All I do is post other articles these days

But I don't care. This is too much fun for me.

Because I'm Either Doing This Or Writing My Thesis

Somehow, even when my work entails little more than a scholarly viewing of South Park, I cannot bring myself to be productive in late May. So instead, thanks to Tyson, I am watching this. Enjoy, though note there is some offensive language.
For those who need background, Charlie Murphy is Eddie Murphy's older brother. He sometimes narrates his recollections of the wild exploits he enjoyed in the 1980s. This story is called "Basketball with Prince."

And I'm Back

So it's been awhile (a year, actually), and I had forgotten my username and password. But I am a fine guesser and I think I may go insane if I don't start putting thoughts to paper (in a manner of speaking.) So I'm back. You are under no obligation to notice or pay attention, but just in case you're curious, here I am.
(Actual reflections to follow.)

A Kindred Spirit

I love this:
(you'll probably have to click on the little box above this text to see the comic)

Smelling the Color 9

Chris Rice is coming to both Chapel Hill and Winston Salem. While I have no idea who he is, apparently he's both talented and famous, at least among my friends. So at Crystal's prompting I downloaded some of his songs and I have to say, I'm impressed. I rarely take to music quickly, so that says something about his stuff.
One song of his in particular stuck out for me. It's called Smell the Color 9; the title refers to the singer's attempts to find God being as hard as "smelling the color 9." A few goofy lines aside (including an especially painful explanation of the metaphor at the end of the song) notwithstanding, I really like this song. It's full of lines about feeling left out in a crowd where everyone else seems to be so sure of their faith and not knowing what to believe except that there's Someone to believe in; these sentiments, to borrow a phrase from Chuck Klosterman, have never stopped making sense to me.
Of course, the overriding sentiment in the song is one of, if this makes any sense, optimistic impotence. This does a nice job of describing my life right now. I won't go into the details, but I've been sniffing and sniffing this last month or two and just can't quite locate the color 9.
But the upshot is that I'm finding more and more people who share and help me express this reality I'm experiencing. If nothing else, this helps ease the loneliness and at least make more sense out of the world. That's a good start.

Bienvenidos a mis visitas que hablan espanol!

Me gusta usar Google Analytics para observar quien esta visitando o leyendo mis obras escritas. No te preocupes; yo no puedo saber quienes son ustedes. Puedo aprender de donde son y que tipo de conexion usan solamente.
He observado que hay dos de ustedes que no son de los estados unidos: un de Tulancingo, Mexico, y un de Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Pienso que ustedes vinieron por casualidad y salieron inmediatamente, pero espero que se gusten mis escritas. Quiza van a volver un dia.
(Yo espero tambien que no he destrozado el espanol aqui. No he usado la lengua por un tiempo largo. Si he cometido errores, los siento.)

Frisbees, Sno Cones, and the Quest for a Hobby

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking recently. Mostly this is because I was paid a considerable sum to read and think this summer and I want to fulfill my obligations, but also because events in my life and the lives of those around me have given me occasion to pause and ponder meaning and abstract concepts and other things much too large in scope to have one sentence answers. Such answers are delightful but unfailingly misleading unless you're a math major, which I most certainly am not. But, because Steen's hair has grown so large as to make me wonder if it has a will of its own, I'll start with a number anyway.
I turned 20 on Sunday, though I was a bit too busy to notice much. 20 is an odd age; people my age can neither drink legally nor claim it was a stupid teenage mistake when we drink anyway and get arrested. I don't even like alcohol (I discovered this in Europe rather quickly), but that doesn't offer much consolation. I can't rent a car or a hotel room either. Who came up with such an arbitrary number as 21 anyway? And an old friend of mine is getting married, a fact that bothers me first because she's younger than me and second because I think she had a bit of crush on me about seven years ago and all of a sudden I'm a little jealous. I've never felt so old and so young simultaneously. I don't know what would constitute a legitimate quarter life crisis, nor do I have any particular reason to be so optimistic as to assume I've still got three quarters of mine left. But I do get the distinct impression that I've spent most of my life thus far waiting, though I'm not sure what for, and that very soon I'll have my physical prime behind me (which is really depressing, given what my "prime" currently looks like) and regardless if I don't start eating better I'm gonna gain a lot of weight. I think most neuroses must start in one's 20's.
My second cousin died last weekend. I only knew Dudley in a very loose sense of the term; he was that guy who came to dinner at Christmas and always sat at a different table. I'm rather embarrassed to admit that, like most people that somehow didn't fit my definition of close family, I never really wanted to get to know him. I didn't even really feel sad when I heard about his cancer, or even when I was with him and his wife in the hospital. My capacity to empathize is defective. But it seems this was my loss, as from what I've heard since his passing and at his funeral Dudley was a cool guy. And I just couldn't fathom why it was that I of all people should be singing at his funeral, or how a guy who was clearly well-liked could be alive one day and in the ground the next and, even with two living parents (albeit ones with minds and bodies greatly reduced by age), only have one person at his funeral who was openly crying.
There have been several other illnesses and deaths on the periphery of my world lately. A few of these illnesses have been metaphorical, as in demographic issues at church and relationship troubles with old friends, but mainly these have been of the literal variety. Not sure what else to say about this, except that I think it's worth noting that it's taken the illness of a great patriarch and the deaths of a distant relative and a vague acquaintance to make me stop and just ... for a little while.
Taking time to ... can be rewarding, but it can also be a little scary. I rarely ... these days, preferring to lose myself in routine and late night television rather than risking finding myself in the quiet. Ben Folds says, "I stay focused on details; it helps me from feeling the big things." I don't know if that's true of me or not, but I do worry about how little things affect me anymore. And that fear of facing the void drives my attention outward, where hopefully I can get away with treating someone else's cancer while smoking. If that doesn't make any sense, I apologize, but it brings me to my point.
There was a moment last semester, after Big Concert but before the big stress of final exams, when I got the distinct impression that I was, at some fundamental level, unhealthy. Part of this was knowledge of my eating habits, which always vex my mother, but most of it had to do with sleeping patterns, social trends, spiritual antipathy, and the general sentiment that something was just wrong. Now that I'm done with a similar flurry of trips and vacations from the summer, I think it's time to reexamine the issue of well-being. My research has brought me to a book called Deep Economy, which examines problems with both our country's and our world's health, ranging from environmental issues to the decline in happiness among Americans in the face of ever-increasing wealth. I won't take the time right now to quote the book (except to mention my favorite statistic so far: 12% of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah's wife), but it's worth examining the idea of sustainability in my life and the lives of my friends and family.
For me, among other things that I already have and take for granted, sustainability means frisbees, sno cones (or, rather, Bahama Shaved Ice), and some type of hobby. I've decided that regular exercise with a Thursday night frisbee group is an investment worth making, as is the occasional indulgence in frozen water and syrup, as infantile as that may sound. A hobby, however, has been much harder to come by. I posed this question to Sam one night in France (though I asked him for a vice rather than a hobby per se), and though he made a valiant effort we fell asleep before a winning proposition was on the table. I've made little headway in the time since; if you have any ideas, do let me know.
In the meantime, I hope to find a more healthy routine. Who knows, maybe I'll finally start working out regularly once I get back to school, or maybe I'll convince myself to branch out onto new culinary avenues. I just hope I get back into the habit of reading scripture and taking quiet time once a week, since it seems daily meditation is out currently too much to ask. Sustainability is a tricky question for me, but every time I read another chapter in Deep Economy I flash back to this vision in my head of the way the future could go, and though the images are somewhat different, the vision is almost identical in tone to the last scene from Raising Arizona. I don't know, it's kind of nice.