Now It's Powm!

Unapologetic

2009-04-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't written in over a month. I've been preoccupied with my fieldwork and this semester has been racing by much more quickly than I had planned.

Actually, I'm not exactly "sorry" for not having updated—I have a perfectly good reason and the people nearest and dearest to me are kept in the loop anyway. But that's the setup for this post: a couple weeks back I was talking to a Swede whom I hadn't kept in regular touch with. When they gently chided me on that point I said I was sorry, I had been so busy that week. They then said that Americans are masters of saying sorry when it isn't necessary. (i.e. "Sorry, I didn't hear you.") It wasn't the first time I had been accused of being overly apologetic, though it was the first time it had been attributed to my culture. I don't view myself as overly apologetic in general (and in the context of that example it made perfect sense to me to say sorry) although I perhaps was so in the past.

The definition of an apology is a statement of regret. So when I realized that it got me thinking: if people are told to live lives without regret, wouldn't that mean that they should never apologize for anything? Now certainly, one shouldn't apologize for not living in the way someone else would have preferred and not feel regret for something just because someone is judging you. The idea of not becoming preoccupied with the less than optimal outcomes of one's choices in life makes perfect sense to me. But if one really believes that one shouldn't consider getting absolutely trashed at a party and waking up with a stranger the next day a regret, but "a learning experience" then you can turn the most mundane things into "learning experiences" and do away with regret—and hence apologies—all together. You accidentally bumped into someone on your way to class and knocked over the giant stack of books they were carrying? No need to apologize. No regrets, remember? Now you should still help them, no regrets doesn't mean you don't hold yourself responsible for your actions. You're checking your email and you lose track of time, you're supposed to meet your friend at 2:00 but you arrive at 2:30 instead. No need to say you're sorry, after all you shouldn't have regrets.

I am not seriously advocating abandoning the practice of apologizing entirely. I'm simply pointing out that if one subscribes to the idea that you're not supposed to regret the big stuff, then you certainly shouldn't regret the small stuff. And if you don't mean an apology, you shouldn't say it, right? So what is to be done?

Thoughts, comments?

What am I?

2009-03-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

The question in this case isn't all that existential, but more concerning heritage. This question of my own identity serendipitously occurs while I'm doing my fieldwork which partly examines the attitude Swedes have toward immigrants. When I say "Swede" I mean "ethnic Swede" and when I say "immigrants" I mean both actual immigrants and those of non-ethnic Swedish descent but were born and raised in Sweden. From what I can tell, there are three ways to define someone as Swedish: ethnically, nationally or culturally. Most people living in Sweden are all three, but there are plenty of people who are only the last two. From my perspective, it is these last two—especially culture—that are the most important, but this is an American way of looking at things. Ethnicity in the US is a novelty; something cool that makes us interesting, something that we can draw a sense of pride from, but when it comes down to it, we're all Americans—at heart and on paper. In Sweden, the dominant culture seems to believe that if you are not ethnically a Swede, then you are simply a citizen of Sweden.

One of my Swedish friends here told me about how their grandparents on her mother's side are Finnish, which would make her mother ethnically Finnish even if she is culturally and nationally Swedish. She wasn't sure if that made her half or a quarter Finnish herself and asked me which it was. I said that from my understanding of ancestry she would be half Finnish because two ethnic Finns can only produce an ethnically Finnish child. She countered that she knows a fair number of people who would then be half Finnish, though they have chosen to identify themselves as ethnically Swedish because they are culturally and nationally Swedish.

So what does this have to do with me and my identity? I am officially one half Polish, one quarter Austrian and one quarter Lithuanian. There was at some point some confusion as to whether or not my family was Romanian rather than Austrian from the accounts of my grandmother, though that was likely due to the confusion caused by the territory of Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century. It is nearly certain my ethnic makeup contains at least those three groups, but lately I've been wondering if there's something more in my background. Over the years there have been a fair number of people who thought I might be part Asian or American Indian, oftentimes citing the shape of my eyes. I've noticed that Finnic peoples such as Finns and Saami have rather distinctively shaped eyes that bear a superficial similarity to Asian features. Estonians are also a Finnic people, and only about 100 miles from Lithuania so I wonder if I might have some Estonian ancestry as well. That's pure speculation on my part, but it would explain a bit. What isn't speculation is that my surname, Turausky, means "from Turau". Turau is a city in Belarus, hundreds of miles from the Lithuanian border. So if surnames are patrilineally descended then it seems reasonable to conclude that there is at least a small amount of ethnic Belorussian in my family as well.
None of this is ultimately that surprising and scintillating given that these ethnic groups are within a few hundred miles of one another (and as a good anthropologist I should mention that if you go far enough back, we're all Africans) but it does show how easy it is to forget—or choose not to remember—ethnic heritage when moving to a new country.

Jantelagom

2009-02-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

Getting a Swedish bank account has been more trouble than I thought, though by the end of it I'm pretty sure I can navigate all the procedures concerning my account entirely in Swedish, so at least some good has come out of the web of bureaucracy.

In more interesting news, I came across a book called "The Swedish Code" in the local library. It's written in English and is designed as a kind of field manual for immigrants or businesspeople who spend a lot of time in Sweden. The core of the book is a discussion on the practical outward effects of the Swedish Jante Law. The virtues of modesty and inconspicuousness can sometimes conflict with other cultures in unexpected ways. One consequence of Swedish modesty is how easy it can be to come off as a braggart. Any kind of impressive statement can be misconstrued as boastfulness, even if it's an honest answer to a question (therefore, when someone asked how many countries I've been to, I probably should not have said 22). One story concerned a Somalian immigrant with a degree in chemistry from Russia and proficiency in six languages. He does not list the languages on his job resume because while he did he was never able to get a job because to the Swedes it sounds like boasting. Now here's something I'd like to look at a bit more: suppose this individual hadn't learned this lesson on Swedish modesty? Might one then only see a qualified, motivated and intelligent black man being turned down for a job in favor of a white, seemingly average quality employee instead? Might they then misinterpret a cultural misunderstanding as racist hiring practices?

They also mention that the Swedes (to some degree at least) trust their government. They believe that it acts in their best interests and while it might not always be totally competent, it is generally a benevolent organization. That stands in contrast to, well, pretty much everywhere else. American checks and balances are built into the system because of an inherent fear of government, France distrusted their government so much they executed the royalty, Germany's misplaced trust in their government resulted in one of the most infamous events in history, in the home countries of the hundreds of thousands of political refugees living in Sweden something went horribly wrong in the government to make them flee for their lives. But because Swedish history is so different, they're much more inclined to believe the government is working for them, not against them. That might be why only half of Swedes seem to be opposed to the FRA Law whereas it scares the hell out of everyone else.

The book is largely apocryphal and as a result some of their views of Swedish society contradict my own observations. Even if it isn't quite an academically rigorous text, it's nice to have an independent source come to many of the same conclusions I have concerning Sweden.

The writers don't really assume the reader's country of origin, as a result you don't get just a comparison between Swedish and American, or German or Dutch cultures but more of a multifaceted approach. It's rather interesting because pretty much everything they phrase to the effect of, "Now this might seem really strange, but in Sweden it's customary to tell the truth." This is for people from non-Western countries where misrepresenting the truth is considered an everyday occurrence and not "lying", per se. Some of the things they say are genuinely different from American culture and some of them are only different to some Americans. Personally, the rules about not striking up conversations with strangers on the subway, not being too outwardly emotional, or respecting and appreciating nature make perfect sense to me, but I know many Americans that would have a real hard time with them.

1st Week

2009-02-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

So it's been just over a week since I arrived in Skärholmen, a borough of Stockholm (it's pronounced something like "wharholmen", but really enunciating the "wh" and aspirating it to the point of blowing out a candle) and have been doing my best to get settled in as quickly as possible. I picked this apartment because they were the only people to respond to my email to their apartment listing in time and really knew nothing of it before I arrived. Nevertheless, the location seems to be a good spot for me to begin my fieldwork. According to statistics it's 70% immigrant, though I would have guessed 50 or 60% based on my initial observations. The borough is part of what was known as the "Million Program" to build 1 million new homes so that everyone in Sweden could afford decent housing. Not surprisingly, those neighborhoods filled up with immigrants pretty quickly. Skärholmen also has the world's biggest IKEA and a mall called "SKHLM: The Capital of Shopping." I'll have to hang out around there and get the lay of the land.
My roommate at the apartment was born and raised in Sweden, but of Spanish descent. At first, I thought that my plan to exclude Swedish citizens that aren't 3rd generation might be too limiting, but after meeting this fellow I'm quite vindicated. He's been very helpful, outgoing and amenable to conversation, entertaining my many questions and eagerly asking about the US in return. In other words, nothing like a typical Swede, whose reticence is the stuff of legends. I'm going to stick to my original plan of focusing primarily on ethnic Swedes, or as they are sometimes known, "Svenssons". That said, while getting the opinions of ethnic Swedes will be important, I won't discount anybody who might have some good quotable information, if the situation comes up.
I've also found that getting Swedes to speak Swedish to you once they even get a hint that you're an English speaker is an uphill battle. Sometimes this is understandable; some Swedes I personally know rarely speak Swedish to me explicitly because they want to practice their English, especially since it is somewhat rare to find native English speakers here. But the same thing will happen at stores or banks, if you slip up a single word they'll be tempted to go to English. I know that they mean well—they have almost the opposite view of the "This is America! Speak English!" mentality—and English is admittedly the international trade language, but it can sometimes come off as incredibly patronizing. Immigrants, on the other hand tend, to be more willing to go along with my ventures into Swedish and I can sometimes understand them better than Swedes. Maybe it's because it's a little easier for us to understand one another because we speak slower and enunciate more carefully than Swedes. Maybe it's because they understand how difficult it is to learn a language if people constantly switch to another language when speaking to you and they're trying to help me out (that's my personal reason for why I almost never speak Spanish to Mexicans when I'm in Tucson). Maybe they're just more sure of their Swedish than their English. Who knows?

Pre-Flight

2009-02-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

In less than 10 hours I will be on my way to Sweden yet again. I probably should be trying to sleep, and I am a little tired, but I promised myself I'd write a blog entry before I left. There's a lot of stuff I should have done before now as far as contacting people, but obviously none of it is of extreme urgency. In fact, once I got my passport back from Migrationsverket, booked a flight to Sweden and made living arrangements in Stockholm, everything just became so unstressful. I did everything I *needed* to do and now the only things left are little things I ought to have done sooner. Oh well.
I'm surprised by how not nervous I am. I suppose it might have to do with the fact that I travel so frequently that the process of packing my bags becomes routine enough that I don't worry about it now. Of course, it might also be the fact that I rarely stress out until incredibly late in the game, at which point I'm too busy to be stressed. I'm not even all that hyped up about it. I mean, I am very happy and very proud of myself for all that I've done to get myself this far and I'm eagerly anticipating getting some answers to my important questions once I'm there. But when one thinks about how one should feel when the dream they've been working toward for a year is about to come true, my own internal state of mind is very calm. Is that being in "the zone"? Even the thought that given the relative scarcity of information on my topic I may very well be one of the names people cite on Swedish immigration doesn't give me quite the giddy thrill I feel it ought to. I will say though I am very much looking forward to saying for the first time in my life "Business" when asked if my reason for entering Sweden is business or pleasure (though I will definitely be aiming for both as long as I'm there).
I'll do my best to keep you folks up to date on the goings-on in Stockholm, but the real juicy ethnographic findings will be posted on a secret online journal that only my EFS class can see. It would be a breach of professional ethics to let anyone else in on the particulars, I'm afraid, so you'll have to make due with the tourist/student's account of things.

God natt, and see you on the other side!

Goethe

2009-01-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

Back in the spring of '08, one of my classes, "Love, Madness and Decay in Vienna", introduced me to some concepts in German literature. The professor touched briefly on Goethe's Faust (since he's German and not Austrian) but the one part he did mention really stuck with me. He quoted the moral of the story at the very end: "He who strives on and lives to strive Can earn redemption still." This is what makes Goethe's version of the story different from the classical legend. Rather than being damned for making a deal with the devil, it is his unending quest for betterment that makes him worthy of salvation. (sorry if that's a spoiler to anyone, but I figure if the story is over 100 years old you're not reading it for the suspense)

With the free time I have over the break I decided to read the book. A quick rundown of the story is that Mephistopheles, the devil, makes a gentleman's bet with the angels that he can corrupt any soul. He runs through a list of possible candidates and passes over a nun in a convent reasoning that a soul that has been "starved" is too easy to turn. He decides upon Faust because he is one of the best servants of the Lord. Faust is an old scientist, a renaissance man with degrees in pretty much every discipline from chemistry to law to theology. He's poured his heart and soul into these pursuits, neglecting his personal life, in the search for The Answer—something that will give him true, unfleeting happiness. The answer is nowhere to be found in worldly knowledge so he turns to the occult. Mephistopheles appears and the two make a deal that he will serve Faust and help him explore all the experiences the world has to offer on the condition that when Faust does find that true, pure happiness, Mephistopheles will collect Faust's soul. Faust believes there is no such thing as pure, unending happiness and agrees. The book is kind of flowery and long winded, but the main thing in the first half is he falls for and seduces a young maiden (after the devil restored his youth) and through this whirlwind relationship her life is destroyed, partly because of Faust's lack of concern for the bigger picture and partly because Mephistopheles screwed them both over. He then spends all of the second half of the story traveling through myth and history, meeting Helen of Troy, nymphs and other such characters. After all those adventures Faust ends up finally experiencing the happiness he had always been searching for and right as Mephistopheles comes to claim his soul the angels intervene and carry Faust up to heaven.

Now, why do I like this story? Because it defies the old saying "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions". The moral is: no matter how badly you screw up, if you try, if you strive and seek to learn and better yourself then you are not a bad person. So a person who makes a catastrophically big mistake but learns from it and never repeats it is a better person than someone who makes a much smaller mistake again and again and can't be bothered to try to improve themselves.
A girl in my dorm freshman year told me her favorite philosopher was Goethe (though she pronounced it Go-ith) because he believed in having many experiences and learning from them. That was her rationalization for having random sex with guys and when my roommate asked what she had learned from that experience she replied, "He had a big dick." That's not exactly what Goethe had in mind. There's a difference between saying that striving to know all that one can about the world and about oneself through experiencing all that life has to offer and acting on that knowledge to improve oneself makes one a good person and saying someone who likes to try things is a good person.

Mephistopheles is in the details, so to speak. If you're in a relationship that ends up really screwing over your significant other, the mark of the good person is if they give a damn, if they try to make it better or at least try to learn something because they are concerned about it not happening again. If you have lots of sex and do drugs because you want to get out of your own head, that's different from someone who really does enjoy it, who wants to test themselves against what the world has to offer, someone who want to be in their own head. I'm speaking largely from an academic perspective here, but I think some of the more worldly readers would be inclined to agree.

Also, it's come to my attention that there are more than 5 people who read my blog and actually know who I am. For those of you who follow the link from facebook, if you have something you'd like to say, please don't be shy!

2008

2008-12-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

This has been a very good year for me. I might go so far as to say it's been the best year ever. That honor previously belonged to 2006 (the first half of it anyway) when I was in Sweden; the rest of 2006 wasn't as spectacular. This year, however, has been consistently good for me. Let's review, shall we? (in a hopefully not too self-indulgent way) January began the last semester at the U of A, I became the Anthropology Club Treasurer and I became a member of the Golden Key Honor Society. I applied for grad school at UMass (the university I wanted the most) and got accepted in February, they were the first to respond so the rejection letters from the other universities didn't sting at all (I also later found out I was among twelve out of 110 or so applicants to get accepted). In March I go to Sweden for Spring Break and see my old friends in Uppsala again. In May I became a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, finished my Honor's Thesis and completed an honor's contract course thus enabling me to graduate with Honors from the U of A (as well as Magna Cum Laude). My dear friend Stephanie flew in for my graduation and a marvelous time was had by all. I got a summer job doing the least demanding and highest paying job I've ever had and caught up on my reading list in the process. I took dance lessons for a couple months and learned how to waltz, tango, foxtrot, salsa, cha-cha, rumba and East Coast swing. I celebrate the 4th of July in Vegas with my friends.
In September I move out to Amherst and have an absolute blast with all the international students. I got into the European Field Studies program, something unusual for first year grad students and something one must be vetted for before they let you in. I discovered the quirkiness of neighboring Northampton and the...educational experiences at Smith College. I started doing parkour (though had to quit after a month and a half due to mangling my wrists while trying to impress my parents) and learned a bunch of new conditioning exercises. Under the exacting tutelage of my adviser I produce a research proposal that is given funding (more than we were initially told) as well as the full $1000 from Sigma Xi.
In about a month and a half, the plan that I have been working towards for a year will begin to unfold. For an entire year, though a combination of my own ability, knowing the right people and just plain good luck, everything that I have set my mind to achieving I have accomplished with greater success than I had ever planned on. I'm forging my destiny, building my life, making it happen. Every selection process, from honors societies to grad school application, course vetting to research funding, every one of these successes has been the result of someone thinking I'm smart enough, clever enough, good enough to take a chance on.Now all I need to do is prove I can get results. That's what 2009 is for.

Yes we can, indeed.

"But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he he always wanted."

2008-12-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

For those of you who haven't been kept apprised of the details of my fortunes at UMass, here's a very pleasant update. The European Field Studies Program is the primary reason I came here for grad school; it gives students the opportunity to write a research proposal and at the end of the semester present it to a committee that decides whether it's good enough and if it is, they receive funding to do fieldwork in the European country of their choosing. Mine is on immigrant integration in Sweden. I want to study how Swedes perceive the large number of foreign born living in their country as well as see how immigrant populations are being assimilated into society. We gave our oral presentations to the anthropology faculty last Monday and we were all told how good they were, one of my professors said they thought that mine was the best in terms of calmness and pace of the presentation itself (being a theatre major turned out to be applicable after all!).

On Friday, after the committee met and looked over all our written proposals, we found out that all five of our projects had been approved for funding. We got written feedback from the committee, who had suggested changes for all of our proposals, and they said that my design needed to be changed because it was too ambitious. I'm not bothered by that at all; it's far better to be told you're too ambitious than not ambitious enough, plus that means that I will have to do less work than I originally planned. My professor said that because my proposal had tried to cover too much too quickly, I should focus on one aspect of it (they said it was up to me but they're strongly hinting at working the Swedish perspective) and the other half shelf until I write my dissertation. She also said that because there was very little research being done in Sweden I may have found a niche that I can work with for the rest of my life. That's really good. Especially considering that that's what I told UMass in my application but once I started this project I found that it wasn't exactly completely untrodden territory and thought perhaps I had spoken out of ignorance. Turns out here are still some rather big unanswered questions concerning Swedes and immigrants.

But wait, there's more! The EFS committee managed to scrounge up some additional funds for each of us and we are now all guaranteed $4000 for our trip. I was also told yesterday that the grant that we all applied for, Sigma Xi, was being awarded to two of us: myself and a physical anthropologist going to London. I had completely written off getting that grant; we wrote up the proposals back in October and they were rushed, vague and effectively the first draft of what is now an 18 page research proposal. I kept saying that I have every confidence I'll get the thing where it needs to be by December, but not a chance by October. Not only did I get it in spite of the normal fierce competition, but the economic crisis meant that Sigma Xi had even less money to give out than usual. I don't know yet how much money they will award me, but it may be up to $1000. I also was told that the retreat planned for next semester where we would all meet in France to discuss the progress of our respective projects is almost certain to be cancelled. Though disappointing in one sense, it means I can shave about $330 off my budget. This, combined with the dropping value of the Swedish krona, means that my expenses keep going down, my funding keeps going up and the money I have will take me even further than normal.

Going to Sweden to do my first real fieldwork has been my dream for nearly a year now, and to have it come to fruition, and have everything fall into place in ways that have exceeded my expectations... yeah, it's a good feeling.

Foreign Devils!

2008-11-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

International students make life so much more interesting. Aside from the obvious benefit of them constantly wanting to party there's the benefit of learning how people think and do things differently. Things like how everyone except Americans seem to say something before they eat, like "bon appetit" or "guten appetit". It's the food equivalent of "cheers" I suppose. They are puzzled why we don't say anything and the closest they can come up with is "enjoy your meal" which I would only say if I were the one serving the food.

On the topic of food, the Europeans will still give me crap for how difficult it is to eat healthy here in the US because everything is bad for you. Since their point of reference is the dining hall and not the UofA food court, they're full of it. You get pasta, Asian noodles, soup, salad, vegetarian options, sandwiches, wraps as well as french fries, hot dogs, pizza and hamburgers. I see the Danes going back to get some hamburgers after a salad and lamenting how bad they are for you. Or the Swedish girls saying (adorably), "I am so weak for sweeties!" as they sneak a few cookies back to their room. The reason that it's hard for them to eat healthy is that we have a wide variety of food here and our desserts are delicious—they have healthy options but they go for the more flavorful ones. Just because we have the most delicious food and they are powerless to resist it doesn't mean that it's our fault that they don't eat right. There's a perfectly flavorless bin of granola they could help themselves too if they really wanted to...

Another peculiarity I've learned only recently is that the Germans actually believe that it's not cheating if you don't get caught. One student was telling me how astonished he was that during an exam the professor walked out of the room and nobody started talking! In Germany, he says, everyone would start asking their neighbor for answers and pull out their notebooks to find an answer. I was unable to explain to them how copying your neighbor's answers on a test is cheating, though the guy who was in the class and cheated by pulling out his textbook said I made him feel guilty since he didn't know it was such a bad thing here. So once and future teachers, make damn sure you spell out the bit about academic integrity at the beginning of the semester.

I'm also being introduced to some strange German colloquialisms. For example, if someone is being a smart ass the Germans would say "he showered with a clown this morning" or "he had a clown for breakfast." Both of these images are rather disturbing: I'm imagining standing on one side of the shower shampooing my hair while a clown (not naked, thankfully) is just standing there on the opposite side staring at you with a big painted smile. Then there are the things that the Germans are at a loss for describing in English and come up with some downright hilarious new words. The soda machine becomes the "Coke ATM" and the juice machine is the "juice cow". I don't mean to make fun of them, anyone who has lived in a foreign country has done stuff like that (like me referring to clouds as "the white things in the sky" in Swedish), but they're just too good to forget. And let us not forget the priceless accent mixups, such as a Frenchman explaining to us how great some car is–it even has laser (leather) seats! Or my roommate Chorch from Churmany who plays the chass trumpet. I try to correct them when I can, they're my friends after all and I don't want them to make a fool of themselves at some big executive meeting when they're out in the real world. But they rarely make the corrections and so, much to my amusement, I will still hear the stereotypical Swedish exchange student declare, "I'm so weak for sweeties!"

Remember, Remember the Fourth of November

2008-11-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama won the election and for the first time in at least 8 years, if not ever, I am filled with joy, optimism and of course, hope for the future of the US. All of the international students were wondering yesterday afternoon when we would find out who won the election and I told them depending on how the results go, we might know tonight or tomorrow morning. I must admit I did not think the results would be known so soon and so when everyone else was going to the bars to celebrate I stayed in, pretending to read while I watched the map fill with red and blue. I then decided to play a game to get my mind off the election since I didn't think there was any purpose in worrying the entire night who would win. Not a half hour later I hear people screaming and cheering outside "OBAMA!" I didn't make much of it at first, "Let's not count our chickens before they hatch," I thought. But the few voices outside grew into a raucous crowd, I looked out the window and saw people dancing in the street and cheering from their open windows. I checked my computer and sure enough the headline read "American Elects First Black President". And that's when it really hit me: it happened, we the people brought about real change through our vote.
I quickly assembled a group of friends to rush to the bar downtown to celebrate. On the way there I asked them if there was ever this much enthusiasm and excitement, honking horns, people cheering and dancing after an election in their country. The Europeans said the only time they see things like that is when they win the World Cup. The South African girl said that she had only seen it once before: when Nelson Mandela was elected. We got to the bar just in time for Obama's acceptance speech. Where the bar had once been loud and full of boisterous cheer, a sudden silence fell over the crowd as we listened to Obama's speech. Applause rang out as he delivered his words and vanished in a hushed awe when he spoke again.
I was personally touched by Obama's speech because his words reminded me of something my mother used to say. She told me that when she was little, when she was frustrated trying to do something and she would cry out "I can't!", her father would tell her that as an American (and not an American't) yes, she could. And so for me Barack Obama spoke the words of a heroic grandfather I never knew when he told America "Yes, we can!"

For me, the change Obama promised came the moment he was elected. When we got to the bar and got our drinks, the crowd of internationals already there greeted me with handshakes, toasts and "Congratulations." Congratulations, for just being an American. That's an amazing feeling. I have never stopped being proud of being an American, there's just too much to be proud of for even Bush to have undone that, but it's good to be appreciated by the world again. Everything seems so much brighter now, even the many patriotic songs being played by the UMass marching band that are coming through my window seem fresh and inspiring, like they were when I first learned them in grade school. Simply amazing...

LYKKE LI!

2008-10-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

I went to go see Lykke Li in Boston last night, something I've been looking forward to for months. And I was not disappointed in the least. I tried to recruit people to go with me but nobody that gave me an answer could go (and those that did want to go never got back to me) so I did feel a little weird being there by myself, but I wasn't about to miss her concert on account of that. Her performance was outstanding, a lot of good energy and she could definitely work the crowd. She also rocked out with her signature bull horn; I dunno where she got the idea for that but it really works. Somehow she managed to make my least favorite of her songs ("Let It Fall" a song about how she enjoys crying) a pounding rock out version. Though she also did this really strange thing with one of my very favorite songs ("Complaint Department" an exquisitely concieved musical middle finger) where she altered her voice to make it this male demon voice. I like her voice a lot so I thought it took away from the song somewhat. Though in a thinly veiled irony, I can't complain—she's not the complaint department.
This was perhaps the first concert I've been to where I have been really into the artist. I mean Pinback is nice, as are Smashing Pumpkins and Jimmy Eat World but I was never a huge, huge fan of them. This was different, and so I now understand people's enthusiasm with concerts a lot more. It was also a new thing for me that I knew every song she played, and knew that she wasn't done because she hadn't sang them all yet. She also did some really good covers, Wendy Rene's "After laughter comes tears" and a hip hop song whose name escapes me.
After the last song, and after her plugging her merchandise, everyone was heading out and as we all filed past the table selling albums and t-shirts I look over and there she was! She was personally selling the stuff and signing autographs (very patiently I might add since people had to open the plastic wrapping of the LPs they wanted signed). Since I had already bought her album way back before it was available in the US, I just bought a pin and very politely asked her to sign my ticket. I had sort of planned to say something in Swedish to her, like "Var trevligt att träffas" or even just "Tack" but I was too starstruck. And having seen her up close I can say with absolute certainty that she is adorable.

FTW

2008-10-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Last week the new batch of grad students all went over to our professor's house to have dinner with a distinguished guest lecturer, John Relethford. He's the author of one of the anthro department's required readings, a good book but one meant for undergrads. The material covers a lot of the stuff I learned in my GenEd "Human Variation in the Modern World" back at the U of A, so there wasn't too much that I hadn't already learned. Those of you who keep track will recall that it was that GenEd that inspired me to become an anthropologist in the first place so while reading the book didn't teach me a lot of new things, it was pleasant to reread all of the things that got me hooked in the first place. The professor told us the dinner was an opportunity to ask him questions about the book since we had to discuss it in class and write reviews. On our way there, a friend and I were wondering how long we would stay. I mean, the end result of the book is fascinating but what are we going to ask him? "So, tell us, when you had finally plotted the ABO bloodtype markers in all those Irish villages what kind of expectations did you have?" It turns out we ended up staying until 9:45 or so because the guy is totally awesome. The talk at the dinner table shifted from a somewhat forced discussion on anthropological stuff to a meandering conversation on our favorite sci-fi shows. He's a fan of Stargate SG1 (Atlantis not so much), Battlestar Galactica (even the original series), and Star Trek to name but a few. He's also a bit of a comic book nerd, commenting on the changes in Spider-Man's character over the decades or how dark X-Men is getting. By now, it's pretty much him, me and one other student talking all kinds of nerdy stuff while the others are all listening, chiming in with some smart-ass remark about Dungeons and Dragons and yet being largely left out of the conversation. John Relethford is a totally down to earth kind of guy, a complete nerd and a distinguished professor. It's good to see that once you've reached that spot in your career you're still allowed to enjoy the simple things, a welcome change from the brilliant but out of touch professors I've known.

Seen It

2008-10-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

Eagle Eye with Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. This movie is impossible to properly review without SPOILERS!
The concept behind this movie, while becoming increasingly relevant to today's world has been done to death. And while I admit to being entertained I have to say it was by no means an improvement on the concept. Also I wonder to what extent the things that happen in the movie are even feasible. OK, super-powerful AI that has the resources of the US military at its disposal, I get that. But little things like being able to remote activate the eject seat on an F-16, seems like if you network computers on manned vehicles like that you're just asking for an enemy to disable you without firing a shot. Also, as was mentioned in Multiplex, why the AI doesn't just shoot missiles at the White House when it clearly doesn't care about collateral damage is a bit of a plot hole. Other people I went to go see it with were hanging on the edge of their seat, not knowing what was going to happen next. I was not one of those people, I found it to be quite predictable. But then again, when you figure out it's an AI from almost the very beginning the motives and plot become quite clear. Think I, Robot, Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Deus Ex, Battlestar Galactica and a little bit of Portal thrown in as well. Y'know, the old "AI knows better than the humans and uses the immense power the humans have trustingly given it to take power for itself and may or may not end up killing everyone" routine. The movie would have been better had the AI won and we would have a nation run by a computer. It would have been interesting to see what would become of the world then.

What did the magical palm of Buddha say to the face?

2008-09-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

I love this shirt. I bought it back in 2006 on the advice of Feifei, though I refused to wear it until she could tell me what it means. In Traditional Chinese (the language it's supposed to be read in) the red characters say "The Magical Palm of Buddha" and the characters at the bottom say "Kung fu." In Simplified Chinese, however, the characters read something to the effect of "Become an ascended spirit." I think both of those meanings are pretty cool, and the fact that it means two things at the same time is even cooler. Last night I was at a house party with a bunch of international students and a Japanese girl told me my shirt said something rather funny. Evidently, in Japanese the red characters read, "Bow to the divine, wild feminine." and the characters at the bottom read, "Smart husband/man." It's not unlike the time freshman year when I found out that one of my favorite shirts with the Chinese character for peace on it reads as "loose" in Japanese. Makes you wonder how entertaining it must be for Japanese tourists in China when they read all the street signs and billboards.

Social Capital

2008-09-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

As predicted somewhat in my previous post, the continual temptation to go out and party with the international students has disrupted my study habits. Thankfully, reading is easier to catch up on than writing so for the moment I'm in the clear, but last week was rather ridiculous. Thursday night, after finishing a parkour class (more on that later) I was all set to get to my reading and research when someone down the hall says that people are going out to a bar, so I figured "what the hell" and went along with them. Similarly, on Friday night I was trying to make up for the work I didn't do the night before, and catching up on missing time due to waking up late, but was unable to do so because of another party. This was repeated Saturday night as well and were it not for the fact that nobody parties on Sundays I might not have gotten any work done. All that said, perhaps the fact that I did get it all done speaks to the fact that it was never as dire as I made it out to be. But the important thing to remember is that, while I was not doing work, I was by no means slacking off—I was, as one of my former professors would say, "accumulating social capital."

Specifically, we've (myself and a plethora of Germans) been going out to the clubs and pubs with a quartet of Danish girls (which is every bit as awesome as you would imagine). Now because Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are very similar, they are somewhat mutually intelligible as long as you speak clearly. Or conversely, if they can't quite hear what you said and they fill in a missing consonant or vowel as you shout above the club noise. However, as I learned this weekend they are not the same language. Right before we were going to go to another pub the Danes wrinkled their noses because someone had farted in the bar. I smelled it as I was walking up to them and so asked, "Fisa?" which is "fart" in Swedish. They looked at me rather shocked and said, "What did you say?" As it turns out, "fisa" (or however it's spelled in Danish) is the word for "cunt" or "pussy", related to the Swedish "fitta". The misunderstanding was resolved quickly enough but for that split second it appeared as if I just walked up and called one of the girls a cunt.
Tangentially, when I was in Sweden for Midsummer we were guests in the home of this one girl named Isa, whom her friends would jokingly call "Isa fisa". Given that Isa was a bigoted, lecherous, unfaithful, abusive woman I think the Danish fisa suits her much more appropriately.

The parkour class I mentioned above is one of the clubs at UMass that I stumbled upon by walking through a bunch of booths (there's a quiddich club and a freethinkers club too, whatever the hell the latter means) in the middle of campus during the first week. Most of the stuff is conditioning and simple exercises, but it requires a good amount of coordination and strength. Personally, my out of shape self was so sore after the first class I was achy for the next 5 days. Parkour is supposed to be about getting from point A to point B in the most efficient manner possible, a philosophy which is not quite manifested in our exercises, such as climbing along window sills on the entrances of buildings. Technically speaking, straight up bipedal walking is the most efficient form of locomotion (aside from wheels), but I can definitely appreciate the exercises. Regardless of whether or not I'll actually ever use parkour to jump off rooftops or scale walls, the conditioning will make me one strong, agile mo-fo.

UPDATE: One of my friends in the dorm evidently tore up his knee playing muggle quiddich. Evidently, it's a bit more hardcore than one would imagine a bunch of fanboys running around with brooms between their legs throwing deflated volleyballs at each other to be.

UMass

2008-09-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

After my first week at UMass I think I can safely say that this place kicks ass. Aside from the very pleasing change in landscape from Tucson, the social atmosphere is a refreshing change from the U of A as well. I suppose it might be possible that it's less the fact that they're so awesome here (as at least one of my cohorts has mentioned the snootiness of "Massholes") and more the fact that anthro grad students earnestly give a damn about what you have to say. Another cool thing is that I'm living in the grad student dorm, which wouldn't seem to be very cool, especially having had a room of one's own for three years, but the people here are really awesome. The vast majority of students here are international students, probably precisely because few American grad students would want to go back to dorm life after years of houses and apartments. It's an anthropologist's dream; everyone is so interested in experiencing American college life and I get to be there alongside them as they do.
My classes thus far seem pretty cool, mostly discussing readings and writing papers. They're about three hours long so every one of the five to ten people in class gets plenty of opportunities to speak up. I'm also rather puzzled by the fact that there are so many redheads here. One or two in each class of less than a dozen people. I'd get the Irish thing what with it being Massachusetts but they can't all be from here. Probably just because they vaporize in Tucson that's why I haven't seen many before.
I've been in this strange mood all week where I feel like every second I'm not out meeting people I'm wasting my time. To the point where I feel like a total shut in for even being on the computer at all. Never mind the fact that I've been going out at night with people every single evening this week, going to all the luncheons and introductory meetings for grad students and generally being very social. Somehow, my mind thinks that every moment I spend not hanging out with people, like the time I set aside for class readings, is a waste of time. Hopefully this is some first week, new school distorted equilibrium thing or this will be one rough semester...

Down With O.T.B.

2008-09-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this now before I forget to completely. I'm making it a tradition to review my previous employment on the blog in order to look back and put it into perspective. For those of you that were unaware, this summer I worked as a mutuel teller, employed by the Tucson Greyhound Park, at an Off-Track Betting site (OTB). Most of the OTBs are in bars, mine was Famous Sam's, but they do have them in bowling alleys too. This was a departure in many ways from my other jobs in that I was unsupervised and was not required to be pleasant to customers at all. I still was, to the best of my ability, but there were no smarmy comments from the boss telling us to smile more. When taken in the greater context of things, this job was very unfulfilling spiritually but when you take it at face value it was a really sweet gig. $7.30 an hour plus tips (ranging anywhere from $5 to $75 a day, but averaging about $20) made this the highest paying job I ever had, the slow morning shift and unsupervised work meant that I was essentially paid and tipped to read novels all day. Incredibly low stress and easy going, the job had some definite appeals and I wish I had discovered it in college, so I could have been paid to do homework.
Now, naturally, all jobs have a down side and depending on one's viewpoint, this one had some pretty severe ones. First off, you get to see the seedy side of humanity, angry people gambling all their money away, their souls poisoned by greed. I've never met such grouchy people in all my life; people yelling at me for giving them a losing ticket even if those were the numbers they wanted, people getting angry when they win but can't get the money right away, people who accuse me of trying to cheat them when they buy a racing form they later realize they don't want and I don't refund their marked up books. One guy, a crackhead (so I excuse his poor manners) will gamble his money to fund his habit, though lord knows where he gets the money in the first place. Another guy, who reminds me of Gil from the Simpsons inhis voice and demenor— he's always so convinced he's going to win every time and he always has to spend $20 every time he comes up to the teller and he loses almost every single time. In addition to the majority of the customers being ugly on the inside, they are also among the most physically repulsive people I've met as well. They're mostly old men who spend their days betting on horses and dogs, perhaps because they frighten small children when seen in daylight.
The other thing that people complain about is the fact that, as an employee of a dog track, I am supporting cruelty to animals. I counter this by pointing out that every industry has corruption. Period. So while some kennels at the dog track might be guilty of animal abuse, it doesn't necessarily reflect on the moral character of the entire organization. Secondly, by that logic someone working for a defense contracter is complicit in death and carnage and someone who works at a golf course or resort supports wasting water.
Whatever the larger scope of the job might have been, I found working as a bookie to be a decently paying, very low stress job that gave me the opportunity to catch up on my reading list. I would never want to work there forever, but the allure of being paid to read all day is compelling enough for some, apparently to spend decades there.

Not Now

2008-08-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I largely disagree with nearly all of this book. He does have a bunch of good points and they are certainly helpful to a wide segment of humanity, but I find that if you take his teachings to their logical conclusion it makes you a dullard. His grasp of science when it comes to coming up with evidence of his views is also rather dubious. Personally, I don't think one needs to destroy the ego in order to be happy, you just have to learn to not obsess over the past or future. A "self" without an education, beliefs or ambitions, even if one is free of suffering, strikes me as a unfulfilled self; a self I wouldn't want to be.
His theory that humans were at one point all perfectly conscious, not obsessed with time and impermanance, and there was a "fall from grace" which led us to the way we are now is straight up false. I wouldn't address it if he was working some religious angle but when he tries to make that a fact there's just no way it's true. Humans have been acting this way since before there were Homo sapiens. Tolle also makes the tiresome gender argument that because men think with their mind and the ego and women are more in tune with themselves that women are naturally closer to enlightenment than men. He also suggests that women have a greater pain-body, a sort of collective reservoir of suffering that feeds into everyone and is fed by the terrible injustices women have faced in the world, as though being a man in most of history was all fun and games. Being forced to endure agonizing pain just be allowed to be called a "man", sent for in the night by some feudal lord who wants you as spear fodder for his grand army, centuries of being taught to not show any softness or being allowed to be open with your feelings without being called weak, I'd say that might constitute a sizable male pain-body. Plus, and this is just my own observation, I've met more men whom I would consider "enlightened" than women.
As I mentioned before, there are some good ideas in the book and some surefire ways of reducing one's suffering. Stop looking towards the future as a point when you will be happy, focus on the present. Basically, stop putting off your plans to be happy. Don't dwell on the past; recognize it, learn from it but don't define yourself by your glorious or inglorious past. The main problem I have is that if taken to its logical conclusion, Tolle's book seems like the book a dictator would want his subjects to read: don't concern yourself with the past or future, there's no such thing as "bad", if you're upset at anything you simply haven't become enlightened enough, suffering comes from within, never from without. Many of the things he says in the book frustrated me to such great lengths that it took me months to read through it because I would have to put it down every few pages to cope with how maddeningly nonsensical a bunch of his statements are (like how truly great artists come from that intense Presence, devoid of suffering, seemingly forgetting that many of the great artists like Hemmingway and Van Gogh did not come from a calm and centered state of mind). I understand that the premise of what he is saying is that who I think I am is not who I really am and thus many of the ideas I have about the world are incorrect, I also understand that in the spirit of Eastern spirituality contradictions are meant to point to a greater truth. What I do not accept are logical contradictions like having a "no" that is free of negativity.
My final verdict is that while it has lessons that are very useful for many people, the world Tolle would have us live in would be a peaceful but utterly dull and complacent place.

Flavor Tripping

2008-08-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Last night our friend Brian had us over for a rather interesting experiment. He bought these concentrated berry pills, the name of which I forgot shortly after it was mentioned, that temporarily deactivate your sour, salt and bitter taste buds. The result is, naturally that only sweet remains and also the other more difficult to articulate flavors that don't fall into the main four categories. Brian had bowls of lemons, limes, grapefruits, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, salt and vinegar potato chips, various sour candies and a couple different beers for us to sample. The absence of sour is the most obvious thing when you're eating and unless you know the stuff you're tasting is supposed to be salty you wouldn't really notice that absence as much. Straight up table salt tastes like nothing with this stuff and salt and vinegar chips taste like they've been dusted in sugar. You can still tell what fruits you're eating, but in each case the core element in their flavors is missing. Tomatoes were interesting because without the tangy zip that normally dominates their flavor all you get is this almost leafy, earthy...undertaste that's always there but impossible to really parse apart from the main flavor.
One's sense of bitterness isn't completely neutralized, however, Guiness still has a bit of bite that I think is the actual alcohol taste (the head on the other hand tastes sweet) and eating the citrus rinds still tastes gross, but not as bad as it would be normally. There also was a bit of cognitive dissonance when you smell the foods and expect something rather acrid but end up overpowered by the sugariness of a bowl of limes. It really helps you realize that, despite common misconceptions, taste and smell function independently of one another. Thankfully, the pill's effects wear off after an hour or so and you can go right back to puckering when you have a mouthful of sour candies. If the effects were permanant I think it might almost be a Hellenistic afterlife punishment; all the most delicious food in the world but in each case the one thing that made it so good is missing. Overall, I'd recommend it not because it's really terribly exciting but it's a great exercise in making the familiar exotic.

Vegas

2008-07-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

Over the 4th of July weekend I went to Las Vegas for the first time. From its reputation I didn't think it would be my cup of tea but I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a try, especially going with a bunch of fun loving people who had been there before. One of the biggest problems right off the bat is that I don't like gambling. After we arrived at the hotel Friday night I gave the slot machines a couple tries but after they ate my money I got bored. I watched people lose game after game after game of craps and decided that really the only way not to lose is to not play, a lesson you don't normally hear. I did bet on horses, however, (I also felt kinda cool since I knew what all the bets and tracks were) and I did win some money, but still didn't manage to break even. This was still better than the guys at the craps table who easily lose $100 in about 20 minutes. Later that night we went to a fancy sushi restaurant on the Strip and it was there I realized that overall satisfaction at a restaurant when compared to price is an asymptotal curve. Yes, the 5 slivers of tuna were delicious, but for the same price I could have gotten more food of an only slightly lesser quality at a cheaper restaurant and not felt, well, robbed.
After we got back to the hotel I went to sleep but everyone else evidently decided to stay out until 4AM gambling and drinking. Needless to say, they were in no condition to do anything the next day until late afternoon. I was not about to sit around and wait for them to wake up so, despite people bemoaning the fact that we can never keep the group together, I went off and did my own thing. It must be a stranger thing to do than I think because people lauded me for wanting something out of the trip and making it happen one way or another. Of course, I generally prefer company but since my destination was very far away and I wanted to walk people probably would not have been up for it. Especially since my destination was Star Trek: The Experience.
That evening I went to see the Cirque du Soleil "Love" performance, which was the greatest performance I have ever seen. Of anything. Period. Needless to say that was the high point of the trip for me. We went clubbing later that night and after a failed attempt to get into a pretentious club we found a decent place to go. I can't speak for the others but aside from the offensive $12 for one drink I had a fun time.

Las Vegas definitely has a personality, but it's not what I would call a pleasant one. It's SO glitzy and SO ostentatious it feels like the city itself is trying too hard to get the other cities to pay attention to it. Not surprisingly, I've never seen so many fake breasts in my entire life. I don't think they're all locals, I'm pretty sure they're tourists who enjoy Vegas because it speaks to them. The city is so hell bent on getting your money, too. The only way you can get stuff cheap is if you stay in the casinos and drinks are only free if you're gambling. Othewise you go out and everything is ridiculously overpriced. It's an...interesting place to visit but there's not a crumb of wholesomeness in the city (or at least not in the Strip). I now fully understand the meaning of my mother's words when she said Nevada was designed to spite Utah.

Anthropology

2008-06-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

What is anthropology? I get that question a lot. When I first switched majors and people asked me what I was doing and I said "anthropology" they often repeated my response with a kind of hushed awe, as though I had told them I was majoring in Superheroism. Given that nobody seems to know what it is, I surmise that all those people must have mistaken anthropology for something else. The most common confusions are archaeology (which is technically not incorrect, but I'll explain that more in a moment) or entomology, the study of insects. More often than not, however, people just give me a blank look when I tell them what I study.

Anthropology, as the etymology would suggest, is the study of mankind. In the US anthropology is divided into four main subgroups: Linguistic anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Linguistics is the study of language and thus instrumental in the study of humans. The results of linguistic research are absolutely fascinating and make for great conversation at parties. Actually researching and plotting vowel shifts and cognates and charting the increase in bilabial fricatives in Proto-Indo-European (known affectionately as PIE) is the most boring and tedious work possible. Linguistic anthropology seeks to explain how and why languages change, covering everything from whole language groups to the introduction of words and phrases into small groups of people (think: "lock it up", "daydoodah", "the Logo" and the subtle difference between "uh-huh" and "uh huh").

Archaeology is the study of extinct peoples through the analysis of the remains of their culture. If an archaeologist is lucky you'll get an Ankor Wat or Tut's Tomb, stuff that was very meaningful indeed to the culture in question. More often than not you get a piece of pottery or a pile of ashes from a hearth and you have to analyze what it was used for. Did the pot have functional purposes (did it hold wine, water, rice etc.?) or was it ceremonial or decorative? What kind of wood did they use in the fire? Is there evidence of it being used for cooking? And so on. Contrary to popular belief, archaeologists don't particularly care about the sites and artifacts themselves, they want to know about the culture. If they could just ask an ancient Minoan what they used this pot for, or how their society was structured, they would—it's a hell of a lot more efficient (and accurate) than rummaging through people's garbage. The public image of archaeologists is Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, these people are more concerned with treasure or rare artifacts rather than their significance in the greater whole of the site in which they were found. As I mentioned in the previous post, these people are antiquarians, grave robbers, "Tomb Raiders". Removing an artifact from a site is like moving a body or weapon from a crime scene, it destroys the context. Patience, precision and an eye for detail are the traits required for a true archaeologist. Because the very act of excavating a site destroys the context, you have to be sure to record every single detail so that way someone in the future can look on your notes and hopefully discover something that they couldn't have from the now-contaminated site itself.

Physical anthropology is the study of the human body. Its focus ranges from the subtle, such as the Human Genome Project, to the gross, such as forensics. Thanks to CSI and other such shows, this is perhaps the most well known part of anthropology, even if people don't know that's what it is. There's the study of how the body works, the evolution of the human form and how human bodies vary between groups. This guy was one of my professors and gives a pretty good idea of some of the stuff physical anthropology studies. Biological and medical anthropology are also parts of physical anthropology and focus on human variation and how differences among peoples can be applied to medicine, respectively. One example of how this is extremely important would be the distribution of humanitarian aid and food supplies. The US sent powdered milk to starving countries in Africa, failing to realize that most of the world's population is lactose intolerant.

Lastly, there's cultural anthropology, my specialty. Quite simply, it's the study of people and cultures. What do people think? Why do they think that? How do they behave? Basic questions but sometimes they're extremely difficult to answer. When I was little and I heard that anthropology was the study of people I thought that sounded like the most boring job in the world; I imagined somebody just watching people in cubicles, writing down something like "10:13AM, Subject sips from coffee mug." And perhaps cultural anthro would be that boring if not for a wonderful little thing called "participant observation." Participant observation means you go and live with, talk to and personally get to know the people you're studying. More often than not they become your friends, though you should always keep in mind a sense of professionalism in your field work. There are no famous examples of cultural anthropologists known to the general public (Daniel Jackson from Stargate would be a good example if people knew about it), so in order to point them in the right direction I tell them about the guys in the khaki safari outfits who go to some tropical island and study the natives. That's anthropology, but you don't have to go to a tropical island to do it, you can study any culture that's not your own (you take too much for granted in your own culture so you would never ask any really good questions). So I study people, what does that entail in practice, people often ask. Basically, I hang out with interesting people, drinking beer and having them tell me their life story. At that point, as surely as they gave me a blank look when I first mentioned anthropology, there's a change in their expression and stance as they realize that sounds like a really cool job.

But, certain career concerned individuals ask, what good is it? Sure it's intellectually stimulating but it's as careerworthy as a degree in philosophy, right? Well, like so many things, that might be true if you overspecialize. But as a field, the only places where anthropology is inapplicable is somewhere where there are not, nor were there ever, any people. As for cultural anthropology, that will only be rendered obsolete when all people everywhere perfectly understand one another.
Yeah, you worry about your own job security.

Indy

2008-06-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett with ShiaLaBeouf. I can't say this was a bad movie, and I didn't have any expectations that it would be better than Raiders of the Lost Ark, but there was something off about this movie. We'll start with what I did like: the fact that Harrison Ford kept himself in such good shape that he didn't need any alterations done to his costume and that he could still believably kick ass. The mythos of Soviet psychics. But most importantly, I'm glad that they specifically addressed how in previous films Indiana Jones does not act like any self-respecting archaeologist should. As my archaeology professor pointed out, because he cares nothing for the context of artifacts within an archaeological site, just their prettiness and their value to a museum, he is in fact an antiquarian. This movie had no treasure hunting, per se, and and Indy left valuable relics in their place. I was glad to see that technicality was addressed.
Now for what bugged me: Shia LaBeouf does not make a convincing greaser. Period. More importantly, the movie lacked the same feel as the other movies. Maybe it's the fact that CGI has a very distinct look that the other films didn't have. I suspect its the motivation: in Raiders and The Last Crusade Indy is trying to keep the Nazis from getting the the powerful artifacts for the sake of national and global security. Hell, he nearly blows up the Ark to keep it from being opened. In this one, he seems to forget that hiding the skull (which was Oxley's plan) would probably be a better idea than bringing it back to the temple and leave it there, hoping the Soviets don't find it.
Another thing that didn't sit right with me, and I might be all alone on this one, is that this installment of the series makes the Indiana Jones universe not make sense. The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail mean that the Bible is true, there is a God, and Moses and Jesus did exist. OK, so Christian myth is all true, and there are also aliens? God's sending down stone tablets, angels and all sorts of holy stuff while he's not only keeping people in the New World ignorant of the One True Faith, but he's letting fucking aliens mess around with the people made in His image? I suppose you could make a similar argument with Temple of Doom and the premise that Hindu mythology is also true, but maybe the unifying theme there is that all the old god myths are all true. There's not just one God, but a whole pantheon of otherwise religiously unrelated, but equally real deities. But again, except in the New World. The Abrahamic God is real, and the Hindu gods are real, but we learn those poor South Americans don't have real gods, just aliens.
And yet, as frustrating as all this is, I don't factor that into my analysis of the film's quality. It's just a pesky sidenote. My final vote is that it's better than Temple of Doom, possibly equal to Last Crusade (though that one bears rewatching) and inferior to Raiders.

Love

2008-06-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't going to be an uncomfortably personal diatribe and certainly not a post-modernist aren't-I-so-clever analysis of love. Instead, this will be an overview of the Western concept of romantic love, with many borrowed concepts from the often (but not always) brilliant Culture and Identity by Charles Lindholm. The thing Lindholm wants us to understand is that while there is a concept of romantic love in all cultures, the Western take on it is rather unique and not nearly as widespread as you'd imagine. Love and sex are intimately linked in Western society. Weddings are based on love and consummating a marriage is a consummation of love, hence why sex is called "making love." But many societies do not see that "obvious" connection between sex and love that we do, or of marriage and love for that matter. The ancient Greeks and Romans apparently regarded love as a dangerous thing (not so different from us) that had to be properly vented. So the men would visit prostitutes and fall in love with them. They would make love to these women while they simply made babies with their wives. In many cultures, such as the Bedouins and Medieval Europe, love is chaste and unconsummated, just talking and holding hands, watching the sun rise and all that stuff.
One culture, the Marri Baluch of Pakistan, is highly patriarchal, the women have no rights and are treated as chattel. Marriages are unions between families—alliances and trade agreements. They are seen as a stabilizing force in society while love is considered an inherently divisive thing, antithetical to marriage. In fact, in their culture loving one's wife is considered unnatural and wrong. The wives still do have love affairs behind their husbands' backs, but again these are chaste loves and they are despised not because of any infidelity but because they see them as destructive to society. People from enemy families can and do meet and fall in love. Think of the destruction wrought by Romeo and Juliet, all the collateral damage and political repercussions and you can see why if they think that's what happens when two people fall in love why it would be thought of so dimly.
The Oneida cult, who advocated communal love and actively discouraged monogamous relationships, collapsed shortly after their leader died. It's usually figured that because toward the end many of the cult members had abandoned communal love for monogamous relationships ("special love") that the collapse was due to the separation of sex and love. I suspect that it's because romantic love was forbidden and, unlike the Marri Baluch, the people who were in love could always leave their society for a more accepting one.

The Western version of romantic love generally appears in "open, competitive, individualistic and fluid" societies whereas hierarchical, structured societies do not have such a concept. As such, it's rather unlikely for a love story in a society much different from our own to have actually played out. For example, in 300 Leonidas probably would not have loved his wife, not because he was such a tough soldier, but because the rigidity of society wouldn't have allowed the idea to cross his mind. With this in mind I wonder about the plausibility of the romances played out in various sci-fi/fantasy worlds that are not connected to the real world. Star Wars, Farscape and Battlestar Galactica come to mind where certain societies (not to mention species) are alien to ours yet romantic plotlines involving those characters progress exactly as if they were from a Western society. I'm not complaining, I just think it's funny how much we take it for granted.

And finally, I leave you with this: for all those cynics and post-modernists that say that love is just a neurochemical concoction devised by Nature into tricking us into reproducing, you are dead wrong. If love motivated people to reproduce then the West would have the highest birthrate. Instead, we have the lowest while societies that do not believe love, sex and marriage are the same thing have the highest. So, if anything, love actually serves to moderate population growth.

Couldn't Have Done It Alone

2008-05-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

A week has passed since my graduation from the U of A. I'm still stunned by it, or maybe its the enormous vacuum left by the absence of 18 credits for the past year. Either way I now have a BA (with Honors) in Anthropology and that'll keep me pretty smug for the next few months.
I can now look back on the past four years and see how all the pieces fit together. I can say that nearly every class, even the ones I hated, served some useful purpose beyond just giving me credits to graduate. The only exceptions to this might be the Stage Costume Crew I was assigned to the first semester of freshman year. I'm tempted to say my Acting class was also a waste, but in truth its suckiness proved instrumental in pushing me away from Theatre Arts just a "Human Variation in the Modern World" was drawing me to anthropology. I dodged the Math requirement with "Logic and Critical Thinking", but that's about the only thing I got out of that. The only class I really got absolutely nothing out of was this last semester's "Cultural Astronomy", sure it satisfied the credit requirements but there must have been a better class.

All that said, I also can look back and see that the most difficult courses were also the most rewarding. "Historical Linguistics", once the bane of my existence, ultimately provided me with a good friend, a kickass paper I used as a writing sample for grad school applications and a letter of recommendation from a very influential and well known professor. I'm fairly certain this class played a significant part in me getting accepted to UMass. The boring nightmare of my studies in Uppsala, "People, Power and Food" resulted in me being able to put down 2 international video conferences in my CV.

And of course there are all of the great people who contributed to my success. Be it being a study partner for a midterm or final, editing and proofreading my essays or even just being the topic of an essay you all helped. Keith, Jenn, Frank, Steph, Feifei, Victoria, Nora, Matt and James, I thank you.

And of course without the generous funding of my parents my college experience would have been impossible (or at least very very different). Naturally, my parents had a great influence on my upbringing and personality but the key points in my life are directly because of the support and encouragement of my mom and dad. Had my dad not suggested we take up martial arts, not only would I have never gotten years of fun and learning from aikido I also never would have met my good friend Frank or any of his awesome friends and acquaintances. Had my mom decided not to go on a trip to Greece back in 2003 I never would have met Steph. Had my parents not supported my year abroad in Uppsala I never would have had the best year of my life, met so many wonderful people and my life might not have come into focus. Without those three points my life would have been totally different and I am fairly certain pretty crappy.

So thank you to everyone that has helped and encouraged me for the past 22 years, especially these last 4, I love you guys.

Ink

2008-04-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to think I'm one of the last people in the world without a tattoo. It's a very unusual thing to the in the minority about, I think. People seem to be obsessed with them and I have no idea why. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have anything inherently against tattoos and some of the best human beings I know have had ink done. My problem is with the masses of people who get tattoos for what they often claim is some desire for individual expression. Again, if it's really individual, if it's really your thing (I think you know who you are) good for you. But the generic designs people have are by their very nature not individual. The fact that there are enough girls that will get a tattoo on the small of their back negates any individuality. I would think that if you're going to have some design permanently etched into your skin you should put a LOT of thought into whether you actually want it. I've had classmates come in sporting a new tattoo saying they got it because they were out with their friends and got bored. That's insane to me. If I were to get one, I would have to be certain that I agree with whatever statement it made every day for the rest of my life. It would just kill me if I had a tattoo I no longer agreed with.
People give me crap for not having a tattoo. "What? Are you afraid of pain?" or "That's sad that you don't have any real beliefs" or the most recent "Only cool people have tattoos." Addressing these in order: I used to do martial arts, where the possibility of getting punched, kicked, body slammed and other painful things were pretty much expected. Hell, I got over a fear of needles once I realized I've volunteered for more pain than a visit to the doctor. So yeah, afraid of pain? Bite me.
As for a lack of any beliefs strong enough to be worthy of a tattoo, let me first say that only the most general of ideas do I believe in strongly enough to even be considered for a tattoo. Stuff I'd expect everyone to already agree with, (tolerance, self-betterment, open-mindedness, truth etc.) so why bother making a statement? To remind myself in case I forgot? The idea behind the tattoo would have to pretty much always be in my mind anyway, a kind of obsession. A tattoo for me would then be a physical manifestation of that obsession, and that just seems unhealthy in my mind.
Lastly, I'm somewhat proud of not being a "cool person" i.e. the edgy indie kid with an obscure tattoo of a tree or something, or the real badass with the barbed wire tattoo on his bicep. Nuts to that. I'll express myself through actions, words, and to a lesser extent T-shirts.

All that said, if you have a tattoo and you're totally cool with it, that's great. I'm well aware that I think very differently than most people and what makes sense to me might not make sense to you, and vice versa. If it really means that much to you, it's your body and your choice and I won't begrudge you that. But if you're one of those guys with a tattoo of a naked girl on his arm or one of those girls with "princess" written in Chinese on your ankle, I'll still think you're an idiot.

Sweden

2008-03-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

For Spring Break I made the unconventional choice to go to Sweden. That's right, while everyone else was in the Mexico or the Caribbean working on their tans I was bundled up in a snowy, Nordic state. It was really, really fun though. It was nice seeing all my old Swedish friends again and being back in the utterly gorgeous city of Uppsala. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a gasque while I was there, actually the day I arrived. For those that don't remember a gasque is a traditional student dinner where people dress up in a suit and tie, drink and sing. This gasque was much different than the previous ones I had been to. This might be because it was a different nation (I was a member of V-Dala, this was at Kalmars) or maybe because it was a specially themed dinner. They were serving a traditional Kalmar dish known as kroppkakor which are basically potato dumplings filled with pork. That's not all that interesting in itself, but it's served with cream, melted butter and lingonberry jam to pour on top. It was an odd combination but I cannot say an unpleasant one; I don't even like lingonberries so that's saying something. I think the thing that set this gasque apart from the others was the quantity of food. At the V-Dala gasques, and from what I gather most other nations' gasques as well, the portions one is given are so meager is common to eat a pizza before going to dinner. But at this gasque the chefs had made so many that they had a contest to see who could eat the most. Everyone could eat their fill, and then some. It was actually Anders, the Swedish gourmet who invited me to the gasque, that won the contest with 18 kroppkakor (would that make him a gourmand, then?)

One of the things I thought was so amazing when you step back and look at it was how incredibly Swedish this whole thing was. Not just the ceremony and the tradition behind the whole thing but on a more fundamental level. Look at what the dinner consisted of: pork and potatoes, butter, cream and milk and the beverages were generous amounts of alcoholic beverages being served. Physically, most human beings could not eat this dinner. 70% of adult humans are lactose intolerant, plus there are plenty of ethnic groups that don't handle alcohol too well. Then there's the pork, that at least culturally restricts Muslims and Jews. That's how unique and special this dinner is, only a select number of people on Earth would be able or willing to eat with us that night. It's exclusive but without being exclusionary. I think that's beautiful.

While I was in Sweden I took the opportunity to purchase some hard to get items as gifts and for my own personal use. First was a massive Swedish-English dictionary set, selected because it had the definition for a sexual term I roughly knew the meaning of but not the exact definition. I also bought some cloudberry liqueur, this time it wasn't the cream kind, so there was no danger of it curdling during the trip back home.
And of course I stopped by the local music store to pick up some Swedish tunes. The clerk actually remarked how every one of the CDs I picked out were from Swedish artists. I got 2 CDs from Kent, the most popular contemporary Swedish rock band in Sweden. One from Säkert, the Swedish language version of Hello Saferide, it's pretty much the same style but a little different sound. Plus when they sing in Swedish you don't get the weird vowel syndrome that seems to be present with every Swedish singer singing in English. Sahara Hotnights seems exempt from this rule for the most part, at first I thought it was because theirs is a different genre than most of the Swedish music I listen to and that requires them to sing differently, but The Sounds are pretty much the same genre and the lead singer still has the weird vowels. Which brings me to Lykke Li, who, aside from having the cutest name ever and being totally adorable, also sings with weird vowels. Somehow she manages to get "B" and "me" to not quite rhyme, but after listening to her CD I realize now she does that on purpose. She has some spoken word poetry that she says with no hint of a weird vowel. This makes her that much cooler since what might otherwise be a charming involuntary quirk is something she chooses to use to express herself better. Learning that made me even more upset that I missed her when she was performing in Uppsala in my nation (the same Rock Gasque where I saw Hello Saferide live 2 years ago) only 2 weeks before my visit!

I spent most of my time in Uppsala, sightseeing and hiking around. It was really strange being a tourist in a place I consider my second home, everything is the same but a little different. It's the same city but it's no longer my Uppsala; most of the people I knew exchange students and Swedes alike all moved away. I didn't expect anything less, it was just strange actually experiencing that. I managed to walk downstream of the Fyris River (it feels weird not saying Fyrisån) a fair ways and ended up in some beautiful lush wooded area. It was cold, but it wasn't an unpleasant, biting cold. Rather it was that crisp, clean cold that a Nordic forest should be—the kind of forest that inspired myths of elves and fairies.

My last couple days I spent in Stockholm, having met up with Kaveh, the Swedish exchange student at the U of A last year. He showed me around the town and told me where to get cheap beer downtown. None of the places were shady, surprisingly enough, one was a karaoke bar. I was surprised how similar the selection of karaoke songs are in the US and Sweden and that the Swedes are just as tone deaf as Americans.

With luck, I'll go on a fieldwork trip to Sweden sometime during grad school and have the opportunity to live there again. I love that country so much. And by then my Swedish, which had improved considerably since the last time I was there, will hopefully be good enough to sustain a real conversation with some snygga brudar...

Poly Ticks

2008-03-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

From comments made in some of my classes I'm beginning to suspect that people who are angry with the government aren't really angry at the actual government, but regard "the government" as an abstract thing. They know the government runs everything and is responsible for everything bad in the world, so when they're unhappy it's "the government's" fault. The general feeling I get is that people are so cynical towards politicians, government and society in general that they start making absent-minded statements about how the world works. For instance, the professor asked the class what are some traits American society values or rewards. People listed the usual: honesty, ambition, hard working... Then someone said that based on the people we elect that honesty can't be an American value. The professor used that to point out the Freudian conflicting nature of the American collective mind. I didn't have the opportunity to point out that no one has ever, or likely will ever, run on a platform of being a lying, philandering scumbag because no one wants dishonest politicians. They always play up how honest they are and accuse their opponents of being dishonest. In that respect at least people vote their hopes and not their fears.

The other comment that irked me came today in my favorite class, Cultural Astronomy. The debate was whether or not it was OK to invite a French ship builder who specializes in replicas of ancient Oceanic designs to this event where Polynesian ships would sail to Hawaii to demonstrate how it might have been done in ancient times. The Frenchman was told he was not allowed to participate, despite the fact that he had been invited by a Tahitian cultural representative. The representative, however, did not tell anyone else that he invited him and was not a part of the actual sailing event. The event was allegedly for Polynesians only (though the Hawaiians originally wanted it only for Hawaiians) and that was really the big hangup everyone had during the actual event. The class was more hung up on how the representative, always referred to as "The Politician", could have the audacity to make such a decision. Granted, not telling anyone and not being there when the guy showed up was bad form, but people were asking what right this cultural representative had to make decisions for other people. Evidently I was the only one in the class who thought that it's not only the right of a politician to make decisions for other people but it is in fact their duty. Furthermore they questioned whether they had to honor such an arrangement if they did not agree. Again, not telling anyone complicates the matter, but if an official representative of Tahitian culture invited the guy they should damn well honor it.

I pointed out that the title of representative allows him to speak for the Tahitian people and everyone retorted that politicians never represent the interests of the people. Again, people fail to understand that politicians always represent someone's interests or they would never get elected and certainly not repeatedly reelected. Regardless of whether or not they're representing the people they promised they would look after the votes give them a mandate to make decisions for the masses until their term is up. The only way I can see the criticism of whether or not this guy had the right to invite someone to participate in a giant international cultural/political stunt is if this representative had been appointed and not elected. Criticizing the authority of an appointed official implicitly criticizes tribalism, the old ways and the authority of chiefs. And since the entire point of the sailing stunt was to spur a revival of traditional Polynesian ways, having these people be upset at an official making a decision over their heads essentially says that the old ways are not necessarily worth bringing back.

So I guess the bottom line I was trying to get at is: no one ever elects someone they don't think they can trust (or at least trust more than the other guy) and whether or not you approve of every decision they make, (barring the genuinely corrupt) politicians do have the right to make decisions for others.

Good News

2008-02-29T17:07:00.000-08:00

This has been a very good week for me. Tuesday morning I found out that I was accepted to the UMass graduate program. That made me very happy. Like singing and dancing and jumping for joy happy. Then the very next day I got an email saying Phi Beta Kappa is offering me membership. For those that don't know Phi Beta Kappa is the most prestigious honors society in the country and it looks damn good on a resume. I think it significant to point out that Monday night I was driving home and saw a shooting star and wished that I got into grad school. And lo and behold it came true. Now the list had to have been finalized before that moment and one can claim wishing on meteorites is folly, but I think believing you can at least occasionally command cosmic forces to do your bidding is good for your self-esteem, which actually does get you further in life. Regardless of the mystical powers of space rock, knowing I got into grad school has taken a weight of uncertainty off my shoulders. Now when people ask what my plans are after graduation I don't have to preface it with "Hopefully". Plus having certainty in my future plans effectively answers the question I ask regarding my current class load, "What's the point?" I'm now newly motivated and return to my monumental amount of homework with renewed vigor.

P.S. I rock.

Döden!

2008-02-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

The Seventh Seal with Max von Sydow and Bengt Eckerot. I can definitely see how this became such a classic. I've never seen a movie quite like it, which is definitely worth something. The guy at the Loft explained that the film became the iconic disturbing art film and whenever you saw movie poster with Death you'd know it wasn't a theater where you'd see a John Wayne film. One thing I noticed in myself while watching it was the fact that I've been so immersed in Hollywood fiction that I had to will myself to accept that a movie in which the protagonists are pursued by Death himself would eventually die by the end. Also, I wonder how much our society's views on death, the afterlife and the need for there to be a God was influenced by the Plague killing two-thirds of Europe.
I'm also rather happy that my Swedish has improved enough to spot the shoddy translations of the subtitles. Then again, it's Swedish from the 50s...

Classes so far

2008-02-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

My final semester at the U of A is shaping up to be the most challenging one yet. That's not such a surprise considering that I have to take 18 credits, just like last semester, in order to graduate in May, but this one looks like it will be even more demanding than the last one. Each and every class is reading intensive and a fair amount of writing is heaped in there as well. The tactic among all my professors seems to be to assign a massive amount of reading right at the very beginning of the semester, then reduce it to a more reasonable load. I'm guessing this is to kill off the free loaders right away, but it also makes life a living hell for the people who are committed. The combined number of pages I had assigned at the very beginning of the semester was around 460. And that's not even counting the Swedish book I have to read. It's entertaining translating it for a little while—when the tension starts building every word you don't understand becomes a cliffhanger—but soon you get tired of having to look up every other word. Thankfully things have already smoothed out a lot and I can make it to about every tenth word now without having to look it up.
The classes themselves are, for the most part pretty good. "The History of Modern Britain" is actually rather interesting. It's really just a long tale of military victories, political cunning and exploration, interspersed with insights into their laws and traditions that seem almost alien. My other non-anthropology class is "Love, Decay and Madness in Vienna" and is really, really good. It's cultural history so while there's some dry historical context we have to read through, the meat of the class are poetry, prose and plays. The professor is perhaps the most professorly professor I have ever had. Bespectacled with slightly messy white hair and a goatee, he speaks with a deep resonating voice and a cadence not unlike Donald Sutherland. His use of German pronunciation when talking about authors and concepts belies no trace of conceitedness but speaks to his ability with and comprehension of the German language.
My first anthropology class, "Culture and the Individual" is taught by the same eccentric, enthusiastic professor that taught my very first cultural anthro class. A little more confident than he was three years ago, he teaches how the many ways identity is seen in different culutes and how the modern Western view was shaped through time. He's a fun guy, even though he completely spoiled Memento before I ever had a chance to see it.
My other anthro class, "Cultural Astronomy" is my least favorite in nearly every way. The mounds of readings that are utterly pointless (one reading's hypothesis was essentially "We expect to find only A or only B. But it might be a little of both. Or neither." and whose conclusion was "Further research is required.") which we then have to discuss in class. Since the readings don't really assert any opinions and the only way we could discuss their findings is if we actually had firsthand knowledge of the archaeological sites the discussions mainly involve us silently looking down trying to avoid having to answer the ridiculously specific questions offered by the discussion leader. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we do have a reading that is worthy of discussion the people who chime in give the most stereotypical college drivel. As I recall, very few of the students are anthro majors so I guess they really don't know any better, but I can only excuse them so much.
A typical discussion might go as follows:
A: "It seems to me this culture has a rather Cartesian, mechanistic cosmology. One that emphasizes the scientia over the mythos."
B: "But who are we to say what is or isn't mythology? I mean, all these definitions were all invented by rich white men (an attempt, I suspect, to ingratiate herself with our black, female teacher)"
C: "But if you think about it, isn't not having a definition just a definition in itself?"
It's rare that I get all three of my least favorite things to be said all said in one class. I'd smack each of them in the face if I could.

Well, here's hoping the good classes stay good and the bad one get better. And that my workload will not be the hellish nightmare I foresee it will be.

Språk

2008-02-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

Swedish is a fun language. Aside from the fact that I can curse at people in a normal speaking voice and not a soul will understand me, there are all sorts of weird words and phrases that give the language a unique flavor. Take the word for jealousy, avundsjucka, it literally means "envy sick". It seems to suggest that the Swedes regard jealousy/envy (curiously, the Swedes don't seem to make a distinction between the two terms) as a sickness, something which afflicts someone, rather than a personality trait. I rather like that implicit interpretation, just like the symptoms of the common cold are nothing permanent, jealousy is something that infects us but can be cured.
I recently learned from my Swedish class there are two ways to say "will". There's the regular ska, which my tutor says denotes roughly an 80% certainty, and kommer att, which denotes a 90-95% certainty. So for a while when I wanted to say "I will fly to Sweden" I would have said "Jag ska flygga till Sverige" but now that I've bought the tickets, I'd say "Jag kommer flygga att till Sverige". The Swedes apparently can hear a situational difference between the two and it would sound weird to them to use the wrong one.
One of the eternally confusing things about Swedish (and many Germanic languages, for that matter) is their insistence upon combining words together while we would simply have a phrase. There wouldn't be a problem with this except for the fact that a lot of their words are combinations of other words already. So when you come across one of these you can't be sure if it's a phrase or a word and picking apart a word as though it was phrase only makes things more confusing. For example, nymodig means "modern", but if you thought it was a combination of words you'd translate it as ny (new) modighet (courage). This happens to be one of the more charming instances of picking apart Swedish words, it's so fitting that modernity then is "new courageousness". It just sounds so progressive and optimistic. There's also gammalmodig, which means "old-fashioned", and if picked apart you'd get "old brave". I thought that made nymodig even more charming because not only is it brave to embrace the future, but so is holding on to tradition and heritage. Then I found out from my teacher that mod in this case is more akin to "mode" in English and that it's just "new mode" and "old mode". But by God, I still say there's something to it! Swedes should know this better than anyone: there is something to be said about retaining the old while embracing the new. I for one believe in modighet, both ny and gammal!

I got you babe

2008-01-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

The very first time I went on a ski trip was two years ago with the V-Dala international club in Uppsala. We went to this ski town called Romme, which incidentally is in the province the Swedish Chef supposedly hails from. My girlfriend at the time was a snowboarder and suggested I try to ski instead since snowboarding is so much harder to learn and much more painful. So I took her advice, rented some skis and was all set to have my girlfriend teach me to ski. Unfortunately, critical pieces of information were left out from her instructions. Most notably, she didn't tell me how to brake until after I crashed into a barricade. After watching me fall a couple more times, she went off to go snowboard with her friends. Her last bits of advice to me before she left me to fend for myself were, as I recall, "Don't worry, just have fun!" and "There's only so much I can teach you, you have to learn it on your own." The next two hours were a Sisyphusian ordeal of walking up a hill, falling down, walking back up and falling down again, making absolutely no progress whatsoever. My day was cut short when my girlfriend injured herself while snowboarding and I kept her company for the duration of the trip.

Flashing forward to last weekend, I went on another ski trip—this time to Pinetop. Given the utter futility of my last attempt I was a little concerned about how well I would do. The slopes we went to didn't really have a practice area for noobs and so my education was a bit of a trial by fire. This ultimately proved to be a very good thing. The ski lifts, which I had never even made it to in Sweden, are a challenge in themselves. It is surprising, though, how natural it feels being on the ski lifts when any other time sitting on a shaky bench suspended fifty feet above a icy, rocky slope would be completely nerve wracking. Maybe it's because you can't really gauge distance as well cuz of the uniform whiteness of the snow, but whatever the reason the only time you feel even the slightest bit of acrophobia is when you pass the supporting towers. Getting on and off the lifts, on the other hand, is far more stressful. Though I only had one incident getting on the lift which resulted in me losing a ski, each time was a little frantic. You have to ski up to a red line, wait for the people ahead of you to get scooped up, then make a mad dash (which is really hard with skis) to the green line they were just standing at, align yourselves with the lift so you don't get picked up sideways, and sit down quickly when it scoops you up.
Disembarking never went well for me. Granted, if you don't know how to ski then it's no surprise that you fall when a machine is pushing you off. (That difficulty is compounded when you only have one ski.) The worst one was when I tried to push off the lift like I was told to do, but my glove got caught where the seat meets the side rail. When I pushed forward my right hand held me back and I fell on my ass. Still attached, I was whipped to the left–in what I can only imagine was a hilarious fashion– when the lift swung back around and took my glove with it. Thankfully, it threw the glove clear and my friend got it for me otherwise it would have been a short trip.
Skiing itself was really rough at first and snow plowing works muscles I was never even aware of. Just like before, I was told to make a wedge go slow down and narrow the wedge to speed up. Unlike before, my friends were skiing as well and not only demonstrated what to do but stayed with me the entire way. My progress was slow and there was still a lot of falling, but by the time I got down the mountain I had all the basics covered and could then actually enjoy skiing.
The next day I was able to jump right into it and while going down the mountain was able to notice some of the more subtle things about skiing and slopes in general. For instance, I quickly learned improved ways to turn and when I discovered this I asked myself, "Why didn't they teach me this? This is so much easier. All they had to do was say..." At that point I realized that, because it consisted of minute shifts and movements, it was something that could not really be explained or taught–you just had to learn it yourself. Thus, that claim as well as "just have fun" are useful things to know, but only after you've learned how to actually ski. If those are the only things someone tells you, no matter what you're trying to learn, then you need a new teacher.

Some assorted bits of wisdom I learned over the trip include:
-Asshole is a terribly vindictive game that, with the aid of alcohol, demonstrates the cruelty of human nature. And yet, it's surprisingly fun.
-Some people were born to play Guitar Hero. I am not one of those people.
-I do, however, have enough coordination to learn DDR.
-Jerks will prefer to snowboard rather than ski. This is demonstrated by the fact that you never see skiers stopped in the middle of the slope just hanging out or waiting for their friends.
-The "Easy Out" slope is so named not for its ease but because suicide is often called "the easy way out". Seriously, how are beginners supposed to successfully make a U-turn in a forest on a slope the width of a car lane?
-Arizona is probably the only place on Earth where one can find both avalanches and sand storms.
-Singing the theme song to "Speed Racer" in your head while skiing will only end badly.

And a word I learned from a 99 year old forestry book in the cabin: mensuration- the branch of geometry that deals with the measurement of length, area, or volume; the act or process of measuring. (I thought geometry was the measurement of length, area and volume)

Yeesh

2008-01-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

Aliens Vs. Predator-Requiem with the Predalien, the Predator and a bunch of human fodder. Fuck. I mean good Lord! Well, it was definitely an entertaining movie and they most certainly earned their R rating. I've heard the phrase "pornography of violence" before but never fully understood it's meaning, now I know. Everybody dies. Many in a most gruesome fashion. They pull no punches. Over the top? I'm going to go with perhaps. Had it been a standalone movie I would have gone with yes; the deaths of children, babies and pregnant women is indeed disturbing (had they actually shown the babies getting eaten I'm certain it would have gone from R, right past NC-17 to U: Unsuitable to ever be filmed) but because there already is a rich back story in the AvP universe it's simply expanding on it and the violence is simply the most effective tool to do so. While the other movies show soldiers getting killed you now see exactly what the Aliens do to a civilian population.
If you expect a complex and spellbinding plot, well, then you need to learn the difference between genres. Of course it's predictable, and that's what's good. The 1st AvP tried to have a plot, and that's why it sucked. This one realizes that humans are not the stars of a franchise called "Aliens vs. Predator". A story doesn't need to be totally unpredictable to make it good, otherwise no one would ever buy movies to rewatch them and remakes of classic movies would be a joyous thing. A film, even a gruesome sci-fi horror flick is to be judged not just by what they do but how they do it. And by that I say this movie delivered exactly what it promised, and then some.

2008-01-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

Cold War

Charlie Wilson's War with Tom Hanks and Amy Adams. One of the better historical political movies I've seen in a while. It's also rather illuminating in terms of how the Afghanis ended up with all the weapons and aid. Not surprisingly, the movie is not entirely accurate and the truth is a bit more convoluted, but essentially the movie got it right. I also like the fact that they showed the human aspect and reasons for the operation. Popular opinion, from the people I've talked to anyway, was that the US was so eager to help the Afghanis and they only did it to stop the Soviets. While that is definitely a big part of it, the movie shows their desire to help the people fight back against an army that slaughters women and children. It also demonstrates that it took effort to get support for the operation and that there was an attempt to give humanitarian aid after the war, but it was stymied.
Aside from the history of it, the acting was superb and it was quite lighthearted and funny. That, in combination with its poignance, definitely made the movie worthwhile.

2007-12-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-11-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-10-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

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....

2007-09-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-08-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-08-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-05-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-04-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-04-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-03-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

¡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.

2007-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-03-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-03-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

God

A conversation I had the other day dealt with what proof an atheist would need to believe in a god. Now naturally, most atheists I've met reject the Judeo-Christian God since that's the one most prevalent in our culture and we're taught that the gods in all other cultures are, of course, false. I suggested that outside of monotheism, the requirements for godliness are relatively low. After all, the Aztecs thought Cortez was a god cuz he had shiny armor and facial hair. Even actual gods like Hermes or, say, Freyr are pretty achievable deities, relatively speaking. If one takes the conservative route, then Storm from the X-Men would be a full fledged goddess. But no one now would call a bearded man in armor a god, and Storm is just a mutant. I think the atheists don't believe in gods outside their culture not because it's the 1st Commandment but because they are raised with the idea that nothing short of the Judeo-Christian God qualifies as a god at all. The atheists reject Christianity but still define a deity by their rules.

The qualification for godliness in modern society I think is the cause of atheism. God, according to Wikipedia, is supposed to have "omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence" and since people have difficulty conceiving all those omni's and consider "good" to be subjective they then deduce that no deity or deities exist. Personally, don't see how these are necessary qualifications for a god. I think transfinite knowledge and power are good enough to be a god, especially since people try to argue God doesn't exist along the lines that He can't make a rock heavy enough that He can't lift it and is therefore not all powerful. One of the necessary abilities that was mentioned in my conversation was that a deity should be able to make something out of nothing. This isn't inconceivable since matter can be converted to energy and vice versa. That ability falls within the laws of physics, unless one considers energy to be "something" and therefore not creating something out of nothing. I find that idea flawed since that suggests a deity would be infinitely (or at least very) powerful without using any energy. Another criterion was that they have to have at least the ability to create, even if they did not themselves create, the Universe or the Earth. Except fro creating the Universe, this is not so hard. All one needs to do is bump a nebula and it will eventually it will create a solar system. Then you just guide organic molecules to a planet in a habitable zone around a star. If one thinks like the scientific atheist in this regard, the Universe does this naturally so none of this should require omnipotence.

To refer to the world of sci-fi, would we consider a being which meets all the criteria for a god as a god, or just a very powerful alien? The Q from Star Trek are effectively gods but they do not claim themselves as such. The ascended Ancients and the Ori in Stargate SG1 have seemingly limitless power, but only the Ori claim themselves as gods and demand worship. If humans were to one day encounter such beings, why not call them gods? As they say, "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck..." Is it the obligation of worship that is then the defining characteristic of a god? Might that be the root of it all? Again, the standards for worship are low; from worshipping the bones of really good people to praying to the sun. My personal opinion is that worship isn't mandatory for deities any more than it is for the seasons. So basically, if you ignore our culture's requirements for being a god and remove the worship aspect, why is it difficult to imagine such beings exist?

2007-02-23T22:45:00.001-08:00

Mörk dag för Sverige

Last Wednesday was the Study Abroad fair at the U of A, so naturally I volunteered to help out at the Uppsala booth. The tone of this experience can be summed up by slapping your palm against your forehead. There were supposed to be more people volunteering but many of them couldn't make it so for awhile I was the only person running the booth (Copenhagen University didn't have anybody). I thought this might be a problem since I didn't really know what I would say to people if they asked me about Uppsala. This really wasn't a factor because the booth for Oslo was manned by the study abroad advisor from Oslo University and he brought all manner of pamphlets and brochures with him. I should also mention that the universities are responsible for sending information, and Uppsala University sent us 5 total. A pair with two copies each and one lone brochure. Also, when I got there I saw a nice healthy stack of brochures for a university in Switzerland. They're the Office of Study Abroad for Pete's sake and they STILL don't know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
The Norwegian guy was really good at promoting Oslo, his booth was just more appealing, I guess. Also might have helped that there were two cute Norwegian girls working the booth too. Man, one of them could not have been any more Nordic if they tried. The thing that bugged me was that I've been to Oslo, it's not a very pretty place. The Norwegian guy even agreed with me that Uppsala was probably prettier, but everyone wanted to go to Norway instead of Sweden. The other frustrating thing was that everyone was asking about the academics about Uppsala, which I only have so much knowledge of. Nobody asked if the city was FUN.
On the plus side, I did get to talk to the Norwegians and catch up with one of the Uppsala students when they showed up. And my favorite moment from that day was this one girl who was really excited and interested about Norway and the more she learned the more interested she got. Then she said, "I have a quick question: Where is Norway?"

In other Sweden related news, Hello Saferide has some new material, including some songs in Swedish. They are still weird lyrics, but at least you don't have to worry about her funky accent.

At this rate, Geordi's parents must have gotten his VISOR at an antique shop.

2007-02-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

Acceptance

This is a thought that’s been floating around my head for nearly a year now. There are people who regard themselves as incredibly socially liberal and have no qualms about sex, drugs, social mores and basically live as if no one else’s opinions mattered. While there is a certain admirable freedom to that kind of outlook, I find that those individuals also tend to spout out sanctimonious rhetoric, insulting and belittling more conservative mentalities and ways of life. I’ve noticed I keep running into these people and as a way of bonding we criticize Greek life, religious fundamentalists or simpletons in general. We agree that small-minded people really should lighten up and see there is more to life than their own little world with its little rules. At this point they’re golden, but almost inevitably they will make some gradually sweeping generalization that everyone who isn’t like them are intolerant, unenlightened fools.
This is the problem; people who criticize those who they identify as closed-minded are just as closed-minded themselves. Simply because they enjoy doing a lot more things than other people might not they feel this makes them somehow more evolved. They will often accuse those who find their way of life unappealing of being intolerant of other ideas and imply, or sometimes outright state, that they are accepting of so many lifestyles and beliefs. But when it comes down to actually demonstrating this universal acceptance, they reveal that they are just as repelled and baffled by the very people they accuse of being unable to understand them. Certainly extreme social conservatism leads to a lack of understanding and intolerance of other practices, but extreme social liberalism is just as bad. It’s tempting to make the analogy of conservatism=intolerance therefore liberalism=tolerance, but if one actually applies this logic the end result is a seemingly open society where no one is outright judged for behaving differently, but are incessantly pressured into conforming. Like they said in Serenity: “We’re not telling people what to think, we’re just trying to show them how.”
I think the best way to go about achieving this acceptance of other lifestyles (aside from yoga and Buddhist philosophy) is to start out from an initially socially conservative and open up your mind from there, rather than being raised to think anything goes. That way, you can then understand the mindset of those who are less open to certain ideas having been there yourself rather than just regarding them as antiquated and stuffy.

2007-02-20T19:24:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things I learned from my Nature of Language class is that people on the East Coast talk at a different speed from those on the West Coast. The East Coasters will speak faster and jump in immediately when someone finishes talking, this demonstrates that they are interested in the conversation. West Coasters will speak slower in general and have longer pauses in between statements. This results in East Coasters thinking West Coasters are stupid or uninterested, while East Coasters are seen as rude because they are always interrupting. Theoretically, I should be somewhere in between. I was raised in a family from the Midwest, which should be more like the East Coast but grew up in Tucson where people would be more inclined to be like West Coasters. Certainly I've experienced the problems of both; I've been talked over by people who just jump right into a conversation but also have been frustrated by people who take for bloody ever to reply to you.
This phenomenon also seems related to a discussion I had in Uppsala with a Finn. According to some study, the amount of time a lull in a conversation can last before both parties consider it to be an awkward silence is longer for Finns that for other nationalities. I wonder how the sense of timing in languages and cultures managed to diverge over time. It can't take all that long for it to happen if there is a noticeable difference between people from opposite sides of the US.

Silly Swedes and their anti-wedding ring. Not really my color anyway.
Although they do make a tasty dessert for Fat Tuesday. How I managed to forget that's what Fettisdagen means is beyond me.

2007-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) with Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones and Sergi López. I liked this movie quite a bit. I was actually kind of surprised with how relatively little of the fantasy world is seen in the movie, with most of it taking place during historical events. I wonder how much of a cultural subtext there is to the parallel stories in the film, aside from some of the more obvious allegories. The depiction of Franco's Spain was pretty powerful, as well; one tends to forget how brutal the regime actually was.
I liked the designs of the creatures they had in the story. Aside from the classical creatures like fauns and fairies, there was a really spooky looking thing that seemed to be inspired by Goya, survival horror video games and Aaahh!! Real Monsters.
I also got a chance to work on my Spanish listening skills, and to become reacquainted with Castillian Spanish. I like the sound a lot more than the Spanish I'm used to, though it does take a while to get used to all those thetas. I also felt pretty good about being able to spot out some of the discrepancies between the translations and what was actually said. And learning new vulgar phrases is always good.

Sometimes I wonder if Sweden is weird on purpose.

2007-02-06T20:36:00.001-08:00

It occurred to me recently, probably due to the linguistics classes I'm taking, that there are a lot of things written in everyday life in characters that don't necessarily mean what they are supposed to mean. My example of this are stylized letters that are used by trademarks to make themselves unique, but actually are different letters entirely. For example, the O in the Monster energy drinks as a Φ. It should be Mfnster. Or the circle over the second A in Stargate, makes it more like Stargote.
In other linguistics news, I've made it through the initial nightmare of Historical Linguistics relatively unscathed. Seeing as about half of the class dropped after a few phenology lectures, I'm rather proud of myself. Those lectures were, with the exception of my Swedish placement test, the worst thing I've ever experienced academically. Everyone is using linguistic jargon like us poor anthro majors are supposed to know what it means, not even bothering to slow down to explain what the hell they are talking about. And what's worse is when the teacher illustrates her examples of sound changes. This whole process results in something to the effect of: "The polypharangealization of bilabial deaffriction indicative of Tapiman results in lenition of 'neh, nah, nyuh' to 'meh mah, myuh'." At this point, I check to see if I've lost my mind. Whenever the professor literally starts to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, I start to worry.

Time travel in the brain. now I don't feel so bad for just staring into space when I should be doing homework.

2007-01-29T16:17:00.000-08:00

Sadly, it seems that while I might get to actually writing a post, it'll just sit in the "drafts" section for awhile.
It's a rare thing indeed when it snows in Tucson, as it did a week ago today. I've seen it happen a couple of times; I was in middle school (I think) last time it happened, but I don't ever recall it being quite this spectacular. We got a good inch of it, plus ice. They closed down bridges in town because Tucsonans have no experience driving on frozen surfaces.They also closed down public schools, presumably for the same reason but really it's because any day where it snows in Tucson is worth celebrating. I'm personally glad I got to see snow two years in a row, not that Tucson's snow was on par with the stuff in Sweden, but seeing it on a saguaro is pretty impressive. And what kind of amateur photographer would I be if I didn't take pictures of this rare event?

The Illusionist with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. This is one of those movies where I got mixed reviews from reliable sources and so had to see for myself. I kind of liked it, though I got the sense that it probably would have made a better play than a movie, aside from the magic acts. But think about how cool it would be if they did them on stage! The movie did drag on for a bit, to be honest. They really could have cut out a few scenes and made the movie a good half hour shorter without losing much. Aside from that, I thought it was enjoyable. Oh and Jessica Biel is totally hot.

2007-01-23T18:58:00.000-08:00

Idiocracy with Luke Wilson and Maya Randolph. A short little social commentary, not really much for entertainment purposes as for reflection. I have to say I can definitely see the seeds of this in our world today. The alleged root of the dumbing down of America is that stupid people breed more than intelligent people and the stupid come to power through sheer numbers. The solution, in my mind, is simple: all the smart people need to start having a lot more sex. The only problem I had with it was the idea that the change in language would necessarily be to something stupid and unsophisticated. I’m sure Chaucer would think English has gotten dumber since his day, but that’s not really the case. That might be the linguistics classes talking now, I’m not sure.
As I thought about it for another day, while I see where they got the notion of this from, I don't really worry about the survival of the species in terms of us getting dumber. The average human is smarter than we have ever been and it's not like populations have historically been a majority of geniuses, yet we've come this far. Hell, we look fondly back at the sophistication of the Romans when they drank from lead cups and watched people actually kill each other for fun. Also, the average person today knows better than to put leeches on themselves when they get sick. The only reason why it looks like we're getting dumber is because we're living now, and the only things we read from the past are from prodigies and geniuses; people who could actually write. A century from now, no one will know about our stupid TV shows except period scholars. It may seem dumb to us, but the majority of my readers are a bit more classy than the run of the mill folk. And the upper levels of society have always thought themselves more sophisticated than the peasants. After all, (since I can't think of a more effective American example) while upper class Swedes in the 18th century were going to gasques and singing in Latin, the peasants were wiping their children's noses with their own mouths and singing "Små Grodorna". You just try and tell me our lower classes are worse than back then.

Snakes on a Plane with Samuel L. Jackson and Nathan Phillips. Not much to say, the title says it all. It definitely delivered on its promise of snakes, a plane and a combination thereof. I found some things about the movie that I couldn’t excuse with willing suspension of disbelief. First on that list is the fact that I have been on many planes in my day and never have I seen stewardesses that were that attractive. And I thought the anaconda was also a little hard to buy from the standpoint of sneaking it onto the plane. I was also rather surprised by the body count, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because unlike getting killed by a gun or a bomb, you need to show every person getting bitten in new and horrible ways.

2007-01-13T20:43:00.000-08:00

I got a fortune cookie from Panda Express in Asheville which read, "Better is the enemy of good." My normal reaction to any fortune cookie is to make fun of them, particularly if they aren't really fortunes at all. But this one seemed more difficult to do, the best I could come up with was to fold the paper so it read, "Beer is the enemy of god." Afterwards, like I traditionally do with other fortunes, I saved in my wallet to ponder it. I'm actually surprised that it's insightful words of wisdom instead of some trite little phrase. If you really think about it, the message is spot on, the idea of "better" does make "good" less valuable. It actually reminds me of the Swedish word "lagom", one of the explanations of the term was essentially "good enough is perfect." The idea that any more is unnecessary and potentially detrimental. I don't think that's quite the angle this fortune is going for though, I think it's suggesting to take things as they are and not place comparative values on them. What you think is good suits you fine until you find someone has something better, then you don't value the good thing you have.
As I thought about it, you can't even make fun of the fortune by adding "in bed" to the end of it. Hell, that's a whole new valuable lesson right there. Originally thinking facetiously, I remembered that traditionally evil is the enemy of good. And since good is part of a duality, there can be only one opposite. Therefore, evil=better. But better cannot exist in a vacuum, evil is then better than good, while the very notion of "better than" is criticized in the fortune. Hence, the idea that evil=better is validated by simply stating it. One could also interpret it literally, that evil is better than good. Certainly in some regards it has its advantages and it is occasionally embraced, as evidenced by society's fascination with anti-heroes and "bad" or "dangerous" characters. Evil is seen as more fun, but because it seeks out fun selfishly, it will always want the best, never satisfied with what might otherwise be enjoyable. The quest for better will then inevitably lead evil to be perpetually unsatisfied, making better the enemy of evil as well as good.
All that from a dessert.

Imagine if an alien probe did the same thing if it looked for life on Earth.

We should all mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest inventors.

2007-01-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Movies:
Borat with Sacha Baron Cohen. I laughed a couple of times in this movie but came out of it really unhappy with it. Its critique on American subcultures is laudable, but even that doesn’t save this film. It’s terribly and uncomfortably racist, Baron Cohen himself is Jewish but that doesn’t magically not make it racist (one might draw a parallel to Bamboozled). Not to mention the insulting depiction of Kazakhstan. If they had executed this with a shred of decency the deception of the documentary might be excused as investigative journalism, shedding light on bigotry and racism, as his defenders claim. Instead, it’s just vulgar and mean.

Lady in the Water with Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard. Self-indulgent tripe is a phrase that comes to mind when talking about this movie. Shyamalan doesn’t appear to have ever been quite all right in the head, but his latest movies are just getting weirder and weirder. First off, a movie inspired by a bedtime story you tell your kids isn’t a good movie plot, no matter what you think. Second, casting yourself as a visionary in your own story is really tacky. And third, if you’re going to use themes, archetypes and symbolism in your films (and who doesn’t?) don’t be so damn blatant about it. You’d think he forgot the movie isn’t just going to be watched by his kids.

The Producers with Nathan lane, Matthew Broderick and Uma Thurman. I liked this, actually. I had heard nothing but good things about it, but you know how that can sometimes go with movies. It’s lighthearted, in that wonderful Mel Brooks kind of way. I’m still not enough of a fan to be singing along to it, but maybe that takes a second viewing. One thing I had wondered though: is Ulla, with her attitudes towards sex, perhaps a play on the Swedish word “knulla” (to fuck)? Is that giving the writers too much credit? But then again, there are a lot of other stereotypical Swedish names to choose from.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. Instead of reviewing this in my own words, I think this guy has pretty much nailed it.

Old School with Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn. For a movie I’ve heard so much about, I was kind of let down. It’s entertaining but not exceptional in its genre. Maybe the expectations were too high, I dunno. I’d bet there would be quite a few people who would love the idea of an age-free fraternity that’s not necessarily affiliated with students. If you strip away the humor of it, I thought the characters were kind of sad. They’re completely immature and selfish and too preoccupied with reliving their past. In that vein, given the recurring themes in Vince Vaughn’s movies, I wonder if he isn’t type cast.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. This is one of those rare movies whose reputation is justified in my eyes. Though weird, it’s definitely good to see the analysis of how experience and memories, even (especially?) unpleasant ones shape our lives. I’m also in favor of the ambiguity of the ending, anything less would have only hurt the story. I’m more curious about the notion that people are prone to repeating their mistakes over and over again if they lose their memories of those mistakes. I think that in the case of the staff members that would be more likely, but the chance meeting of Joel and Clementine seems a much more difficult thing to repeat. Plus, since the erasure also affects memory triggers as well as the memories themselves, I wonder if one erased memories of someone they met in high school if they would also forget most of their high school experiences. Would they forget everything they learned as well, or would they inexplicably know Spanish or something? Come to think of it, the movie kind of reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic, for those who have played it.

2007-01-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

North Carolina is a great place with wonderful scenery (even though everything is dead in the winter, as I was often reminded). It’s funny, I had frequently told people in Uppsala that the US is huge and it’s no more fair to judge the US by one region than it is to judge Europe by one country, but I had never actually experienced the diversity in the US for myself. I now see there is more truth in my words than I had ever thought. Europeans had real difficulty understanding that although Arizona is technically in the southern part of the US, it is not in the South. The difference between the South (and North Carolina isn’t even the Deep South) and the Southwest is staggering. There are more churches than I have ever seen in one area in NC. It’s unreal. Also, the food is distinctively different, although thankfully there are enough national chains that you don’t have to go to the South to sample it. I tried grits for the first time and was really not impressed. I also tried Southern sweet tea (thanks to Keith) and was very much impressed. I learned they really like fried chicken there and one can go to nearly any restaurant and order some. Chick-fil-a has twice as many options on their menu in the South than they do at the U of A food court. I learned that even though I'm still in the same country and the cultural differences aren't international, I can still be struck by completely unexpected things. My most memorable instance of culture shock was when I ordered barbeque pork and got a plate of shredded meat resembling nothing of what the rest of the civilized world calls barbeque.
Asheville is everything I was promised it would be. Imagine if 4th Avenue became its own city and you pretty much have Asheville. As if to drive that point home, I saw a New Age store called "Street Fair". The Great Smoky Mountains are really a sight to behold. We had complained that it was overcast the entire time we were there, but if it hadn’t been, the mountains wouldn’t have looked nearly as beautiful.
Driving around in NC is quite interesting as well. It’s a big trucking state, so there’s always an inordinate amount of trucks on the road, often making for terrifying moments when it doesn’t look like their load of lumber is properly tied down. The speed limits are frequently strange numbers, like 19MPH. Also, there must be some strange force afflicting vehicles in NC because you will always see cars on the side of the road, not visibly damaged, but abandoned nonetheless. We saw between 20 and 30 cars on the side of the road between Smithfield and Asheville and saw about as many cars with their emergency blinkers on or some that stalled at a stoplight.

Tangentially, I’ve gained a renewed appreciation of Kim’s dogs Mattie and Tia (not that I didn’t appreciate them originally). After seeing how completely unexpressive and lifeless certain hound dogs can be, I’m glad some dogs are more animated and lively than that.

And finally, I have to say I’m surprised with how I can know someone since kindergarten and not know anything about them, be best friends with someone in high school and never see them now, but meet someone for 11 days that changes your life and becomes one of your closest friends even though you haven’t seen them in 3 years. How does that work?

Plus, many new pics and a new, surprisingly accurate, map function.

2006-12-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

I am endlessly fascinated by how far I’ve come over the course of a year. A year ago today I was away from my family and friends exploring a new city by myself. I came back to Uppsala to see a Swedish Christmas and biked through the falling snow to go to a Christmas dinner for those who didn’t go home for the holidays. I remember the Christmas carols were still there, the selection was different but the essence was the same. The stores had some Christmas decorations but nothing like we have here. In fact I was reminded of all this when I was running errands to the grocery store yesterday. I remembered the first time I saw it since I got back and how different yet familiar it seemed. I am glad I can see these things, and am glad even Safeway can bring a smile to my face just by being what it is. Most of all, I’m glad I can be back in the US and with my family once again for Christmas.
The 24th is Christmas Day for the Swedes, so God Jul to all and to all a God Natt!

2006-12-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

My archaeology textbook had a brief article on the difficulty of respecting the sacred sites of different cultures. Their example was Devil’s Tower, a sacred place to many American Indian tribes, but also a popular destination for climbers. Even though it is on federal land, the tribes consider climbing it desecration and the textbook likened it to scaling a mosque or cathedral. It became clear to me that I am not the one who should be in charge of deciding if climbing should or shouldn’t be allowed because the first thing I thought of was how cool it would be to scale Domkyrkan. I always wanted a nice close-up picture of that angel, not to mention a view from one of those spires.

2006-12-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

Beerfest with Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske. I’m actually surprised by this movie. I had some small, cautious hopes for it and it exceeded them. There were the requisite and hilarious gross jokes, some of them that were really just unsettling. I praise its accurate depiction of various Europeans, or at least poking fun at the ones I know that actually are like that. I have to say, the Bavarians are not anything like the Germans portrayed in the movie, the East Germans, however, are. And with that in mind, the funniest German insult ever is now “umlaut”. I also have to give the movie props for its portrayal of the Swedes; the lovely hot blonde stereotype that I now know isn’t completely false. Plus major props to them for including the Swedish drinking song “Helan går.”

An interesting note from my Anthro GenEd classes: one of the links associated with domesticating animals to be more docile is a tendency for the animals to develop lighter skin and fur coloration. An example mentioned was the aurochs, the ancestor of modern cows, was black, but many cows today are tan or white. Someone then asked if lighter pigmentation is indicative of docility, what does that say about blondes?

Word of the Day: Propinquity-nearness in place, relation or time; affinity of nature; kinship.

2006-11-30T15:48:00.000-08:00

I’ve become reacquainted with the coldness that Tucson can bring. It doesn’t creep in like you’d kind of expect. It just pounces on you one day and it’s suddenly too cold to wear short sleeves or just light jackets. I think I now understand why people in Tucson complain about the cold so much as opposed to people in other places. First off, the locals aren’t prepared for that kind of weather. We only need coats for about one or two months, then the desert heat makes them useless for most of the year. As a result we just never bother with them, so when we finally are faced with cold, it’s a shock that we can’t really deal with. Then there are the people from out of state who likely come from somewhere colder and like the desert heat. But when they’re faced with the cold (yesterday Tucson’s low temperature was lower than Uppsala’s) they refuse to admit defeat and tough it out. Though I think some Tucson natives might do that as well. There’s something wimpy about wearing long johns in Tucson, no matter how cold you think it is.

A fun little program, though the accuracy leaves something to be desired.

2006-11-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

Casino Royale with Daniel Craig and Eva Green. I liked this Bond movie quite a bit, actually. It seems the Bond franshise has decided to adopt the new perpetual plot twist trend in spy thrillers. They pulled it off nicely without it getting all kinds of crazy. I liked the prequel-ness of it all, as well. Bond is rough around the edges and makes mistakes. I know that’s against the whole appeal of 007 but I just enjoyed seeing that even he made mistakes when he first became a 00 agent. The Bond girls were lovely, as expected, and the seduction and charm was actually believable, as opposed to Die Another Day where he was more like Austin Powers. The fight scenes and stunts were damn impressive, the best I’ve seen in a Bond film, though I would like to know where an African bomb maker learned how to do all those jumps. I particularly liked how the film explains why Bond acts the way he does towards women. There’s definitely a Darth Vader kind of thing going there.

The Break-Up with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. I heard a lot about this movie from my friends, who all told me the exact same thing about the ending. But putting that aside for a moment, I thought the movie was alright. Nothing profound, though I did find some of the dialog to be strangely familiar. I don’t know how long the characters were supposed to be together, but from the opening montage and the fact that they were living together I’d guess it would have to be a while. The thing is, I never once saw that they had any chemistry together. Not even from the first meeting. I kept waiting for a scene where they would remember the good times together but from what I saw, there was never anything between them. It made both characters really hard to sympathize with. Which brings me to the ending: while everyone else thinks it was a really crappy, unsatisfying ending I kind of liked it. It’s the only thing that would make sense, it has a cinematically refreshing touch of realism and they are both happy. Face it, we’ve all had breakups and we all know that all things considered, that’s probably the best possible outcome.

2006-11-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

Ah, another Thanksgiving has come and gone. I have to say there’s no such thing as a bad Thanksgiving in my book. A holiday about eating lots and lots of good food with people you care about. There’s not much to commercialize or corrupt when you get right down to it. I never trust people who say they don’t like Thanksgiving. If you don’t like your family you can always have dinner with a friend’s family, or a group of friends—anyone that you enjoy being with. And if eating a big dinner with your friends is still not your thing, well, you’re an alien.
I was going to have the Swedes over so they could experience this uniquely American holiday (yes, I know Canadians have Thanksgiving too, they just stole it from us) but they decided to go to Mexico over the holiday break. Jävle svenskar… Anyway, it turned out for the best that they weren’t able to show since our kitchen was in a state of (dis)repair, making cooking a challenge. Thankfully, we live in Arizona where you can have Thanksgiving outside and not be cold at all. Plus, I was reacquainted with all of my family’s traditional dishes that I missed out on last year. Even if you have the recipies, you just can’t beat mom’s cooking. And like all Thanksgivings, it ended in a lovely turkey nap. It’s a shame this concept is unknown to foreigners because it is quite possibly the best feeling nap in the world.

2006-11-15T00:10:00.000-08:00

It’s strange for me to think that one year ago today I was on the other side of the planet contemplating the greater meaning of being 20. Now I’m back here and I think the greater meaning of 21 is less elusive. I remember thinking that my teens were pretty uneventful and lamented not making the most of “the best years of your life”. A friend of mine told me I was wrong; that the best years are in your 20’s. The simple matter-of-factness with which she said that really erased any doubt in my mind.
So I’m one year older, and for the first time, I really feel one year wiser. I’ve learned and experienced so much this past year, even in these past few months. Studying abroad really does make you grow up. After experiencing what it’s like to be totally on my own in a totally new place with no one to help make decisions for me, I really miss it and already want to go back. That said, I’m now enjoying Tucson more than I ever have in my entire life. Sure it’s the world’s biggest small town, but it’s got a certain small town charm to it. Oh, and Eegee’s, can't forget that.
It’s still relatively warm here in Tucson. A high of 76F (24C) today and a low of 44F (7C), but to Tucsonans it’s getting rather cold. I see people bundled up in jackets, girls wearing warm pants and the return of my arch nemesis: ugg boots. Contrast that with Uppsala where last year, just as I opened a birthday care package from my family and took out a scarf, gloves and a beanie, it started to snow. Now that’s timing. While the gloves may have been ill adapted for Swedish winter, those beanies and that scarf really made life easier in my travels.

Tonight I’ll be off to celebrate my 21st in true American fashion. Hopefully my experiences in Uppsala were adequate preparation. Funny, not many people get to have the “old enough to drink” birthday twice. Go me!

2006-11-10T20:22:00.000-08:00

Where does everyone get the time to blog? I have difficulty keeping up as it is, though I suppose work and college don’t leave a lot of extra time. I think I’ve finally gotten used to the American college system again, Uppsala made me soft. As fun as it was to have no homework or exams before the final (plus 4 day weekends every week my first semester), I think a constant barrage of midterms helps keep your academic edge. Now, granted, the academic career of an exchange student is pretty light anyway, but I don’t think all of the ease was just because of that, the Swedes have it pretty easy, too. They get paid to go to college (everyone, not just people with scholarships) so they really don’t have to work, only have to worry about one test that they can take over again indefinitely, don’t have GenEd’s or minors so they can focus on just one thing and rumor has it they have university counselors to help the students cope with the stress of it all. Now, some of the majors have a pretty hard time, at least from what I’ve observed: the Law students (or maybe they were just pretending) and the Engineering students.

In other news, Beyond Bread is a very interesting anthropological site, I’ve come to realize. Just tonight I saw a perfect example of sorority girl hierarchical structure: a Lil Sis was ordering food from me and when I asked if it was to eat here, she asked to her Big Sis, who just stared back at her, not so much as uttering a word. The Lil Sis then surprisingly meekly, especially considering the chipper nature of sorority girls, said she going to eat here. I guess that’s part of the hazing process, breaking their will and turning them into little clones. She didn’t look like her Big Sis, but I suppose it’s only a matter of time.

Finally, I’ve always been slow to embrace cell phones. I first got mine as a graduation present when nigh everyone else in my class had one already. But I came to see their inherent value. I was still wary of all the crazy new features they kept coming out with, preferring my simple non-color screen and default ring tones. I only started appreciating texting while I was in Uppsala, mainly cuz it was easier to read and write Swedish than to try and speak it. Also, my old phone never had the auto word dictionary thing; I used to just have to type it in the old fashioned way. Plus having a polylingual dictionary made things a lot easier. My new phone isn’t as good with recognizing what I’m trying to text and I find myself having to spell it out again. Also, unlike my other two phones, it doesn't have any other language settings besides English and Spanish. I’m really miffed about that part, it means you can no longer steal your friend’s phone and switch the language settings to Hebrew and see how long it take for him to figure out how to undo it. It also bugs me cuz now I can’t type the ö in one of my friend’s last name.
On the plus side, my new phone has a camera, allowing me to take pics like this:

2006-10-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

I got to throw an atlatl last week for my TRAD class. I gotta say that’s one inventive weapon. I want one. The record distance for throwing one is 800 feet and it has enough force behind a good throw to go through a sheep. It’s just so simple, yet brilliant. I often have wondered if I would have been able to invent stuff like that if I had no knowledge of the modern world. I like to think I would at least have been able to come up with some stuff. I used to knap rocks in the back yard when I was little, so I probably would have been able to create hand axes, spears and knives. Plus I figure my creative abilities would have been boosted if my life depended on it. Still, I doubt I would have figured out you can increase a spear’s effective range tenfold by using a wooden launching handle. I guess it’s not so different from a catapult, but it doesn’t look like it should work.
So props to you, Paleolithic Man. You are a damn clever fella.

In other news, I finally went hiking with the Swedish exchange students. They seemed to enjoy it a lot, even though one took a prickly pear pad right to the shin. We also talked about the differences and quirks we noticed in the US and Sweden. They say it's hard to find Americans to hang out with. We're really friendly and open if you talk with us at first, but it's more difficult to actually make a new friend. Contrast that with the Swedish experience where chitchatting with a Swede is like pulling teeth, but once they get to know you you'll be friends forever.
They were also interested in finding places/events/activities that were very American or Arizonan. Try thinking about what you would tell someone is something really representative of the US that you would want to share with foreigners. It's kind of hard. I suggested Rodeo Weekend for something Arizonan, Thanksgiving for something all-American and after the hike I took them to the most American place I could think of: The Five and Diner. They loved that, they said it was like being in a movie.

2006-10-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

I just noticed tonight that Orion is rising differently than it was when I saw it last year up in Kiruna. Around 11PM in January Orion appears upright on the horizon. That is, his “feet” are on the horizon, rather than at an angle. It’s kinda weird to me that the stars change depending on where you are. The Southern Hemisphere would be even worse, I imagine.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how much I like Sweden’s landscapes and climate. I suspect some of it may have to do with nostalgia or some cultural ideal I’ve imprinted on. I’m guessing that’s why I like the idea of a two-story house with wooden floors (though I missed carpet so much while I was actually there), a green yard, trees and the like. But I wonder why I like green and forests so much over other landscapes. I’ve had a theory that maybe people have imprinted ideals of beauty and aesthetics for landscapes and environments which might be optimal for them. While I might think a tundra is pretty to look at I definitely wouldn’t consider it a place to live, but an Inuit certainly would. At the same time, would the Inuit consider the Sonoran Desert habitable? At first I didn’t really have much to support my idea but if you think about it, it would make some sense. People all over the world are adapted to environments which their ancestors evolved in and it would be only natural that they would prefer that environment. Now I’m not saying this is anything absolute or that white people can only like European climates, but a subconscious preference might still exist. In some cases it might be prudent for people to heed that preference. For example, Africans will get rickets in northern latitudes if they don’t have a dietary source of Vitamin D, plus melanin increases one’s risk of frostbite. I wonder if Africans would find Sweden as aesthetically pleasing as I would, or might they prefer Tucson?
Also, along the lines of subconscious desires and instincts I learned that shepherd dogs will exhibit shepherding behavior without any actual training to do so. So one can evidently breed a specific behavior into animals, that’s pretty damn impressive considering humans only domesticated dogs around 17,000 years ago. What’s more impressive is that we managed to single out a behavior that is totally against a wolf’s natural instinct. They would rather isolate an animal from a herd and then kill it, but somehow we managed to get dogs to group animals into a herd and protect them. Now, nature can’t account for this entirely, nurture plays some role. I don’t think that feral shepherd dogs would herd their prey like that, but otherwise they act quite differently than dogs bred for other purposes.
I wonder if you could genetically select for a certain instinct in humans. It couldn’t be anything really drastic since our self-awareness can override our natural tendencies. I wonder if you could, say, breed humans to break fall instinctively without having to be taught. I have no idea how you would do that, but it would probably be easier than breeding wolves into shepherd dogs.

2006-10-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

The Grudge 2 with Amber Tamblyn and Takako Fuji. I don't normally go to see horror movies in theaters, but I was offered free tickets, so how could I refuse? Having never seen the first one, I'm not sure how it compares but I'm told it's better-ish. The overwhelming sentiment is that it isn't as creepy as the Japanese Ju-an movies upon which they were based. Quite a few people said it sucked, but I'm inclined to dismiss their opinions for a couple of reasons. First, I gauge horror movies' quality on how scary they are, not their subtle acting, logical plots or character development. Since I get the feeling that those are most people's criteria, they might be right, but since the movie was indeed scary, I say it was good. The other group of people who said it sucked I dismiss because they don't provide any constructive criticism and I suspect are trying to rationalize a way not to be scared when they go to bed. For example, when asked what he thought could have been better about the movie, one guy I watched it with said, "If they didn't make it suck so much!" he then said how it was so funny and he didn't get why everyone was so afraid of "the albino kid." Dude, it's OK to say a scary movie scared, you don't need to put on some macho bullshit act.
My old roommate had more constructive opinions of the movie: having seen the Japanese version, he felt that the obligatory American origin/explanation scenes took something away from the movie. He suggested that in the original, rather than giving the characters hope, they just know they're going to die and there's nothing they can do about it. While that kind of fatalism can definitely be scary, I think there's also something to be said for dangling hope in front of the characters, then taking it away. He also felt that the number of jump scenes was too much and by the end you kind of got desensitized to them, whereas the Japanese ones use them sparingly and to a greater effect.
I think it's always strange that no one ever thinks to fight against the ghost, certainly they don't have anything to lose. Granted, there are some instances where they are caught totally by surprise, but there are some times when they had ample time for a punch, kick, anything, but they don't. I think that's one thing some of the moviegoers didn't get, the ghosts, aside from being seemingly omnipotent and creepy looking induce paralytic fear, preventing people from doing anything. In that thought of what would happen if someone fought back, we wondered who would be able to. One person had suggested they would like to see the ghost from the Grudge vs. Constantine. That would certainly be an interesting fight. I, on the other hand, think that the ghost vs. aliens a la Communion or Taken would be a pretty interesting fight to see as well. I keep hoping someone will make an aliens vs. ghosts movie, or at least a short film.

2006-10-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm experiencing little bits of culture shock as I go through the semester, odd things that I see on campus. Notably, the fundies going around campus stopping random people and asking them about their beliefs and trying to guilt trip them into converting. Here's a fun tip: demonstrate any knowledge of the Bible that contradicts what they're trying to sell you and they'll get all defensive. It's good to be back in the US, where I am persecuted for my beliefs and not where I was born. It's a purer form of intolerance, no?
Not too long ago I had lunch with one of the Swedish students at the U of A. It's kind of funny to me that he and the rest of the international students will hang out with each other for the most part with less interaction among natives. When I went abroad I figured I'd be spending most of my time with Swedes, but for the most part I was around international students. It's just a hoot to see that that's exactly what they're doing. It's a strange kind of thing, seeing a strange culture through my eyes, then coming back and seeing those strangers see my world through their eyes.
This guy has evidently embraced American fast food culture totally, he claims that's all he ever eats. I kind of hope he was exaggerating, but I dunno. It's funny that our fast food culture is one of the (MANY) things we're criticized for and he's all for it. Of course, who can't appreciate the fact that a "large" serving in Sweden is ridiculously expensive and has the same amount of food as an American "small" serving? Since he is so interested in absorbing American culture, I offered him some of my root beer. Curious, he sampled my "beer" and predictably, was disgusted. Hilarious, I tell you. He was even more astonished that I drank the whole thing and that it wasn't some kind of practical joke.
Really, it seems only Americans like root beer. It actually reminds me of an episode of Deep Space Nine, where two aliens are at a bar trying to find the appeal in root beer:
Quark: What do you think?
Garak: It's vile.
Q: I know. It's so bubbly and cloying and happy.
G: Just like the Federation.
Q: But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you start to like it.
G: It's insidious.
Q: Just like the Federation.

That’s about right, just with America instead of the Federation. And like root beer, if you have enough of America, you do start to like it. Now all I need to do is get the Swedes to appreciate the simple joy of a PBJ.

2006-10-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

So the other day we’re driving to the dojo and see a license plate that says, “Be an organ donor” so we joked that we would go in and just donate a liver like one might go in and donate blood. So then here’s a weird thought: could one conceivably commit suicide by organ donation? That is, donate a vital organ, or better yet, donate all your organs. The doctors would be labeled as highly unethical, but on the other hand if the “patient” comes up to them and tells them they are suicidal and will kill themselves one way or another, it’s in the doctor’s hands whether or not the waste of life is a complete waste. All organs could be salvaged as well as marrow and all the blood. Gruesome, yes, but remember that the selfish act of suicide would be mitigated by the selflessness of offering your entire body to those in need who do want to live. Suppose each organ goes to a separate person, saving each of their lives. Would this form of suicide then be looked down upon? The only problem is finding doctors who would utterly violate the Hippocratic oath and intentionally kill and essentially gut their patients even if it was the patient’s expressed wish. They would be reviled even more than abortion doctors. But perhaps some ethical concerns might be evaded if one considers that the killing of one patient ultimately benefits many more. Consider it an expansion on the logic of triage: the patient has a low chance of survival (because he’s suicidal) while other patients who will die without treatment (an organ transplant or blood transfusion) still have a chance if the doctor administers treatment in time. In a triage scenario, the doctor administers treatment to the other patients and neglects the patient with a lower chance of survival, essentially killing him. In this way a doctor sacrifices the life of one to save the life of another, this doctor would not be considered unethical, in fact they might be praised for their cool professional approach and understanding that not everyone can be saved. In a triage situation the tradeoff of life might be one to one, but in this scenario the sacrifice of one ultimately benefits many more.
So would people opt to commit suicide in this fashion? Would the doctors be willing to go through with it? Would the general public accept it even when weighing in the benefit it would have to those on an organ waiting list? Do the needs of the many truly outweigh the needs of the few?

2006-09-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

Hard Candy with Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page. One creepy, intense movie that really got me riled. It's certainly suited to a debate, but not for a blind right/wrong debate with absolutist, sexist arguments. My personal opinion is that the girl is in dire need of a vacation, specifically one to a certain "Hostel" in Slovakia.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now, the debate is: are the crimes committed by the man sufficiently atrocious to warrant the events in the movie? And are the events in the movie atrocious enough to warrant my suggested punishment? When dealing with this, it is important to only look at what was explicitly proven and stated in the film and not every single claim, allegation or suspicion the girl had. Now, the director is brilliant in only providing just enough solid proof to keep the plot from being completely ambiguous. All that we know about his secrets are from the reactions of a sadistic and legally insane character looking for anything that might prove her right. It's important to look at the movie in retrospect, seeing how carefully orchestrated and planned her whole scheme was and factor that into her character. But also remember that everything we learned at the end she knew for certain all along. That exonerates her only slightly, because it is inferred that she obtained all this information from the guy's friend using similar methods but operating on less than absolute certainty. He was a monster for his actions that were left unseen; she was a monster for her actions both seen and unseen. He deserved punishment, but is a monster who kills a monster any less monstrous?
And I'd also like to add that movies like this are what make being bound a borderline phobia of mine.

2006-09-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

Returner with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. Pretty much your standard sci-fi movie complete with aliens and time travel, but with some notably cool action scenes. I remember seeing a trailer for this at the Loft a few years back and based solely on some scenes with transforming airplanes I was determined to watch it. I was a little disappointed by the plot, but such things are to be expected with foreign films. Why do the aliens have to be so damn unreasonable? One thing I thought was pretty funny is in the future "flashbacks" there are a lot of Americans. Their lines are so horrible and over the top I'm not sure if it's cuz the actors are so bad they couldn't find work in any English speaking country or if the lines were written in Japanese and translated directly into English. Or both. Lastly, the villain was pretty good too. That is, he's one of those really despicable characters, not just the "I'm a bad guy because the script says I am" types. His mannerisms are quite similar to a bad guy character in another Japanese movie Versus. I wonder if the bug-eyed, tongue flicking psycho is an archetypical Japanese character.

In a remarkable instance of serendipity, my schedule has changed enough to dramatically increase my fun time. It turns out one of the classes I took in Uppsala counts as a GenEd credit here, meaning I can drop one of the ones I'm taking now. I could either drop my first class of the day and sleep in or drop the last one and go home early. I chose the latter, Chinese Civ, since it's boring (but really interesting) and dropping it means I can go to work an hour earlier and work 8 hours every shift. Now I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday and get off work right before the dreaded closing shift. That means I can go to the dojo Tuesdays and Thursdays, just like old times plus have Saturday free for sparring. And in a remarkable coincidence, my high school drama teacher is directing a play at the U of A and an opening for a part appeared. The rehearsal times happen to match my new schedule *exactly*. There's a Swedish word for windfall, but I can't remember what it was. That's how I would best describe this series of developments. Anyway, "Southern Fried Murder", on October 20th, will mark my triumphant return to the stage!

Speaking of Swedish (yeah that's gonna keep popping up. What can I say? It's still fresh in my mind.) the customers at Beyond Bread, interestingly it's often the crabby ones, will ask for wheat bread but always put too much air into the 'wh' producing the Swedish word for 'shit'. It gets me every time, and with some customers I really wish I could give them what they asked for.

And also, after a bit of a break, I now have new Flickr pics.

2006-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

I think only now am I really getting the reverse culture shock I kept bracing myself for after returning from Sweden. It's not just missing things that made life fun, like the nations (I would kill for a night at the nations, even V-Dala club nights) it's seeing things that are odd in comparison and being reminded of little quirks.
One of the things I think is really bizarre is that when I was at the U of A freshman year, I noticed there were some foreigners, mostly Asian and a few from Africa, but for the most part it was hard to find someone who wasn't American. When I went to Uppsala I was amazed by how many exchange students there were. I'm aware that as an exchange student I was in classes with other foreigners or was in other activities designed with exchange students in mind, but even putting all that aside there still seemed to be more international students than at the U of A. Now I'm back and it seems like while I was gone the number of international students increased tremendously. I'm not sure if I just wasn't actively looking before or if I'm just in the right type of classes; maybe the Theater department wasn't the most popular venue for foreigners.
Another thing I noticed while I was in Uppsala, while there were plenty of exchange students and a fair number of immigrants, the general appearance of the population was pretty homogeneous. Even fashions and hairstyles were pretty uniform, I remember being rather disenchanted with that discovery. But at the U of A there's a paradox; I see the rich ethnic diversity, blending of different peoples, countless subcultures, people of all shapes and sizes. Then I see the sorority girls, all with bug-eye sunglasses, bleach blonde hair, fake tans, and shorts with their sorority written on the ass. They're everywhere and they're all exactly the same. Even their speech and mannerisms are identical; it kinda creeped me out that it seems I see one of the sorority girls I met in Uppsala everywhere here.
I also got in touch with a couple of exchange students from Uppsala that are at the U of A. It's really fun and surreal to be able to talk about Uppsala with someone while they're in Tucson. It's funny, I asked them why they came here of all places and they said it was to get away from the cold. They couldn't imagine why I would leave Tucson to seek out icy weather in Sweden. I also can keep up my Swedish by talking to them; it's embarrassing that I've already started to forget simple words. On the other hand, as a habit for familiarizing myself with the language I would insert Swedish words or phrases in an English conversation with a Swede. I had to wean myself off that habit when I got back to the US since no one would know what the hell I was talking about. But since I met the Swedes it's been popping up every now and then. The other day at work I didn't hear what someone said and instead of saying "What?" I said, "Vad sade du?"

And not really anything new, but I think it's interesting that the English words 'ken', 'canny', 'know' and the Swedish 'känna' are all from the same Germanic word. I was kind of disappointed to not find a link between 'sense' and 'känna' though; they sound similar enough and they do have overlapping meanings.