summer blockbuster movie and as such you can't expect a deep and profound plot or a mind warping psychological thriller. It's a very well done movie for what it is and I'm definitely excited about the eventual sequels.

King

1408 with John Cusack. A very nice scary movie. The people next to me seemed to disagree, but I think people nowadays think horror movies aren't any good unless you have things jumping out at you every eight seconds or show someone ripped apart with power tools. It was more psychologically terrifying and used the jumping moments to augment the fear rather than relying on them exclusively. What I thought was a very nice touch was one particular scene where Cusack's character is trapped on a ledge on the outside of the building simply because that's almost exactly like a recurring nightmare I had as a child. But as Keith observed, Stephen King presents everyone with their nightmares and if he hasn't yet, he just hasn't gotten around to it. The statement near the end of the movie that it's all a matter of free will was especially chilling. The only thing I was left wondering was how much of what happened in the room actually happened and what was an illusion caused by the room. The ending seemed to answer the question but a lot of the stuff on the tape would still suggest it wasn't all real.

De är lustiga att se...

Due to the awesomeness of my first Midsummer last year, I have decided that this is a holiday worth celebrating no matter where you are. I did have to alter the act of celebrating this day, though, mainly because no one else would give a damn enough to have a proper party on a Thursday but also because the day that the sun is up the longest is traditionally condemned in Tucson rather than celebrated. As a result, the fun times that were had were coincidentally at and around the same time and I retroactively declare them to be Midsummer celebrations.
Things of note from a Arizonan Midsummer:
-Judging from the number of kids from Sabino, I'm going to have to hang out at O'Malley's more often.
-There are at least two completely different ways to make a Polar Bear.
-One can still have a good time camping even without hot dogs or a fire.
-It's a sad thing when most people's idea of camping involves an RV.
-The forest rangers' device for putting out campfires would be a big hit at pool parties.
-People are more uncomfortable talking about the night sky than they are about sharing racy stories.
-Truth or Dare becomes Truth or Truth when too dark to see meets too drunk to walk.
-My brother and I are apparently the only two people on Earth who eat eggs over hard. (and a thank you to Keith for introducing me to the arguably best way to cook eggs)

And in honor of Swedish Midsommar, a series of photos from my year abroad that for various reasons didn't make it into the collection the first time around.

Fjortisar

One of the things I've noticed in my interactions with my coworkers is how I have not changed so terribly much from high school. In high school, for the most part, quality social interactions with was difficult with many people. I figured it was because I was socially inept (which I still may very well be) and not that it was any fault of theirs. This was slightly less so my freshman year of college and my sophomore year it seemed to vanish entirely. Of course that might have just been because I was in another country and half expected things to go back to the way it was once I got back to the U of A. And as it turned out my first semester was nearly all GedEd classes full of freshmen and my social skills were just like they were in high school. The next semester then brought classes all but devoid of freshmen and my ability to talk to people magically improved again. The people at work are no exception to this trend, the majority of them are either still in high school or just graduated and getting to know them and talk with them has been slow work. And even then I get the unshakable feeling that it is only my age that keeps them from ignoring me entirely.
I won't make some sweeping dismissive claim that every awkward or failed social interaction in my past is a result of the other person being a high schooler but it does seem there is a pattern here. While I still have a long way to go before I'm the confident socialite I'd like to be, I think it's fair to say that high schoolers/college freshmen and I tend not to mesh well even when I was younger.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. I went in to the theater expecting very little since I didn't enjoy the first one very much and was unfortunately not surprised by the outcome. As I understand it, whatever your feelings on the second movie were, it will be exactly the same for the third. So while it was agreed that rescuing Jack Sparrow was way too easy, it was ultimately necessary because focusing on one plot line for too long would have crowded out all the other ones they insisted on including. One positive thing I will say is that I was wary of them bringing back Barbossa but not making him a central character, but was glad to see that he was given lots of due screen time. All of the characters were given their fair share of screen time, actually. I guess the best thing you can say about the movie is that it allows for a lot of character development but at the utter expense of plot structure.

Girl with a Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. The plot itself is interesting but nothing spectacular; the fact that the created a movie as a backstory for a painting was pretty cool. The truly amazing thing about this movie is the visual composition where nearly every scene can be paused and might serve as a photograph or painting in itself. The film is incredibly beautiful and the depiction of Holland is very archetypical, especially the clothing. Honestly, the film would be worth seeing even if there were no audio, the visuals are that good. I should also mention that Scarlett Johansson is much prettier than the girl in the original painting.

Ass up!

We went tubing down the Salt River on Sunday in a rather poorly planned fashion. All would have been well if not for the forgotten fact that you can't buy alcohol on a Sunday before 10AM. This led to us being separated as half of us continued on to the park to get the tubes while the other half stayed behind to get the beer once it was 10. This of course led to the other group being unable to park at the entrance and due to the po-lice they weren't even able to drop people off by us while they found a parking spot. Flash forward to 3 hours later, all is resolved by patience and a little faith in everyone's respective abilities to meet up at the top of the river. Not exactly the best way to start out my first time on the Salt River, but the next 5 hours were quite worth it.
It's really kind of strange, I had this image of us all floating down the river all relaxed and peaceful, leisurely drinking our beers as we coast along. That lasted about 10 minutes. Then our raft of tubes caught up with everyone else, the river picked up and hijinx ensued. Due to lack of space (I'll leave it at that) we couldn't fit any water bottles into our cooler so the only liquid available was beer, which made everything more interesting. The whole experience was really fun, more than I had suspected; I was never bored for even a moment. I'm also rather surprised how little everyone was sunburned afterward. Save for right above my knees and my feet, I was just fine. And one poor girl who had a little too much to drink was looking pretty lobsterrific by the end of the day but evidently was just tanned afterward.

STFU

One of my pet peeves that's been coming up lately is people who don't know when to keep quiet, or at least not shout as loud as possible. My first clear memory of this problem was in high school when I made some quiet joke to someone about someone walking by. The ditz replied very loudly "I don't get it!" and despite my attempt to quiet her down, when she got the joke she happily cried, "Oh I get it! You're saying he's...!" I don't think there was anyway for the target of the joke to have not heard it. And I'm positive the two weren't friends, so there was no reason for her to do it deliberately, she was just a moron.
I find myself encountering this again at work; when I notice an attractive female customer, I honor my manly duty and make sure the nearest male coworker has the opportunity to check her out as well. But some people don't get the rules here. One coworker, a thuggish Mexican, has a complete inability to control his volume, so that when I discreetly direct his attention to a hot girl he'll loudly (perhaps vulgarly) agree with me so that the girl, indeed most of the restaurant, knows what we were talking about. Needless to say, I've stopped pointing them out to him.
So if you're going to be a loudmouth, you'd better be prepared to miss out on what everyone else notices around them.

No Hope

Hope's End by Stephen Chambers. A borrowed book which naturally came recommended. Unfortunately I didn't like it all that much. It's a fairly good effort considering the source (a then college sophomore) but objectively it's kinda dull. The setting seems interesting but it doesn't really make the story by itself. A dystopian future society on another planet that has regressed to Medieval technology where reading is forbidden by the Church. The author I think was trying to be too clever in his exposition, very deliberately coy about things to the point of being obnoxious. Constant reflections by the main character regarding strange artifacts with cryptic writing like "Campbell's So" Oooo what could it be!? The characters are not the most compelling either. There are a couple of badass female characters who are mysteriously attracted to the main character who has a knack for delivering lines that would make Anakin Skywalker blush. He also is frequently hit on the head hard enough by rocks and sword hilts to be rendered unconscious for a rather long period of time (generally when it's convenient for him to get from one setting to another without having to write how he got there) yet suffers not ill effects. I'm no doctor but I think repeated blows to the skull like that would at least make sword fighting difficult. I guess they just build 'em tougher on that planet. Though his quality dialog might be explained by being a little punch drunk. None of the characters are very well developed or likable, so when they die you don't really care, though you're very blatantly prompted to by the author. And while the author constantly drops hints about what the colony's founders were like and what they believed in it wouldn't kill him to give a little back story of how or why they left Earth. Given how unpopular their ideologies are it seems unlikely they would just be allowed to leave or that they would have enough voluntary followers to create a colony.

Art

Couple of stream of consciousness ideas that just came up. The phenomenon of surfing the web, copying and pasting links and emailing them to people is wholly contingent on the modern era. The only thing close to a historical analogy would be sitting in a library going through books, documents, encyclopedias and albums, writing down the articles or tracing the illustrations then putting them in an envelope and mailing it to a friend. And that's not including multiple recipients or forwarding YouTube videos.
Also, flowering plants only started appearing around the time of the dinosaurs. Imagine if that little evolutionary experiment hadn't worked out. How many foods, concepts or metaphors would no longer exist? Just on the poetic/aesthetic aspect, how would civilization have coped? What would Van Gogh have painted? Roses wouldn't be red, violets wouldn't be blue, there would be no sugar to be sweet and you know the rest.
And how would aliens with no sight organs create art? Would it all have to be tactile? That limits them to portraits and still lifes since they wouldn't be able to create a recognizable representation of a landscape. Would they regard paintings as some kind of abstract form of koan? Like maybe the way the paint is situated on the canvas is symbolic of the place where it was painted or a general pattern of paint represents a cloud. They'd sense the paint but couldn't understand how it represents a landscape. That said, they may very well have some other form of long range sense we do not comprehend and have developed art based around that sense. What, then, would we make of that?

Spindelmannen! Spindelmannen! Does whatever a spindel....kannen?

Spider-Man 3 with Tobey Maguire and James Franco. Yeah, the reviews are sadly accurate this time. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. And there are certain parts I really empathized with, especially since Spider-Man has always been my patron superhero. The movie is too long, suffering from the common affliction these days of directors getting so full of themselves they forget that it is possible, nay, preferable, to tell a story in under three hours. Eliminating the Sandman entirely would have made the movie shorter, the story better and everything generally less cluttered. I liked Harry Osborn quite a bit in this movie, though the big fight at the end was just dumb. Fantastic Four dumb. I didn't like MJ very well this time, I understand her difficulties and how Parker was being a little too self-absorbed but she was being such a girl about it all. Plus she's dating Spider-Man, she knew what she was getting into. Cut the guy a little slack, he can't always be there for you. That said, Parker was being kind of a jackass, even before the black suit. People in the reviews bitch about how Tobey Maguire was the wrong choice because he can't pull off evil, just creepy. I counter that Parker is inherently so good that even when his dark side is brought out it's still not actually evil. And it's only because it's skinny little Peter Parker that makes his behavior creepy, if it was Flash Thomson it would have looked better. And while his whole emo style was just plain silly, my favorite part of the movie is his slick moves with the ladies (and their varying reactions).

In other news, I went to the doctor to have my sore throat checked out. They use a tongue depressor, a stethoscope, write me a prescription and *poof!* I'm all better. THAT'S how going to the doctor should be!

4D

I'm done with the semester! I'm amazed as everyone generally is how quickly the year has gone by. Yes, it is trite to mention it but I'm genuinely surprised by it. Especially considering how long my stay in Sweden felt. It was only a little longer than a normal academic year but it felt like forever, which is why I suppose I was not really upset to leave Sweden as I felt I had gotten adequate time to experience it.
Why is that, I wonder? Time is supposed to fly when you're having fun and I've never had as much fun over a year as in Uppsala. If anything, it should have gone by even faster than in the US. Maybe it's analogous to the missing time when one works too hard only to look up from their books and find it's 3AM. Uppsala was definitely low stress so that phenomenon never occurred. The class schedule might have had something to do with it as well. In high school you had all your classes every day and so my base unit of time was the day since no matter what, something was due the next day. Freshman year of college, my class schedule was different every day with some classes meeting only once a week. This resulted in me changing my base mental unit of time to the week since I could afford to not do homework for a class the night it was assigned. Experiencing only weeks instead of days would definitely make the year fly by a lot quicker. In Uppsala I had classes every day (or evening, in this case, which might add another factor to my sense of time) but the academic week was shorter so while there was always something due the next day, my week ended on a Wednesday. So not only did I experience time in days again, I had more weekend days to enjoy my experiences. Also worth considering is the possibility that experiences themselves might contribute to my perception of time. High school seemed like an entire lifetime but then again the multitude of experiences, even if they weren't scintillating, made it seem longer than it actually was. Freshman year of college kinda sucked so maybe its uneventfulness made it just run together. Uppsala, of course, was nearly constant waves of new experiences and ideas so it felt like more was accomplished. Then again, it might just be as simple as I experienced my stay in Sweden as a contiguous year and not split into two different semesters.
Whatever the cause, I'd like to know how to duplicate it. As much as I enjoy zipping through boring classes weeks at a time, I wish I could slow down sometimes and experience a day, a week, a year like it is meant to be experienced.

It burns!

At this moment I'm suffering from the pollen saturated air in Tucson but nevertheless had every intention of writing about how much I had missed the desert in the springtime. Even though the sun is blinding, oppressively hot (and it's not even July) and everything is covered in thorns, it's just so beautiful. It's something I had really missed in Sweden, not to say that I didn't absolutely love Sweden in the spring, but the nature of the, well, nature is completely different. There's no way to compare the two nor a way to combine them. Plus, the scent of the desert in the spring is so compelling but I don't quite know how to describe it. It's spicy, but I don't know if that's just the collective scents of the cacti in bloom or maybe the pollen in the air burning my sinuses. Oddly enough, while some people were near literally incapacitated by their allergies in Sweden, I was perfectly fine. I wonder if you get an immunity to pollen you're not used to and the pollen you are normally exposed to eventually finds your weakness and destroys you.

Ook Ook!

Friday I skipped work to go see a lecture at the U of A by Jane Goodall! I kinda felt bad for leaving them high and dry, but it's for the greater good. I wonder if they think I called in sick cuz of 4/20... Anyway, the lecture was very eloquent and inspirational and most definitely worth seeing. She was talking about her research and claims being an uphill battle since all of the "erudites" at Cambridge insisted that only humans had personality or emotions. As a result Goodall's findings were utterly groundbreaking. She, of course knew well before observing chimps that animals had emotions and personalities and her dog was her living example. And since anyone who has a pet (be it a salamander, rabbit or dog) knows full well they at least have personality and the mammals have emotion, the conclusion must be drawn that the erudites of Cambridge were the stuffy British lords with spectacles, twirly moustaches, tobacco pipes and never owned a pet in their lives. Incidentally, she is likely the only person in the world capable of greeting a university lecture hall in customary chimpanzee fashion without looking silly.
Also, from the footage of her doing fieldwork in the 60's, she was a cutie in her day.

And congratulations to Mr. Kissel on winning Teacher of the Year!

Darmok

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso. A required reading but very well written and entertaining. It concerns the value of places and place names in Western Apache culture and why they have a strong connection to the land. While the Apache reasons might not necessarily be the same for other tribes it might explain the stereotypical American Indian obsession with land. First off, place names are considered to be direct quotes of the ancestors and to mispronounce them or abbreviate them is considered disrespectful. Second, the names are things like "Water Flows Down On A Succession Of Flat Rocks" and are meant to paint a descriptive picture of the place so that even if you hadn't been there you can imagine it just the same. Also, some places are so named from the view at a particular spot which they were originally viewed. The best example I can think of is the two light colored vertical strips on the Catalina Mountains in a depression that looks like a giant shoe print look like a 19 to me. But if you're further west, it looks like an 11. Most importantly, parables are told in context of those places and a moral lesson is then forever associated with that place and whenever you see, walk by or even hear the name of the place you are reminded of the moral lesson. This is why Apaches don't like to move from their land, because they will no longer have these very real reminders and they may forget to be a good person.
This also explains their cryptic dialogs with one another. As all Apaches know these stories and where they happened, they can reference the stories and talk about some moral issue without directly stating it. Think of it like constantly quoting movies to get your meaning across, you really need to understand the origins of the metaphors to effectively communicate in Apache.
I also learned from the book and subsequent class lectures on Apache culture that they are the most frustratingly passive-aggressive people ever and by Western standards (no, scratch that. By European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern standards) they're downright unfriendly. In the book, there's some young woman who is acting too much like a Whitewoman at a ceremony and is thus being disrespectful. Rather than mentioning that she's going against tradition in a subtle way, this old lady tells a story about how some stupid Apache tried to act White and in doing so almost betrayed another Apache, to all the people at the ceremony while the girl is right next to her. Gah!
The most bizarre thing is that Apaches make Whiteman jokes where they imitate how they think we speak and act. And naturally EVERYTHING we do offends them. Whites call people "friend" too easily, Apaches only use it for people they've known pretty much all their lives. Asking how someone is or how they're feeling is an invasion of privacy. Saying something like, "Look who's here!" is considered offensive because it's obtrusive. Calling someone by their name is rude. Physical contact such as handshakes, hugs, slaps on the shoulder are not welcome. Telling a guest to "Come on in. Make yourself at home." is considered bossy. A rapid-fire series of questions like "Can I get you something? Beer? A sandwich?" are also rude because you haven't given them time to stop and think about the answer. Calling attention to one's appearance (i.e. nice boots or something) make Apaches feel uncomfortable. Plus eye contact is considered aggressive. Just stop to think about all that. Those are some of the nicest things you can do as a host, but would all be rude and offensive to them.
They make jokes where they do all of the above and then end with "Whitemen are stupid."(incidentally Whiteman evidently means anyone that isn't Indian) All I have to say is they should thank their lucky stars it was Whites who colonized the New World. If Frank's and Feifei's moms are any indication they would have gone nuts with how polite and effusive the Arabs and Chinese are.

Zzz...

Sleeping Dogs Lie with Melinda Paige Hamilton and Bryce Johnson. A dark comedy with a moral is really the best way to describe it. It raises good questions that are generally glossed over in most movies: is complete honesty the best policy? And do your loved ones really have a right to know everything about your past? The movie was pretty good all around especially considering how small scale it was. My only gripe is how utterly screwed over the main character gets, but that's just cinema and the brutal dark aspect of the film. As I thought about it, there are really several messages one can take away from the film: the first is obviously don't assume honesty is always a good thing and don't assume you can handle the total truth. The second is the idea of forgiveness, one really shouldn't hold people's mistakes against them, especially if it's from a time before you knew them. That said, are there things that cannot be forgiven? Both in the sense of being unable to put down the mental weight of a grudge and also the inability to shake an idea from your mind no matter how much you want to forget. And third, perhaps the one no one wants to hear: should one police one's own behavior if they think they will regret it or have it come to bite them in the ass later? I have a feeling most people who read this blog are of the "No regrets. Your past is what makes you who you are. Time heals all wounds." mindset so bear with me. Are there things you shouldn't do (I'm talking about things you could go either way on, not stuff you know you want to do because it makes you happy) because having that in your past is a liability to your future relationships? It doesn't even have to be something horrendous, but just enough to scare away someone in the early stages of a relationship. And for those that would reply with, "If they can't handle who I am, then they weren't right for me anyway" I'd say you've missed the first two lessons.

Word of the Day: Bricolage- a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things. A piece of makeshift handiwork.
I wonder if it's related to brickabrac.

Hen Mei Rong Xing!

About a month ago, some Asian guy stopped by Beyond Bread and after ordering his food somehow got into the conversation of jobs. He said he worked at a sushi restaurant and was about to suggest the cashier (a Mexican gangsta) do the same, when he realized he would probably not go well in a sushi restaurant and should set his sights on another kind of establishment.
What struck me about the conversation was the acknowledgment that certain races are given preferential treatment in the restaurant industry. I don't mean the usual discrimination of all non Whites, but how ethnic restaurants will hire people of that ethnicity to gain a measure of authenticity and avoid other ethnicities to maintain credibility. One of my favorite examples is a sushi restaurant in Stockholm owned by a Chinese family. As long as the average White person can't tell the difference they keep their authenticity. Which brings me to my main rant. Yesterday Frank and I went to get Chinese takeout from a place we had never been to before. We ordered boba tea and I ordered kung pao beef. The boba tea was absolutely horrid; the tea was bitter with nearly no fruit flavoring and the tapioca had a texture bordering on crunchy. After disposing of our drinks, we went home and tried the dinner. Normally when one has peanuts in Asian food they're raw and then fried, which gives them a nice flavor and texture which is still clearly peanut but not something you're really used to. Not this time. This kung pao had roasted peanuts sprinkled very generously on top. The most peculiar thing was the subtle yet distinctive taste of the peanuts, which is only found on Planter's products.
WTF mate? Who the hell do they think they're fooling? Was the old Asian man behind the counter even Chinese, I wonder? At the very least they weren't following any "ancient Chinese recipe" that's for damn sure.

One of these things is not like the others...

First thing's first: Muddy Bug rocked last night! I was genuinely impressed, though not surprisingly, they sound much better live than with the speakers on my laptop.

And Happy 19th Birthday to Stephanie!

Yesterday, per the suggestion of my adviser, I paid a visit to the Career Fair at the U of A. Honestly, I have no idea why she sent me there. Naturally, I figured the employers for anthropologists would be pretty hard to find and that it would mainly be business and hard science majors. Turns out the only thing even resembling a job opportunity for anthro majors involves working with the mentally unstable or meth addicts (note not recovering meth addicts) . I was most definitely out of place there; not only was I not the right major, I wasn't actually looking for a job, I didn't have a résumé and I wasn't dressed in a suit and tie. Oh no, while everyone is dressed to impress, focusing on a singular goal, rattling off 1 minute interviews at the people running the booths, I'm meandering through "exciting opportunities" and "leadership builders" with a McLenin's shirt. Ironically, I had the feeling people were paying more attention to me than the "goal getters" and "team players" that were trying to catch their eye.
Awash in corporate clichés, I departed after what was at most fifteen minutes. I left with that feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater wondering why everyone else around you loved the movie you just tolerated. Sure, it was keyed to a certain type of major, but why would my adviser tell me to go? Had she never been to one before? Maybe she was deceived by the ALL MAJORS signs which were as abundant as the corporate catchphrases being recited. At the end of the day, one question remained nagging me: do corporations really ONLY want leaders? That word seems to be the key to a successful interview or accepted application. Do they really want 20 million people in the workforce all thinking they should be telling everyone else what to do? Is there no room in the job market for a highly trained and devoted employee with aspirations of leadership?

Bajs

No better way to start a Monday morning than with an email that begins: "There's no easy way to do this." Evidently the paper I submitted to Arizona Anthropologist was rejected. Helldamncrap.
In happier news I may have decided on a topic for my Honors thesis that has the best of both physical and cultural anthro.

Interesting tidbits from the Wildcat regarding the land I love (or rather it's neighbors): "The US is first in the world in gun ownership per capita, Finland is second." I've hear stories about the Finns carrying all manner of weapons with them, but never guns. There's a stereotype among Swedes that Finns all have knives in their boots and the Finnish exchange students were asked if they had a knife about as often as I was asked if I had a gun. Also, supposedly there's a large instance of murders in Finland related to medieval weapons such as swords and battle axes. I'm gonna have to call BS on that one, can't trust them Swedes.
And: "Norway consumes more Mexican food than any other European nation." This one I believe, as the Swedes were very fond of Mexican food as well. Even though the Scandinavians couldn't get Mexican food right to save their souls. Or drinks for that matter (sugar on a margarita glass, helvete) I'm guessing the definition of "Mexican food" is lax for that survey.

And new Flickr photos. The ones from NC are now correctly geotagged and I'll probably rearrange the sets sometime in the future.

¡No Me Gusta!

At the start of this semester I had been out of touch with Spanish for about 3 years. I had debated whether I should go finish my secondary language requirement with one semester of Spanish or tough out two semesters of Swedish. Ultimately I chose Spanish partly out of convenience, but also because I wanted to brush up on the language. The thing is, I considered this the best move career-wise and not something out of personal fulfillment. I never really had a good time learning Spanish in high school, mainly because of my classmates but also a lack of engaging teachers. My mom, who just so happened to be my middle school Spanish teacher, assured me that as I progressed to higher levels of Spanish the idiots would thin out and I would only be left with intelligent, well motivated classmates. Alas, this was not true. The morons just kept coming, utterly useless study partners and atrocious accents and always pronouncing the silent H.
My GATE and AP classmates all took French and they were clearly academic and motivated, plus they at least tried to get the accent right. I think the majority of my crushes in high school happened to study French, and there I was in crummy ol' Spanish. I sort of resented the kids that took French; did they think they were too good for Spanish? Of course I recognized this wasn't the case all the time, French is a very important, globally useful language and if people like the sound of French better, that's their choice. The people I could never abide, and still can't, are the ones who took French because they didn't want to speak "Mexican" as though merely learning their language might infect them. People who think it's a coarse and dirty language of peasants. I'm not exaggerating here, these are all things people have told me. Now granted, folks around Nogales really do sully the language's reputation and if you go to Spain or talk to someone from central Mexico the language suddenly becomes a lot more pleasant.
It also doesn't help my feeling toward Spanish that they have all manner of crazy verb tenses. Even when it's clearly written down and explained in English I still don't know what the hell the unconditional subtransitive perfect participle is. Or why they decided to make all of the most commonly used verbs the ones that completely defy all of the rules of the language. Seems like they should be setting an example for the rest of the verbs.
And then there's swearing in Spanish. Now swearing is a tricky thing in most every language and I haven't been immersed in a Spanish speaking culture so my observations are more limited, but it seems cursing in Spanish is fundamentally different than in other languages. From my understanding of the language you really can't have fun swearing, there's no real joy in it. You can call someone a "lucky son of a bitch" in English but "hijo de puta" is something quite different. In Sweden during the gasques (a formal dinner) the entire table toasts the V-Dala librarian, calling him a "skitstoval" which basically means bastard. The only contexts I have ever heard Spanish swearing is if someone is being mean or cruel, never in a joking or light tone. Of course, I get irritated when people swear too casually, where they say "fuck" with the frequency which Valley Girls say "like". But that's because it's still vulgar and inappropriate and it shouldn't be used all the time. But just because of that it shouldn't mean you can't have fun with it. I also have to consider I might be spoiled by English, as people from all over the world have told me that swearing in English is just better. Whether they are aiming for humor, vulgarity, anger or just aural appeal, people find English to be a good cursing language.
When it comes down to it, I know comparing different languages is like comparing apples to oranges and you can't ever expect that a culture should follow your rules. But that doesn't mean I have to like them equally. I've plowed through years of Spanish with the nagging thought that maybe it just isn't my thing. I always figured it was just because I was learning a new language and such feelings were unavoidable. But after learning another language (admittedly one that is closer to English) I realize this doesn't have to be the case.
So Spanish, I guess what I'm trying to say is I still think you're a good language to know and you're really interesting, but I just don't love you. I'm sorry.

Turtles

TMNT with James Arnold Taylor and Nolan North. As a lifelong ninja turtles fan, I would have been happy with most any movie they made (unless it had resembled the 3rd movie), but I was especially pleased with the way this one turned out. It's a pleasant shade darker than the other movies or series (but not necessarily the comic books) and the animation was very well done. I was glad Raphael, my favorite turtle, was given such a major role and was very pleasantly surprised that Leonardo's character was expanded upon and finally made interesting. It was a welcome change from him simply being the bland, level-headed voice of reason and now we see him shouldering the burdens of leadership. The fight scenes alternated between large scale, video game-esque battles and one-on-one intense combat, something the live action movies never really could do. It also reminded me I have a big stack of DVDs of the '87 series on my desk that I haven't even touched. I need to get on that.

Spartans

Ah spring at last. Finally I can wear shorts again, as opposed to Sweden where I had to wait until May and even then only on hotter days.I have to say, my favorite thing about spring in Tucson, aside from the girls on campus wearing more revealing clothing, is the orange blossoms. It may not have been the most eventful spring break I've ever had, but at least I got orange blossoms.

300 with Gerard Butler and Lena Headley. I think I'm one of the few people that can snootily claim they read the book before seeing the movie. I liked both quite a bit though it might be one of the few times where the movie is better. Aside from the simple fact that fight scenes are better in motion than in panels, the characters were made better, I thought. Leonidas was made more likable than he was in the book and some depth was given to the characters. Inevitably there will be some who claim it's not historically accurate, and it may not be completely faithful, but so what? It's definitely how the Spartans would have retold the story. Though I do think it's funny that the Spartans looked down on all those that didn't stay and fight as cowards when in reality it was more of a strategic retreat rather than just running away. The 300 were trying to stall the Persians while the rest of the Greek armies regrouped and assembled. I think people tend to forget that stylization and just plain good storytelling are just as important as, if not more than, historical accuracy.