The thoughts that were thunk and the goings on of my life.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

You Gotta Grow to Know

There are some things (actually, you might argue most things) that you don't really fully comprehend when you are first exposed to them. A great example of this for me is the movie It's a Wonderful Life. As a kid I used to be forced to watch this movie each year, an event which I dreaded. I didn't care about some random dumb movie that's really old and only for fuddy-duddies. For some reason though I watched it a year ago over Christmas and was riveted to the TV. Little did I know the treasures that were contained within this slightly cheesy story. By the end I was near tears (but I'm a man, I don't have tear ducts!).

Today I was listening to the radio and a similar occurrence happened. I heard the song Everybody's Free (The Sunscreen Song) by Baz Luhrmann, and for the first time I didn't want to change channels. I listened to what was said, and while I never understood it before I think I do now. The music part is pretty dumb, but the words from the speech are some of the greatest words I think I've heard in awhile. Without further adieu I give you this small nugget:


Baz Luhrmann: Everybody's Free (Sunscreen Speech Song)
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance -- even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.

*****************************************************************

Get to know your parents; you’ll never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;

live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: price will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful who advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.
Source

Adendum
I found out today (2005.03.01), thanks to Snopes.com where all of this stuff actually came from.

-Btw, I highly recommend going to Snopes if anybody EVER sends you an email that you think is either strange or fabulous (such as the Bonsai Kitten emails).-

Turns out this song is actually from a writer for the Chicago Tribune named Mary Schmich and you can find her column (and others related to it) here, but don't click around too much or they'll try to make you sign up.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Observations

So tonight I went out to 6th Street here in Austin and I did what I normally do...observe. Personally I find it fascinating that thousands of people walk down to a certain strip of bars and then leave a few hours later. I like noting the behavior of people, and I think if I were into environmental study I would study the environment of so-called social scenes. Because here's how things usually go.

A group of people gets together and decides that they want to go out. First they go to one bar, that one is always slightly empty. So they go around in a circle, no real reason, just a general circle. Some comment is made about the bar. Guys talk about the hot girls (or lack thereof) that they want to &^#$ and the girls talk about...whatever it is that girls talk about. Everybody buys one drink, they drink it, feel silly and move on to the next bar.

Second bar, the cycle is repeated: go in, look around, comment to friends, get drink, stand around a bit longer, then leave.

Third bar people stay a bit longer, spend less time talking to one another, more time surveying. If you're a guy in the bar you begin to scope for who you are going to pick up (aka harass). If you're a girl, you do the same thing, just more subtly.

Finally, you try to find somebody in the third bar to go dancing with you, and if that doesn't work, then you just find a small group of people while walking down the street. Keep in mind they can't be too creepy or sober. The final stop is the 'club' where the dancing is done. This is where any real 'production' is done. Really all you have to do to get a girl is be the last person she dances with. All you have to do to get a guy is...be a girl and hope you're cute enough. Then everybody begins to practice humping, the music gets intense for a while, you notice the place begins to clear out, you decide whether or not they are worth going home with (probably aren't) so you then go home with your friends...the same group you went out with.

In the course of one night you really don't meet anybody, everybody is in their own circle of friends and very little is accomplished, but it's okay, cause the alcohol will make you forget how pointless the endeavor is and you'll most likely repeat it the next day/weekend.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Takin' Some Hits



I've been tracking my blog for about a month now and after reading another friend's blog I would like to fill in the 238 of you that have visited my site about some of the unique searches that hit my site:

football tyson wallis (2)

life's a garden dig it (1-2)

play station (13)

shoppıng ın turkey (3)

"i may not have gone where i intended to go, but i think i have ended up where i intended to be" meaning (3)

And I would like to say proudly that I'm the only hit on yahoo for:
"dirty chewbacca"

Sunday, February 20, 2005

With or Without You

The moment comes in each one of our lives when we are forced to make some long awaited choices that we never wanted to make. Whether it be an actual choice or perhaps the choice is forced upon us and we must merely choose to keep moving on. Every one of us at some time, and probably many times, choose what we keep with us and what must go.

This weekend I had to go to my mom's house to pick up the boxes of things that were mine. Seeing as my former step-father decided that we should no longer have a place to call home, it meant that my mom had to go in and get everything lest it be thrown away. In the process she came upon boxes of my things, some long forgotten, that had to be put back in my possession. But that's where the choice came in to play. What are the things that I still hold close, still want to remember? On the other hand, where do you draw the line? What possessions can keep making the journey thru life with me, and which ones are better left as being merely a memory? If you think about it though, all of the things that we retain which serve no practical purpose are simply the urns of our memories. They contain within them a spirit of some treasured emotion, time, or place. In each of those memories though we define who we are by which of those items we choose to bring with us on the rest of the journey of our life.

For me it was difficult. Do I bring the Pound Puppy that sentineled me each night? How many notebooks from those countless courses I've taken over the years are necessary? What knowledge has been lost that is still contained therein? Should I keep the baseball cards that embodied the images of my heroes? That old hockey stick, the adventure book, the pictures of that embarrassing moment we want to forget, the love notes from an old girlfriend, the pictures from that time at camp, the old Tonka truck that used to race around the house...each one had a memory, each one had a place in my life.

Sifting thru those boxes that smelled of dust and insulation I realized what I hold dear, what I can live without, how much I'm willing to put up with for sake of a memory, and where I draw the line in deciding what I can and can't live without. While all of the things in those boxes are just threadbare animals or yellowed pages to anyone else they can have so much more meaning to us. We can really define who we are by what we cannot let go of.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Are They Too Old/Young for Me?

Let me start by saying I think Valentine's Day is one of the lamest days on the entire Gregorian Calendar. Okay, it's cool that people want to share their affection towards one another, it's great that people like the color red, I can even forgive people thinking that a heart is a nice pretty shape instead of a lump of muscle or the fact that people think swans are nice loving birds even though they are mean and angry. But one thing I can't look past is how over commercialized everything is. Does anybody really want to buy The Notebook on DVD? No. Or worse the DJs this morning that had a wedding ceremony planned and were trying to force this guy to propose to his girlfriend. Seriously people, that's just wrong! I don't need to buy a Lexus this Valentines, I don't need to run out and get a diamond tennis bracelet to "Tell her that I love her," I don't need to listen to the greatest romantic hits of all time, I don't want a blanket, funny balloons, a new washing machine, the best HD TV setup, or any of that other crap. C'mon people, just tell the person that you love them and prove it by not just spending your life thinking about what you want...do something for them and don't just do it today!

But enough ranting, let's have a little fun. So here is an issue that plagues people particularly once they leave the bubble containing only 18-22 year olds; which most people call college. For those in the real world the thoughts cross our mind, how old are they? Should I be going for that? Is that even legal? Yes it's sad but first off girls are hard to figure out. In the words of the sage Chris Rock, "If she says she's 26, and looks 16, she's 12. If she says she's 26, and looks 26, she's damn near 40." Alas some of us need a less ambiguous gauge for how to tell so, courtesy of the guys around me at work, I bring you.

Mathematical Solution to Find Out If You Should Date Them:
//Formula applies only to those out of college and without children
int ItsCool = 1;
int ItsUnCool = 0;
boolean IsItCool;

int HisAge;
int HerAge;

HisAge = prompt('What is his age');
HerAge = prompt('What is her age');

If
{
(HisAge)/2 + 7 >= (HerAge)
AND
(HisAge)*11/10 =< (HerAge)
Then (IsItCool = ItsCool)
else
(IsItCool = UnCool)
}
return IsItCool;
end



Example A
Question: Let's say I am 24. What ages can I date?

24/2 + 7 >= 19 AND 24*11/10 =< 25.3

Answer: Anybody between 19 and 25.3 years old.

Example B
Question: If I'm at my physical peak at 28 who can I date?

28/2 + 7 >= 21 AND 28*11/10 =< 30.8

Answer: Anybody between 21 and 31 years old.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

The Adventures of Link

Links:
Greatest Article Ever

Flash Player Randomness

Not really much to talk about. This week I'm only puting in 40 hours and I'm trying to get at least 9 hours of sleep. Kinda cramps my social life, but my body really needs it. In fun news I got my second achievement bar in my karate class, soon I'll have a new belt and it's only up from there.

Oh yeah, and my sister just got engaged, so if anybody knows good places to get married that are outdoors in Austin let me know.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

It Seems Like Such Fun Until You Lose What You Had Won

The funny thing about being a boy is that our whole lives we're told not to have emotions. Not saying that any particular person has told me this, but everything in our society has said, "Be a man don't [blank]." Where 'blank' = cry, worry, get angry, look so sad, or let-it-get-to-ya. So we continue on in this state where we all try to lock out emotions about what's happening to us, what we really think about issues or even what it is that we truly like. With all of these things going for us it is funny that while I have trained my whole life to be a rather emotionless being the fact is that there is one thing that can simply send me for a loop. Girls. The one thing most guys complain about with girls is that they're too emotional, but if we're honest with ourselves they are the one thing that can truly evoke emotions in our own lives. All the defenses, all of the learned behaviors are nothing compared to the anger of another man having hurt a girl you like, the fear that lurks when you know you are going to lose them, the elation when you get that one look from the corner of a crush's eye, or the most intense feeling of joy/pain brought on by the one you love. A lifetime can be spent trying to keep those very emotions from surfacing everywhere else in our lives and in one fell swoop she can tear down any of the barricades and expose the heart of the man beneath. Maybe that's why we so long to love them, and at the same time nothing can hurt us more.

Speaking of girls, I also learned an important lesson this weekend. I like to tease people for things I make up in my head. Usually there's no shred of truth to them, so I don't have to worry about hurting the person in any way, shape or form because they recognize instantly that I'm joking. Well, that gameplan backfired. Evidently I found out something I 'made up' was an actual reality and that when I teased them about it they thought that I knew exactly what was going on. At the end of the day I ended up hurting a friend and didn't even know it until weeks later when I brought up the fact that 'so and so' doesn't really talk to me anymore. Then another friend was kind enough to inform me exactly where I screwed up. So, from now on no more teasing people for things that might potentially be true...maybe just less teasing in general.

So in order to make ammends I headed to the store to get a card for them so I could apologize, let them know I screwed up unintentionally, and then to try to make amends if that is possible. But out of all the 100 ft long row that was at least 10 rows of cards tall (at 4 in wide each that's about ~3000 different cards) can you guess how many cards were for the section 'Apology'? 2. That's right, 2. I thought it was strange because I know that in any given day I am bound to do at least 5 things I should apologize for, but there are less than 0.1% of cards in the world that allow you to apologize. Am I the only one that screws up sometimes? I'm thinking (and hoping) no. If not, then why so few? I'm thinking that it may relate more to the world that we live in. We're all in such a rush, all so proud of what we have, what we've done, how we're going to do the next big thing...well, we can't even take the time to move out from ourselves and admit that we messed up. I certainly know I have...now I just pray that in the future I am humble enough to admit I have.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

State of the Union

So today I got all excited to watch one of my favorite shows, Alias. But then I turned on the TV and lo and behold it wasn't on. Instead it was the post inaugural State of the Union address. Normally these things bore me to tears. Not cause I don't care about politics, I really do, but because it seems like all to often people make grand public speeches and then are unwilling to back them up during their daily life. Regardless, I was pretty impressed with the whole thing. I really liked the ideas about most of the financial stuff, like spend money more wisely, increase funding for Nuclear Energy and lower energy dependency, and thinking that the whole Iraq election was a good thing.

But then he got to the point of Social Security and I thought it was ridiculous how much opposition he had. I mean c'mon people! The world works on simple economics. There is so much money to be had. If you are taking out more than you are putting into something then it goes in the red...that's bad. If you put in more than you take out then you are saving and can pay for other things...that's good. Social Security simply cannot stay as it is. Frankly I'd be amazed if our taxes don't go up because of it in the near future, but more importantly I think we need to rethink what retirement really is. Too many people think that just because you reach a certain age you're entitled to quitting. This is a wholly modern concept and one that I think is flawed. People should keep working in some capacity for their entire lives. It gives them a sense of purpose and direction in their lives. We gotta fix SS soon otherwise it's going to put our whole country out of whack.

But on to the things I'm not too sure about. I would like to preface this with I like Bush as a person, but I think some of his ideas are close-minded and I wish the Dems had a better candidate last election. What's this business though of saying we need to cut spending? Seriously, this administration has increased spending like crazy...definitely a case of not practicing what they preach.

Statistics are always manipulated: 2.4 million jobs were said to have been created...but how many were lost? What types of jobs were created?

Then there's the social issues. What does it matter what the government calls a marriage? A marriage is a religious ceremony, a sacrament under the catholic church even. The state should only be concerned with who takes care of whom, not what that relationship is. If I want to be legally bound to any random person I should be allowed such, so long as I'm willing to accept the good and the bad of it.

Does Bush really think that higher education is going to be fixed by increasing the size of Pell Grants? I got them during college and I'm really glad of it, they helped out quite a bit when I needed it, but honestly it didn't make or break my decision. I see that it helps a few and that they need to be more, but the real problem is that colleges are becoming under-funded by the states they're in. Unless we are seriously willing to give more to schools (and I'm not just talking research grants) then they are going to keep their trend of being places where only the wealthy can afford to send their kids.

Finally foreign policy. We can't keep saying things like, "We're coming to getcha!" to countries we don't really like and aren't strong enough to beat us up. That just makes those and other countries even more angry at us. Try something like, "We want to work with-ya!" I wish the US would see that the whole reason places like Iran are amassing weapons is that they think we're going to attack them. Although there was one thing I really liked, the whole thing about giving Palestine hundreds of millions of dollars (pitifully little when compared to the amount of money we spend in Iraq though). It's a good thing that we're willing to give them aid, I just hope that it's not like most of our aid ends up being. Aid Ranking of Rich Nations

In closing I was generally pleased by the whole speech, but as with anything in politics it isn't so much what you say but what will get done. My bets are social security stays the same, we keep bullying other nations, and that politicians will keep saying they "support education" (duh) but will actually slowly take funding from it. At least we claim to be wanting what's best in the world though...let's just make our words have some substance and try to follow thru (except those ones about attacking more people...we don't need to prove that to be true).

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

My Fort-night

I know this sounds all immature (and I assure you it is), but today was the most fun I've ever had at work. Now it has nothing to do with how lousy my shift on the phones were, or the fact that I felt stupid all day for not knowing the basic reasoning behind some of the things I do all day...nope, today was made great thanks to Dell and my dead tree friends. You see, our department finally got some new computers (something I'm in dire need of) and while they will be cool, they left behind something even cooler...their boxes! Now some of the people in the department were lame and did such things as break down the boxes so they could have something to move with, but oh no not me. I went down to Home Despot and got me some good old fashioned Duct Tape. Then instead of going home and eating dinner I stayed and with the help of a few friends turned a couple of extra cubicles into a full sized fort! It's awesome, and I'm just hoping that it'll be there in the morning so I can hang out in it and make secret handshakes and hide from my boss. Yes, it'll be good...who knows I might snag a picture of it too so I can post it.

Song of the Weekend Past:
The Blowers Daughter by Damien Rice