Stay in bed, jerk

Oh autumn with your soothing fresh air, smooth pattering rainstorms, and breathtaking bright leaves. How your deep oranges, mottled greens, your triumphant yellows streaking across worlds of fading color make us sigh. What majesty to witness the last stage of a summer's life, born on wind full of exotic new smells, transforming into cool grey evenings. We can revel in your chilled arms, skip through puddles left by your shy rain showers, even watch your great spectacles inside by our windows, nursing fragrant warm cups of coffee. And how *Achoo* *Cough cough* ... how .... *SNOrT* *bluuueRRrghhh* how *sniffle* *snrGGgggg huugck-POUGH!*... how you make people sick.

And then people go to school. And to work. And to the mall. And they cough and sneeze and snort and neglect to wash their hands while touching things. Then their friends get sick, and guess what they do?

I love you guys, but I've been sitting in class for about two weeks now listening to a steady drone of noises that only some slime monster from Calvin and Hobbes is supposed to make. All the while the hackers, snifflers, and phlegmers have exposed their schoolmates to a steady stream of infection.

It's no accident that even in a small community like Whitman's, the sickness held by some sliver of our population magically appears in a bigger chunk the next week, and the week after. Illness spreads because someone gets sick, and takes their gross germs with them as a present for their comrades.

Now I get that times can be rough and sometimes it seems like you have to go for a grade. I get that sometimes we can spread whatever junk we picked up over four-day babysitting, walking in the big city, licking doorknobs or whatever without knowing we're sick yet. Going to class while knowing that you are contagious still forces other people to face the same choice. It still may pass your misery onto two, three, four, or even dozens of friends and strangers. Picture a world in which everyone does the responsible thing and self quarantines. Random strains die in a world like this so fast, and we all have a much better situation.

So next time you're feeling awful, wishing to god that you didn't have to get out of bed, and generally hating life outside of your warm room, please, please, please stay there.

Digging through your old stuff

Hello readers,

I'm voyaging back to school in about a week, and before leaving am trying to get my things at home in order. Part of this task is cleaning out a morass of old stuff piled around my house. My room has three closest, a gap under my bed, and a bunch of large drawers beneath my work desk, and all of them are bursting full of paraphernalia.

What have I kept you ask? Rather than try to describe the group as a whole, I'd like to share an item or two to illustrate the randomness.

A broken Taj Mahal statue from an ex-girlfriend
Some swiss money
A nearly life-sized 3d puzzle bust of Darth Vader
A stuffed cloth catfish that is longer than I am tall
A blob of melted plastic that used to be my favorite army men until I sent them on a mission to hide in a house lamp and my unknowing grandma turned the lamp on
Nearly every Where's Waldo, Redwall, and Tolkien book ever printed

The stuff that I will never use again but can't bring myself to get rid of goes on, and on, and on.

When I was laughing and showing the Vader bust to a friend of my mom's over for lunch, she had a great idea, which is why I am writing to you today.

Her thought was that, since we all have these kinds of things we just don't need but can't throw away, we could take pictures of them to remember them by and get rid of them. What if we took these pictures and put them in an album?

I think this idea protects the real importance of old stuff, the memories associated with them, without sacrificing much. Another plus side is that since old junk usually has really cool stories behind it, if a few people made photo albums of this kind and got together to share them over a few drinks, there would no doubt be plenty of surprises.

Maybe your life is too cluttered as well and this is worth a shot?
I think mine is.

Here's to a simpler life and being able to find things in less than an hour,
TW

The Magic of Reddit

Good afternoon readers,

As a quick forward, this entry was typed with only my left hand partially due to boredom, and partially because of my right wrist being about as messed up as eating all the marshmallows from your roommate's Lucky Charms. Hopefully you appreciate the effort.

Bo Cao introduced me to Reddit, a brilliant forum that I have somehow missed all my life before. Hopefully you have run across it, and if not you should go there now and prepare to be entertained.

Reddit exceeds all expectations by having an enormous and diverse user base, as well as a sleek moderation implementation. Where many forums and sites like Youtube are overrun by trolls, Reddit dodges the issue. You will rarely see posters sharing with the whole web such witticisms as "FAGG!!" "AMerIca Haaaates gOd111" and "OmG ur sO ffucking Sadddd".

Reddit accomplishes this feat of troll pruning with aggressive moderation and a good post rating system. Users rate topics and posts by voting them up or down. Only the threads and replies with highly favorable records find their way to viewers. Initially this approach removes most of the forum offal, and since everyone likes to have their voice heard people actually try to write well.

We get to enjoy the result of this, an unending supply of novel tidbits and provoking discussion.

Until next time,
Wilder

Strange thought patterns

(As a spoiler this is kind of about the LSAT and kind of about a socially overreaching Irishman)

Holla todos,

Fortunately the most severe conflict in my life right now is preparing for the LSAT. I've fought my battles before, but this summer is really peaceful. Something odd about preparing for the LSAT though is the way it makes you think.

As a quick get-up-to-speeder the test is mandated by law schools to get a fair bearing on how good at the whole thinking thing applicants are. Without it, someone who padded their resume like a room in an insane asylum would look better than the next guy, and we'd be straight back to high school and its vomit inducing equivocation on extracurriculars.

A problem might set out a scenario like this:

There are five gigolos, Bovice, Chey, Dwayne, Tron, and Livingston, one sugar daddy, and Chris Hanson to be placed in three Cadillacs. Each Cadillac must have at least one passenger, and additionally the passengers of the cars conform to the following rules.

Chris Hanson is not with Bovice or Dwayne.
If Tron is with the sugar daddy, then Chey, Bovice, and Livingston are together.
Etc...

Questions are then asked.

The thing about doing too many of these kinds of puzzles at once is that you start to think about other things like puzzles.

For example, the other day I was over at my Sister's house in the U-District. A female friend of hers "Alice" was hosting another male friend "Sam" from Ireland. Sam was trying painfully hard to become romantically attached, demanded attention constantly, and since he had come so far the situation was uncomfortable.

Late at night we were all sitting around in the living room talking, and the time for bedtime swung around. Sam clearly wanted to go join Alice in bed, but Alice was pretty strongly opposed. I was sleeping on the couch, and so quietly wished for the situation to resolve swiftly so I could get some solid snoozing in.

At one point, just after my sister left, Alice got up, looking away from Sam, and told me that my sister had a serious problem that needed discussing. She left for the upstairs portion of the fairly large house. I was alone with Sam.

We continued to make small talk, me in a drowsy drawl and Sam in a fairly charming, but almost desperately morose Irish accent. I was reminded of a sad dog when its family left. He told me, not asked me, that something must be seriously wrong with my sister. I looked resigned, and shrugged trying to mask facial signs of the logic game going on in the back of my head.

Alice, Sam, Tim, and Katherine (Tim's sister) are in a house to be assigned to beds. There are three beds, Couch, Alice's Bed, and Katherine's bed. The following conditions apply to bedding.

Tim would prefer not to sleep with Sam.
Alice would prefer not to sleep with Sam.
Katherine would prefer not to sleep with Sam.
Tim is sleeping on the couch, Katherine is sleeping in her bed.
If Sam does not have a bed, it will be awkward.
If Alice, Tim, or Katherine has to sleep with Sam, it will be awkward.
If Tim has to sleep with Alice, it will be awkward.
If Sam does not see Alice for long enough, he will go to find her in her bed, and probably drunkenly go to sleep failing that.
Katherine is not upset, but Tim has been told that she is.

How can beds be assigned so as to avoid awkward, and what is the dealio with Katherine?

Answer:
T/A/K do not wish to sleep with Sam. Sam must sleep alone to avoid awkward.
Since Couch is occupied by Tim and cannot be slept in by Sam, and Katherine's bed is occupied by Katherine and cannot be slept in by Sam, Sam must sleep in Alice's bed.
Alice cannot sleep in Alice's bed.
Alice must sleep in Katherine's bed.
Katherine is not upset, Alice is just sneaky.

And that is why studying too much for the LSAT is a bad idea.
Hasta luego amigos,
Tim

How young Edric made himself a general buffoon, and how you, if so inclined, would ideally galavant so as to avoid such malady.

Dear Readers,

I once worked with a young man by the name of Edric. For the sake of professionalism and personal feelings, and because Edric is a rather spicy name, I call him Edric, but his name was as you may have guessed not in fact Edric. I will not say in which of my past jobs I worked with him, and there have been enough that you probably cannot guess; so there.

Onto the story:

Edric was by any normal consideration a superb human being. He had many friends, a magnetic personality, was good at what he did, and was fundamentally very kind. In short he had all of the tools to be successful and happy in this here American society. (No readers, don't worry, Edric is not me, but so flattering of you to make the error ^^.)

However, like Smaug hoarding altogether too much gold and upsetting one too many lake dwelling persons, thus inevitably attracting a ragtag but charismatic band of a wizard, a little person, and a bunch of uppity dwarves, or Oedipus not paying quite enough attention to prophets and subsequently ending up in what we might call a rather awkward family situation, Edric had but one tragic flaw.

Edric was condescending. He did not condescend over talent, or looks, or anything like that, but rather personal ethics. Although Edric was of a very ethical sort, taking care of his friends, paying his debts, doing what he was paid for, never stealing and so forth, he had little respect for those who didn't adhere to these principals. This fact happens to be true of a lot of good-natured ethical people, but Edric took his one major weakness a step further and made his opinion public. Regularly.

He didn't do this by wheeling off all willy-nilly-Don-Quixote-after-a-windmill style. Edric was quiet in his expressed disdain. If a co-worker sat on Farmville all day, letting the responsibility for his work vanish into the bureaucratic morass of his employer, Edric would snort and scoff quietly to himself, ask his fellow pointed questions that indicated the other's ineptitude, and suggest when the slacker was in earshot that Edric himself had enjoyed his productivity for the morning and couldn't understand how the firm was behind on goals.

Now you may be thinking Edric's fault to be not such a fault at all. What harm is there picking on a scallywag or two, especially when said picking might be deserved? Well the problem for Edric was that he was in general such a good guy, and worked at such a dilapidated company that in some way or another, almost everyone with whom he worked fell up short of the Edric bar. That is not to say that this bar was particular high, in fact a nice, normal, fully civilized adult would usually be fine in the eyes of Edric, but for whatever reason he DID work in a place where people failed his test.

There is something about human nature that Edric didn't understand reader. In our hearts what we all want is not that complicated. We want to respect ourselves, and we want our friends and acquaintances to respect us. This means very different things to different people, but few men and women who meet this standard are not quite satisfied with their state of being.

Prior to Edric, many of his work averse colleagues were likely in a state where they had some measure of self respect, and some measure of respect from their peers. When Edric saw their Farmville playing, their assignment redirection, their petty mean acts against others for no greater reasons than questing for attention or boredom, he let them know. It didn't matter that the way he let them know was quiet, or that only he, they, and very observant bystanders would notice the exchange. Edric was letting them know that they shouldn't respect themselves for what they were doing, and that at least one person and probably others did not respect them for what they were doing.

Because Edric's disdain was unfortunately only targeted at the least mature elements of society, their reactions were unfortunately among the least predictable and most negative that could be expected. They freaking hated Edric. He was a threat to peaceful well being, a snake in the Eden of sloth, a Samuel L. Jackson telling you that he was in fact tired of these Mother Fucking Snakes on this Mother Fucking plane, if Snakes were lazy, mean office workers and planes were offices.

How did they react? They whispered, snorted, and quietly made their positions known in return. Some, amongst themselves would say things like:

"That Edric sure has a way of putting his nose where it doesn't belong doesn't he?"
(Translation, oh crap he's onto me! You don't work either do you? What should we do?!!)

"Oh Edric, at it again..."
(Translation, I'm going to pretend that Edric is doing something vague, yet seriously wrong to mask admitting my weakness, but we know the score. Time to go to work boys.)

Others would act independently, putting Edric in difficult situations by giving him extra work, submitting damaging rumors about him, implying that he was incompetent to his face, and generally doing the things that modern employees can do to reciprocate offense against a perceived threat without exposing their soft, soft asses, sweet, sweet deals, and fatty, fatty gravy trains.

At first Edric took no notice, or chose not to notice, but slowly, he began to be affected. Edric still respected himself, but the closest thing he was getting to respect from his colleagues was fear. The human mind is a strange thing in that it begins to believe what it hears enough times, and so little by little Edric's self confidence too, as well as the legitimate respect of many elements in his place of employment, began to fade.

This changed Edric's often cheery and energetic demeanor to a bellicose and often bitter one, and was a dark specter over his heart.

Edric began blaming his co-workers increasingly for their actions. He saw a world turned against him, and grew furious that things could be so unjust. Where once his gestures of contempt were quiet, difficult to decipher, they began to be sloppy, overt, even aggressive at times. This only served to further goad the work weary workers around him, and they returned fire.

At this point you can likely see the vicious cycle that took place in Edric's life. I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not everything ended well, and if Edric found a way out of the mess. Now comes the important part. Why were Edric's actions misguided, and why despite perhaps being right, should we never do what Edric did unless ready to face the consequences?

People hold their self image too dear to take assaults against it lightly. The same is doubly true for ongoing attacks. No matter how toady, no matter how repulsive, no matter how awful a certain person's way of dealing with others and himself might be, pointing this out to him is obviously going to have repercussions. Edric was in a position where he truly thought he might make the world a better place by facing off against wrongdoers, and where he felt fully justified in his actions. When they retaliated, all he saw were the same negative traits manifesting higher, and felt outraged that he, of all people, would have to be the victim of this kind of assault.

Edric was not prepared to face the consequences though. He liked his job, he liked the respect that others showered on him for his good work, and he had not realized that this was the mana on which he lived. When it was taken, he wilted and was sad.

What does this mean for us? In the situations where we are surrounded by half efforts and poor morality, we often have to choose between struggling against this, and our peace of mind. In Edric's case the "evil" he saw was not really harming the world in any powerful way, nor was it something Edric had any hope of changing, but he still flung himself headlong at it like a fool, and was surprised when things went poorly for him.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, so if you're going to stick up you'd better like hammers. If not, I suggest being pragmatic and withholding criticism from all improper channels.

That is all readers, you may disagree but hopefully Edric's story has helped you to consider the issue,
Tim

"Hans" or I'm pretty sure that's not my type of date

Today I have fairly awkward story to share with you,

So recently I had the opportunity to go to Switzerland for two weeks. I saw many amazing and unforgettable things there and gained plenty of random tales. One of the more interesting ones involves a Swiss German I met who we will call Hans.

It started in a hostel in Interlaken, a town on two large lakes that contain the runoff from Europe's highest and possibly most gorgeous range of mountains. This hostel was a large affair with beds for over 100, a gaming room, and a full cafeteria. As I was there during tourism off season things were pretty quiet during breakfast on a clear morning day. While I ate near the counter, the resident chef got to talking to me.

He was a blonde haired, blue eyed man who look to be in his late thirties. Standing around five foot eight he was hardly tall, and while physically fit had a slight gut to him, presumably from drinking lots of good Swiss and German beer. His English was heavily accented, but passable, although he frequently could not find the words to express a simple thought. I was struck by how friendly and open he was, talking to me for about forty five minutes about his life in Switzerland and what I should do while there.

As most Americans do, I eventually got tired of talking and wanted to go do something else. As I departed he smiled and said that we should have a beer later. I laughed and said sure. What a nice guy!

So I got back from hiking up to Schilthorn (the site of that 1969 Bond ski chase scene)after about eight hours and go to make myself some dinner in the kitchen basement of the hostel. As I walk down the stairs Hans sees me waves, smiles again, and says he gets off work soon.

I strike up a conversation with a South Korean woman in the kitchen after she asks me if I am American. It happens that I am a pretty big fan of professional Starcraft (That's another story, but it's a crazy big thing in some subcultures of South Korea). She herself had only watched a few matches but thought it was funny that I knew about it. As we talked, I noticed that Hans had migrated downstairs and was now in his street cloths. He was sitting outside of the kitchen using an internet booth and evidently on Facebook. He had not said anything to me when he came downstairs. Kind of strange...

At some point Hans cuts into the conversation by more or less demanding that I help him add me on Facebook. I don't see a way to gracefully decline, and so I provide my contact info. When the South Korean woman leaves later, and I get up to go, Hans asks me if I would like to share a beer outside. Generally I try to accept social invitations and be open to new experiences, so I went along with it. Hans leaves and says to meet him upstairs in a bit.

I go back to my room and accept the Facebook invite. I see that Hans is bisexual and single. Now I am thinking that the man is interested in men and potentially me, but hey, perhaps he is just being friendly, and if nothing else it would be awkward to just leave him standing down in the lobby.

I go downstairs and don't see Hans, then look outside to a large grassy green where one family of tourists sit around a table, and Hans sits 50 fit away alone at another. He has two large beers out.

Sitting down at the table, the fact that my beer as well as his are already open immediately becomes apparent. Slightly concerned now about being drugged based on Hans's erratic behavior earlier, I take the beer closer to him and we discuss life, Switzerland, and the hostel/cooking business for a while. The conversation starts to get strained due to language barrier after about forty minutes. It is then that Hans shifts the subject towards what I am doing later, raising his eyebrows a bit and smiling more. I'm fairly certain of his intentions and trying to think of a way to politely excuse myself when I notice his shirt.

For some reason it had not become apparent earlier in the conversation, but it really is a peculiar shirt. Mostly black with cutoff sleeves, it has a bunch of logo pins attached to it and a picture of a guitar. The pins in tiny, tiny lettering all say "Let's fuck". There is silence for about 45 seconds. Hans continues to smile and winks as he raises his eyebrows again. It seems he has noticed me reading his pins. I tell Hans I am tired and going to bed for hiking tomorrow despite his complaints of it being too early and me being boring/needing to try to have more fun in Switzerland.

I block Hans from Facebook and set my profile to friends of friends only as I wonder how acceptable it is to be bothered by bisexuality. Normally I don't pay very much attention to orientation, but normally I am also not the somewhat blunt target of an alternate perspective. The room down the hall distracts me from this line of thought as I realize that since getting back they have been blaring some dubstep. This same room was cranking dubstep when I left in the morning, and had been doing more or less the same as far as I could tell every day since I arrived at the hostel three days prior. I almost crack up and get out my book to read before bed. Switzerland can be a strange place.

Until next time readers,
Tim

Some weirdo I know

Well hello there readers,

Today I have a short somewhat biographical snippet to share. It's about a peculiar specimen of humanity to whom I owe quite a lot.

My dad is funny, intelligent, caring and creative; in short he is a wonderful man. He is also a huge weirdo.

I'm not talking about that social-outcast-make-elaborate-villages-out-of-toothpicks-and-glitter-all-alone-all-day type, but more the kind who does things just because other people don't, loving every second of it.

He trained in resource economics and programs computers, he ostensibly likes charred meat and black licorice, and he keeps plastic prehistoric sea creatures on his work desk at home, and a large actually frightening plastic rat on his shelf at work. This is a man who worked as a draft counselor, advising people how to get out of war duty during Vietnam, and who moved from Michigan to Seattle alone just to change the pace of his life.

When my sister and I were collectively about as big as the TVs were at the time, he would read to us every night and continued doing so for years. What did he read for 90% of that time? Lord of the Rings... over and over and over. We've been through that one series at least six times.

Given the choice between a luxury all expenses paid vacation featuring all of a cities fineries, and a walk in the mountains, he would almost certainly take the walk.

I still have at best a very hazy idea of what this particular weirdo did during his life between 20 and 30, and I pry more details from him now and then. A tragic accident wiped out all photographic records of the man from his earlier life, so I don't even know what he looked liked.

These kinds of details are not isolated events, there are thousands of them and together they form a human being. Not only that, but they rubbed off on me. What I'm trying to say by this is that when people look at me and say something to the effect of "You're an odd one Tim" (and believe me, this justifiably happens a lot) I smile for a reason. I know why I'm a strange fellow and it's more than a point of pride.

-Tim

The sadface side of the American Dream

What makes America unique? We could say that it's the deliciously fatty food on which we gorge, our stellar university system, our ubiquitous role in geopolitics, or even the tiny flags that sometimes express our patriotism by covering a lawn or shirt. If I had to isolate one factor that really defines us though, I would select the American Dream.

We've all heard the narrative. Kid is born in impoverished (read bad) setting, works hard and catches a few breaks to fight through high school with a strong GPA, nails the SATs, goes to Harvard, proceeds to receive gentle massage from business world and Western society in general, dies in wealthy (read good) environment.

A brief, but ultimately relevant tangent:
I've lived in Spain the last few months. While here, one thing has made me consistently wonder. There is paltry social mobility, the economy is in the shitter (and believe me, it really is; 20%+ unemployment makes even the worse parts of our recent recession seem comparatively dandy), and yet, by all appearances, Spaniards are much more content.

If my unscientific guesses from walking around on the street here don't do it for you, this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States) Wikipedia article (Wikipedia is now the source of all knowledge, so shush ye naysayers and get with the times) tells us something interesting. American male suicide rates are nearly twice as high as in Spain. Keep in mind that males are the ones most affected by a culture of business pressure.
Enough of that, back to the main thread we go.

If I had to explain the happiness divide I might point out the clear unspoken corollary to the American Dream: If anyone can make it big with the right passion and dedication, and you didn't make it big, you lack passion and dedication you worthless sack of poo. We quietly believe that financial success is an indicator of intelligence, drive, motivation, and in the more extreme value of the belief, personal worth.

This concept goes beyond just an idea, and approaches the level of being a gospel unto itself. I know many intelligent, kind people who strive towards future financial vindication like it was the holy grail, and who will consider themselves failures, even though they won't admit it often, if they don't end up as wealthy men with high powered careers.

Every day our culture bombards us with images of the socially mobile, wealthy, satisfied male. We see commercials discussing family legacy, car commercials appealing to the upper middle class, TV shows where all of the women would just love to have the clean cut, witty, and conveniently well dressed and financially endowed protagonist, success stories told in side columns, coffee shops, and dinner parties literally pitching the great dream verbatim, book jacket descriptions of authors that inevitably state their prestigious school of origin, reporters subtly flouting their credentials in one way or another, huge skyscrapers with their corporate hives practically shouting to youth that they could be a part of moneyed America, the list goes on, and on, and on.

It would be nearly impossible to miss the fast track, and then miss again the five, ten, twenty or more daily reminders of what could have been, might have happened. It's relatively hard to be an unsuccessful, content American.

So what can we do?

We could start by stopping to give a fuck. Sure there's something to be said for having big piles of money with which to buy good food, go on vacations, live in a nice house, display status symbols, and generally live in comfort, but conflating that money with actual happiness is a mistake. Money can't buy you love, right guys, right? This doesn't mean ignoring career progression and going to live in a tree somewhere. It means recognizing that corporate culture has distinct motivations and rationales from what a healthy person should have, and that work is only a means to an end. If we can see that everyone has their limitations and accept that we can and should be perfectly happy in a world where our limitations... limit us... we're going to be way more content.

Now back to studying for the LSATs,
Tim

Amazing ad campaign

Someone showed this to me the other day, I think that it is hilarious.

http://www.dailydawdle.com/2010/09/10-best-lifes-too-short-for-wrong-job.html

Nelly

A short story about a man who liked to drive buses

Nelly was a horribly boring man. All day he drove a metro to and from the same street corner. Five blocks up, stop at Elm, six more, Harris, five once again, Washington, and so on and so on until finally, Cherry, and then he would return by the same route. Five times a day, six days a week he would make this Oddysey. His works hours were not too bad everything considered, he had after all been working for the city for years now and so had some leeway in choosing routes. When he started so long ago, the idea was to find work, any work, and do that until a painting career could be launched. Painting never really panned out.

Every night after driving for about seven hours, Nelly returned home to his apartment and watched TV. He always felt like he should probably be painting, but never quite got the guns together to run out to the store and grab new materials. CSI Miami was his favorite. Sometimes while he watched he would pay attention to the story, but more often than not he just liked to see the expressions on the faces of the actors. After a few hours of television and a dinner of raman or pasta, Nelly would go to sleep and set his alarm for the next day.

As you may have guessed by now, Nelly was a man of few passions. He was content enough to live one day to the next, and even his strongest ambition, to paint beautiful works that all the world might look on and sigh, was at it's strongest an afterthought. Some of you may find this a repulsive plot, but to Nelly it wasn't so bad, really. To him, why not? He ate, he slept well, he had leisure time, what more could a man want?

There was one thing peculiar though that sometimes rather pleased Nelly. He loved to close his bus door. He would slowly approach a stop, easing into the brakes and hearing that familiar squeal that accompanied the feeling of deceleration, and glance at the assembled bus riders waiting for him to open the door. After stopping, Nelly always glanced back behind his bus to see if anyone was frantically huffing and legging it towards the front door (he ran a pay as you enter route). On spying someone late, or even better several someone's who were late, Nelly's mouth would curl up into a big smile.

Quickly he would usher the riders onto the bus, and then with a flourish, Nelly would close the door, and start the bus slowly crawling off. Often the people who had just been running, Nelly's scorned commuters, would jog up waving their arms to his door, looking at him imploringly, smiling and trying to give their winningest expressions. Nelly would look at them knowingly, grin, and shake his head side to side, continuing to accelerate away. Some people would yell, some would slump their heads, some would look at their watches or the route schedule to see when the next bus could be expected, and Nelly's favorites, they would scream profanities at the top of their lungs, muffled out by the glass and receding away in his rear view mirror.

Why it was that this ritual so tickled Nelly, he could never quite tell. Maybe the years of commuters treating him like a stone object had planted in him a general disdain for public transportation users. Maybe the day was usually boring and emotionless, and the glimpse of their honest reactions was refreshing. Maybe Nelly just didn't like people.

Over time, leaving would-be riders by the stop developed into a nuanced performance for Nelly, and Nelly became the leading star. Sometimes he would add a gesture into his rejection, calculated to be confusing. “Dear rider”, he seemed to say, “I am sorry that you cannot get on my bus, you must understand that it is because” … “hand swirling in circle” or “two hands open, then brought quickly together with a shaking head”. That would leave them to wonder for a bit.

After punching his time clock, but before going home, Nelly would usually go to a local sandwhich shop and grab a mayonnaise, chicken, club, with the swiss cheese. Biting into it, he would reflect on the most interesting encounters with his late riders, and relax his shoulders, sometimes almost giggling to himself.

One day after finishing his club, he finally found the care to head to the art supply store. There he picked out some fresh canvas to go with the empty aisle in his apartment, and a selection of drably colored oils.

He bustled down the sidewalk towards his home, very close to work, holding an armful of supplies that oddly contrasted with the unbroken gray of his urban setting. On entering his apartment, he set to work.

First he drew the silhouettes of three running men, screaming at something, in pencil outline. Then a bus. Then he colored the scene. This process took the greater part of his evening, and he was hungry by the time he finished. He sat there looking at his finished product with a bowl of raman in hand, and thought that it was handsome enough.

The next night Nelly painted again. This time he took a more careful approach, slowly sketching his outline and painting meticulously. The subject was again men and women chasing a bus, but this time in vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds, with a cold blue bus. He only finished about a third of his work before it was time to sleep, and over the next several days he polished away the work. On finishing he was quite satisfied.

That Sunday he had the day off and painted all day. He chose again the same scene, and tried to make a vivid, lifelike illustration.

As the days passed by, Nelly continued to paint. He still watched television, and did so more often than he painted, but this was still a great shift in his use of time. He began to diversify his subjects, working on people waiting in a line, someone being tax audited, a grocery clerk mopping up someone's spilled bottle of pickles in a supermarket, and many more. The walls of his apartment filled with works little by little.

One day at work, his boss Steve talked to him. This was normal in that every morning they exchanged the usual pleasantries, but never had they really had a conversation. They talked about the recent baseball game, which Nelly had watched, about food places nearby, and about their families briefly (Nelly choosing not to mention his in any detail). At the end of their talk, Steve asked if Nelly had any plans for Saturday evening, and that if he didn't, would he perhaps like to come eat with the family?

Steve's slightly worried and patronizing tone told Nelly that his boss found him a lonely man, too old to have no real connections, and that Nelly was to be something of a charity case. He resented this, but at the same time thought that it might be nice to get out a bit. Considering, this was actually an honor of sorts. Nelly resolved to bring a gift.

When he arrived on Saturday night, it was with a painting in hand. More specifically the first he had done, of the men and women chasing a bus. It occurred to Nelly that it would be a funny work for his boss to have lying around, seeing as the man oversaw public transportation and all. He found himself wondering if the gesture might be too much, and realized his palms were sweating slightly at the edges of the frame he held.

Steve loved the painting, and introduced Nelly to his wife, daughter, and a family friend who had also been invited over, Estella. Looking at Estella, Nelly noticed the clear, angular nature of her jaw line, and pretty brown eyes. The company chortled and talked away the evening, and when it was time to return to his apartment, Nelly went with a measure of sadness.

Nelly and Steve didn't say more to one another until the next week, when Steve walked up to Nelly looking like he had something on his mind. He told Nelly that Estella was a curator of art exhibits, and had been quite interested in Nelly's painting, asking if he had any other work. Nelly was surprised, and then anxious, wondering how a curator might judge his projects, but at the same time, she had been interested had she not?

Nelly took pictures of all of his paintings and gave them to Steve the next day. Two days later, Steve told Nelly that Estella would like to talk to him directly. She called him later that night, asking if he would like to do a small exhibit! Nelly jumped a little at the news, and after some confused babbling agreed.

On opening day, Nelly came in a suite, the first he had worn in who knew how long. There was a substantial turnout, evidently Estella was well connected, and Nelly could overhear the various attendees talking. Many of them, Estella informed, were art critics.

Nelly's paintings evidently possessed, a subtle undercurrent of angst, the soul of oppressed urban society, postmodern satire against the something or rather, ironic criticism of the system itself. They were a hit!

The next week, Estella mentioned that there was a buzz about his work going around the city, and that many potential buyers had emerged. Nelly considered what she said, and after a while consented to selling some of his work. Every piece that he listed was gone the next day, and a beaming Estella handed Nelly a tidy stack of checks. Nelly was impressed, this was much more money than he made driving buses.

The next week Estella asked if he would like to paint more works for sale. Nelly said he would consider. Steve even mentioned selling paintings to Nelly, saying he might like one now before they got big, and that maybe Nelly might consider cutting back or even quitting on the whole bus driving thing, seeing as there was this opportunity of a lifetime presenting itself. It sounded like a lot of work to Nelly. The next day Nelly told Estella and Steve that he was out of paint, and would prefer to drive buses, but that they had been very kind.

Travel Blog Launched

Hey guys,

I decided to do my daily blogging that I talked about earlier on a different blog dedicated solely to Spain. I will still update this one with the occasional short story, but being abroad has put constraints on my time, so they will be irregular. I'd love to see you on the other site.

It can be found here: http://wilderinspain.blogspot.com/

Best,
Tim

The favorite blanket

If I had to go on a Sound of Music style naming binge of all the good things in the world, somewhere in there would be the favorite blanket. It's that piece of fabric that on rainy days, after failed tests, with a bowl of icecream, a favorite book, or whatever else is your personal catnip, you are content to curl up with and sit in blissful, comatose lethargy. It's Leo Bloom from the producer's panic button, Linus of Peanuts constant companion, and one of the few things in many childhoods as ever-present as our cell phones are now. If you've ever had one, you know that blanket.

Mine used to be what I called dino-blankey. I found it the other day cleaning out my room before going to Spain and took a long moment to think of days gone by. I would take that thing through mud puddles, living room forts, Pokemon-inspired romps through the woods, and rolling down grassy hills on a daily basis. Understandably it ended up about as bedraggled and grisly as Snooki after a night at the bar, without all of the unfortunate side connotations. My mom, ever the faithful caretaker managed to repair the thing some countless dozen times, but inexorably it grew ever patchier. The memento sitting in my closet is a cobweb of cotton that still makes me smile whenever I chance across it.

Is it just me that hoards these things? I have dozens of similar 'treasures' stowed away in random bags and boxes in the obscure corners of my house. It feels like a Toy Story inspired tragedy where the haunted soul of a once loved possession calls out to its owner begging not to be tossed whenever I consider trimming things down. How could I ever throw away the favorite blanket though? Do you have any relics like that?

Best,
Tim

The strangeness of Picasa

Google's Picasa is a piece of photo-management software that has what is simultaneously one of the most useful and most strangely unnerving functions that I have seen in image managers. It can look through a library of your photographs and identify one particular face, then take a close up cropping of that face and display it. This is intended to make it easier to see all photographs of one person, and does, but when the images are aggregated over a large collection, the effect is odd.

When all photos of one person are displayed contiguously, the wall of slightly similar and yet mostly identical faces that result are just plain strange. Have you ever gotten to consider what your picture-time smile looks like in a complete vacuum? Have you ever seen your friends doing it? There's no doubt that the way we grin for the camera is distinct from our real smile, and even for the most photogenic that trend is abundantly apparent with volume.

Here is one small portion of the map of me. I noticed looking at it that I have a fairly distant expression in most photographs. If you're looking to pass some time I advise checking this out. You can find Picasa for free here: http://picasa.google.com/.



Best,
Tim

2011 and new directions for the Blog

Hello there,

We've spent another year working, playing, laughing, crying and doing all the other random junk that makes being alive worth the time, and now 2010 has come and gone like the fat guy who danced to that one O-zone song.

In the spirit of annually changing relatively minor parts of our behavior and then likely reverting back to our old actions in no time, some new things are coming for this blog.

I'm going to try to post more often and worry about the content less. I mentioned doing this earlier, but every time it came to posting some random evening journal entry, I couldn't just throw it up on the internet since it feels like I should provide at least a semblance of quality to readers. The whole point of this project though is to practice writing, and that doesn't happen in as meaningful a way when I just do not post.

In other news, I am going to Spain in about a week for the remainder of the time until Summer, and will likely transition content here into mostly observations on Spanish culture, its oddities and the experience of a foreigner trying to deal with them.

Finally, here are some pictures of cats that I thought you might enjoy. They are lifted from http://kittenwar.com/. Don't say I never did anything for you.

Best,
Tim