Back to blogging?

I just read my friend Tum's blog and it inspired me to give this a swing again. However, after reading his, I'm not sure I've got anything interesting to say. I can't think of any particular anecdotes or recent peculiarities that sparked a crazy line of thought.

Lately though, I've been writing, and thinking a lot, about poetry. Poetry is something that I grew up with, but not in any major way. When I was home-schooled in third grade, my mom taught me about poetry and made me memorize some poems. I was into the normal boy stuff, I memorized some poems about the Civil War and shorter ones by Edgar Allen Poe. In high school, with everyone else who took American Lit., I learned about various aspects of poetry; rhyme and meter and whatnot. Throughout high school and college (thus far), I have been stricken --from time to time-- with random sparks of verse, only ever a fragment of a poem. If the mood is right, I sit down and try to push it out. Sometimes (again, if the mood is really) right, a satisfying poem will emerge. Many times though, I'm stuck with one or two lines clever phrasing and crap around it.

In this past semester of school, I've been thinking a lot harder about poetry. I joined an online poetry critique "forum" (in the Roman sense). The crowd there are quite strange. Many seem to be middle aged (although anonymity is a selling point of the website, apparently, so it's hard to tell much about any of them). Some are assholes, belittling people trying to get honest feedback, some are people giving honest feedback in the harshest words imaginable, and some are nice old mothers, shocked at some of the disturbing poetry that the online community contributes. In the middle of it, I'm trying to find my voice. After having written lots of groups of lines, some with particular rhyme, some only with emotional spewing, I still don't know what a poem actually is. What makes something a poem, rather than a couple of sentences? Sometimes it's obvious, but sometimes it's not. For example:

1 Is this a

2 poem, just because

3 I spread it over

4 a couple of lines?

5 Or are these sentences

6 that happen to rhyme?

7 I don't know. I

8 hope this isn't a poem.

But compare that with this, who any scholar of poetry would try his best to argue is a poem:

1 seeker of truth

2 follow no path
3 all paths lead where

4 truth is here

What is the difference here? This has been what's puzzling me for the past couple of months. What separates my non-poem from E. E. Cummings' Seeker of Truth? As a student of semantics, this is particularly interesting for me. I've spent the past three or so years diving into a theory that I had no idea existed four years ago. The theory's central tenet of belief is that of compositionality: the meaning of a sentence is composed of the meanings of its individual parts. I think it's an extremely cool question: how do we understand that other people mean, with only the words they use, in the order they use them? If you believe that I've spent three years making sense of the idea (and trying to make it work), and that others have been doing so for thousands of years (e.g. Socrates dabbled in semantics), you'll also believe that's it's not an easy question to answer. But we only study normal sentences and discourse (a few sentences in a row). If I told my advisor that I wanted to do a paper on poetry, he'd probably slap me.

But why? What makes a poem special? Why can't we describe it in our theory of semantics? One thing that I believe to be true about poems is that often their meaning --the message they carry-- is much more than just the meaning of its parts. Poems seem to elicit stronger emotions than every day speech. In fact, I imagine that you wont be moved at all after reading this blog post (except by the E. E. Cummings poem, maybe). A poet (which I wouldn't dare call myself) has the gift to bring up these emotions by choosing only certain, very specific, perhaps the only right word for the situation, and then find other words that work with this word in a unique way. Rhyming must elicit some pleasant emotion, and so must a rhythmic meter. Its how you say a poem that makes it good. Still though, we're humans and poems are the output of some linguistic mechanism anyways. An effective poem must be recognizable by a native speaker, and that reader of the poem has to connect the particular words to particular meanings, and combine those meanings in a particular way. The same (adult) reader could probably tell the difference between a poem and a non-poem, and this begs the question: how?

I think if someone knew, we'd have a theory of poetry as developed as semantics which is hardly developed at all, but at least it's a start. If we had a theory, anyone could be a poet, assuming they learned how to apply the theory correctly. But when human emotions are in play, there's a lot of variables that we don't yet know much about. I think poetry is an interesting place to start.

Dependency

I realized lately that my emotions are more dependent on everyone else's than on my own feelings. I can't be happy when I'm alone, and I can't be completely sad when someone's there with me. I need company and I need assurance than people that are with me actually want to be there with me. I've found out that if I don't have these, then I get weak and can't function until I gain back some confidence. A long time ago, I learned that what made me happy was making other people happy. It's sorta selfish the way it works out. I love entertaining people and making them laugh, but if I'm failing at it, then I'm not happy. So when I do end up making people happy, it seems like it's only doing it for myself. But, I never made the connection that I needed those people to make me happy. It's similar to when somoene around me is sad, and I get sad automatically. I don't want other people to be unhappy, and I'm unhappy until they feel better. This makes me entirely dependent on other people, and I'm starting to dislike it.

I'm starting to feel like I can't count on myself for anything and that if left alone I'll just freak out or something or get super depressed. I think my problem with neediness is bigger than I originally thought, and I'm kinda scared about what to do. One person can and does solve all my problems, but I can't expect her to do it all the time, or maybe even not at all. I don't know. I can't write anymore.

Google Chrome may be the best thing that's ever happened to me:

It's a bold title, I know. Even the length of the title is daunting at first glance. It offers some weight to the following post, it says "this is what I'm going to talk about, and it's very important."

Google Chrome? Life changing? The statment is also bold. But never have I been so behind a product as this. Those of you who know me, know that I have been a fan of Google for a while now. You may have heard me talk about how my brother Geoff lived on the same floor with Larry Page (yes, he was really born in Lansing) at UofM their freshman year. So that's my little connection, it's not a big one, but it was enough to make me prefer Google's search engine over Looksmart's. If you're not familiar with looksmart.com, it's an old search engine, so that tells you how long ago I've been using the internet (man, that make's me feel old for some reason). The company that you'll find on that site has come a long way since it's beginnings as an internet search engine.

Either way, that's not the point here. The point is, I like Google a lot, and I've been liking it for a long time here. I hope you can see that I'm starting to build a defense for my bold title. I was happy with just the Google website, you know, just the search. I liked that it found me a lot of relevant results, what I was looking for, and was easy to use. In fact, now that I think of it, I remember looking for Pokemon games I could download to floppy disks rather than going to a store and buying them. And yeah, I've been a nerd for a long itme too. And I liked that if the Google search just wasn't cutting it, I could always go to an advanced search, which is extremely helpful if you know what you're doing. By the way, do any of you ever use the I'm Feeling Lucky button on Google? Hmm, I never do, I guess I'm never that confident. I mean, if I'm using a search engine, and I'm that confident in what I'm looking for that I hit the I'm Feeling Lucky button, then why am I using a search engine? I mean, it seems like I know what I'm looking for, so I don't need to search. I don't know, maybe I should use that button more. After all, Google did send me a t-shirt after Austin Ellsworth emailed Google and asked if he could have any free things. It's a fun hobby to begin with, you look around the internet, find any company you want, email them and just ask. Most don't respond, a lot just say no, but some actually say "sure, why not". Heinz sent me a like 4 little pins that you can put on sweaters or something, and like 2 pens. It was cool. But Austin hit the jackpot, Google sent him a T-shirt and some cool pens and a note, right to his house (within a week!). So I was like nuh-uh, and I emailed them too. They sent me the same shirt and the same pens and a hand-written note that said "Hey Alex, We're glad you like Google so much. Tell your friend Austin we said 'Hi.'" It was crazy.

[[Random Cool Link]] A cool think about Google is they make caches of the internet, and they save them. You can actually search a cached copy of the internet in 2001, it's amazing how much Wikipedia has changed, huh? Facebook is old too!

Anyways, then Google came out with email (they came out with a lot of other shit too, but Gmail was the next big seller of Google for me). I had been using Hotmail, under some stupid name for a long time and I was ready to grow up, right when Gmail hit beta. You need an invite to get in, and fortunately I got one, because it was a lot harder to get one back then. It had everything I liked in an email service, it held a lot of emails, and it was free.

After using Gmail a while, along with other a host of other Gmail products like Google Maps, Google Earth (who hasn't used that!?), Google SketchUp, and...Blogger, I was thinking how awesome it would be for Google to come out with a browser. Lo and behold, Google did exactly this, and a lot soon than I expected. They released Google Lynx, faster, better cleaner than the rest. Unfortunately it was an April Fools joke. But oh well, they came out with Chrome not much later.

So giving me a browser when that's what I wanted was enough to make it a life changing event? Of course not. Google Chrome, like Gmail, had all the features I liked in my browser (Firefox at the time), it was simpler, better and, as we've come to expect: free. Some of the differences between Chrome and Firefox are simple, some of the differences are drastic, and everything, in my opinion, is easier on Chrome. "Everything?" you may ask. Everything. Otherwise it wouldn't be the best thing that's happened to me. The first time I excitedly opened it I said "Oh no..." it was so empty. I thought, "Where's all the stuff I need?" But, as is common with new browser releases, the first page that opens after installation is a sort of help page, or 'here's what's going on with this browser.' I read through that, as you might expect me to by this point in my dedication to Google. And as I used the interesting features that I read about, I realized all that shit I thought I needed, I never used anyways. So far, I've never had to look for something in Chrome that I needed, and not been able to find it. I could spend a long time listing all the shit I like about it, but you could look it up yourself, and I imagine that if you're still reading by now, you're wondering when I'm going to wrap this thing up. Now.

Fuck Philosophy

Ok, so I'm a senior now, and I needed two cognate departments so I could graduate; one of them has to be outside of the College of Arts and Letters, the other may be within my college. Ideally I would have taken something like computer science and engineering and statistics, but the problem is that I neede 12 credits from each of them in one school year (2 semesters) and the way their classes are set up, I wouldn't have been able to fulfill those requirements (what with prerequisites etc.). So, I was stuck with taking Anthropology as one, which isn't terrible since I've got a lot of credits there already for some reason. I still needed one outside of the CAL so I decided on Philosophy, mainly because it was late to sign up for classes as it was, and PHL had a bunch that I could get into and be able to get my 12 credits. I figured, what's philosophy, just a bunch of squares thinking about shit and giving their opinions, sorta like I do on my blog, so it shouldn't be too hard right?

Well, I've always had this opinion about philosophy, that it was sorta a waste of time. It was people thinking about more or less irrelevant shit, and trying to convince other people that their way of thinking about it was more accurate or appropriate. As a man who's been based in the scientific method, I never saw any validity to philosophy. As far as science goes, I always thought that it was an unfair and wasteful use of otherwise good brain power, power that could be devoted to actually doing stuff. I mean there are ways to think about the world where accomplishments are made, where results are found.

Even before I started taking these philosophy classes, I had a little respect for the philosophers of old: Aristotle, Socrates, Plato etc. and I really had an open mind about philosophy. I mean, I tried to open it up on the first day of classes. Maybe I had been wrong, maybe this stuff was actually a valid pursuit of the mind. No, fuck that. It's not. Not only has it been shown to me that there is no greater way to waste a brain than to pursue philosophy, but also it's been shown that I don't need to respect those old fuckbags of yore who spent their time thinking. Sure, back then, 2500 years ago, they didn't have the advantage of technology and previous scientific and ethical inquiry, so maybe there was nothing else they could do but just think about it. Wrong, there were people even back then, like Pythagoras who, rather than saying "Hey maybe this is what's going on." he said "Oh, let's figure out whats going on by using what math we have." and bam, Pythagorean theorem! Results man, that's what I want and big man captain P proved that it was possible even waaay back then.

But my biggest beef is with the later philosophers; the guys we're dealing with in my Existentialism class. What a waste! Guys like Jean-Paul Sartre, Hegel, Kierkegaard and shit-for-brains like those. I have the advantage of going into this class without any previous formal philosophical background, so I can see this stuff that we're being fed with an untainted view. I'm listening to these words that my Italian-borne, French professor is spewing and thinking "What?! Seriously, is this what's being said?" My main problem isn't with the subject of what we're talking about, although I'm not too fond of that either. I'll get back to that. What I hate is how they talk about what they're talking about. Their words are so whispy that they're not really saying anything. These are some exact notes that I took down:

Kierkegaard presents his philosophy as a dialectical progression of existential stages. The first is the aesthetic which gives way to the ethical, which gives way to the religious.

What does that mean? "Gives way," are you kidding me? They've got ways of expressing stuff that could be expressed in a clear and concise manner (even though what they're expressing is neither clear nor concise) but they choose to do it in this philisophical stuff that they think sounds deep and well-thought-out.

Ok, so whatever, they can talk about it how they want. I'm sure someone could make the same arguments about how linguists talk. In fact, I'll make the argument for you. This is an excerpt from a book I'm reading about formal semantics.

The operations F2-F5 each take a CN as an argument and syncategorematically introduce a different determiner, combinging it with the CN to yield a T.

The difference, I would argue is that although, to the untrained reader, both the philosophical writing, and the linguistic writing are more or less unintelligible, the goals of each are drastically different. Philosophy is great for writing about what you think of some random thought, or some random aspect of the world, but little else. Linguistics has a goal, which is to understand the way that the human brain processes a very real and tangible (maybe) part of every day life: language.

Philosophers argue about what it means to exist, what it means to be ethical. Maybe it's useful but, I'll put it this way: when they come to a conclusion about how to exist the best way, how to be the most ethical, what's gonna happen? Nothing. Someone's gonna say, Ok, but how about this is more ethical? It's all based on their world-view. When Linguistics comes to a conclusion, and believe me it has come to a couple in it's day, we say "Oh shit! So that's what's happening when people have speech impediments, this is what's going on in someone's brain when they are diagnosed with aphasia, here's a way we can medically help them." It happens. If you don't believe me, look up an article in Neuroscience or Neurolinguistics about aphasia and see what sort of tangible (yes, actually tangible, you can see where language is being processed and, assuming you have the technology, you can see where memories are stored etc.). I dunno, I'm definitely biased here. But what's the use for arguing about something that has no definite answer? Whatever.

God is Cockblocking Me

It's been a while since I updated this mofo, but I got an idea today in church of all places, and recent events in the life of my friend provoked me to rethink my idea and I felt the urge to write it out. You see, my friend Tum is a dude. He told me tonight that he had a party and made out with some chick, and then she returned tonight and they did it some more. It's not very unusual, I don't think, but it's an event that seems to elude me at all costs.

I've got a lot of time to think in my life. In fact, I like to think of my brain as some sort of supercomputer (whether it is or not) because the amount of time I spend thinking leads me to believe that I can make like gillions of calculations all the time. Anyways that's not really relevant, except for the fact that my thinking all the time provides me with all sorts of plausible explanations as to why I can't find a fucking girl for myself. I'd wager that I spend a good 2/3rds of my time and thinking capacity on any given day on this subject. I'm always looking at chicks, like any other guy, thinking Hmm, she's cute, she could be the one.

But, I never come to any conclusions when I'm trying to figure out what I've been doing wrong. Believe me, I've gone through any idea I can think of, and while I can't be sure what it is, nothing I've thought of so far would rule me out as a candidate for a boyfriend. In fact, I think I'd make a pretty fucking kickass boyfriend. When I was in high school, my self-esteem was dropped. I came from a different school, didn't know many people and had some acne. Let's start with the first, I didn't know people, which meant more importantly (in my eyes) that people didn't know who I was, and if they had more exposure to me, they'd figure out how sweet I was. Next, the acne. I gave that a lot of credit for my troubles for a long time, until I realized that people with acne find some pretty fucking awesome people, despite it. Then in 10th grade, I was hit with some devastating news. Matt Rathbun jokingly made a comment about how big my nose was. I kid you not, I had never even thought about it. I always looked at myself from the front, and when I got home that day, I went to the mirror and sure enough, I've got a schnoz. Oh well, I'm more comfortable with that now, and I realized it's not as big a deal as I originally thought. So what else? Let's see. I dunno, I can be annoying I guess, I admit that my personality and humor can get a bit grating at time, but I also think that I'm generally in control of it and am at the very least, aware of when I'm getting annoying.

So, if you agree to discount these flaws, like I have, you can start to see why I'm confused with my current (and ongoing) predicament. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I'm gonna go ahead and list some things that I like about myself; some things that I think would be traits that a girl would like in a boyfriend. First of all, my sense of humor is my favorite thing about me. I think it makes me a fun person to be around, fun to talk to and overall is the makings for a good time to be had by all. Next, I'm fairly intelligent. I've always been smart, as long as I can remember, and I think it's the biggest contribution to my wit and humor. So far so good eh? I can go on! I think most importantly, I'm a nice fucking guy. I really am. I realized semi-recently that I rarely think of what I want first. I've always been a pleaser, doing what I think will make other people happy. People have told me that it's not fair to myself, and I've got to do for me more than I do. But I like the fact that I put other people first, and I like the fact that I'm not as important as everyone else. I think it's a good trait.

So what the fuck man!? I'm not as good looking as I'd like to be, but I've come to the conclusion that I can't use that as an excuse I mean, I wouldn't consider myself ugly. Uglier people than I have been much more successful at finding a person for them than I have. I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm nice. Aren't those like the big three? Maybe it's the girls I'm going after. I mean, if I'm going after them, I obviously like them and think they're worth pursuing, but can I really have that bad of judgment? There are still very few examples of girls where I've been like "What the hell was I thinking?" The conclusion I came to in Church today, was that God was indeed cockblocking me. Yeah, you heard right. What might be otherwise good attempts at reasoble targets have been put to rest by none other than the big man Himself. I dunno if this is a substantial epiphany or just another attempt to rationalize something that I don't understand. There could be a couple explanations for this divine cockblock. One is that, shit, I just haven't found someone good enough for me. Another is that maybe I am supposed to become a priest, which has been something that has been tapping at me for years. But I dunno, I don't want to be a priest. I want a wife and kids and stuff, not to mention the fact that I've done some fairly unpriestly things in my day.

Whatever the answer is, I want a fucking girlfriend and I've been thus far deprived. Any ideas guys?

End of Semester Update

So, one more semester, one more year under my belt. This semester sucked. I had a Computer Science class that totally fucked me. I blame the professor actually, because I know I understand programming, and I know I could have gotten C++ if it was presented better. I'm pretty sure I failed that class, but then again, I only half-assed it for like the past 2 months. I would have put more effort in but I had another grad-level Linguistics class that took most of my time. Oh well, I probably got a 3.5 in that class, a 3.0 in another one and a 3.5 in my archaeology class. No, I didn't meet Indiana Jones, yes I'm pissed about it. Compared to last semester, I did much worse. For some reason, I don't give a shit though. I spent almost this entire semester with my mind on a particular girl, so in a way it kinda messed me up, but in every other way it was better, so I can't complain.

I don't have any plans for the summer yet, except that I want to DJ some gigs. If you need a pair of kickass DJs, let me know. We're ready. I need to get a job to start saving up for my rent next year because it's a little more than it was this year. Wait...what the fuck am I doing? You guys don't give a shit about any of this. I guess I'm just bored. Whatever, piss off.

My Tattoo

My neighbor, my roommate's girlfriend and I were talking about tattoos. My neighbor Brooke already has a tattoo and she wants more. My roommates girlfriend doesn't have any, so I don't need to say her name. I actually didn't need to say Brooke's because this is my blog, so it's about me. All about me in fact. I've joked about what tattoos I'd get before, stuff like the Death Star, perhaps Alderaan on my other shoulder getting shot by the super laser. Something like that. I do like Star Wars after all, but enough to get a tattoo? That's a big statement, and not one I'm sure I could back up my whole life. I was telling them, I don't know what tattoo I'd get because there's not anything that I think I'm going to like for ever. The only thing I could think of that I know I'm going to like forever is my dick, but that's already on my body. I don't think I need a picture of it somewhere else on my body. It's like, hey, check this out...I bet you can't guess where the real one is.

But then I got thinking, why not get a tattoo of something that'll be helpful...something that I could use as a reference. Maybe I could get the Bill of Rights tattooed somewhere, so if I get pulled over I could cite it. But there are other things that are more useful I think. Little friendly reminders that could be of use until I'm pretty old. One I think that I could use a lot would be "2 Minute Warning" on my forearm. Why this? Well, how many times have I been close to being done and need to let someone know?! "Alex! Hurry up, we've got to go!" BAM 2 Minute Warning, I'll be there in a minute. Brooke was talking about how tattoos are addictive: if you get one, you always want more. I think if I had the "2 Minute Warning" tattoo it would be most useful in conjunction with my next tattoo:

What the fuck is up with sports?

All right, sorry for the delay. I'm sitting here waiting for my class to start, and I figured, I have a half hour to burn (I should be reading but, meh). I hope my title grabbed you. I meant it too! Dude, fuck sports. What am I some sport-hating stuck up son of a bitch? I don't know. I just think our society places far too much importance on sports and athletics, and I suppose actors and movie stars etc.

Please, don't get me wrong, I enjoy an occasional sporting match on the television, or go out and watch a movie in the cinema theatre. And really, I don't even mind if you really like sports and say, watch all the games you can see on TV (why was I all in like 1920s mode earlier? wtf?), or even buy season tickets to your favorite team. By the way, when you write "wtf" do you need the question mark or is it implied? Sometimes, I'm saying wtf and I don't even mean it as a question. Like "You ate all my cheese?! Wtf?" Anyways, my real beef with sports these days is all the fucking attention it gets outside of the actual game. It just bugs me. I like watching baseball for example, but tell me why anyone needs to watch fucking 2 hours of commentary and recaps after the game you just watched!? Fuck that. Sports are not that important.

Also, I guess I just don't understand why someone from Michigan would root for Arizona when Arizona is playing New Mexico. That's a bullshit example, I know but the point is, sports teams have locations associated with them to bolster local pride (or national in the case of the Olympics). High schools have sports teams so people from Eaton Rapids have a reason to like Eaton Rapids and hate Charlotte. Will brought up a fair point, that sure, you've got relatives somewhere so you can root for that team. That's fine, but I refuse to believe that half of this fucking country has relatives in New York, and the other half has relatives in New England (That's not even a place! wtf?).

What really gets me is the fact that some people want the Supreme Court to get in and regulate for drugs. Fuck that! Like those dudes aren't busy. They've got better shit to do than keep an eye on some bulked up meat-heads (I'm jealous) sticking needles full of growth-goo in their asses. They want the legislature to pass laws for sports! Why not use the time to pass a marijuana law that benefits some people eh? Besides just wasting time, I really hate the idea of using our government to regulate our sports. This brings me to my final point.

Sports are around for ENTERTAINMENT! That's it. Those sweaty ass-holes run around pushing each other so I can sit on my couch, or in the stands and cheer. I don't think they should get paid nearly as much as they do, nor get nearly as much attention as they do. In the Roman times, entertainers were the lowest of the low. All their job was to do was to make me happy. Think about it. An athlete doesn't provide a product. An athlete doesn't teach me something, I don't get smarter. I could even argue (I'm not going to) that athletes don't even provide a service.