It's LoG - from BLAMMO!

The aforementioned LoG pic and the accompanying video / lyrics:

There ya have it, legendary disc of the 1997-98 Rice Ultimate Frisbee B Team. Complete with scuff marks. And now for the real deal...

What rolls down stairs
alone or in pairs,
and over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack,
And fits on your back?
It's Log, Log, Log

It's Log, It's Log.
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's Log, it's Log, it's better than bad, it's good."

Everyone wants a Log
You're gonna love it, Log
Come on and get your Log
Everyone needs a Log
Log Log Log

*whistle*
LOG... FROM BLAMMO

Let's get off Memes ('Cause I just got off yours)

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins: NR

This book focuses on one excellent thesis - that in thinking about evolution, we should focus on the down up perspective as opposed to the up down. Dawkins postulates that evolution began the moment a molecule "learned" to start replicating itself, and any molecule that could ensure its own stability or replicate more reliably than its fellow molecules would "win" and continue on, if only in form, through time. He postulates that the biological organisms that arose around these DNA molecules serve as gene vehicles /survival machines, and that our theories which had at the time of publication (mid 1970s) tended to focus on the survival of biological individuals or as species were misguided. Essentially he claims that the only genes that will survive will be the ones that instill in their "hosts" a better ability to survive and reproduce and pass them on. He terms this facet of evolution the "selfish gene" - not selfish as in consciously concerned with only its own well being, but selfish in that the dominant effects of any gene on its vehicle's phenotype will be those which look as if the gene is behaving selfishly. The term "selfish" actually arises in direct contrast to altruism and is an attempt to resolve the existence of altruism in animals, a seeming paradox when viewed from the top / down organism / species model.

Quickly, any organism that practices pure altruism - that is, self sacrifice for the benefit of other organisms - would be doomed to stopping its own gene line in the favor of others. While it would be nice if organisms would reciprocate to such a pleasant fellow, the reality is that such organisms would quickly be taken advantage of and they (the altruistic ones) would be at a selective disadvantage to the crafty ones, so the altruistic ones would inevitably die off. Dawkins says that in order for any trait to propagate and become viable, it has to demonstrate a survival/reproductive advantage - there is no such thing as "pure altruism" because it is such an obviously disadvantageous stance to take. We do see altruism on occasion, though, so what is going on? Dawkins says we can't see the advantages at the individual / species level because they're not there, but you can see them on the gene v. gene pool scale. The gene that promotes altruism in the host animal is causing it to rescue animals that are likely to be highly related to the host animal and therefore highly like to contain that very gene for altruism. The altruism does not, it turns out, sacrifice one animal for the benefit of many, but sacrifices one copy of the gene for the many copies that exist in those it saves. The move, then, is a "calculated" selfish one, something straight out of game theory or utilitarian ethics.

I've already committed the sin that Dawkins himself is widely accused of committing in this book, that of sloppily throwing out terms like "selfish" that imply a cognisant will on the part of the gene. Dawkins is actually very careful to stratify his language and fully admits within the text that he will write in an informal language that implies willful intent because to use the absolutely correct terminology would render the text clunky. He notes that when he says terms like "selfish" and "tries to" w/r/t genes, he means behaves in a way that seems as though it has a will from the outside much the same way we say a heat-sinking missile "chases" a target even though everyone knows the missile is not consciously chasing but is following a preset program that looks like will to an outside observer.

And this is what makes the world according to Dawkins a little bit terrifying - there is no will and no intended action, there is only this sense that physical actions as an outcry of the genes within the survival machines. In a weird kind of tautology, the things that exist and propagate start to be identified as "the things which came about that are the best at existing and propagating." There's a callous wasteland feel to the book that is psychologically terrifying for some people; that all that is is th equality of "is-ness" - you can break it down and identify individual trends that explain why these things have come about the way they have, but to the objects themselves, the only point worth considering is that you exist because at some point you did what was necessary to exist. The only permanence here is in the genes, and not even really there - they mutate and change, not to mention that "they" are not a "they" at all but really the abstract of the overarching forms they take - e.g., it's not the actual same carbon atoms that move down generation to generation, it's only their arrangement. I felt a harrowing undercurrent in the text of the absolute instantiation of everything only in form and not in content. There are details in survival and reproduction that are interesting to us but meaningless in the grand scheme - "gene still standing" is the only rule that matters, and not even that particular gene but that's particular gene's particular gene-ness.

Still, despite that gigantic dose of scariness, Dawkins makes great arguments for this approach to evolution with example upon example, each time meeting any challenge that could be thought up and dispelling many of the earlier models of species based evolutionary thought. The book is also filled with great "classroom examples" of game theory and other scenario setups that Dawkins used to explain typical animal world phenomena on a gene perspective basis - for one example, explaining on a game theory basis why cannibalism and battles to the death within a species tend to be rare events. It is, no doubt, a very easy-to-read layman's book that uses highly memorable examples to, for better or worse, hammer and hammer and hammer its point home - and yes, one complaint I had was that I had more or less gotten the message by the seventh example in favor of the theory.

The other big complaint is a trend I notice in a lot of these pop-science/religion books I've been reading lately and one that The End of Faith happened to be guilty of as well - that of the "now that I've established my main argument, I will now recklessly speculate on topics which I have no business touching upon." In this case, Dawkins does it twice - first, he throws in some highly miscellaneous comments about how humans are uniquely capable of consciously battling our unconscious, selfish genes. For example, a person can decide not to pass on his genes by not reproducing, an act that serves the "survival machine"'s interests but obviously does some harm to the genes within.

Second, O dios mio and insert other expressions of exasperation here, Dawkins coined the term "memes." A meme is the insubstantiated thought-equivalent of a gene, and survives by the same mechanisms - the content of the meme is borderline irrelevant outside of the same abilities that are important to the original replicable molecules - is it a stable idea (good at living) and is it an easily transmittable idea (good at reproducing). VERY IMPORTANTLY, the survivability of a meme DOES NOT have to do with the survivability of its thinker - memes need not bestow reproductive or survival advantages upon their thinkers. They, just like genes, only need properties that help themselves survive and reproduce. Dawkins keeps thing relatively simple - he mentions stories, poems, tunes that stick in people's minds and such. He notes that they battle for the finite resources of people's memory banks as well as billboard signs and paper and everything else. He (rather weakly) claims that memes tend to survive and become replicate best if they are favorable to the psychological environment (though he neglects to mention what that psychological environment exactly is or what properties of ameme make it ideal). So memes are, in a sense, at battle with one another, and just like genes, they mutate and propagate and pass from generation to generation to arrive at the embodiment in which they exist today.

I have (and have had for a while) numerous problems with the concept of memes. One, unlike genes which endow their carriers with sharper claws, hyperactive sperm, or what have you, the characteristics that make memes memorable and persistent within human culture are often left out of discussions and carry a sort of ineffable quality that to me sounds a whole lot like my favorite quote from school this year:

"The movies that are the most memorable are the ones that are unforgettable."

In other words, a lot of meme talk sounds like an exaggerated version of "the ideas that stick around are those which stick around." My second major complaint is that regardless of how abstract you get about these memes, they ALWAYS exist in reference to a physical reality. And when they don't exist in reference to a physical reality, they came from one, i.e., a physical and biological human brain, so the line between the physical gene embodiment and abstract self propagating idea is woefully blurred. Third, I think there is a problem with the idea of replicability of memes. With genes, there is a physical object which, in order to be able to still be categorized as a variation on that which came before it, can only physically vary from its predecessor within certain limits. If a gene were to suddenly inact its exact opposite, it would clearly not be the same gene any more. With a meme, you can never be sure of this - for example, if I hear something incorrectly and the meme that is transferred into my brain is a wildly different version of the intended meme, is this a case of a bad meme that couldn't be replicated well or a good meme that varies so well that it can even propagate itself in brand new forms? Take Reform Judiasm, for example - is that a bad-ass meme that has evolved successfully along a process for 5000 years, or is it a new invading meme that is beating up the old Orthodox one? Are the two even related? I don't think you can have it both ways. Fourth, the meme conversation to me *reeks* of the "pointless banter" of which philosophy routinely gets accused (and in this case, as opposed to all the other ones, it's accurate). A term like "meme" seems like it should be a categorical label, but I am hard-pressed to think of anything that isn't a meme - sure, terms like "the marriage meme" get thrown about, and that seems to be some kind of overarching, more permanent meme. But there are so many others - the carnivorous cat meme, the Coca Cola meme, the jazz meme, the what's in my back left pocket mere, etc. After a while, it seems like all you are talking about is IDEAS. And if so, why are you using a different word? The concept that memes constitute our mental embodiments is akin to saying there's a certain quality common to all things in the universe - it's a useless quality, because it distinguishes nothing.

(memes also ahve the additional complication of being part of their own subset; i.e., there exists something you could call the meme of "memes." And that gets the ball rolling for the meme of the "meme of memes," the meme of the meme of the meme of memes, etc.).

Of course, the main meme beef is that Dawkins brought this up at all. What the hell? In an otherwise great if somewhat repetitive book, there's this toss-off underdeveloped idea about how cultural evolution works. This armchair speculation in such a text is highly unwelcome - leave the meme banter for a book on memes! I'll fully admit that maybe I just don't understand what all the meme buzz is about, but the throw-away chapter in this book certainly didn't win me over. Otherwise, fine work, Mr. Dawkins.

This is what happens...

When fellow teachers ask you to stay at work another two hours to cover their class, but then it turns out that they were wrong and it wasn't today they needed you to cover their class, only they didn't tell you that, so you ended up staying there another hour when you didn't need to and since you hadn't planned on being there you didn't bring your book and so you end up doodling:


Argh, to say the least. Nyetian Art connoisseurs will notice a certain stylistic resemblance to LoG. Maybe we'll post that one some day. Anyhoo... tutoring / class otherwise went fine this morning and now I am back at the homestead enjoying my fourth to last Monday afternoon in the fine suburb of Graftonia. That's right, any denial that an official countdown has begun is futile; we are now in the waning hours of the Nyetian Northeastern Adventure. At some point this blog will feature a wrapup of the six year stay; that point is not now.

Instead, I will regale you with more boring tales of BUDA Ultimate. Actually, no I won't, other than to include a bullet point list of highlights from yesterday

- I had a player call "Violation of Airspace" on me. Which is one of the weinier calls out there anyways, but in this case was just heinously silly - I was downfield of him, a throw was coming, I timed it and jumped and he, who had been running with his head down and didn't even know the disc was up, ran into me from behind. Awesome.

- Another player called "Violation - Changing Hands." I can't even express how dumb this one is. You might as well call "Dribbling" in basketball. I.e., this is not a rule. Wacky.

- I threw a soft, soft scoober (upside down pass) to a teammate who was all by his lonesome - said teammate gacked it with both hands then fell down as the disc bounced off his face. He asked me after the point to "stop throwing so many hammers."

Stellar day. i otherwise had a couple of saweet layout catches and a couple of layout D's, which is a surefire sign that I am getting my legs back under me. The whole thing, though, was just a kinda depressing afternoon - gloomy and dank, and just felt like a pointless exercise, what with the idiotic calls and people doign ridiculous stuff on the field. I've mentioned this before, but I'm probably not fast / good enough / unafraid of serious injury enough to play competitive club now, but on the other hand I am not patient enough to play at this level. Oh well - good exercise, good exercise I keep telling myself. Plus occasional fun...

Met up with the Beck later after a much-needed shower and shave (I was face-covered muddy after said layouts, which always makes for an exciting drive home - if someone cuts you off, you just catch up with them and give them the mud-faced stare, highly effective in conjuring "mommy, why is that man sharpening his axe" type thoughts in the offending driver's head). We lolligagged on dinner and ended up making it a S&S night which, sadly, the Gringoat were not able to attend. That last line effectively means we had ice cream for dinner (though I did follow it up with a veggie burrito later - if by veggie you mean bean and cheese. And I do, I do).

Mean Bean and Cheese. Yeah, I said it.

Otherwise a low-key Saturday leading into this ill-work-extend Monday - dancing tonight, and I will spend the afternoon finishing that Dawkins review and otherwise reading reading reading to edumacate the me within. Peace.

Kerja Rodi

Akhirnya bisa memposting lagi! Setelah sang sakit sudah puas mengambil jatahnya, sekarang saya bisa beraktifitas dengan lancar lagi. Yah, tau lah sok ngartis gitu, kemaren kena penyakit yang biasa melanda para artis Indonesia : kecapekan. Wakakakakaka, karena emang metabolisme tubuh selama sebulan terakhir emang gak menentu banget, akhirnya selama satu minggu kemarin terkaparlah saya dengan suksesnya menjadi korban sang sakit. Mulai dari demam tulang selama seminggu, radang tenggorokan, flu berat, migren, sampai penyakit yang udah 4 tahun gak pernah kambuh lagi, yaitu asma. Ibu saja sampai ngomelin, karena artinya sakit saya udah parah banget karena sang asma muncul, dan memang begitulah kenyataannya!
Tapi sekarang saya udah bisa berbagi lagi dengan kalian, dan inilah postingan terakhir di bulan april sebelum memasuki bulan mei yang kayaknya bakalan penuh struggle.
Selama wiken kemarin tidak ada kegiatan yang berarti, karena emang saya yang malas kemana-mana karena masih mau beristirahat aja, ada sih undangan makan-makan waktu sabtu malam, dan pas minggu nya di ajak karakoean sama SonIX-ers (miss you fella!), tapi udah niat beres-beres kamar, jadi semua kegiatan di cancel dulu.
Dan jadilah saya selama 2 hari mulai menata kembali sang kamar yang pernah lepas dari tanganku. Pasca kembalinya sang nenek ke pangkuan di-Atas, sekarang saya mau balik lagi ke kamarku yang dulu. Udah capek tidur di gudang. Jadi pas hari sabtunya, semua sampah dan semua debu di bersihkan. Tempat tidur kembali di tata di tempatnya, dan lemari baju pun otomatis di pindahkan kembali. Yang paling menyita perhatian yah kamar mandinya. Ckckckckck, secara ternyata tu kamar mandi udah kotor banget. Jadi deh, babu sehari.
Setelah puas menata kembali letak barang-barang besar, ternyata perjuangannya belum selesai. Nah di hari minggunya, mo dikemanain semua semua barang-barang kecil itu? Secara saya lihat, begh, begitu banyak dan menumpuk “hal-hal kecil” yang ketika disatukan semua menjadi banyak. Dan setelah menganalisa dan mengumpulkannya di lantai, ternyata yang paling banyak menjadi sampah, yaitu : KERTAS!

Gak tau napa pas saya perhatikan lagi, kok bisa-bisanya saya masih menyimpan brosur gak jelas (bahkan saya sudah lupa mengambilnya dimana), struk wartel, sampai foto kopian kuliah yang nasibnya sudah tidak jelas. Satu lagi sampah kertas yang menjadi banyak kelihatan yaitu majalah! Mulai dari majalah hasil rampokan jaman sma dulu, majalah gratisan dari konjen Jepang, majalah film, sampai majalah musik bertebaran dimana-mana. Cuma karena emang gak pernah dirawat dengan semestinya, jadilah beberapa majalah itu keadaannya menjadi terburai, dan akhirnya menjadi sampah! Jadinya sekarang mesti menata kembali, dan memilih-milih majalah yang masih bisa disimpan, dan selebihnya dibuang aja.

Satu lagi penemuan, ketika membereskan kamarku, yaitu saya melihat kembali sisa-sisa dari beberapa kaset. Jadi teringat, jaman dulu banget dimana kaset merupakan teman yang paling cocok dikala sendirian, dan ternyata yang tersisa hanyalah kompilasi max 10, soundtrack Roswell, Sheila on 7 album 2 & 3, kompilasi prambors hits 1, kaset demo dari sony untuk single Sheila on 7 yang sahabat sejati + denada yang kangen (yang ini rampok di Sonata), dan kaset bonus dari Westlife yang coast to coast special edition (yeah, you’re right, bagaimanapun westlife teteup menjadi guilty pleasure tersendiri) dan terakhir, soundtrack AADC dong! Ah, jadi kangen lagi dengan masa-masa lalu itu, yang skarang sudah tergantikan lagi dengan keberadaan mp3.


Yang mesti dibenahi juga yaitu tatanan posternya kembali. Hahahaha, entahlah apakah masih mau temple poster lagi, soalnya besok (di bulan mei) rencana mo ngecat ulang dengan semangat brown power! Jadi poster-poster itu kayaknya udah mesti dilepas juga. Dan yang paling berantakan ya, inilah meja multi fungsi. Meja belajar jaman sma masih betah menemaniku. Dan karena emang lagi berantakan, jadinya serba guna deh!

Setelah 6 jam lebih bergulat dengan debu, sarang laba-laba, berbagai kenangan yang masuk kembali melalui beberapa barang tertentu, akhirnya kerja rodinya kelar juga! Dan sekarang saya telah resmi menempati sang kamar lagi, dengan semangat baru lagi dan kehidupan yang baru lagi.

He-Moe's (Not the Austin Club)

The sign on the bathroom door at Moe's said "He-Moe's." Despite the fine status of my clotting factors, I went in anyways. Ba-Dum Ching.

After getting my blogging in yesterday I left to tutor and got stuck in the STUPIDEST TRAFFIC JAM EVER. Well, okay, maybe not Phish in Coventry Bad, but i was rolling along my normal 20 minute route to the first house when I got stuck in a vortex of the cessation of movement near Westborough Center. dx/dt = 0 and such. I was wedged between cars in front and back and there were police vehicles to my immediate left (and a sidewalk to my immediate right), so I couldn't even turn around and go home to cry. What the hell was going on you might ask?


At 9:45 on Saturday morning! Ah, Americana, I shake my fist angrily at you. I ended up dodging the Center and getting back on track about 30 minutes later, but it threw off the entire morning. Argh.

When i got home, though, I had the clever inspiration to run up to our local Little League replica-Fenway park Miner Field and take in a game. It's about two miles from our house, so i figured hey, nice way to get some exercise and take part in that which had wrecked my commute. (Oddly, no one has posted pictures of the little replica job on the web - at least not that I can find in two seconds - so here is the view from above courtesy of Zach and my friends at Google Maps):


So I made the trek there and just about died 2/3 of the way - crazy humid here in the Bay State yesterday, and my weak winterized body was not ready for it. I watched some little league baseball for about five minutes before I began to feel my own "To Catch a Predator-ish" vibe - I am so glad that my fine culture has emphasized such ideas to an extent that I can't even enjoy a baseball game anymore. No, thank you, Stone Phillips. I eventually ran/jogged/walked home, and that is it for my 2007 Little League support.

Spent the PM watching the Sharks barely lose to the Red Wings and watching the Sox choke against the Yankees, bringing everyone in the local area back to the plane of reality / despair. Beck moved some more furniture out on the lawn and it was dutifully picked up by passers by - this included our dining room table and my cinder block shelves from the days of my youth. The apartment is starting to get a definitive squatted-in vibe.

We headed over to Gringoat to have dinner with them and Ben "Nolan Ryan," a first year resident and former Tufts student friend of Ali's. Tres nice dude. We hit up the aforementioned local burrito joint Moe's (now with new menus and higher prices, oh my!) and its oddly labeled bathrooms and then came to Ben and Ali's for a vastly more even-tempered game of Boggle. I spelled "teared" as in, "I teared up when I realized that when I go to hell, it will involve an eternity of playing boggle."Just kidding - fun times and flat tonic, and we got to chill with the Heidster (the GG dog) taboot. Ben-Ali have an apartment in Providence now, so that source of stress is thankfully gone; Ali and Beck will now spend their Sundays attending baby showers and the like. Ali addressed their card to "Sarah Plus Fetus."

And today... it once again rained for a good portion of last evening, so I think my Ultimate game may be canceled. It is impossible to get off the ground with these constant rainouts - I would seriously like to get back in running / sprinting shape, but the every-other-weekend warrior routine is not getting the job done. Grumble grumble. So if that gets canceled, I will have to come up with something else exciting to do today, like run on the shoulder of 122. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE recreational jogging?

I know, I know, you're screaming for that Dawkins book review. And the dog tails. I'm going to read another one of his books today and keep a close eye on S & W so I can review even more and note even more hilarious antics from a dog's eye view. You are psyched; I can tell.

Da. Da-d-da-d-da-d-da. Da-d-da-d-da-d-da. Dah Dah Daaaaah (burumbarumbadarumbumbumbumbumbum).

Wow. That post title is supposed to be the theme music to The Legend of Zelda. You know. That game with Link.

Memes and memetics
The iFam (plus Greg and nyet) had a talk about memes last weekend, a topic which will surely be ballied about here in the not too distant future. These are the wiki links; you should get reading lest the Ballad leave you in the confused dust.

Viruses of the Mind
And while we're at it, here's a Richard Dawkins essay attempting to explain the role of memes in religion.

Mary Midgley
A British moral philospoher with a penchant for laying the philosophical smack down on Dawkins.

Gilbert Arenas's Blog
No memes within (or at least no explicit discussion of memes)(which is the biggest problem with memes - what isn't a meme?)

Rolling Stones Immortals of Rock and Roll
A top 100 list with articles written by music peeps.

Top Sports Movies
Over at Rotten Tomato.

Philosophy since the Enlightenment and Squashed Philosophers
Two sites that break down heady philosophy into bite sized chucks. "Modern" philosophy indeed.

And finally, Kramer has some ideas w/r/t my plans for June 2nd:

*OH* *I* Just Don't Know Where to Begin...

Though he says it's now or never, he'll wait forever...

Ladies and Gentleman, your clever inversion of an Elvis Costello Lyric!! That's right, he who was Imus before Imus was Imus has been the Main Attraction in the CD Player / iTunes this week, so I thought I'd kick things off with a lyric apropos. You know, what with my whole stick in the mud approach to career decisions. Yikes.

Alright, week in review... Monday night the Beck and I go tin another dance lesson, this time incorporating a spin into our promenade. Ooh la la, indeed. It was fun but frustrating as we were both pretty friggin' tired. Tuesday... ugh, Tuesday. I had given my students a Quiz is Pop (Yeah Yeah) on Monday, so they were not thrilled to see me on Tuesday - in an act of revenge, I made them watch a lecture series video on evolution. And they complained and complained, and they were right - hella boring. But informative. Whatever. It just set the tone for a drawn out day of tutoring and blah. I eventually made it home to the Beck who had been obsessively watching Dancing with the Stars on the internet all day. What the World Needs Now is another drawn out faux reality results show(and apparently that's now what we'll be doing on Tuesday nights) like I Need a Hole in My Head. I went for a run and started to watch a little baseball when I learned via the fantasy baseball board that the Tufts Emen Ultimate team was going to be playing LIVE online that night. Wahoo! It was pretty sweet to watch Ultimate live on the computadora, even if it is one of the worse spectator sports out there. The commentators, for instance, are constantly mumbling "I think there's some sort of call on the filed..." Anyhoo, the Emen won and are headed to Regionals. Exciting times. Here's a clip of Emen superstar of years past Rob Spies for your enjoyment:

Wednesday was a crusher. Get ready for a bunch of "And thens." To start, more of the usual, school-wise: class in the morning; we continued a video on the history of AIDS. And things just slowly got crappy from that point forward. Horrendous tutoring session with one of my students; he just COULD NOT get nondisjunction and other concepts of meiosis. Painful. Then I had a meeting with my advisees and told them about Arizona next year; most of them took it well but a couple were actually upset. And then some of my other former students (Grace, Sophie, Tory) stopped by and I told them, too, and they were very upset. A bad vibe all around. And then one of my tutees stopped by, one whom I'm sure I've mentioned before who I've been working with all year on chemistry and math and have occasionally served as faux counselor for, dropped by to cancel her appointment and tell me she would now be working with another tutor. I essentially got fired by a 16 year old for no discernible reason other than it was more convenient for her to tutor with someone who lives closer. I understand, and on paper it's no big deal, but the complete absence of any commentary from the parents and the sudden shutoff were not great. And then... one of my advisees parents called and asked me all about his college application process, and I only remembered about halfway through that his parents were bitterly divorced, he was emancipated from her and this was essentially a manipulative lady trying to get info behind her son's back. AWESOME! And then... the kicker was that the day ended with a faculty meeting that was completely focused on contract holds , which essentially means debating which kids were and were not going to get kicked out. Rife with tension and an overall air of childish bickering. People going to bat for kids and all semblance of any kind of unified (academic and artwise) school vision just vanished. Just a crappy and overly emotional end to the day. The final and then is that my afternoon tutoring client flaked on me - thankfully, this time I called her house before driving all the way out there.

SO the and thens stopped, and I called Beck - she and Ali were apartment hunting in the Gringoat's new city of residence, Providence, RI. We decided that based on a long day for everyone and a bad day for me that Bertucci's was in the offing. Hells yeah. It took a while for the ladyfolk to get back from P-town, but when they did I drove over to ALi's to meet them and we in turn drove to Bertucci's to wait for Ben.

Separate paragraph: the PGoat was on fire Wednesday night. She had decided to wear a top with what must have been a solar eclipse in the front. I wouldn't know, because I wasn't looking, but Beck kept interrupting Ben's stories at the restaurant by shouting "Ali, your solar eclipse is falling out of your shirt," which inevitably drew Ben's attention. But he was smart and only quickly glanced at the solar eclipse and then looked away, just like you're supposed to. Ali seemed moderately embarrassed about her overflowing solar eclipse. Beck then pointed out that Ben shouldn't be so excited because he gets to see solar eclipses all the time. I found this entire conversation very confusing. Ali later upped the ante by doing an impression of our friend Richard Johnson, complete with facial expressions and dancing and a threat to spit various liquids. And lest I forget, on the car ride over, Ali sifted through some of the "essays" written by my students and read them in her most theatrical voice. Let me just say that if you thought the Robster was funny, well, you have no appreciation of relative comedy scales. Ali's rendition of my student-who-shall-remain-nameless's essay on her ideal evolutionary animal will not be topped on any comedy scale any time soon. Hi-larious, and only mildly demeaning to the student who wrote it.

In seriousness, though, Ali was very sweet in asking about the crapitude of my day and the general crapitudes of teaching, and I appreciated it. beck of course made things much brighter as well. Ben rolled in a bit late and told us a sweet story of "Don" (whose real name was Mark), a adidas track-suited gold chain wearing mafioso type in Providence with not-so-subtle racial opinions. Ask him about it sometime, as I cannot hope to replicate it, but let's just say that all those New Jersey gangster stereotypes that you would think are too stupid to possibly exist in real life? They do. And Ben and Ali's mom met one. Named "Don."

We took a rain check on S&S (which i will cash tonight, dammit) and called it a night. Thursday (left the house at 6:40, didn't really get back until 9 because of various tutoring duties) was nowhere near as exciting, except that the Beck and I finished the Lost episode from Wednesday. this week, I only lost 12 IQ points, so things must be looking up. I drove in to work on Friday to give my class and then noted that my schedule of appointments / meetings and such had been canceled due to school assemblies and/or the prom that night, so I drove home through a ridiculous rainstorm - no Friday PM Cognex Ultimate for me. :(. But I chilled at home, finished The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Don't worry, a timely review is coming. Beck got home after a jaunt to the baies R Us stores - Sarah aka "Mound Plus" is having a shower this weekend, so there is now a bevy of (surprise presents) in our home. Beck and I chilled for the remainder of the afternoon, took a nap, and played a sweet game called Blockus at night. I am sure marital bliss is going to change our pattern extraordinarily.

I kid, I kid.

A little bit of tutoring this morning (calculus and then bio) and then it's back to a sea of NHL and NBA playoffs and baseball this PM. Maybe we will have more fun with Solar Eclipse and the Astronomer and Saviour Mound Plus tonight; who knows. But one thing is for sure, there will be scoops, swirls and inappropriate cursing at children involved, and not necessarily in that order.

More posts coming today, i swear.

The End of Faith

The End of Faith by Sam Harris: NR

This is Sam Harris's full argument, a much broader and more successful take than his Cliff's Notes-version, directed-at-Christian-America tome Letter to a Christian Nation. The argument is essentially that in a modern, rational age, we should no longer afford religions special privileges in terms of being able to state claims that have no supporting evidence. He is essentially saying that religions are an antiquated, backwards-thinking approach to life when we have (in most cases) over 1500 years of human-acquired knowledge (via science, philosophy, etc.) to utilize in our approach to everyday life. His argument then takes a forked approach. One fork is that Islam in particular is a dangerous religion, and he makes a good argument that we all know this but are afraid / unwilling to call the religion out in the international sphere. Islam has a particular bent on violent dealings with opposing views, and while the Koran in parts admonishes suicide, murder and other such acts, so much of the bulk of the text and the religious tradition points toward afterlife rewards for deeds done in the name of Islam that the end result is a favorable review of rationally deplorable acts. Islam is, despite its defenders as a "peaceful religion," an inherently violent one, and Harris repeatedly points towards the fact that a religion like Jainism (noted for its pacifist teachings) does not suffer from such implicitly violent tendencies. Harris further acknowledges the ultraviolent and magical-thinking history of Christianity - he puts forth a harrowing argument about the Inquisition and witch trials and their reflection of Christianity as a brutal, non-thinking religion - and stakes the claim that it is only modern, secular thinking which keeps us from continuing to pursue barbaric lines. Harris rather notably states that stepping into Islam is akin to stepping into the 14th century mindset. Harris's language throughout these sections is bristling and entirely unapologetic; he is definitely taking an attitude that this is patent, and only cowardice and ignorance are preventing us from noting it and acting upon it. He further adds that these detriments of religion are often defended in the light of the good that religions accomplish w/r/t morality and charity, but he dismisses these claims and states that morality and charity can be achieved through humanist means.

The second fork of his argument is probably the crux of the book, that as bad as the fundamentalists are, a lot of the blame for their actions can be placed on the relative apathy of the moderate religious people. People that toe the line, that find one set of metaphysics and explanations palatable on Sunday mornings and another one applicable in their daily lives, are clearly not the ones perpetrating the heinous crimes in this day and age. But their tolerant attitude towards all things religious, even things which are blatantly ludicrous and lack any sort of evidential basis, is what permits the extreme end of the spectrum to persist. There is a powerful tendency to allow any kind of freedom of belief, but Harris argues that belief by its very definition is something that must be acted upon - so permitting any kind of belief implicitly allows for the actions that would follow such beliefs. Harris states that the fact that modern religious moderates do not dismiss the radicals out of hand but instead allow them to contribute to the global dialog makes the moderates a reckless, irrational and irresponsible group that is indirectly permitting atrocities to happen. If the moderates would instead abandon the traditional religious teaching as the naive magic-based mythical mindset that they are and deny broad permission to believer whatever one will withotu evidence, they would bring rational, scientific and evidence based thinking to the forefront and the insane claims of religious extremists would be squelched and not tolerated rather than permitted to infect the minds of masses. Harris repeatedly points out that the arguments that it is only the poor and destitute who behave irrationally w/r/t religion is incorrect; numerous terrorists have been college educated and come from established financial backgrounds. It is the passive attitude of those who should know better that allows even the intelligent among us to fall into these mind-bogglingly irrational worldviews.

Harris also draws a parallel between religion and slavery - both are antiquated practices that have been held as legitimate by the vast majority of people (with the possible exception of the slaves themselves) for the bulk of human history. Slavery was fundamental to our culture for centuries - without slavery, there's no America, there's no Renaissance, there's no Greek philosophy, etc. And yet, enough people came t o the conclusion that slavery was a cruel, inhumane practice that it was eventually toppled and outlawed in the bulk of the world. That was a massive change that clearly took a radical change in thinking (as well as tremendous amounts of courage and bloodshed) to enact. Harris's goal, then, seems to be to do the same to religion, and while he admits that it seems almost impossible to envision a worldwide overthrow of religion (given its cornerstone place as part of human society since the dawn of), he readily points out that at one point it seemed fundamentally impossible to overturn slavery, too. I find this argument nothing short of amazing - while my gut feeling is that the goal itself is ludicrous, that religious wondering seems so fundamental to the famed "human condition*" that getting rid of it is by definition impossible, but I have to admit that the idea that at least the organized body of religion could topple and that worldviews could come to be dominated more by rational thinking, in light of the similar staggering and seemingly unconquerable opposition to abolition, doe snot seem out of the realm of all possibility. In short, I think, "Huh..."

* - The "human condition" is in quotes because it does not exist, but that is for another day.

If the book had stopped here, I think Harris would have been justified in his attitude and presentation, even if some of his claims about Islam as living 500 years in the past were a bit over the top. His argument is passionate and frightening, and he keeps falling back again and again on the same line: science has essentially been a sequence of topplings of these religious ideas that were set centuries and centuries ago. To continue to cling to these old teachings in some regards is akin to relying only on 3rd century physics as our knowledge base - its plainly ludicrous, and furthermore, we don't "agree to disagree" with anyone who goes around denying Newtonian physics, so why should we do so with notions of morality, ethics or the meaning of life? His call to treat the physical world rationally seems to be a solid one - he does not deny that there are possibly realms beyond the physical, evidential one in front of us, but he abhors any argument that tries to explain anything in the physical world without evidence.

The book did not, of course, stop here. Harris, for better or worse, laced his book with some extraneous and odd arguments. A couple examples - one, he spent a long time illustrating how intent was an implicit consideration in moral judgments, but then went on a lengthy arguments about how torture (complete with intentionally inflicted, horrific pain) is justified because of collateral damage (presumably unintended but able to be anticipated) in war. Even if this argument was valid (which is debatable), it was stunningly off topic. Two, he spent the bulk of one of the final chapters of the book explaining how meditation is actually an empirical exercise, even going so far as to claim that the separation of self from the body is a readily apparent phenomenon if you only look hard enough. This not only had the feel of a self-contradictory argument - after spending a book demanding evidence, he pulled a subjective "you'll know it if you try it" line - but it also gave off an air of new-age-ness or some kind of quasi-Eastern religion agenda, probably the last thing a self-claimed rational-only tome should do. It's not that I objected to the arguments; it's that I found their placement in the book bizarre - the argument had already been made. I suppose the second was something of an apologetic stab at maintaining spirituality within a rational worldview, but that in and of itself seems to be a bow to Eastern traditions instead of Western ones, not a bow to the rational over the religious. In essence, trying to maintain spirituality within the rational worldview, given what we know about meditiation and the associated brain states, seems to be just as much of a faith leap as everything that Harris ranted against for the previous 200 pages.

In the end, I found this book to be less of a screaming, fist-waving exercise than the follow-up, but I still think Harris is taking an approach that is going to receive Amens from the rational choir and get a whole lot of nothing from the intended "converts." I find it difficult to discern if this is because we are looking at the equivalent of early, early abolitionist stances or if there is just something that is actually so fundamental about myth structures and religious narratives within our cultures that any screaming attack like this is a failure out of the gates. I also think his complaints specifically targeted against Islam were overly derogatory and referring to such an expanse of people as living in the 14th century is certainly going to do nothing to convince them to see his light. I regard Harris as right - the trump card of faith, the ability to say anything sans evidence, is a dangerous notion, especially when played within the game of conflicting religions, at least one of which has a fairly explicitly stated goal of world domination. Your own brand of faith is going to only butt heads with that notion and end in a violent dispute, so even if it is entirely unrealistic, he's right that it would be best if cooler, rational heads could prevail as the definitive system.

"It's not okay to lick my eyeballs"

A direct quote from the Beck to the Wrigster. Nice.

I dropped off last week again - bad habit I'm getting onto it seems - so I'll try to pick up where it gets more interesting. Alright...

First, MLB TV. This is SWEET. I am highly enjoying watching the Cubs games and miscellany from around the league. They won't show the Sox here due to local blackout rules, but by the time I get to Phoenix that will be more awesome than a glen full of Campbell's Soup, if you know what I mean. So yes, work hard, go running, come home and watch los Cubbies lose. It's a lifestyle.

Second, I neglected to review Papa Jovino Santos Neto's show two Wednesdays ago - it was awesome. Very energetic, very creative piano trio with some guest spots from a Berklee school of music flautist. Brazilian jazz with lots of traditional rhythms - it was a bit more composed than typical jazz and they kept things very tight and short, which was a good move for the crowd (and, for that matter, the Beck). The crowd consisted of a whole bunch of Ariel's frisbee friends, so we got to see Jerrel, Lisa, Skipper, Tali, Verbs, Davey, Jeff "Dick" Brown, Funboy, Dad (Elliot) and others. Good times, and a nice little club taboot. I picked up a steeply priced CD which is very good - I immediately recognized which tunes we had heard at the show and which we hadn't, which is a pretty good indicator of the quality / memorability of the melodies. And, as we all know, the most memorable melodies are the ones that are unforgettable. In every way.

Third, I promise you two things in the next couple of days: one, a review of Sam Harris's End of Faith, which is WAY overdue. Two, I owe the planet at least three dog tails I can think of, so per Karen's request, I will get on that.

Fourth, I'm having trouble remembering anything exciting that occurred on Wednesday or Thursday, so I'll zoom ahead to Friday. Here goes: Beck needed to go to Natick Mall to run errands so she drove me down in the AM and dropped me at the Nut. Half of my class declined to show up, so in lieu of the activity I had planned, we watched a hellaciously depressing movie on the early history of AIDS. I worked, graded, tutored, and eventually Beck swung back by to pick me up and deliver me to Friday Ultimate at Cognex.

Ah, the noontime Ultimate game at a tech company. This game always wavers between worth it and not - there are a few reasonably solid guys out there, they're all nice beyond belief, and it's generally a good time. But I invariably aggravate someone by hustling after a disc, or marking hard, or whathaveyou. And it's the usual mixed skill pick up phenomenon where people occasionally stutter cut (so if you're throwing you have no idea what they're doing), go to the wrong place, and generally don't play defense. So it's frustrating, but good to get out and run around, and occasionally gets pictures like this:


On the awesome side, everything is feeling pretty okay for the time being - not real explosive and can't jump, but nothing is actively hurting which is a change over recent times out. Yeeha. And the best part was when the Beck returned from lunch and brought me a meatball sub AND a gatorade. Hoorah! Beck is awesome, and you know this.

We briefly left Natick for Grafton to clean up and head back at 6 for dinner with the iFam, who were in town for Beck's Tea Shower. (Help, it's raining Earl Grey). We hit up Dah Mee, the excellent little Korean / Japanese restaurant in Natick where I saw a few Nuts and we talked very loudly about memes. A great dinner, and great to see everybody.

Saturday started for me with a drive to a tutee who called me as I pulled into his apartment complex to let me know that he was ill and didn't want to meet. Um, sorry, but, like, uh, thanks for the call ahead. I went grocery shopping and took the dogs running instead. Hoowha. Ali picked up beck and whisked her downtown while I spent the PM watching hockey, basketball, and the Sox win game 2 of 3 (SWEEP!) this weekend from the Yanks. The shower/tea apparently went well, despite our crew's gauche desire to move tables together and Kate's grand entrance in which she knocked everything off the table by stepping on the linen... nice. Someone (Jill) also asked Ali if she was drunk and Beck replied...

(Insert TV show theme music) "That's Ali."

Beck and iFam called in the late afternoon to let me know that Figs had been shut down - :( - so we were eating at the Naked Fish in Natick. I walked and fed the S & W and booked it down to Natick with the intention of stopping by the Nut to pick up some papers I had forgotten for Beck... only to find I had grabbed beck's keys, which are very lacking in the "key to my office" department. D'oh. When I arrived late sans papers for Beck at the NF, I found out that this is a habitual female Searl problem, that of not taking their keys anywhere. Oh, well. Somehow, the species survives.

GREAT+ dinner at NF - I had South American ribs and popcorn shrimp, both of which were miles beyond excellent. We met up with the Searl clan one last time along with Gringoat and the Matron SheWolf (aka Ali's mommy) at the South St. Diner in Westborough on Sunday morning; We apparently met there at 9 am because PGoat's mom has "real" diabetes. Imposters best recognize. Another great meal, crazy laughing goodness, and it turns out that Ali can say things like "Peri Hooha" in mixed company without batting an eye.

We're in the long process of stripping the apartment of all signs of life, so I spent a little bit of the rest of the morning helping Beck with that and then headed off to Sunday BUDA Ultimate. Ah, BUDA Ultimate - this game always wavers between worth it and not. Just kidding. I played very well, felt very good and we lost. D'oh. Bur I did get to hang out with Dave Wu and he gave me a DVD of pics from last Polaroid season - I'll include a conglomerate of self-centered Nyet shots right here:


You can learn a lot from that little montage. One, when I huck forehand, i go out of focus. Two, I look like a complete ninny after I release a hammer, whether I'm facing right OR left. (For the record, all three of those throws were for scores).

Here's a pic of a classic Polaroid O-line:


That's Lisa, Andre, Jay, Tom, Flor, Nyet & the Speckle-bellied Jullietta. Definitely a big positive part of the Boston experience; gonna miss it.

So I drove the long way home and Beck and I watched The Simpsons (yay) and an episode of Family Guy (boo) before crashing. I woke up wicked early this morning (4:45 am, no reason) and made a day of it, tutoring, giving out a pop quiz, tutoring, tossing the disc in the Walnut quad with some of the Nuts, and then I went and played a little more lunchtime Ultimate. The weather, if you hadn't gathered by now, is friggin' gorgeous. I'm pretty wiped and sore, but otherwise doing okay. And the Beck and I are headed out for more dancing instruction tonight. I encourage her to hum the appropriate Carole King tune.

Until next time...

A Simple Question...

Given that sports broadcasts refuse to show idiots who run on the field during a game...

Why is every media outlet in the country running pictures / videos / etc. of a mass murderer?

Answers containing the phrase "voyeuristic amoral consumer whores" will receive extra credit.

Fondue for Nothing

As Frank correctly asserted, the Melting Pot is a big fat rip-off. Fortunately, Friend Kate had a $100 gift certificate which she generously donated to our four-person cause, AND Jill and Kate were nice enough to take us out for dinner as a belated engagement gift. Very belated. So the meal was AWESOME - cheddar-garlic cheese fondue, mushroom salads, steak and shrimp and fish topped by an oreo/fluff/dark chocolate dessert fondue (dipped-in by cake, strawberries, bananas, and mysteriously cookie-coated marshmallows). Mmmmmmmgood, and the price from the beck and Nyet perspective was a-okay.

And the company was grand, too. Kate is up to her usual hilarity, dating a seven fingered giant from Wichita Falls by way of Iowa. She has known him for three days and is now making Iowanian hotel reservations. This would be funny were it not so true. But she is otherwise sane and looking for a house up by her new internship / residency digs in Northwestern Mass. Jill is doing well, too, getting ready to lead what sounds like a highly cushy life in her transition year en route to an even cushier life in radiology at UPenn. It's enough to make you want to stay in med school. Or not. She continues to inquire about cute boys attending the wedding, after which I continue to advise her to stay away from internet chatrooms and stick to the handsome men her own age. So, gentlemen in attendance, the tall pretty lady who is on the prowl at our wedding is quite a catch, and it is apparent that she would rather her next Date be followed by coffee and cuddling than "line NBC: To Catch a Predator."

Went home after the dindin and crashed after another in a long series of moronic episodes of House. And today is another in a long series of disappointing classes - Walnut seniors have officially checked out. Oh, well, c'est la vie.

The news, as in media news, quickly shifted from a moronic Imus scandal to the horrendous shooting that occurred at Virginia Tech on Monday. I've got nothing to add to the fray other than to say it's exhibit 134673824-A.127 of life's cruel and random potentialities. I heard on the radio this morning that one of the victims, a professor, was a *Holocaust survivor*. I heard someone else on the radio, the U.T. director of security, discuss how impractical it would be to shut down the campus in the event of domestic violence cases even if gunfire is involved. People clearly want to impose order on a implicitly disordered situation and their course, completely disregarding notions of everyday propriety, is to blame someone while simultaneously implying that the situation was obviously preventable / controllable and that the world does not contain fear-inducing, erratic elements. I'm not saying that the blame is wrong or that some aspect of this tragedy could not have been prevented by better action by the University's leadership, just saying that people's snap reaction is to look for a rational chain of events even when a primary cause is so plainly irrational. Some friends of mine have discussed how relatively non-discussed this event has been in their respective workplaces, and I think beyond the typical "people are desensitized" explanations lies something more insidious about people's inability to deal with an apparent aspect of this story: that sometimes very, very terrible things happen, and they don't have a good explanation beyond their inevitability due to bell curve dynamics. It's admirable that we try to do everything we can to prevent such things, but we still need to allow for the potential falsehood of the baseline assumption that they are actually preventable.

sebuah percakapan

*percakapan ini nyata terjadi di atas sebuah angkutan kota jurusan cendrawasih-unhas, dimana para pelaku baru saja pulang kuliah dan tidak bermaksud untuk menjelekkan pelaku. hanya berbicara fakta apa yang terjadi dan apa yang ada di dalam kepala sang pendengar. apabila terdapat kesamaan tokoh dan cerita, harap maklum beginilah bentuk moral orang-orang kebanyakan pada saat ini. maaf sebelumnya kalau ada revisi sedikit mengenai substansi percakapan, maklum gejala osteoporosis,,,

pelaku :
x << mahasiswa, cowok, umur sekitar 21 tahun, baju polo biru, topi putih, tas slempang kecil (banget)
y << mahasiswa, cewek, umur sekitar 20 tahun, baju garis-garis hijau, tas yang biasa dijinjing
z << saya, mahasiswa, umur twenty something, baju coklat sesuai dengan spatu pantofel yang baru saya beli (narsis!!!)

isi percakapan :
y : mana -tiiiiiit- (nama salah satu temannya x), kenapa ndak sama pulang?
x : ndak tau itu, masih ada temannya dia tunggu kayaknya
y : oh, sampai jam berapa kuliah mu kah?
x : deh, padat skali kuliahku dari jam 8 tadi sampai jam 3, sambung terus
y : memang berapa sks kau ambilkah?
x : 23 SKS dong, soalnya IP ku yang dulu 4,00
y : betulan? ah, bohong pasti!
x : masa saya bohong? semester lalu 19 SKS saya ambil, tapi ada satu mata kuliah yang kosong, jadi yang dinilai cuma 16 SKS, makanya IP nya 4,00
z : (pantasan IPnya 4, wong cuma 5 mata kuliah, saya mah juga bisa kalau cuma segitu SKS yang diambil!)
y : kenapa bisa kosong? maksudnya nilai tunda?
x : tidak, memang kosong, jadi dari 19 SKS yang dinilai cuma 16
z : (duh, cantik-cantik kok geblek, emang jadi mahasiswa udah berapa lama? kan emang beda nilai TUNDA dengan nilai KOSONG)
x : makanya skarang banyak skali kuliahku, yah, biar sajalah
y : memangnya kuliahmu hari apa saja kah?
x : hari senin sama kamis. tapi itu juga dari pagi sampai sore, jadi sama aja
y : wih, jadwalnya sama denganku. cuma saya ada kuliah HI hari rabu
z : (mmm, tebak-tebak berhadiah,, HI << hukum internasional kah? atau hukum indonesia kah?)
x : ambil kuliah perdata kah?
y : belum, baru nanti akan saya rencanakan

...

narator : dan percakapan terus berlanjut mengenai mata kuliah mereka in which way saya tidak mengerti apa yang mereka bahas dan dosen-dosen siapa saja yang mereka ceritai, sampai pada pembicaraan,

...

x : eh, beasiswa sudah keluar toh?
y : iya, sudah keluar, tadi baru saja saya urus
x : ada namaku kau lihat?
y : ndak tahu, tapi saya sama -tiiittt- (temannya si y) namanya ada di pengumuman, makanya langsung saya urus
x : sama siapa kau kasi berkasmu?
y : ada sama bapak R di akademik. untungnya saya kenal. jadi dia yang bantu kasi loloskan berkasku. kau iya?
x : (ketawa jahat) itu hari tidak sengaja lewat depan rumahnya om ku. langsung ka dipanggil masuk, dan ditawari beasiswa, tentu saja siapa yang nolak? jadi langsung ji saja, ndak kasi masuk berkas ji
y : deh, enaknya. kan ada diurus surat keterangan keluarga, slip gaji, dan temannya-temannya
x : (masih ketawa jahat) kalo saya gampangji, ndak pake semua itu
z : (ckckckckc, yo olooooooooooooo, bisa-bisanya itu kau ketawa dan berkata segampang itu ada yang URUS kan. saya sama nire, ballo dan yang lainnya berdarah-darah urus itu beasiswa, di ping-pong sana sini, mau gila!)
y : enaknya kalau punya om di kampus
x : tapi kau lihat ji ada namaku toh?
y : ndak tau mi, tapi kalau memang ada nanti sama-sama urus nah!
x : traktir ka nanti
y : dapat jako juga beasiswa, masa minta traktir
z : (dasar cowok tidak modal! bisa-bisanya itu kau minta traktir sama cewek?)
x : nanti saya traktir makan di kampus, kau yang traktir makan sama nonton. okeh!
z : (mari sama-sama teriak, TIDAK MODAL!!!)
y : kau juga minta traktir, ini saya bingung juga mau saya kasih berapa itu bapak.
x : maksudmu?
y : itu, bapak R yang uruskan ka. pasti ada UANG TERIMA KASIHNYA. rencana mau ka kasih 50 ribu
x : deh, banyak sekali. 20 ribu saja
y : deh, ndak enaknya. masa cuma 20 ribu. nanti tidak dia URUS kan lagi
x : terserah kau, kalo saya kan tidak perlu ada uang terima kasihnya
y : deh, kau dari OM mu yang kasih lolos. jadi ndak usah ada ongkosnya.

...

narator : percakapan dalam perjalanan ini terus berlanjut, mengenai kabar teman-teman si x, karena kayaknya si x ini tipe cowok ngartis yang jarang ke kampus karena disibukkan show ke luar daerah ataukah tidak ingin dikatakan selalu mudik setiap waktu. jadinya dia saban akhir minggu selalu ke luar makassar, katanya sih untuk mengurus proyeknya. yah, percakapan yang seperti itulah, sampai ada satu lagi ini pembicaraan mereka yang menarik,

...

x : kau sudah ambil kuliah hukum adat?
y : belum. kenapa kah?
x : SP (semester pendek-red) kan saja.
y : bisa kah? saya kira yang bisa di SP kan hanya kuliah-kuliah yang di programkan semester ini. kalau memang E atau C, baru bisa di SP
x : siapa bilang? ini saya banyak mau saya SP kan kuliahku. supaya cepat selesai bodo'
y : betulko deh.
x : ini nanti banyak mata kuliah semester 3 yang mau saya SP kan, supaya nanti semester depan saya langsung ambil mata kuliah semster 5 saja
z : (yang dimana saya tidak mengerti, ni X anak semester awal atau akhir? kalau dia semester 2 skarang, hebat banget, SP ambil mata kuliah semester 3, trus nanti ketika mestinya semester 3, ngambil mata kuliah semester 5. hmmm,, taktik yang hebat atau bodoh?)
y : iya yah, supaya nanti bisa cepat berkurang jumlah kreditnya
x : nah, kan nanti ada uang beasiswa, BAYAR saja itu pegawainya, langsung dikasih itu formulir kuliahnya
y : jadi betulan nanti kau mau SP?
x : iya, asal ada UANG. pasti beres.
y : nanti telpon ka nah
x : masih nomormu yang dulu toh?

...

moral cerita : mungkin ini sudah menjadi hal yang biasa di dalam masyarakat kita, tapi yang membuat miris adalah, yang melakukan percakapan diatas adalah mahasiswa fakultas HUKUM. tidak menggeneralisasikan, tapi beginikah gambaran dari calon yang akan bekerja sebagai pengacara, atau di bidang hukum lainnya?
semoga akan ada hari esok yang lebih baik buat kita semua.

This afternoon's fun

On Mondays I mock marathoners; on Tuesdays I do this in the rain:


7.6 miles, aches to follow. And now, we're headed to the Melting Pot ( = Fondue) for dinner. YAH! More tongiht after the self-stuffing.

Oh one day when yooooou're looking back...

It's Tuesday morning, but that's not what we're talking about here, other than to clarify from yesterday's post that the reason MLB TV will be nice is I will be able to keep up with both the Red Sox AND the Cubs while mired in the land of figurative and literal Diamondbacks. So Tuesday discussion over (I won't even mention that another topic bombed in class today; seems I teach 18 year olds who are incapable of following instructions. The adjective "feeble-minded" is being tossed about...)

Sunday was spent behind a drape of rain. I woke up early unable to sleep and worked on my iTunes library for a bit - now THIS is the kind of dynamic writing the people tune in for! Seriously, I am adding album covers and putting dates on all of my iTunes music, and it's taking forever. Things I have learned from the process:

Greatest hits / compilation albums - in most cases, iTunes puts the year that the GH was released on the individual tracks instead of the year of their release. Argh!

Jazz compilations - because of the above fact, the jazz compilations I have are all labelled "2005" when the music was quite plainly recorded in the 1930s. Some of this information, because of the huge number of different versions of the same track, is essentially impossible to accurately determine without a huge amount of leg work, so I end up making generalizations like "The Charles Parker Dial Masters comes from 1939," even when I know this is not true. I am otherwise pretty strict about the accuracy (Though I also make big approximations on the classical music I own, usually putting "1730" as the date for a composers entire career. On the plus side, I now have electronic files from 1730 on my computer, dope).

iTunes album covers - are occasionally just wrong, and often unavailable because they only have album art for music they sell in their store. This means the entire Beatles catalog was unavailable and I had to grab the art individually from le internet. Very time consuming.

Also with the covers - embedding the art in the files wastes memory and is time consuming. Ideally I could just download one copy of the album cover and "point" all the files to it, but it seems iTunes very arbitrarily does this with some album art and refuses to do it with others.

End fascinating clip - but I should note that I have spent a good deal of time on this already and only got up to "Cheap Trick" this AM. I'm about 20% done, I think. This is going to take a while, but it would be nice to have it done display-wise for le wedding. All of which drives me insane, because I feel like I'm throwing hours and hours into a project just to pass the time - the project itself will not really be that meaningful once completed and I'll just have to go on to the next thing. Haunting. Oh, well. At least I get to look at the pretty pictures... anyways, speaking of le wedding, beck is getting her dress fitted today with the help of the make my goat the Pgoat. This whole thing is starting to get eerily real.

So that was part of Sunday, the rest of which was watching some hockey, some baseball and later that night the series premiere of "Drive" which is another chapter in the mindless drivel novel that is Fox television. And we might as well throw out there, television in general - did you *see* Lost and it's "twist" this week? You know, the one a blind, deaf and tactileless man could have seen, heard and felt coming from a mile away? It absolutely breaks my heart that Lost, "good" as it is, is the apex of what's available. Another rant for another time, but they put out some WEAK crap now and again.

And yet he continues to tune in...

So, continuing back, Saturday, the undoubted highlight of which was "Nyetian psychosis while playing Boggle." Ali/Grin/Sarah/Cristophe came over for pizza drinks and games, and we had a grand ol' time. I probably should have prefaced the entire thing by admitting that I hate word-based games, especially ones with arbitrary definitions of what is and what is not a word. The ling major in me, aka he who hates pointless prescription, rears its ugly head. I kept including words like "doer" and "toer" and "donner" in my lists with the idea that "one who (blanks)" is a fairly accepted convention of the English language, only to be shot down rather emphatically by the Goat. I also tried to say "crit" as short for "hematocrit" or "criticism," depending on your academic atmosphere, e.g. chic lit crit, and this was also shot down with reckless abandon (despite "crit"'s presence int he dictionary). So I got more irked than I should have and tried to joke about it but ending up sounding more caustic than I should have, and later when I used "lathery" and tried to not take credit for it because it seemed to me to be just as constructed of a word as the others I had previously tried, I got accused of being passive aggressive and martyr-like. So I'm sorry to my friends and the Beck for getting overly emphatic about the game; I was clearly not in the mood for it (as others were not in the mood for singing and Encore) and I should have just said so instead of playing while in a foul mood and being a general jackass. I'm sorry pals.

Otherwise Saturday night was fun, replete with 1950s moments where the men sat in the living room with beers and the women were pregnant and in the kitchen... ordering a pizza. So close. Anyways, good times and funny discussions abound. The earlier part of Saturday for me was spent running, tutoring, and completing student comments. Ah, student comments, the fork through the temple moment of every mid semester. One of these semesters I will go minimalist and give it this treatment:

Version A: Your son/daughter is good and works hard.

Version B: Your son/daughter is a chump-ass punk who does not work hard, does not pay attention, sleeps in class, forgets homework assignments, can't really write in complete sentences and makes me feel like education is a waste of time.

Version C: Your son / daughter is somewhere between A & B.

That would have saved me a lot of time; as it were, four hours of giving individual attention, the apex of which was the beck convincing me not to use the term weasel. Argh.

Okay, so the week in reverse review angle has grown predictable tiresome. I will try to stay on top of things better in the near future. In quick sum - Friday, dinner with GrinGoat at the Cactus, somewhere in there Swirls & Scoops opened and Beck, Ali and I hit it up after one of their long days of surgery together. I continue to be fat accordingly.

More exciting things to come. I hope.

Weak and Off (But Blessed by Alchemy!)

Sorry for the thunderous silence. I will, per usual, now have to account for the past week in backwards fashion.

Today is Monday, and several thousand morons are running 26.2 miles in the wind and rain in order to prove something about themselves to themselves or someone like them. I kid, I kid. Beck is currently in not-so-sunny (more accurately, windy windy floody floody get those animals up on the arky arky) downtown Natick cheering on the runners in a sparse crowd. She's specifically waiting for our tea/shower-throwing friend Theresa who is racing with the Tufts West running club. So good luck to all of them; I look forward to walking to downtown Natick to stand in the rain and watch people run by. I am sure it will be inspiring and not remind me of the fact that the original runner of the Marathon died immediately afterwards.

I did not do a great job in class today - I am trying to teach in some no man's land about evolution, trying to be detailed enough so that we actually say something of substance but not so detailed that they have to start filling in Punnett squares or anything. You *could* assume that they are familiar with it, seeing as they have all taken this before in biology, but you would be making an ass out of u and mption, and worse you would be wrong. The day is ruled by erratic statements and vague notions; TV teaches them to be inexact. At least that's been my experience. Regardless, my enthusiasm and motivation are waning hard, and I haven't even mentioned the "38th parallel," our contingent of Korean students whose effort level has given them a grade around 38. They sure do make days great - and since I have to bug out a week early for wedding-oriented reasons, I have to get them to pull there averages up (so they can GRADUATE) that much faster. SO, yeah, work is not grand, and my mood and vigor are cowering accordingly. I continue to fail as a human being. Ladies and gents, your melodramatic overreaction of the week...

Okay, it's a few hours later now in this interrupted post. Theresa indeed finished the marathon at about 5 hours, which is way more than I will ever be able to say. Congrats T! The reason for the interruption was a four hour nap I slipped in this afternoon - I felt zonked all day and surrendered my afternoon off in an effort to right the ship before tonight's DANCE LESSON. Which went awesome - the iF is slowly changing her elemental makeup. Pb and (nyet) J. Fun times; we are getting our schwerve on. Lookout Geneseo.

Otherwise I am chilling at home and watching MLB TV, which I finally caved and purchased this weekend. All the baseball games across the country. Nice. This will serve me well when...

We move to Phoenix. In capital B big news, Beck accepted a job in sunny (yes, actually sunny) Phoenix, AZ. It is a dope job, and now we get to live near friends Dan & Christina. Sweet. Not so sweet: leaving New England summer right as it stops being craptastic New England spring (the worst of all seasons) to head into the snarling teeth of summer in the desert. Ugh. We are also selling all of our thick clothes and coats. Not really. Anyhoo, the job was un-pass-up-able, and so we're headed for the Southwest.

I look forward to attending spring training games. I otherwise have ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKING PLANS. In a parallel universe, this does not cause me stress. ASU may be calling. We'll see...

This seems like a good time to start a new post for the past week in review...

Fairytale Gone Bad

Sunrise Avenue - Fairytale Gone Bad

This is the end you know
Lady, the plans we had went all wrong
We ain’t nothing but fight and shout and tears

We got to a point I can’t stand
I ’ve had it to the limit I can’t be your man
I ain’t more than a minute away from walking

We can’t cry the pain away
We can’t find a need to stay
I slowly realized there ’s nothing on our side

Out of my life, out of my mind
Out of the tears we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave this mess behind
Out of my head, out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they ’re bad
Tell them it ’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad

Another night and I bleed
They all make mistakes and so did we
But we did something we can never turn back right

Find a new one to fool
Leave and don’t look back. I won’t follow
We have nothing left it ’s the end of our time

We can’t cry the pain away
We can’t find a need to stay
There’s no more rabbits in my hat to make things right

Out of my life, out of my mind
Out of the tears we can’t deny
We need to swallow all our pride
And leave this mess behind
Out of my head, out of my bed
Out of the dreams we had, they ’re bad
Tell them it ’s me who made you sad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad

Tell them the fairytale gone bad
Tell them the fairytale gone bad

sariawan dipelihara...

begh, busettttttttttt, saya juga tidak tahu mengapa dan kenapa sehingga sang sariawan bisa betah beranak pinak, bersaudara kandung, saudara tiri, sampai mempunyai sodara angkat di gusi dan bibir bagian dalam saya. hancurlah awak!!!
pertamanya sih, okelah cuman 2 biji yang muncul. lengkap dengan formasi bagian bibir dalam atas dan bawah. tindakan preventif belum dilakukan soalnya belum terallu menggangu dan belum menyiksa dan membahayakan kelangsungan umat hidup yang ada di dunia. waktu berjalan, dan sang sariawan masih betah memberikan rasa yang pedis-pedis nikmat (ups, pedih-pedis menyakitkan) dan saya pikir dengan memakan yang pedis-pedis maka sang sariawan akan terkalahkan.
*perasaan sudah dari dulu muncul pemahaman kalo misalnya sariawan dan makan pedas-pedas (pedas berarti sangat pedis :D) pasti sariawannya akan hilang.
ternyata tidak!! schedule dengan memakan pangsit+bakso tenes+bakso 2000 perak+kerupuk pertama saya kira akan berkhasiat, nihil! malahan saya mendapat satu gejala aneh lagi yang timbul. malamnya, pas tukang+bakso+kesayanganku (yang dikira tukang bakso hantu oleh nire+gaga sewaktu mereka nginap dirumah, soalnya jam 1 malam masih bunyiin mangkoknya cari pembeli :D, wong tu penjual bakso emang spesialis begadang kok!) lewat di depan rumah, tercegatlah dia dan saya kemudian membeli lagi porsi yang sama. 2 bakso tenes+4kerupuk+5bakso kecil, gak pake kuah, langsung dihajar sama sambel+kecap+daun bawang+bawang goreng, dan saya kira taktik ini akan berhasil, sayang..............
besoknya saya terbangun dengan rasa perih yang berlebih,,, pas mo mandi dan ke kampus,, gusi bagian dalam tersogrok (apa sih bahasa indonesianya? terseruduk yah?) oleh sikat gigi. dan menghasilkan... 3 sariawan tambahan.
jadi total ada 5 biji sariawan yang sekarang menguasai mulutku, dan begh,, bahkan mangap pun terasa perih...
sudah hampir setengah plastik rambutan (hasil rampokan dari ucchank) plus fres tea original dan itu tidak ngaruh,,, dan sampai sekarang... saya masih bingung akan terapakan ni sariawan...
gimana cara saya ngomong nanti yah kalo siarannya?

Fe ~= Pb

Just returned home from a dance lesson. Lotsa fun. Seriously. But. The fist is made of iron. Not (2b) lead. Fear not. We will get our fox homerun trot going soon enough.

I'm going DOWN!

In a Blades of Glory: 50

Ben called it - this movie promised very little but them delivered it. Plenty of laugh at the stupidity moments (watching Beck fall to pieces was actually more fun than the film itself) and plenty of shirtless Will Farrell improvising in typical carpet bomb fashion (say a million stupid things, one or two will stick and be funny). Amy Poehler and Will Arnett were exceptionally C+ish in their roles, except for the chase on skates scene - the escalator section of this was just a fantastic absurdist handbrake to the cliche. Many reviewers have likened this to a one joke SNL skit that instead of going on 6 minutes too long went to 80 minutes too long - it's hard to disagree, but it's not like anyone thought or pretended that this would be more. I think Will Ferrel is just good enough to mandate a middle range ranking of his films - they're all pretty stupid but enjoyable enough, and not so bad as to make you angry. I put this one not as good as Talladega Nights or Anchorman but better than Old School and idiocy like Kicking and Screaming. (Stranger than Fiction, another movie I panned, doesn't really fit in this stu-comedy genre).

I will say this though...maybe, just maybe the whole movie was made worth it by pushing Jenna Fischer into the official super-cutie next door pantheon:


Yes, on second consideration, a special thanks to the iron fist, PGoat and Grin for dragging me to this movie. I guess it all Pammed out after all.

F.F.R.R.I.DAY. Hey Hey.

Blitz of an academic week, and I apologize for the lack of posting. After the Sparkle debacle on Monday night, the rest of the week took a furious flight toward completion - I basically reviewed with the students for Friday's test and tutored a bajillion people between tuesday and friday and worked at all hours. I managed to catch Lost and pick up Beck from work on time, but that was pretty much the extent of my non tutoring (okay, non jazz-obsessed) output for this week.

I had attempted to gather the SG Boys for some basketball viewage on Monday night, but thanks to the appetite for de-crust-ion exhibited by a certain dark-furred sausage- shaped dog blunder, that went out the window. But there was a lingering unfinished note on what we should do for the weekend - I had merely suggested that we should get us and the SLF's together to "do something;" Christophe had responded with an equally ambiguous "yeah." Beck had returned from the Southwest, Gringoat had returned from the West, the Mound was bursting with (almond) joy - it just seemed like the thing to do. Reunited, and it would hopefully feel so good. Of course, left in the inept planning hands of the Chrome Yers, even two days after the failed Bball attempt, nothing definitive had been said.

This somehow morphed its way through the grapevine that is Ali's head into "the boys are planning something for this weekend" and then "the boys are trying to do something without us this weekend; we have to fend for ourselves" and also "and this is all nyet's plan, and he clearly hates women, that misogynist fool." hemanawha? Eventually we got our act together and decided to head to Savior Mound's place for takeout and games. And if my "games" you mean "scotch and nature videos," well, then we got what we came for.

I went to pick up the Beck from the ER. She had apparently gotten in the spirit and dressed up as a mint green Easter egg for work, so she was easy to spot, though not easy to corral - I rocked out in the parking lot for 30 minutes after popping my head into the ER to request that one of her fellow doctors let her know that her ride was there. She had, in her defense, taken a patient right at the tail end of the day, so all was forgiven. I listened to Headhunters and a weird hypermodern version of Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts. All was fine.

We made it over to Birdland at about 8 and had a raging debate over how to successfully order chinese food when one person doesn't really like vegetables, one person is vegetarian (and pregnant, for that matter), two people are faux-practicing passover kosher and one person really, really wants chinese food. The men folk quickly invoked the spirit (nay, spirits) of Scotch Searl and enjoyed some single malts while the women folk, rather predictably, fell into vet school conversations. Eventually the food showed up and shut them up. Egads. Just kidding, ladies. Kinda. 50 days til graduation. Tick. Tock.

Eventually the food showed up - hurrah - and a mighty feat we did eat while enjoying great conversation about the merits of An Inconvenient Truth (review pending). Not even atrociously written fortune cookie fortunes could squash our mood. (FTR, it turns out that my decisions will determine my destiny. And the most memorable movies are the ones that are unforgettable).

It took a Herculean / Heran effort, but we eventually peeled our Asian-fatted butts out of chairs and headed to the living room to play Trivial Pursuit, super evil genius edition, when the warming glow of television's warming glow grabbed our bug-zapper victim attentions. Christophe had turned on the Planet Earth series, and we were set. Both Christophe and Sarah rather plainly lied about whether the show did or did not show "kills" - but it didn't really matter, the show itself (in HD, no less!) is ridiculously enthralling - super slo mo shots of sharks, above the field african hunting dog attacks, the funniest baboons crossing a river scene you would ever care to see - you name it. All very impressive. More impressive / cuter was S/C's dog Belle, who sat in front of the TV and gazed into it like an RCA dog. Gazed! Into a real TV! We give our dogs credit for looking out windows or listening to barks in the speaker. They, it turns out, are weak.

So another good night in the books - we all putzed out around 11 due to old age and left for our respective homes (well, those of us who weren't already in our own home). Yep - metamucil, scotch, two sore backs - these were all topics of discussion. Plus a rather heinous comment that Ikea furniture was okay "for this point in our lives." Apparently I just graduated points in life and didn't even know it, from one where Ikea was but a dream to one where it sat lowbrow on the list of things that could prop my feet.

I'm Nyet Jones, and I did NOT approve that message.

Chaise Beau

So I'm headed to Papa Jovino Santos-Neto's jazz show this Wednesday. Sweet! Live Music! An activity I love with a price tag I can seldom afford - which in a lot of ways makes it that much sweeter. Ah, here's to truisms. Anyhoo, Papa Jovino is a Brazilian-American musician and also my Tufts bud Ariel's dad. So I am pumped to hear some modern world-jazz and hopefully han gout with some Tuftsmen as well. Boo. Yay. Here's a holiday concert from NPR if you're aching for a preview.

So in preparation I've gone all jazz crazy. I just finished Ted Buehrer's How to Listen to and Appreicate Jazz, another set of CD's from the Modern Scholar series I checked out from the Morse Library. It turned out to be an excellent compliment to the other Jazz series I listened to recently - that one focused on some of the more technical aspects and differences between the various styles, whereas this one was much more of a personality-driven historical account. This one also spent less time dawdling in the origins of jazz (cakewalk, new orleans, etc.) and more time hitting the big names from those eras and then tracing their influence into other eras / styles. So it was cool to hear about the music as spillover of the artists' intentions and not just the formed-in-a-vacuum material characteristics of the music - not that that isn't a useful take, it just would've been overkill given the series I had already heard. I was very happy to dig into the innovations and various incarnations of bands - Miles Davis, for example, essentially traversed AT LEAST four different styles, maintaining his own signature soulful playing throughout. Even after listening to 20 hours of lectures and a bevy of samples, though, I'd still say I'm at a very newbie-ish stage - I will say that having a framework of style to place your listening into makes it vastly easier to really focus in on the music. I've only been trying to apply some of this newfound listening technique for the last week or so, and I'm already one, noticing a big difference, and two, starting to find focused, attentive listening to jazz to be a meditative / hypnotic experience - it's simultaneously easy to see why jazzheads get into it and why nonjazzheas don't. I fully admit that I've been a bigtime wannabe jazzhead for quite some time and am now starting to drift further that way...

Quick interjection - I have to warn everyone that whoever produced this lecture series did a HORRIBLE job. There are countless times when the professor misspoke, stopped recording, and then restarted his previous sentence. This is understandable- it's hard to speak flawlessly for hours at a time - but no one bothered to edit these screw-ups out of the finished mix. It would be as if I were talking It would be as if I were writing and I wanted to say I desired to say I desired to type something and I kept re-saying I kept re-typing it instead of just using instead of just hitting the backspace key. Hopefully you can appreciate how annoying this is - and as an added bonus, it makes you feel a little insane, little flashes of verifiable deja vu throughout your drive home.

So if you know anything about my personal history, which you don't, you would know (but you don't) that I get wicked manic-depressive style mania when it comes to new hobbies and collections and such and I have a real problem stopping myself. I get on big kicks, in other words, and just start scavenging. You can check my Phish bootleg collection for a direct and obvious example of this - the desire to be with the in crowd and have a working knowledge of those concerts far surpassed my rational side which was trying to politely inform me that even if I sat down for 14 consecutive days I would still not finish listening to all of those shows. This kind of behavior is fairly explicitly targeted by the likes of Grateful Dead, Phish or Bob Dylan archivists, who slowly release their heroin I mean old shows with full knowledge that we the bug-eyed masses will go running dollars in grubby fists. Bahstahds. Anyhoo, I bring all of this up because I got a bigtime jazz bug and had an overwhelming urge to go out and buy every recommendation I heard in the CD series or read about online.

This is not good. Fortunately, the college professor guy at the coffee shop the other day (he of the chatting up coffee cutie nature which so irked the iF) dropped a wiseman quote that I heard loud and clear, right about the time that this wave of purchase-desire had overcome me. I had just hit up Newbury Comics and picked up an Ornette Coleman LP (Free Jazz) and a Miles Davis LP (Seven Steps to Heaven). Classic addict's behavior - I can stop at one, no, I can stop at just two,t his is the last one, I promise, etc. But fate intervened - wise old professor (aka WOPpy McAdage) dude said "Don't buy what you can steal or borrow" with an air of authority suggesting a lifetime of hobo loneliness. I picture many a sandwich grifted.

So i've taken the advice and raided my local library plus put in about seventeen requests to the Minuteman system. So they'll be trickling in. And I'll probably keep blah-blah-blahing about them in the coming weeks. Maybe even throw in some feature track / album reviews. Who knows? I mean, there's a framework here to the blog, but not really any rules for what goes in it.

There are no wrong notes.

For now, though, I'll just leave with a hearty recommendation that you check out both of those academic intros to jazz and then partake of some of *one of* America's finest art forms. And consider this fair warning that if you thought posting about my baseball simulator's no hitter was nerdy, then you have no idea of the transcendent 30 year old living in his mom's basement essence I could drop on you if I start jazz-chatting on here. So fair warning, the theme could weave its way in. It's just the sentimental mood I'm in.

setengah hari di tanggal 5 april

oke kita mulai postingan ini dengan damai
tanpa sumpah serapah
tanpa caci maki (walopun sebenarnya ingin)
pertanyaannya, mengapa sampai ingin mencaci?

sebab pertama, di kuliah produksi media format kecil
maaf nih yah sebelumnya
buat dosen yang bersangkutan, gila aja
masalahnya produksi poster kita udah setengah jalan
udah capek-capek meriset (bahkan wie-wie katanya udah dijual di polisi :D)
proposalnya udah kelar, tinggal di presentasikan doang
apakah deal ato tidak kita buat poster itu
tiba-tiba,,
cut!!!
teriakan seorang dosen pengasuh yang lain
ternyata perjalanan sama bang sonny cuma sampe mid test doang
dan selebihnya diasuh oleh d-o-s-e-n ini
ya elah, kita yang udah semangat banget kerja posternya,
karena udah berasa di advertising agency
langsung berubah, materinya mengenai OHP!!!
pak tolong, ini tahun 2007 dan kita masih membahas
mengenai bagaimana membuat slide dengan spidol marker
what the ...
dan sebagai tugas final
harus membuat story picture di perpustakaan
sebanyak 36 shoot, baguuuuuuuuuuus!!
ckckckckckckc, heran.....

sebab kedua, di kuliah produksi media audio visual
minggu ini mestinya kumpul tugas
yang harus diekrjakan di adobe after effect
(dan semua anak-anak gak ada yang kerja XD)
jadinya tu ... (sensor) agak bete juga sih
habisnya...
nah setelah itu, presentasi proposal lagi
mengenai karya yang akan dibuat sebagai tugas final
saya, rani, titin sudah sepakat membuat iLM saja
mengenai tema "eksploitasi anak"
sebenarnya, pilihannya bisa video klip, dokumentasi, ato program tv
tapi berhubung rekan setim saya, ehm...
sudahlah...
dan tema kami sedikit dibantai (plus diberi masukan)
mengenai angle-angle shootnya
tema-tema, dan akhirnya kami berembuk lagi
hari senin sudah mulai hunting lokasi
terima kasih!! mudah-mudahan produksi ini bisa berjalan dengan lancar...

yah, seperti itulah hari-hari normal yang dilewati di kampus
dengan sedikit huru-hara
dan ketawa, but enjoy your life lah!!!