Mightier than the Sword

From the Inside Looking Out
September 26, 2005

I got an email today from a friend who's making a documentary about radiotelescopes and the search for extra-terrestrial life. I’m going to help her write the narration and voiceovers once the filming is complete. (She’s even mentioned, wistfully, that Jodie Foster does a lot to support SETI-related projects, and maybe she’d be willing to sign on. Jodie Foster reading something *I* wrote??? How cool would that be??) But here's what Keri said:

The camera's reserved, airplane tickets are bought! You are all MOST WELCOME to be there. Since we're still securing funding, travel is "at risk." But if you're willing to risk it, don't have plans, and are up for the travel, come on out!! Nothing like spending the day in a hidden bunker in Ohio searching for aliens. Seriously.

Wile E. Coyote Ugly
October 9, 2004

One of the things about relationships that I think is most flawed is the lack of more direct karma. We could really use some kind of system that includes the six-month follow-up interview, like a customer satisfaction survey. If you think about it, whether that special someone comes up with an innovative new way to strangle the optimism from your soul, or just underscores preexisting insecurities by recreating unfortunate situations, he or she never really knows how much damage you've suffered as a result of the relationship. Isn't that a pity? That honor falls to your next interest, be it a fleeting sacrificial lamb, a conscious rebound, or a wonderful person with whom you could have been genuinely happy, if only you hadn't been burdened by unresolved pain and distrust. We carry it like an invisible torch, passing it on to the next person after being unceremoniously thwacked in the head with it ourselves. Wouldn't it be better if we had to experience each bright, shiny new emotional issue we give someone?

I'm beginning to feel like the Wile E. Coyote of dating. I keep thinking, "THIS time I've got it!" This time I'm smarter, I'm more careful, I've got just the thing. Now I know how that Road Runner thinks.
These rocket-powered rollerskates are the key to my long-awaited success...
This explosive bird seed, this will do the trick...
If I just repaint the road's centerline to go straight into this rock and paint a tunnel entrance on there...
Now that I have ACME shoes with giant springs on the bottoms, now I can finally keep up...

I keep trying to improve my game, yet I always end up plummeting off of the cliff or getting klunked on the head by an anvil or being squashed by a giant boulder. I'm 27- isn't it about time for the learning curve to flatten out? Why, oh why do I keep sticking my head in the cannon to see why it didn't go off?

Conservation of angular momentum
March 31, 2004

I was just spinning in my office chair, thinking about how extending my arms slows me down and pulling them close to my body speeds me up, and I was wondering whether mathematics is the underlying structure of the entire universe, waiting for us to get smart enough to figure it all out, or if we just THINK we're clever when really we just designed our mathematical language based on our observations of the world, thereby ensuring that we could manipulate numbers and measurements to the point that they describe what we see and seem to predict the world's behavior, such as the spinning office chair and the inverse relationship between radius and revolutions per second. Then I increased my radius by sticking out my leg and promptly whacked it on the wall of my cube, bringing me to a sudden halt and nearly causing me to fall out of my chair. Energy released by the sound waves, the jolt my body felt, the way the cube wall shuddered... Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: leg against wall, wall against leg... inertia and momentum, friction in the bearings of the chair...

But what principle or equation can explain why it made me laugh so hard? Is my sense of humor an anomaly of the universe's rules?

Road less travelled
October 17, 2003

Had half-priced margaritas at Chi-Chi's with friends from work. They were both involved in the Greek systems at their respective schools, so I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation. I emailed Krissy about it later and mentioned that I'm not sorry I wasn't involved in a sorority, but that I do kind of regret that I can't instantly relate to someone else's college experience the way Sue Anne and Jim could. I tried telling them about blading out in front of MSEE at 3 a.m. and the community of skaters that I knew even if I never talked to them, but they didn't really have any idea what I was talking about. It kind of seems like once you decide to go your own way, it's hard to get back on the highway without feeling like you sold yourself out.

The Paton Saint of Lost Causes?
October 13, 2003

"There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly as love." - Erich Fromm

Where does that come from? The wellspring of hope, I mean. I place the blame squarely on Hollywood. Too much "Last of the Mohicans" has raised the collective female expectations. We keep looking for Nathanial, and we keep finding Duncan. (Ok, maybe that's not fair- at the end Duncan did save the day.)

I suppose we all put up with the hurt feelings and dashed hopes and mangled trust over and over because the payoff is, by all accounts, worth the effort.

My complete lack of AcuMEN
July 29, 2003

I've been talking to Krissy a lot about my most recent crush, and we've come to the realization that boys are dumb. She also said it sounds like this guy would be a hard guy to have a crush on because I never know what's really going on with him. It's extremely hard to drag any information out of him, but I don't know if that's a function of my personality or what. In an email, Krissy wrote, "There are a lot of layers to his onion."

So true. And everyone knows onions make you cry.

Wisdom via Discover Card
May 24, 2003

Found three cards at a store called Earthly Delights, all featuring quotes by Rumi:

"Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises."

"Every object, every being is a jar full of delight.
Be a connoisseur."

"The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me."

I also bought a magnet that says, "She liked her men like her cocktails: Neat, but with a twist." Great stuff in that store.

A gentle reminder about helping others
Janurary 1, 2003

Before we met up with some other people in Chinatown, Krissy and Sanjeev and I stopped in to Barnes & Noble. They were both buying something so I was just hanging around on the other side of the cash registers. There was an older woman at one of the registers trying to buy something with piles of dirty coins scattered all over the counter- mostly pennies, from what I could see. The cashier was also an older women, in fact they looked to be about the same age, but the cashier's hair was carefully pulled up in a loose bun, her earlobs glittered with diamonds, and she had Ralph Lauren glasses hanging around her neck. She was visibly uncomfortable as she stood in front of the customer with tangled, partially dreadlocked hair and layer upon layer of mismatched jackets and coats.

The cashier scanned the coins and told the woman that she didn't have enough, and that she needed to find two quarters. The customer looked at the coins, and then back at the cashier. She might have murmured something to the cashier, but I wasn't close enough to hear. The cashier shifted her weight again and looked at the line of people waiting to check out behind the velvet rope and said, "I'm sorry, unless someone..." The people in line were out of earshot.

Finally the cashier said shortly, "I'm sorry, I can't help you," and strode over to the next cash register, calling out for the next person in line. I dug out two quarters and walked up behind the woman as she was gathering her piles of pennies, asked if she needed two quarters, and dropped them in palm of her fingerless glove before she answered. She looked a little startled, looked back and forth between the quarters and me and then breathed a quiet "thank you." I wished her a happy new year and walked away. The cashier came back a few minutes later and asked if she was all set, and I made myself busy and feigned interest in some discounted paperbacks. When the woman turned to leave, clutching her purchase, she had tears in her eyes and as she passed me she nodded abruptly and said thank you again. I smiled and said you're welcome again, and she hurried out.

For the rest of the night I was thinking about her, and how fifty cents to me was nothing, and to her it obviously meant a lot. And as we were cruising down Lakeshore Drive on the way home that night, I was looking through Krissy's moonroof at all the huge condo highrises with lake views and bellhop service, and it all seemed so bizarre that some people should have so much, and other people should have so little. And how they all live in the same city but they move through completely different worlds. I'm not really into New Year's resolutions because it seems kind of arbitrary to rededicate myself to something because of what day it is, but I sort of took that incident and the introspection that followed as a nudge for me to find more ways to help.