The London Paper came back to haunt me.

I'm a hypocrite. At least in this one instance.

I made sort of a big deal this summer about not picking up the free London papers. I wanted "'quality' news" and didn't want to waste my time on rags like The London Paper and London Lite. So, I ignored and brushed off the vendors who "flip(ped) the paper a few times frying-pan style" and tried to push their papers into my hands.

Last Friday, the IDS had its first Slash meeting of the year. In these meetings, we talk about how the week's paper and Web site were and what we're planning to do the next week. A lot of it (sometimes most of it, depending on how the week went) involves critiquing the mistakes we made, like a poorly-worded headline, or a bad layout, or using an Oxford comma.

During the meeting, the marketing department passed around a clipboard for people to sign up for paper distribution. For a free shirt, one could stand in the Arboretum, by the Sample Gates or elsewhere around campus and give papers to people passing by. I found an open slot in my Monday schedule, took a pile of papers from the backshop, walked to the Arboretum, and passed out issues of the paper to students.

After about the ninth person who gave a short wave and a polite, "No thanks," I realized what I was doing. Here I was, the guy who looked away as vendors offered me The London Paper, getting the brush-off as I try to give away free newspapers.

Karma.

"If you want it aaaaaany time, I can get it!"

God, it’s wonderful what you can pull from your subconscious. And how random those pulls can be!

An obscure Paul McCartney number, “Come and Get It,” has been swirling in my head on and off for about three years. Most times, it comes to mind as I’m trying to get into a Spanish-language mindset. In a way, it’s a vestige of a time when I was trying to go to Spain after my junior year of high school and would translate almost every snippet of song in my head. With this song, I had wrestled over whether the lyrics should be translated as, “Si lo quieres, ¡aquí está! Ven y óbtenlo” or, “Si lo quieras” or, “venga y obténgalo.” (I was in the middle of learning the commands and the subjunctive tense.) Because of that constant internal quibbling, it ingrained itself into the mixed tape of my mind, recycling like the end piece of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But it also reshuffled itself. Because I had recalled a song from the past and attached a different memory to it, I lost where I had originally heard it. Had it been on a late Beatles album? I asked myself, or was Paul’s voice developed enough that it could conceivably come from his solo work? I decided on the latter, and I went on for about a year convinced that it was a Paul McCartney solo number. When I looked through my McCartney songs on iTunes, though, I didn’t find it. Consumed with other things to do, I moved on, content in not knowing its origin for sure and allowing it to float around in my head without a home.

With the confluence of two Beatles forces, however, I have finally found the source. I want to finish the Beatles biography before classes start so that it doesn’t run into the reading requirements for my Jimi Hendrix class. (And every other class, of course.) While I was still reading the book at home, I thought of the great idea to put all the Beatles Anthology recordings onto my computer so I could, in effect, “listen” to the book as I read descriptions of the band’s studio work. Now that I only have 84 pages left, I’ve started to get into their latest work, the things that are covered in Anthology 3. Buried near the end of Anthology 3, to my great surprise, was “Come and Get It,” the old Spanish-practice standby!

Immediately, the old feelings of the song came back. I mean the OLD feelings, before I used it to debate the subjunctive tense in my head. This song, and an early version of “The End,” brought back memories of me acting out the lyrics and moving in time with the melody. I would point at an imaginary person, maybe someone who really wanted a candy bar or my Game Boy, and curl my finger as I sing, “If you want it, heeeeere it is! Come and get it.” Or I would take the place of Ringo and play his drum solo, which is regrettably overshadowed by electric guitar in the Anthology version. Of course, all that would happen in the privacy of either my own room or a spare room in Grandma Farris’s house in South Bend.

(The latter room figures prominently in recollections of “The End.” I would lie down on the guest bed, slowly rise up as the final crescendo built, and stand up on the bed just in time to fall dramatically back down once the final piano chord struck. Either that, or I would slowly fall off the edge, clutching the covers in fake desperation and hitting the floor in time with the piano.)

All these memories coming back in two little songs simply overwhelmed me. The events of those last two paragraphs came flashing back to me in five short seconds of condensed nostalgia, and the whole experience has plastered a smile to my face. The feeling is even better than when I listened to "Closing Time" on my last walk in London. This is wonderful!

Question, for those of you willing to answer: Has any song brought back that intense nostalgia in you? A song that you hadn’t heard in A LONG TIME but that conjured up the same feeling it did 10 years ago? Respond with a “tangent.”

[P.S.: A good history of the song is here. Paul wrote it and played all the instruments for the "Beatles" version, but he wrote it for a movie and another band in the Apple Records family. So really, it's neither a Beatles song nor a solo McCartney song. Paul had simply recorded it before a day's Abbey Road session.]

Another Peril of Facebook

Warning: There's some naughty material about to follow. If you offend easily... well, you might want to read on anyway, 'cuz it's really funny. All names have been withheld because I wouldn't want my name to be attached to this outside of Facebook.

I was going to write an update of what I've done in the past week (it's been VERY busy!), but then a little nugget of cheer dropped onto my laptop that I had to share with all of you.

***

While I was reading the Beatles biography today, a friend on Facebook updated his status with this:

"(name withheld) is going to beat the wood."

Someone, who apparently didn't know what that innuendo meant, commented on the status:

"Hope you are doing good and school is going well, too!
Thinking of you! Aunt Rita"

Two people ::liked:: the status update after Aunt Rita made the comment.

***

I DARE you not to laugh.

I'm Back! (And somebody's gone...)

Sorry for the lack of posts, folks. It's been eight days since I could devote some time to writing a blog entry, what with my last day of summer work, my first day back at IU, workshops for the IDS, helping other people move, going to men's soccer practice and volleyball practice to take photos, and starting work at the IDS's visual GA desk. Inadvertently, I timed my return to the blog with the passing of a titan of the Senate, Edward M. Kennedy. So, instead of providing a recap of what I've been doing (which will come later this week, after I've done more stuff), I give you one of Time's lead articles today, which brilliantly sums up Ted's life, accomplishments, embarrassments, and role in following (and creating!) a legacy.

(Also, take a look at James Poniewozik's blog post on this morning's cable news coverage.)

The Book You Read, The Books You Don't

In re The Beatles by Bob Spitz:

I’ve done more things this summer than I have in any other summer: travel to three countries, take a class, do an internship, submit or resubmit four research papers, refine a Web site (it’s not online yet, but it will be), maintain a personal blog, and get back in touch with a childhood passion. That passion (consuming anything about the Beatles, whether in walking Abbey Road, listening to Anthology again, almost buying a vinyl on Brick Lane, or reading the biography) has welled back up in me after lying dormant (relatively) for roughly the last seven years, and it fueled a lot of the excitement of this past summer.

Unfortunately, that passion, especially the latter manifestation (reading the biography), got in the way of other books I’ve always wanted to read. Case in point:

I was packing up for Bloomington last night. (Not finished yet!) I brought too much stuff last year, including some books that I kept in my dorm room largely for show, so I wanted to trim down the stock a little bit. I didn’t think that would be too hard; my personal Wells Library filled a milk crate and three shoeboxes. But as I browsed through the titles I would leave behind, I began to regret whatever time I had wasted over the summer. (Yes, I did waste some time. Watching new-to-me episodes of House can be productive, but watching familiar reruns of Scrubs can’t.)

I kicked myself especially over the classics. Sure, I had books that were already read, an unopened book about poker, and non-essential reference books that I could easily leave at home. But as I tossed The World Is Flat into the keep-at-home tote—

The Godfather! I started reading it last year after I “won” it at a Quizbowl meet during freshman year. I’m not even halfway through it! And The Art of War! I didn’t buy this at Barnes & Noble just ‘cuz it was on sale! And St. Augustine’s Confessions! I’m not even a THIRD of the way through this! Ugh! Why did I start reading that 900-page monster when I had THESE?!

After some exasperated sighs, some head-clutching, and some annoyed hair-combing with my hands, I resigned myself to my fate and began to toss most of them aside. I didn’t read these books when I could, and now that the school year is starting, it’s just gonna get harder to fit them into my schedule. I still have some shreds of hope, however, because I chose The Godfather and The Confessions to bring to my dorm room. I can find time.

(“I can find time.” I can’t wait to read this at the end of the year and laugh at my blind hope.)

Anyway, this is what I’m bringing to IU, excluding textbooks:

• The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
• The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
• Gray’s Anatomy, Dr. Henry Gray (my one concession to vanity; besides, I might need it for my biology class)
• Spanish<->English, Spanish->Spanish, and English->English dictionaries
• Bible, multiple authors
• Liturgy of the Hours, multiple authors (I’ve tried before, and I might try again!)
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Charles Darwin (didn’t know the title was that long, did you?) (could double as a supplementary textbook for my evolution class)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Day by Day, multiple authors
• The Essential Erasmus, ed. John P. Dolan
• Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
• All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
• The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

^That only takes up HALF the milk crate. I feel much better now about the prospects of my back, and my car's gas mileage.

Two roads converged in a yellow wood (which meant that I COULD travel both!)

I’m talking, of course, about two influences in my childhood, funneled together by two best friends from that same childhood. (It wasn't in a yellow wood, just in my basement. But that doesn't matter.)

I hung out with Dave at his house Friday night during the Colts game. We didn’t watch much of the game (they lost to the Vikings 13-3, and Walk the Line was on), so I pulled out my laptop that I brought with me so I could work with some photos I was posting to Facebook that evening. I had forgotten to bring the photos, so I resigned myself to writing down Springboards for this very blog. (Springboards are the small capsules of thought I write down when I can’t spend the time writing them out completely. When I have the time and space, I pull a Springboard out of either my pocket or a Word-document list, and hopefully it brings me back to the frame of mind I was in when I wrote it.)

Dave asked me what I was writing. I told him at first that it was a to-do list (because it WAS a to-do list, of sorts), and he said to put on the list, “Give David a billion dollars.” I politely said, “No,” and explained that I was really writing down Springboards. He said, “Then write about giving me a billion dollars,” and some day, when that writing gets me a billion dollars, “give me half a billion.” I said, “Okay, I will.”

There, Dave, I wrote it.

Anyway, one of the Springboards was this:

Reading Bob Spitz’s Beatles biography like a Harry Potter novel (you know roughly how it will end, but the details are fascinating & the writing style is too quick to stop)

Those are the two elements of my childhood that have converged: the Beatles and Harry Potter. They hadn’t completely converged yet, though, which is one reason why I had written the idea down but not expanded on it yet. For the moment, I left it on the page and continued watching TV.

Only after mentioning the book to my friend Luke at dinner after Mass yesterday did the parallel re-enter my head. Thanks to that mention, I decided to explore it again. I put off all other things I planned to do that evening (watch the first season of House, organize my stuff for IU) until after I read some more of the book. I had stopped at the end of a chapter earlier in the day (the Quarry Men now consisted of John, Paul, George, and Colin Hanton!), so I could pick it up easily and continue reading.

I settled myself on the couch in the basement, piling three pillows against the armrest and lying across the length of what had comfortably framed my body from head to toe five years ago but which now only went down to the ankles. Eventually I turned from lying on my back to sitting, to lying on my stomach, to lying on the floor. It takes some effort to recall those movements now, because I was so enthralled with reading about finding a drummer, John & Paul’s songwriting process, and the Liverpool rock ‘n’ roll scene that I blocked out everything else. The other things I could do, the more comfortable places I could sit, even the stomach rumblings from the Mexican restaurant could not pull me away from the trance I was in, scanning my eyes back & forth across the page like a copy machine and mouthing the more revelatory passages. Sometimes, I even forgot where I was and I read passages out loud, although I don’t think anyone heard because I was in the basement. I felt like I was eight again, when I absorbed those tracks from the Anthology CDs over and over, when I discovered what a truly awesome sound the Beatles created at the expense of hearing any other sounds from any other bands of the day.

And then I realized, “This is exactly how I felt reading The Half-Blood Prince.” In that instance, I ignored the need to apply for scholarships as I raced through its pages during Christmas break of my senior year of high school. (I was late in reading the summer release, I admit, but I caught up quickly. I read it in two days!) I brought that book to the dinner table, to the bathroom, on errands with Mom, and to bed, all of which (besides the errands, because I’m driving now) I have done with the Beatles biography. The cliffhangers, the fast pace, and the characters of each book all have the same rapturous appeal to me, and they all result in lost time, both then and now.

It’s not really lost time, though. Like any good book, it’s just time spent differently.

God, I haven’t been this excited about reading a book for a long time. Of course, I’ve read gems recently (The Things They Carried, The Godfather, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), but not since growing up at the same pace as Harry Potter have I wanted to devour a book so quickly. Of course, I’ll probably end up with the same problem I had with those books: asking myself, “Why did I read that so quickly? I didn’t stop to savor it!” But that’s okay; satisfaction, wholeness, and a sense of accomplishment are meant only for the end of philosophy and theology books, anyway.

There’s no time to harp, though. I’m only on page 160 of 858!

A Self-Contained Conversation

There’s not much else to do when you’re mowing the lawn. You have to make sure you don’t mow too far from the last row, lest you leave some tall grass behind; and if you’re on a riding lawnmower, you have to make sure you don’t spin the tires when you’re going uphill. Other than that, your mind is free to wander, much like mine did. And boy, did my mind wander.

See, I’ve mentioned before, but I talk to myself sometimes. I did it a lot more when I was younger and ::cue the false pity:: didn’t have social skills, but I still sometimes let my brain go somewhere else, do, something else and talk with someone else. Maybe I’m having a debate with someone about health care reform, or replaying a conversation I had with someone, or meeting famous people on a photo assignment, or creating a fail-safe situation where OF COURSE I get the girl. Whatever it is, the sequence starts almost automatically, and it makes sure I stay inventive and not brain-dead when I’m doing a thought-deficient task like mowing the lawn.

It’s nothing crazy. It’s not like I think they’re real or anything. Sometimes I don't even make it up, in cases where I'm replaying a stand-up routine or scenes from a movie.

Anyway, this happened in my head today. It’s not an exact transcription, of course; even if I taped it, no one would be able to hear it over the lawnmower.

***

SETUP:

Imagine, if you will, a world where everything is as simple as your mind thinks it is. The groups, the stereotypes, the rash generalizations you make in your head are, indeed, true. Or at least some of them. The Vatican got out of that business during the Reformation, when the Illuminati replaced it.

...and right here is the person you’re looking for. She doesn't usually talk to reporters, but she's feeling open right now. It's your luck day. Enjoy the Capitol Building.

Thank you.

Hi! Nice to see you!

Wait... I don’t think I know you. I didn’t ask for you.

Oh, don’t worry about that. We’re all the same.

We?

Don’t you know?

Know what?

I’m a member of the most exclusive and ::quote marks, fake-drama voice, etc.:: oppressive club in the country: The Liberals in Washington.

The Liberals in Washington?

Yep. We’re the people that would have you believe anything that would make us better off and the American people worse off.

Wow! I’ve never met one of you before! Or should I call you one of Them?

::points finger:: I like the way you think. Do you wanna join?

I don’t know how much I would fit in. I don’t consider myself either a liberal or a conservative. I’ve grown ::blech:: with both sides.

Oh, don’t worry; that’s our fault, anyway. Besides, we’ll get you a lifetime pass so you don’t have to switch out when the next wave of ideology hits.

...That doesn’t make any sense.

Oh, you didn’t know? Our name and membership change with the national debate. Makes collecting dues hard as hell, but that’s the way it’s always been.

Oh, so you’re not always the Liberals in Washington?

Right. Depending on what people are arguing about and who they’re arguing with, we could be the Liberals in Washington today and the Conservatives in Washington tomorrow. The membership just switches out.

That’s a lot of switching.

Oh, not really. If we changed for every person and every debate, we might as well just keep everyone in the group and call ourselves the Elitists in Washington. ::winks aside:: But then we’d have to switch between that and the Rabid Populists, and we’d be back where we started...

When DO you switch?

It’s actually not very complicated. We only switch when there’s a change in the NATIONAL debate as it’s portrayed in the national media. Take health-care reform. The reporters who cover the “mobs” show people using different names like “the government,” “bureaucrats,” “death panels,” but everyone knows they’re only talking about the Liberals in Washington. And it’s not the Liberals in New York, or the Liberals in Los Angeles, or the Liberals in Their Hometown. No, it has to be the Liberals in Washington, because it is a far-away place where important national decisions are made without their constitutionally-protected objections heard. There’s enough distance between them and Washington that they can Loom Large, but this town is important enough for the claim to be credible...

But you digress.

But I digress. You’re right. So anyway, we pick up on that cue that we get from the MainStream Media, and we adjust our membership accordingly.

When was the last time you were the Conservatives in Washington?

Me, personally? I’ve NEVER been a Conservative in Washington. Those guys are too backwards, hickish, God-fearing and gun-toting for my taste. I prefer the collective guilt, irrational idealism, and poorly-applied smarts of the Liberals. But we changed very recently. You remember the Blue Dogs?

Conservative Democrats?

That’s them! They and their Republican partners were crushing everything that was good about the proposed health-care overhaul, and the national outlets were all abuzz about the Conservatives in Washington creating that opposition. That was about two weeks ago, back when I wasn’t just an object to swing a bat at…

Huh. That’s interesting. Wait, would that explain Obama’s public lamentation of journalism at the correspondents' dinner?

Exactly! Both the Liberal members and the Conservative members want to keep The New York Times, the network & cable news, and Rush Limbaugh as the best media sources. We couldn’t hope to stay on top of things if we had to follow the blogosphere. ::aside:: Eat THAT, conspiracy theorists!

Wow. I just gained five levels of cynicism.

So, what was it you were here for?

Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m just gonna head home. ::heads out, but turns around quickly:: One thing, though. Why did you offer me a lifetime membership? I thought you were the most exclusive club in the country.

Oh, that? Yeah, I was just kidding. Only one person has ever earned a lifetime pass.

Oh, yeah? Who?

George Washington.

Right. Friend of the Federalists AND the Anti-Federalists.

Have a good day!

You, too.

Hey, um... You're not gonna write this up, are you?

Are you kidding? Of course not. This is old news.

***

PLEASE don’t read into this. Even I can't read into this.

Squirrel!

I yell ^that in my head every time I see one. ...I say “in my head” because you wouldn’t want to hear that every time I see a squirrel. I wouldn’t want to hear myself yell that.) But I did hear it all the time in high school, and that’s where all this came from.

The grounds of my high school had a lot of squirrels, and it was hard not to notice them at all times of the day. During class, they would scamper up the trees and park outside the windows, prompting at least one student to either yell, “Squirrel!” in the middle of a lesson or, in an attempt to not cause a scene, turn toward the back of the room where the windows were to watch it scurry. (If the student were sitting in the front of the room, it wouldn’t matter which one he chose. And yes, it was always “he.”) For those of us who ran around the neighborhood as part of practice for a sport, the afternoons were even better. They were Prime Time for Furry Interruptions from Nature.

As a (by no means stellar) member of the cross country and distance track teams, I found myself almost looking for squirrels as we ran along the streets near our high school. We worked squirrels into our informal points system, where points were “awarded” and “taken away” in the same spirit as Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as in they didn’t really matter, but we still paid attention to it because they were tied to social cues and team harmony. Jokes sometimes got you a point, good PRACTICAL jokes could get you ten points, falling embarrassingly might have lost you five points, and being a poopy-head could take away a point a minute. We didn’t keep track of points because it was THAT informal, but they did tie the practices together and make for good conversation during our runs.

Squirrels, because of their speed, their furry tails, and their generally comical nature, were worth a significant number of points if caught. (“Significant number of points” = ONE MILLION POINTS) We never caught any squirrels, though, because a) it would have taken too much effort while we were running and b) would YOU like to be grabbed & picked up & removed from your play area just for a bigger animal’s enjoyment? (I didn’t think so!) We never expected to give anyone a million points for catching a squirrel, but we enjoyed them so much that we couldn’t let our informal points system exist without it.

My love of squirrels... Love? Nah, I don’t LOVE squirrels. They can’t love you back. Let’s look for a better word…

My interest in squirrels continues to this day. (That's better!) In fact, it might have grown since high school for two reasons:

1) The squirrels at IU are intense! They’re bigger and more willing to get in your way than other squirrels I’m used to. Nowhere else have I seen a squirrel outside of a dining hall holding breadsticks as nunchucks.

2) I have my own camera! During my freshman year I had a Canon PowerShot A560, and this year I upgraded to a Nikon D80 with a wide lens and a long lens. Over those two years, I’ve snapped a few photos whenever I come across one and have my camera. (I don’t go out and find photogenic squirrels. I don’t have to; they aren’t scared to get close.)

...Don’t tell anybody this, but when no one’s around, and I see a squirrel, my eyes get big and I yell, “Squirrel!” It doesn’t always stay in my head.

***

I See What You Did There

I’ve developed my sense of humor from six sources of varying influence: my dad, Comedy Central, Boy’s Life jokes, Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor, and newspaper comics. The last one supplies today’s installment of I See What She Said There. Since it’s in a family-friendly newspaper, the following joke, which appeared in Crankshaft this morning, isn’t of the “that’s what she said” kind. I wouldn’t stoop to that level of jokes, anyway. That would be immature. ;D


(from The Seattle Times)

Disaster Me!

It's (a)live!

Denis, the designer of NetDisaster, e-mailed me last night to say that everything works, including the "remove disaster" button. So, the God Almighty disaster is now fully operational, and I've added a disaster to this blog so you can shoot it down with the second deadliest weapons next to the wrath of God: WMDs! I'll switch the disaster out every once in a while and maybe even give you a choice of disasters, but I'll take it down sometimes so it doesn't get too annoying.

Please, have WAY too much fun with this.

What'chu Talkin' 'Bout, Chris Martin?

I was going to write something about Coldplay’s single “Viva la Vida.” I was going to say that I love the almost orchestral feeling and the historical & religious references in a pop song (of all things!); that outside of the Beatles discography, it is the only song I don’t mind getting stuck in my head; and that this is the best Coldplay song since “Clocks.” Unfortunately, all of that has already been said (well, not so specifically with the third claim), so I wouldn’t be adding anything really new with that kind of stuff. So, in keeping with Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger’s musing about the chain of knowledge, let’s add some value to this!

***

Who the hell is Chris Martin singing about?

That’s what I thought the first time I listened closely to the song. My brother and I were driving back from vacation in southwestern Michigan, and we were listening to the album on the way. Unfortunately, my sleep schedule was still moving from London time to Indiana time, so I accidentally took my nap right when it was playing. I think I woke up once the next song started, so I just missed it. However, we both still wondered aloud who was the king/revolutionary/other historical figure he was talking about. I suggested John the Baptist because of the “head on a silver plate” part, but then I thought of Constantine. With his Edict of Milan and adoption of Christianity, and the “Roman cavalry,” and the prayer to “be my mirror, my sword and shield” echoing (in my mind) the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, I thought it had to be him. I also mentioned Alexander the Great (“missionaries (of a Hellenic kind) in a foreign field”), Jesus (see previous lyric & the Commissioning), and Julius Caesar, but Constantine remained stuck in my head…

...until I kept thinking about why I thought specifically of Caesar: “One minute I held the key / Next the walls were closed on me.” Constantine never really fell from grace, as far as I know, whereas Julius had to beware the ides of March because in a few people’s eyes, he had already fallen. (That is, if the characters from Shakespeare’s play are to be believed.) All that, added with the sweep to power implied in the crowd shouting, “The old king is dead! Long live the king!” made me question whether it was Constantine.

(Curiously, Napoleon never popped into my head. It’s funny the associations you do (John the Baptist) and don’t (Napoleon) make while simply listening to a song.)

This subject was brought up about a month later, and my friend Arec said that maybe it isn’t about some historical person. I thought, “Of course!” That sounded MUCH more likely. Maybe the song simply describes a universal feeling and cloaks it in historical references to get people to pay more attention. (It certainly grabbed MY attention. That, and the naked strings throughout.) But what is that feeling?

I’d almost liken it to bipolar behavior. You’re on a high, confident that you’re the best you could possibly be, so sure of yourself as you “roll the dice” and “feel the fear in [your] enemy’s eyes.” Then you realize that you only think that way because you’ve built yourself up mentally, or you’ve ignored what could stop you, or you’ve only been doing easy stuff so far. All the castles of awesomeness you’ve built were on “pillars of salt and pillars of sand.” Indeed, you might say there was “never an honest word” because your false confidence made you think you ruled the world. Suddenly, you feel walls closing in, people can’t believe what you’ve become, and you begin to refer to your domination in the past tense. You think that something other than work & inherent skill got you where you went, and you begin to call those self-told confidence-boosters “the wicked and wild wind” and blame them for the sorry state you’ve gotten yourself into. But as you “sweep the streets (you) used to own,” fixing everything you did wrong before, you realize that you indeed did have some skill, and with the right application of that skill, you could try to earn St. Peter’s attention again and get back to the place where you heard Jerusalem’s bells and your cavalry choirs. Then, when you ask yourself, “Who would ever want to be king?” you’d say, “Me!” And you’re on a high, confident that you’re the best you could possibly be, so sure of yourself as you “roll the dice”...

I would ALMOST liken it to acting bipolar. ::stuffs high school back into its box:: However, there are experiences much more well-known and universal than that: getting fired, getting dumped, resigning effective at noon tomorrow, obtaining false fame for fame’s sake and losing that fame.

The point is, the song is widely applicable and yet highly personal. The human journey from the top to the bottom is as old and as far-reaching as The Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical story of the Flood. It would be almost perfect poetic justice if, once Coldplay becomes less popular and fades into the lore of epic bands of the past, they re-record “Viva la Vida” for their final album. I say “almost” because it would by no means be unique. (Then again, if poetry tries for the universal, then acknowledging that the band went through a universal experience would, indeed, be perfectly poetic.)

So, who the hell is Chris Martin singing about? In my reckoning, he’s singing about everyone. And everyTHING, too: ideas, philosophies, governments, and even species (if you want to bring the dinosaurs and/or climate change into this). Sometimes, a wicked wind brings in a powerful regime that eventually loses out; sometimes, an ideology that seemed popular for a while turns out to be built on shaky ground; sometimes, a person gets drunk off the thrill that came with feeling the enemy’s fear and forgets why he/she beat the enemy in the first place.

“Viva la Vida” is a powerful reminder that nothing lasts forever. (It’s also a clever oxymoron, given the title’s translation of, “Long Live Life.”) It’s always good to watch out for the fall from grace, whether you’re a government that wants to stay true to the people, a proponent of an idea with flaws, or simply someone who thinks he’s all that. Realizing that you can be brought down, and thereby staying true to reality, can paradoxically keep you up, because you’re not building your power on sand.

Bits of the Media, Part Two

Part One

True to the lessons of this summer, I continue reading international news sources. I'm not being consistent with it by any means (all of this stuff comes from what I read on Monday DURING LUNCH), but I'm doing more of it than I did before May, so I've progressed a little bit, at least.

1) I'm completely new to this news source. This is Xinhua News Agency, an official media outlet of the Chinese government. It's like the BBC in that way, in that public money supports it. It's quite different, however, in that it reports directly to the Communist Party of China's publicity department, so some say it will always favor the party line (as in this article discussing China's partnerships with Latin America and this one reporting a protest of a "separatist"'s visit to Australia). (So, it really isn't much like the BBC.) You should not ignore what it reports, though. Because China is becoming more important in the world, I'd say it's near-required to pay at least some attention to it. You can learn a little about how the party thinks and acts, you can read & watch relatively independent reports of sports & natural disasters, and you'll get the chance to read about things like Shenzhen's experiment in "the separation of powers". (Although I can't stop thinking about The Onion's riff on this aspect of Chinese media.)

2) This one scared the bejeebus out of me.

My J110 professor sent this Nation article to my science writing professor over Facebook. (The wall-to-wall post showed up in my news feed.) Although I've seen everything in the article before (whether in both professors' classes, in my internship, or even in the international reporting class), but to see it again, all synthesized into a Nation article, made me cry a little inside. By what my limited experience can tell, all of it is true, and by what my limited experience can feel, all of it is terrifying as I try to enter the field. It ends with a little bit of cheeriness, and as I read it I thought of the Science Media Centre's work in this regard; but nothing can end well enough when the penultimate paragraph sounds like this:

In light of the media upheaval, scientists can no longer assume that a responsible, high-minded press will treat their ideas with the seriousness they deserve, delivering them to policy-makers and the public for sober consideration. Instead, partisan media will convey diametrically opposed versions of where science actually stands on any contentious subject--consider, for example, the difference between how Fox News and NPR cover climate change--even as most of the public (and many policy-makers) will tune out science more or less completely, besieged by other information options.

3) Okay, now for something funny. We need a bit of that every now and then. (Not too much of it, but at least a little.)

My favorite on-the-scene reporting to watch is in inclement weather, and nothing provides inclement weather like a hurricane. And nothing is more fun than to watch reporters try to play cool (or give up the charade!). Time collected the ten best.

That’s a wrap of what I’ve read on the Internet recently. Enjoy your own reading.

Kill the Blog!!!1!1

Check out the London blog. There should be something new there, namely THE HAND OF GOD smiting the page at your command!

It's a NetDisaster. I posted a link to it on my Facebook account a while back, back when you could puke on, worm, zap, or nuke any Web page you wanted. Unfortunately, some major Web sites mistook the most clever application of JavaScript ever as a phishing scam and asked its take-a-chainsaw-to-Paris-Hilton functionality to be taken down. (Phishers: This is why we can't have nice things.) The developer, however, has found a way to let people disasterize their own Web pages by allowing them to plug some of his script into their page's code. I, being a fun-loving and slightly nerdy person, decided to try it. I loved it!

I'm e-mailing the developer back & forth (his name is Denis) about parts of it that don't work so well. (For example, a viewer can't remove the disaster in Firefox or Safari on a Mac, which makes clicking on links a bit difficult. When you scroll down & away from the disaster, though, everything works fine.) I sent him a link to the London blog with the God Almighty disaster plugged into it so he can take a look and see what can be done. If everything works out, it should be widely available, and I can put it there, here, and on an upcoming portfolio Web site. In the meantime, have fun shooting lightning bolts at my writing!

Some Old Writing of Mine

There's this thing I do every once in a while. It's called a FreeWrite, and it's my version of journaling. (I guess. I've never really had a definition for it.) I take out my laptop, open Microsoft Word, and type whatever is in my head, full and unadulterated.

I started doing it in January of my freshman year at IU after reading A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart for class. He said Roy Peter Clark (another important guy in my writing development) is a "plunger;" he writes a "vomit draft" of anything that comes to his head about a topic, and after about fifteen minutes he's found something to do a story about. "In more polite circles," Hart adds, "that's called freewriting," and it's a good way to "muzzle your internal critic and start writing, as fast as you can."

I did it a lot of FreeWrites in the early days, writing about anything that came to my mind in both public and private spheres. In that way, I separated it from its role as a method of finding a topic to write about, and I turned it into something to separate my thoughts from myself so I could look at them objectively and see if I was right or just crazy. Once my writing load increased throughout the year and into my sophomore year, I regrettably wrote less of them. I still write them every now and then, though, especially if I need to empty my head of some issue or look from a distance at a problem. Most of them won't ever see the light of day unless 1) I become famous enough that historians, etc. want to analyze everything I write (Ha!) or 2) the contents apply directly to a current situation (MUCH more likely).

The following falls into the latter category. It's a FreeWrite from 5 March 2008, after a Sunday of shorts weather was followed by three days of crap. Even before today, I had planned to post this because it was enlightening about my thought process and, more importantly, not embarrassing (!). When I was talking with a family friend after Mass today, though, I immediately thought of this, because it pretty much confirmed that there's some substance to what I was thinking that day in March 2008. He didn't use the same analogy (no analogy at all, in fact), but the message was the same: You can't stay satisfied.

(Warning: I talk to myself. Also, I still haven't thought of a better name for the analogy. Also, the explanatory hyperlinks weren't in the original FreeWrite. :-P)

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I think God’s toying with us.

Or at least with me. It’s this weather, this changing between “OMG, it’s spring!” and “Damn, I forgot my umbrella” and “I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t like snow,” that He’s using to mess with my mind. That, combined with the close proximity to spring break and the light workload I have right now, is making me a little crazy.

However, this may be a good thing. I’m referring to the Life According to a Cell analogy I developed in AP Biology. You know the one (at least, if you’re Me from a later date, you know the one), but I’ll refresh your memory.

The Life According to a Cell analogy (I’ll try to think of a better name if at some point I decide I need a better name) applies the workings of a cell and its organelles to the workings of a person’s life. I’ll start on the level of the cell. There are many processes in a cell (movement across membranes, making ATP, etc.) that are working toward equilibrium, that hallowed state where a cell may say, “I’ve achieved the goal.” That goal remains perpetually elusive, as its surrounding environment supplies new particles and moves existing ones around so that equilibrium cannot be reached.

Though this “hallowed state” is one toward which a cell continuously works, it is dangerous for a cell to reach equilibrium. In fact, if the cell ever has the exact-right concentration of all substances with no movement across membranes and thus reaches said equilibrium, the cell dies. It dies because there is no impetus to continue the processes necessary not only to attain equilibrium, but also to maintain life. There is no polar difference between the surrounding environment and the cell cytoplasm, potentially sending the gradient-dependent cell membrane out of whack; there is no concentration difference between the separate areas of mitochondria, preventing the machinery that makes ATP, a cell’s primary energy source, from working; without the possibility of a controlled environment, a cell cannot provide the necessary conditions that allow peptide strands to fold into necessary proteins. In a state of “comfort,” the cell does nothing and dies.

I’ve noticed myself working in the same way. Just as cell processes function when there is a difference between its present state and equilibrium, so also I function when there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with something. That dissatisfaction can come from many sources: internal uncertainty or just being antsy, a busy schedule, competition, or something missing in a social environment. Whatever the source, I feel compelled to do something by the imperfection of a situation. And just as a cell would die if it ever attained equilibrium, so I find myself “dead” to the world when I seem satisfied with what I have done or when I do not feel the need to do anything. If I feel no pressing need to do anything, and there isn’t any “imperfection” with something that garners my attention, I don’t do anything.

I found evidence of this analogy working in other people. In one example, a story I read in The Indianapolis Star, I believe, examined kids’ workloads with camps, extracurricular activities, music lessons, sports teams, and homework. One of the people quoted, a parent of such a kid, said that he did better in college when he had a busy schedule compared to a lax one, because he was more primed to do work and to do work well. This was not long after reading ahead in AP Bio had revealed to me the aforementioned analogy, and I thought as I read it, “Hey, that jives with my metaphor.”

In light of the Life According to a Cell analogy, I’m starting to question whether this crazy weather is actually God messing with my head. (Oooooo, I should have left it at “me head.” I would have sounded so much like a pirate!) Maybe, in that mysterious way he seems to have trademarked, He’s helping me make the most of my time. If he is, then “Thank you!”; if not, then it doesn’t change the fact that I feel like working now, which is always a good thing.

701 words in 30 minutes

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