Despite the cold in the air this morning, it's unmistakably Spring now. I have one of those thermometers that gives both the indoor and the outdoor temperature, and obviously all winter, it was always warmer indoors than out. Well, until well after sundown on Friday and Saturday, it was warmer outside the house than inside.
After a couple of days of taking care of things in and around the house, I had a bit of a case of cabin fever. Luckily, I found some suitable outdoor activity in the form of a bunch of guys who play touch football on the National Mall on Sunday afternoons. The downside of this activity was that, well, my left ankle in particular is not liking me today.
Next weekend, most of the plaid flannel shirts and winter coasts go into the storage bins.
.
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misc. Show all posts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Either/Or
Early this morning, I noticed that some Facebook application, one of a million that has somehow found its way onto my Facebook page sent me some automatic email - the Compare People one. As some level, it's supposed to be and really is just a little parlor game. Most of the questions of a vaguely frivolous nature - who's the best singer, who's the best dresser, etc.
But not all of them.
I ran through some friend comparisons, mostly in a rapid-fire manner. I tended to skip the ones that involved Facebook "friends" I didn't know in person or didn't know well. But I wasn't really using deep thought neurons, so to speak.
And then I looked at how people rated me.
Apparently, while I am smarter, apparently braver (never thought of myself that way, but go me!) more dependable, have better taste in music, am more creative, and more useful than whoever it was I was being compared to. On the other side of things, I'm not the snappiest dresser out there and I'm not the most outgoing sort.
But then I felt something, like I was staring into something I probably should have looked away from, like Pippin and the Orthanc-stone. And I had never thought of myself as a particularly sensitive sort - but it felt odd. I don't think the people who rated some other person higher than me meant it as any sort of slight, but it still feels weird to see that most other people (either friends, or more likely, friends of friends I know either scarcely or not at all) that you got randomly chosen to go up against for this exercise were nearly universally deemed as kinder, as better friends, as more loyal and as more trustworthy than you. I don't care how unflappable you are, if that doesn't hurt a little bit, you're not human.
No one wants to travel with me versus whomever else, and would rather spend a day with other people...but apparently they would rather be stranded on a desert island with me. Go figure. This is probably a sign that I'm wasting too much time writing all this.
Continuing the thought from Saturday, it's yet another sign that knowledge, even imperfect knowledge to be taken as a grain - nay, a shaker - of salt, can be a burden of sorts.
I suppose between some unfortunate incidents I've been involved in and the kind of view of humanity that three years in law school taught me, I'm not exactly the most trusting soul out there, and that probably comes out in more contexts than I would like it to, and I imagine that if you're seen as someone who's slow to let his guard down, other people you encounter might sense a need to act in kind.
I am reminded of the time that I was at an internship and was asked to sort through a filing cabinet of junk - something that I would gain a lot more experience with on some of my old paper document reviews, not to mention filtering out all the junk mail I started getting once the marketing people found out I had passed a bar exam (and now two of them), once they found out that I have a decent household income (especially for a one-person household), once they found out I'm a single gay man, and once they found out I buy a lot of electronic equipment....I'm a freakin' marketer's dream. So I have a giant bin of junk mail to go through when I get a spare minute.
Therefore, the people who picked the other person in the "Who is more organized?" question were 100% justified, unless they opted for certain friends of mine who are demonstrably less organized than I am.
Anyhow, one of the things in there was a report that was evaluating the interns that I can't imagine I was intended to see. I got tagged as "very intelligent" and "a good writer" but also as "unstable" and "overly intense." It may seem funny to anyone who has not known me for long and who has never seen me play quiz bowl or been involved in any of my relatively rare athletic endeavors, but I suppose back in those days I could see how someone could see me as a bit intense, particularly in my former guise as an aspiring politico. But man, seeing "unstable" next to my name didn't feel good.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to be more disturbed by a negative opinion that comes as a surprise than such an opinion that one could anticipate, and yet that's just another sign that humans aren't necessarily rational creatures.
Although I decided right then and there not only that it would be imprudent to say something to the person who wrote it but that I was only going to let this bother me to the extent that I needed to present a better face to the workplace.
Seeing those words probably changed me a little for the better.
But not all of them.
I ran through some friend comparisons, mostly in a rapid-fire manner. I tended to skip the ones that involved Facebook "friends" I didn't know in person or didn't know well. But I wasn't really using deep thought neurons, so to speak.
And then I looked at how people rated me.
Apparently, while I am smarter, apparently braver (never thought of myself that way, but go me!) more dependable, have better taste in music, am more creative, and more useful than whoever it was I was being compared to. On the other side of things, I'm not the snappiest dresser out there and I'm not the most outgoing sort.
But then I felt something, like I was staring into something I probably should have looked away from, like Pippin and the Orthanc-stone. And I had never thought of myself as a particularly sensitive sort - but it felt odd. I don't think the people who rated some other person higher than me meant it as any sort of slight, but it still feels weird to see that most other people (either friends, or more likely, friends of friends I know either scarcely or not at all) that you got randomly chosen to go up against for this exercise were nearly universally deemed as kinder, as better friends, as more loyal and as more trustworthy than you. I don't care how unflappable you are, if that doesn't hurt a little bit, you're not human.
No one wants to travel with me versus whomever else, and would rather spend a day with other people...but apparently they would rather be stranded on a desert island with me. Go figure. This is probably a sign that I'm wasting too much time writing all this.
Continuing the thought from Saturday, it's yet another sign that knowledge, even imperfect knowledge to be taken as a grain - nay, a shaker - of salt, can be a burden of sorts.
I suppose between some unfortunate incidents I've been involved in and the kind of view of humanity that three years in law school taught me, I'm not exactly the most trusting soul out there, and that probably comes out in more contexts than I would like it to, and I imagine that if you're seen as someone who's slow to let his guard down, other people you encounter might sense a need to act in kind.
I am reminded of the time that I was at an internship and was asked to sort through a filing cabinet of junk - something that I would gain a lot more experience with on some of my old paper document reviews, not to mention filtering out all the junk mail I started getting once the marketing people found out I had passed a bar exam (and now two of them), once they found out that I have a decent household income (especially for a one-person household), once they found out I'm a single gay man, and once they found out I buy a lot of electronic equipment....I'm a freakin' marketer's dream. So I have a giant bin of junk mail to go through when I get a spare minute.
Therefore, the people who picked the other person in the "Who is more organized?" question were 100% justified, unless they opted for certain friends of mine who are demonstrably less organized than I am.
Anyhow, one of the things in there was a report that was evaluating the interns that I can't imagine I was intended to see. I got tagged as "very intelligent" and "a good writer" but also as "unstable" and "overly intense." It may seem funny to anyone who has not known me for long and who has never seen me play quiz bowl or been involved in any of my relatively rare athletic endeavors, but I suppose back in those days I could see how someone could see me as a bit intense, particularly in my former guise as an aspiring politico. But man, seeing "unstable" next to my name didn't feel good.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to be more disturbed by a negative opinion that comes as a surprise than such an opinion that one could anticipate, and yet that's just another sign that humans aren't necessarily rational creatures.
Although I decided right then and there not only that it would be imprudent to say something to the person who wrote it but that I was only going to let this bother me to the extent that I needed to present a better face to the workplace.
Seeing those words probably changed me a little for the better.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
All We Have Is Now
Long hours of boring work and a lack of social interaction give one a lot of time to get lost in one's own thoughts. Armed with the iPod and surreptitous websurfing...
The shuffle widget today brought me "All We Have Is Now" by the Flaming Lips, a song where the narrator is told by a visitor from the future that he and whomever he is speaking to are "not going to make it" and "not going to be part of the future."
I had always through my youth told myself that knowledge was always better than ignorance. That version of me would scarcely have hesitated to opt for the affirmative if asked something like "If an omniscient being gave you the opportunity to know to the minute how long you are going to live, would you let him tell you?" (Note that I'm further assuming that the answer doesn't involve the being killing you while saying "your time is up now.")
With some more age I wonder if that's still true. I've been told that human beings have more capacity for dread and terror than other animals. I wonder now if I'm more the sort of person who's going to be counting down the days, like I used to do as a kid during the second half of summer vacations, knowing exactly when I'd need to be back in the classroom.
But knowledge can be a burden, which at one point in my life I found very tough to acknowledge.
I suppose it would be useful at some level to know that the short term was all I had to look forward to - I'd worry less about student loan payments and working more overtime and such.
The shuffle widget today brought me "All We Have Is Now" by the Flaming Lips, a song where the narrator is told by a visitor from the future that he and whomever he is speaking to are "not going to make it" and "not going to be part of the future."
I had always through my youth told myself that knowledge was always better than ignorance. That version of me would scarcely have hesitated to opt for the affirmative if asked something like "If an omniscient being gave you the opportunity to know to the minute how long you are going to live, would you let him tell you?" (Note that I'm further assuming that the answer doesn't involve the being killing you while saying "your time is up now.")
With some more age I wonder if that's still true. I've been told that human beings have more capacity for dread and terror than other animals. I wonder now if I'm more the sort of person who's going to be counting down the days, like I used to do as a kid during the second half of summer vacations, knowing exactly when I'd need to be back in the classroom.
But knowledge can be a burden, which at one point in my life I found very tough to acknowledge.
I suppose it would be useful at some level to know that the short term was all I had to look forward to - I'd worry less about student loan payments and working more overtime and such.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Saga Begins
Here's my first post, which I suppose is where my manifesto as to what this blog is supposed to be about goes. But it's not really about anything. It is desgined with an eye towards mass consumption I suppose, but I don't really have a theme in mind.
I'll write about pop culture because it fascinates me so. I'm not really interested in celebrity gossip; I'm more interested in what the purveyors of popular culture actually produce - i.e. the things they're ostensibly famous for. I'm especially a huge music fan, as the blog title suggests.
I'll write about sports because, well, once upon a time I got into sports to have something to dicuss with my peers, and it all kind of mushroomed from there. I am a down-the-line Boston sports fan, which comes from my deep roots in New England, though I don't live there now. There will be more on that later.
I'll write about politics because, well, that's what almost every blog I read regularly talks about. I'm joining the fray after occassionally posting to various blogs, which I'll probably step up in an attempt to perhaps get similarly-minded people to start reading what I have to say.
And then there are the little observational slices of life that for some reason seem worth documenting.
I may include some things that are semi-personal, but this is intended to be about thoughts and observations I'm going to try not to talk much about my personal life, except in such a way that might interest total strangers in a non-prurient way.
Those are the goals anyway. We'll see how it goes.
I'll write about pop culture because it fascinates me so. I'm not really interested in celebrity gossip; I'm more interested in what the purveyors of popular culture actually produce - i.e. the things they're ostensibly famous for. I'm especially a huge music fan, as the blog title suggests.
I'll write about sports because, well, once upon a time I got into sports to have something to dicuss with my peers, and it all kind of mushroomed from there. I am a down-the-line Boston sports fan, which comes from my deep roots in New England, though I don't live there now. There will be more on that later.
I'll write about politics because, well, that's what almost every blog I read regularly talks about. I'm joining the fray after occassionally posting to various blogs, which I'll probably step up in an attempt to perhaps get similarly-minded people to start reading what I have to say.
And then there are the little observational slices of life that for some reason seem worth documenting.
I may include some things that are semi-personal, but this is intended to be about thoughts and observations I'm going to try not to talk much about my personal life, except in such a way that might interest total strangers in a non-prurient way.
Those are the goals anyway. We'll see how it goes.
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