Yeah, I Want Things To Go My Ways. But As Of Late, Shit Been Going Sideways.

I finished the book "Everything Bad Is Good For You" by Steven Johnson on the plane yesterday.

The thesis of the book is this. Mass Culture (large C) is in incline, not decline. Cultural critics argue that it's decline because television, videogames and movies have become more violent and filled with sex and other blah blah blah (and they have). What this book argues is that it's actually in incline because complexity has increased and thus the work a person must do to enjoy entertainment has increased. It has even begun to make us smarter, a fact which goes unnoticed because of the Flynn Effect. Basically the shift has taken place because of three things.

The first is not only that culture is more complex by following more and longer storylines but the complexity is encased in the relationships between things. It's not just that you have to solve the mystery of what the things placed into a show or videogame are a la Chekov's gun but also how they relate to one another. You have to parse what information is important to the ultimate resolution and what is not. Specifically you have to do this in (and are trained to do this by) videogames but it applies to more passive forms of culture. Producers are now "allowed" to leave more ambiguity in their programming and require the audience make narrative leaps of filling in and making assumptions which they wouldn't have to in the past.

Because all of our media is now storeable and repeatable and you can see something later which will explain something earlier instead of only vice versa. In 1970, one of the Big Three television networks aired something once and then it was gone, a movie ran once in the theater and it was gone, etc. But with the advent of VCRs and the expansion of cable (and with it, the comensurate thirst for programming to fill their shelves and schedule), media has to hold up to and can require repeat viewings. This encourages the creators to embed clues and in-jokes into the programming which you only see or get upon repeat or obsessive viewings. We've moved away from a lowest-common-denominator you had to get the first time thru to a most-repeatable ethos where you will want to watch it over and over.

A contributing factor to that is we now have a greater community to discuss our ideas via the Internet. It's now a "lean forward" culture as Steve Jobs calls it where we the viewers experience rewards for digesting close readings. Where as the likelyhood of finding someone who had even seen Star Trek in the mid-70s was low, now there are massive web message boards devoted to Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and Survivor and so on down the line. You aren't encouraged to sit back and zone out. You tune in and join up.

An example they cite is the in-joke of Art Vandalay on Seinfeld. You wouldn't need to know Art Vandalay is a name George uses to lie in awkward social situations to enjoy the episode itself you're watching. It's just a name which could be interchangeable with anything else you could make up on the spot. But for someone who has obsessively and repeatedly watched the show, it's a nod to George's long-arcing laziness. It adds depth to his character to know he's so often a liar that he's has created a character he can lean back on when he's forced to lie. If you haven't been following Seinfeld since day one (or The Simpsons or The Wire or college basketball) there's this massive online community you can tap into right there on the Internet.

I found the book fascinating. It held a couple of keys for me which tailed back incidentally to earlier things I'd been thinking of a la a television show's later explains earlier structure.

The first was that television producers create shows like Lost specifically to obscure and leave out plot points BECAUSE that's the way people want them. To me it seemed like lazy, drawn-out storytelling (and perhaps it is) but they're doing it that way to respond to their audience. So where I might watch Lost and think "This is dumb. He's obviously dead and in a limbo-like state." other people will watch Lost and think "I think he's dead and in a limbo-like state. What are the clues which confirm that?" The Lost audience wants drawn-out storytelling they can watch closely and analyze and interface with other people about over the Internet and in-person. I won't "get" what they think is great about it not because I'm skeptical but because I'm not skeptical enough. I look at it, think "That's answer." and move on. Lost fans see it and get sucked in.

The other key was what I did just there. I didn't use the tools of defining what something is and how it interrelates to other things on a popular television show or in a videogame. I used those tools to define something and how it interrelates to other things in my life. And I'm trying to get better at those things because Life is a one-pass event like a 1970s television show. Johnson brings up the idea of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence near the end of the book in regards to how media is put together in this version of the mass culture. They try to get it right the first time because people are going to watch it over and over if it rewards them for doing so.

A couple of months back I went to brunch with some friends and we were discussing religion. I told them how my morality is based upon having to explain your actions later. I don't always get them right which is why I'm a big proponent of grace. But I'd like to think I could go back and explain my reasoning and emotional state which lead to me doing what I did and didn't do.

I'm trying to get better at the skills "Everthing Bad Is Good For You" defines not to analyze media but because Life is a one-pass event like a 1970s television show. I worry about getting Life right because it too is storeable and figuratively repeatable. I want to make the right choice the first time around because that's the one which will remain in people's memories. If I know better what the right choice is, I'm more likely to make it and to be remembered as making it.

Untitled Pt.2

"Then six weeks ago, I received an invitation to her wedding. She's marrying some guy she met at a company conference or something like that. They had a by-the-numbers story book romance. He met her, he was nice to her and he really appreciated her. They moved in together, they got a dog and they decided to get married."

He raises his voice a few octaves and buttons his cuffs. "'I want you to be there,' she told me when I expressed reservations. 'You mean as much to me as anyone else I've ever known. Well, other than Brent.' Then she used the dirty trick it was perfectly fair of her to use. 'Please, do this for me. It wouldn't be the same if you weren't there'."

"So I'm going. I'm going to sit near the back on the bride's side and stare across the room at Louisa. She won't be up there making sure I'm watching and it would be the same if I weren't there. But I'm still going."

"The tense moment will come when the priest asks whether there is anyone who knows why these two people shouldn't be married. In my younger and more reckless days, I might've stood up and screamed, 'I do. Because I love you Louisa.' Today I will stay in my seat and the moment will pass without so much as a burning in my legs. She'll run down the aisle and they'll cut the cake. I'll give her a hug and we'll promise to do a better job staying in touch. Two months from now she'll be the furthest thing from my mind. I have enough other women I keep close but not too close to take up my time. In that way, she's been an odd precedent."

He ties his tie while looking at the ceiling.

"I don't want to sound like I regret the way this ended up. Louisa was not the 'one great love of my life' and I did not miss the boat by never telling her how I felt. In reality, we just liked being the center and focus of someone else's attention. The invigorating rush of a crush eventually gave way to how little was behind it all."

"I'm steeling myself for one moment though. At some point in the night, I'll look at Louisa or she'll look at me. We will be talking to seperate groups of people and our eyes will meet across the room one last time. She'll wink at me and I'll wink back. It will be a hold over from when we cared about the other person seeing. Back then, it meant 'I know that you know.' Now it will mean the exact same thing but in a different way."

"It was crazy to be so unhappy for so long. Our relationship could never last. We had to move on with our lives and be happy."

He pulls his suit jacket on. "Does this look good?" He stands there arms spread, his shirt already wrinkling from the sweat.

Untitled Pt.1

"I once heard, 'A relationship can never last between two people who are the same kind of crazy.' At first, I thought it was the sort of thing which sounds wise because of its odd sentence construction. A lot of advice is repeated because it sounds antiquated and it's a common assumption anything which lasts long enough must be The Truth. So I was skeptical and thought my results would inevitably vary."

"That was before I met Louisa. She was exactly the same kind of crazy as me. By that, I don't mean she loved Japanese animation, Ernest Hemingway novels and Left Coast punk. Quite the contrary."

"I mean she took the world in the same way I did. She could see the differing nature of any moment. Most people see the world in only one way. It's easier to think if you live your life by one hard and fast code of ethics that apply to every situation and every time. In fact, it's so easy most people don't even think they are as they're doing it."

He imitates a voice. "'That's just me,' they'll claim. 'That's how I am.'"

"Louisa saw every new moment as unique. She once told me her only presumption upon entering an unknown situation was she knew absolutely nothing. I remember making a wise crack about how wonderfully Zen that was and how I wish I could be so free-minded and unfrightened by the world."

"She was right though. By going in with an empty slate, her first instinct was to listen."

"Now, years later, I think that's why so many people gravitated to her. She was constantly sticking out her neck and taking risks for what she believed in. And what she believed in was she could actually make things better if only people would tell her what was wrong. She was the most selfless person I'd ever met."

"That was what attracted me to her as a friend. It was a different thing entirely which made me want to be something more. I honestly thought she treated me differently, treated me better. As nice as she was to everyone she met, I thought I caught a certain sparkle when she noticed I was in the room. It was something special to me. Her eyes would beam, her smile would light up and she would stop."

"It became a little game between us. Who could dance around the issue better? Who could let on in a more deniable way? I stretched on for weeks and then weeks became months. The game grew more complex. Soon it became 'Who could flirt more while the other watched?' 'Who could brag more and who could bear more while talking about meeting a nice new...?' Who could get the other to say, 'You'll find a nice ... who really appreciates you,' when the nice new ... left?"

"We became co-dependents in romantic failure and co-conspirators in never being happy. That was the crazy we shared. We chose to always be the bridesmaid instead of ruining our tacit 'If all else fails and we're both 30...' agreement."

"Slowly we drifted apart. Other things and other people started to clutter up our lives. Where once we flirted to make sure the other was still paying attention, now we flirted and didn't care. I could have entire relationships and only mention it off-handedly once it ended. We no longer mattered. All of the years melted, swept away as though there had been a gust of wind. The last time I really talked to Louisa was almost three years ago. She was just out of undergrad and she was freaking out about actually being out in the world. There was so much she just couldn't deal with and she called to lean on my shoulder."

He begins buttoning his shirt, the very bottom button first.

"It was fair of her to call me since I'd been something like a confidant for years. I would listen, make some noises which implied I understood and then make broad, wisened-sounding statements. This time I was bound for failure because what each of us had done was never actual support. We were experts on each other's idiosyncrasies. But we'd never let each other in far enough to truly know us."

"The last time we talked I listened and made affirming grunts in her little pauses. Then when it came time to make my usual non-commital advice, I realized I had nothing. I couldn't even find something someone else would say. There is no old saying which expresses 'I don't even know you anymore and can't relate to your problems.' In real time, I mumbled a bit about how everything would be okay and how she would find her way eventually. It was the first time in our relationship that someone's bullshit openly stunk."

He steps into his dress slacks one leg at a time and makes a grimmace as he buckles his belt to his usual loop. "Not as skinny as I once was."

"We made plans to see a movie in the upcoming weeks and neither of us called back with firm plans. We could've repeated it a few times more, each time behind an 'Oh, hey...' facade. But we both knew it was time to quit."

Take Away the Football Team, the Basketball Team And All We Got Is Me to Represent New Orleans

Jeff, a Milwaukee native and transplant to Minneapolis, is standing in the Bryant-Lake Bowl, a turn-of-the-20th-century bowling alley converted to include a bar, restaurant and theater. As moderator of a popular and locally-acclaimed reading series, Jeff is working with the technical staff of the theater to wire in a Skype chat with the author of that month's selection.

"Can you hear us?" says Jeff as the 150 person capacity crowd of the theater greets each other and orders drinks around him. ...

Ok, so all of what I just wrote is true. By reporting what I know about Jeff and by attending the July meeting of Books & Bars, I've given an accurate representation of what was happening. I may have embellished a little bit here, tightened up a bit there and put words in Jeff's mouth but at its heart everything I wrote is true to the actual event.

Is it the Truth though? Is what I wrote an absolute representation of the situation? Well, no. I focused on Jeff while cutting out everyone else in the room. I gave one perspective on the event and had that stand in for the whole of the event. As a reader who wasn't there, you would likely assume (correctly I hope) that a perspective highlighting the moderator would be able to be generalized to the lion's share of the people in attendance because taking the time to actually chronicle the entire crowd would be time-consuming and unlikely to shed a great deal more perspective upon the July meeting. So you accept it's a representation of the Truth.

The same is true of "Zeitoun". It's based upon actual events from Zeitoun and Kathy's real lives. But it doesn't purport to be the Truth. It is after all Eggers' name on the front of the book, not Kathy and Zeitoun's names. Eggers is giving a representation of the Truth of their experiences surrounding Hurricane Katrina and using it to stand in as representative of a generalized experience of a person who lived in New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm. We could again try to chronicle the experience and perspective of everyone but at a wont of time and necessity, we don't.

So you might be saying, "So what? Eggers is writing creative non-fiction. Welcome to the world of early 21st century publishing." And I agree with that, especially because the popularity of Eggers and his own deliberate efforts have pushed contemporary publishing in that direction. Did anyone see that 16-year-old Justin Bieber is writing his memoirs? Speak of a wont of time and necessity...

This is why I think it's important. One of the three things which stuck out about "Zeitoun" (along with how it romanticizes the post-storm anarchy and how poorly Kathy comes off) is the frequent references to how difficult it is to be a Muslim in post-9/11 America. It stuck out to me because 1.) it's kind of tangential if Zeitoun is taking the place of the Everyman and 2.) it's like duuuuuhhhhhhh. It's not even something which we can limit to happening prior to January 20th, 2009 either as the stupid "WTC mosque" controversy has proven. Though it's been almost ten years since 9/11, our continued military presence in Muslim countries makes for a constant backdrop to living in the United States right now. Anyone alive and aware in America knows it's difficult to be a Muslim in our culture.

The only people whom that wouldn't be readily obvious for is people who don't live in our culture. Since America is a cultural hegemony (just try to find a foreign film in the top 100 grossing films of 2009) and because we're willing to live with our warts, that's not an idea which is remote to anyone living in a free society on the planet. Which means the people whom need to be told of that reality are for the most part people who are either too young to remember or haven't been born yet. Eggers has to be aware his celebrity and influence means his books will be read not just by contemporary audiences. They will also be read by people who wouldn't know offhand how difficult it is to be Muslim right now.

It matters because for many people who will be looking back on this era, this will be their perspective and representation of this era in the same way Kerouac's "On the Road" is for those of us who were not old enough or even alive in the 1950s. (Notice that I said Kerouac and "On The Road", not Halberstam and "The Fifties" or C. Wright Mills and "The Power Elite".) But it would be ludicrous to suggest "On the Road" is the Truth about the 1950s, no matter how beloved our friend Kerouac is. "On the Road" is creative non-fiction which is meant to represent a generalization of post-WWII America in the way "Zeitoun" represents our current moment. Hell, the focus in each is even on the main character's transportation.

So my impression while reading "Zeitoun" was an awareness that what I was reading was true but not the Truth. I don't think you can hand someone a copy of the book and say "This is what it was like to live in New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina," any more than you can hand them "On the Road" and show them the 1950s. To get closer to the Truth, you have to keep on looking and I hope, being an open-minded individual who believes in the freedom of religion, that the future readers of "Zeitoun" keep looking. Our era is much too complex to summarize in 325 pages and in the experience of only one man.

The Renewable Razor

"When will somebody invent the renewable razor?"

I think this as I examine the single-blade Bic I have in my right hand to accompany the handful of shaving lather in my left. As I think this, the cold water of the faucet continues down the drain at a rapid pace. It is cold not hot because, although it feels better on my face and makes the hairs of my beard stand on end, warm water makes the blade dull more quickly and I go through razors more rapidly.

I examine the plastic of the handle. It is orange and made of some thin and cheap polymer made of foreign oil and American blood. A whole pack of these things, 20 in all, was less than two dollars so I have no reason to believe great care was expended in lessening the environmental impact of its production. The same is surely true of the razorhead and although it is white I doubt that means it's any more Earth-friendly.

I look at the blade, a thin strip of indeterminate metal, steel possibly, custom-fit to the razorhead. Metals are rare molecules pressed together in the hot depths of our planet's molten core over thousands of years. Geological ages bringing atoms of iron together with oxygen and occasionally something else to form compounds like Fe304 and Fe2O3 or FeCO3 until some man, a human, tears it out of the Earth using strip mining or mountain top removal. Even then it must be smelted in a fossil fuel-burning blast furnace and cast into wide thin sheets before it can be trucked over road and possibly across the continent to the place where it meets the thin plastic held in my right hand.

I look at all of this and I think of the whole process required for me to remove hair from my face. I think of the natural world being ruined so I can have the convenience of a clean face and a nuzzle from my girlfriend. I think about this and I think "When will somebody invent the renewable razor?"

For me, I see hope in the destruction. I reject the bleakness of the end of the world. I imagine a future when there will be a blade that doesn't go dull or at least biodegrades when I am done with it. I imagine a handle made from natural materials not synthetics. I imagine these things, believe they will one day exist and return to shaving my face by rinsing my Bic in the cold stream flowing ebulliently from the bathroom faucet.

Five Texts You Receive On Vacation

I was on vacation this weekend and had my phone turned off from about 6 o'clock Friday until I plugged it in just a few hours ago. During that time I received five text messages.

I will use this space to respond to those text messages.

Fri July 23rd 5:54 pm from Todd Turner "Hello sir"

Todd, You just missed me before I went up north for the weekend. How was your weekend? Let's get together sometime this week. Maybe go swimming if the weather is nice.

Sat July 24th 3:09 am from Twitter KingJames: I swear I love my bro @oneandonlycp3!! Nuff said

Noone was questioning it, LeBron. Or should we?

Sat July 24th 11:50 am from Facebook Dan Herman to you and 7 others:

Hey all,

I found out yesterday that Four Peaks' Pumpkin Porter is going to be released on...(reply "n" for next)

Oh, fuck this is one of those cliffhangers. When does it get released? WHEN DOES IT GET RELEASED?! click

Sat July 24th 12:44 pm from Stensby Your voice mail sucks.

I hardly ever use it. What sucks about it? [Ed note. Stensby didn't even leave me a voice mail.]

Sat July 24th 7:50 pm from Hayley Doyle What route do ppl use to bike to dan's?

I'm sorry I didn't get this message until it was way too late. I like the way that takes you through Kenwood and along the bike path to Penn Ave. Link

Need A Go-Go Girl Who Dance Like Lady Gaga

Last night I went to a Lady Gaga-themed 30th birthday party for a friend. Attendees were encouraged to dress like Gaga or in Gaga-inspired outfits. Some people took their direction from Gaga videos and replicated the bubble outfit or the Diet Coke rollers. Other people simply wrapped themselves in electrical tape or something sparkly because nothing which is aware and celebrates its oddness is really un-Gaga. I myself took the four aces and a joker from a deck of cards and stuck them to my forehead with double-stick tape.

It all relates to a simple truth. Like or dislike her music (I personally like it), it would be pretty difficult to deny Gaga's influence as a cultural force. In the last two years she has released 8 new singles and 7 of them have been top 10 hits with the most recent being the Isla Bonita-esque "Alejandro." What distinguishes Gaga as a cultural force is that each video is a envelope-pushing production and the new video is no exception.

In her early videos, she celebrated rockstar-like Midwest partying, L.A. decadence and, like a good New Yorker, New York. Then came the dual turning points of "Paparazzi" and "Bad Romance" where the now-famous Gaga began making insider points/mocking the celebrity culture which now enveloped her. By the time "Telephone" and its unabashed product placements arrived Gaga was both ensconced in the business-side of things while winking at us from the art-for-arts-sake side. How "Alejandro" distiguishes itself from Gaga's earlier videos is the type of iconography it choses to ape.



It's disappointing to me Gaga's first foray from what she'd done well with into new turf didn't take her anywhere interesting. Gone are American influences as Gaga draws from an even deeper pool. Unfortunately the influences she draws are the tired and worn-out trifecta of Fascism, Catholicism and Victorianism. If she's feeling restricted from producing her art (and quite unworthily so) the play isn't to recycle cliche. Even if it reads as unintentional homage to Madonna, it's a rare misstep from Gaga and hopefully one she doesn't soon duplicate.

So why didn't it work? I'd offer this as a simple possibility. We Americans have our cultural feet placed deep one-each into two cultural pools: that of Europe and that of Africa. Gaga represents an excellent balance between those two cultural pools. It's not a stretch to call her music techno or to call it R&B. Some may look down their rock critic noses at dance pop here in the Anglosphere but dance music is what makes the rest of the world move. You could play "Alejandro" in an international setting and not seem over-reaching or out-of-place in either Stockholm or Malawi. Gaga's American melting pot is what distinguished her from other also-rans. I put forth the video doesn't work because it tilts to formalism while forgetting about that world-moving sensation of dancing.

The truth is Gaga is one of only two American popular artists who have actual credibility within all but the shrewdly discriminating of our culture. If her career follows the arc of Justin Timberlake's (an artist who has his own internationally-infused songs), she'll be just fine.

My Reading List

A friend asked for my reading list. This was the result. Get on GoodReads and you'll get an e-mail every I add or finish a book. Starting with January '09...

Read

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Black Hole by Charles Burns
People Are Unappealing: Even Me by Sara Barron
Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher
The Ghost Map... by Steven Johnson
Bonk by Mary Roach
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Black Hole War... by Leonard Susskind
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!... by Richard Feynman
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Alex and Me... by Irene Pepperberg
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
How Proust Can Change Your Life... by Alain de Botton
The Book of Basketball... by Bill Simmons
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Inventory... by The Writers of The Onion
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
Why God Won't Go Away... by Andrew Newberg
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe
Big Machine by Victor LaVelle
Professor Stewart's Cupboard of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

Reading

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Avoid Boring People... by James D. Watson
News, Nudity, Nonsense: The Best of Vice Magazine Vol. 2 (2003-2008)

To Read

The Biology of Belief... by Bruce Lipton
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaker for The Dead by Orson Scott Card
House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Aristotle and Aardvark Go To Washington... by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
The Tall Book by Arianne Cohen
Wigfield by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paulo Dinello
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
Second Nature by Jonathan Blacombe
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Supermob by Gus Russo
The Collected What If... edited Robert Cowley

It's A Number Game But Shit Don't Add Up Somehow

From the time I got on the bus yesterday morning until when he stopped texting me back seven hours later, Smallz and I exchanged mini-diatribes about the NBA Draft ranging from which player the Wolves should take with the fourth pick to the proper way to evaluate talent and construct a team to the other person's deficiencies at evaluating talent and those of their chosen method to constructing a team. Basically our arguments were this.

Smallz loves efficient players. Thus Kevin Love is his one shining beacon on our entire roster. As such Al Jefferson inspires much hatred in Smallz's gut. Not only does Jefferson play the same position as Love but inefficiently uses the ball in offensive situations Love would efficiently use them. His evidence is statistics and his team-building philosophy is to find other efficient players to pair with Love.

I, on the other hand, believe Jefferson is inefficient because he needs to be. Love is a good player and a compliment to Jefferson. But efficiency statistics don't tell the whole story. As the most offensively-skilled player on the Wolves, a less-than-efficient attempt from Jefferson is still better than passing the ball to a less talented teammate. Being the focus of the offense and the volume of his shots he can't cherry-pick only the best attempts. Basketball is scored as a quantitative game, not an efficiency game, and to remove Jefferson without a suitable replacement will only focus the defense on another lesser player.

(Further reading found HERE.)

This is especially important with the NBA draft coming up. Since the Wolves didn't get one of the surefire guys at the very top of the draft, their path forward is a lot less clear. Smallz wants to trade Jefferson to free playing time for Love and draft Kentucky's DeMarcus Cousins, a freakishly large center who may have character issues. I want to keep both Jefferson and Love while drafting Syracuse small forward Wesley Johnson, a lower risk lower reward player who plays a position of need. We could argue back and forth for hours (and did) about which one would be a better fit for Minnesota. I wanted to model the problem and get some results now.

How I Used Math To "Solve" the Problem

So let's assume three things. First that either Cousins or Johnson could boom or bust with equal likelihood. Let's just say Cousins wider range of possible outcomes averages out to Johnson's thinner range to make things easier. Second, let's assume the pick is an independent outcome. Let's say if Minnesota picked Cousins they wouldn't keep Jefferson and his minutes would go to DeMarcus. Third, the actual outcome will be one of many possible outcomes. When a weatherman says 55% chance of rain and it doesn't, he was right. It just fell in the 45% he didn't mention.

Here's the "game" I developed. Imagine every possible outcome for DeMarcus Cousins' and Wesley Johnson's careers is represented by a playing card. Since they are top draft picks they are more likely to succeed than fail so all face cards represent complete success (being a cornerstone), ten through six represent qualified success (being an NBA starter) and five through two mean they bust. I could look up the real success rate but let's keep it simple. Now draw two cards, one representing Cousins and the other representing Johnson. Reset the deck, reshuffle the cards and repeat the process 100 times.

(Or do like I did and use a random card generator like THIS ONE.)

What I found is Cousins is a cornerstone 37% of the time, a starter 38% of the time and a bust 25% of the time. Likewise Johnson is a cornerstone 38% of the time, a starter 33% of the time and a bust 29% of the time. In 48% of the cases Cousins is the better player while Johnson is the better player 45% of the time. (The remaining 7% is when they're even.) It's also worth noting Cousins is significantly better 27% of the time while Johnson is significantly better 26% of the time.

So what do the results tell us about who the Wolves should take? Nothing. This is a simplified model of an enormously complex system. But within the context of the system it says we should expect any result to be possible. In that way both experience and this simulation align. In the NBA Draft eventually you have to play the odds and hope for the best.

P.S. This is the raw data from my simulation. Cousins is on the left and Johnson on the right. Ignore the symbols. That's just me coding the data.

CJ

A4**
A3**
A9**
88-
610++

610++
Q8**
QK*
63*
32*

5J++
10Q+
9J+
87*
410++

56*
3Q++
34+
5A++
67+

109*
QJ*
4K++
82**
109*

63*
56+
7Q++
86*
J8**

3A++
910+
5K++
J9*
Q4**

103**
KJ*
JQ+
A2**
9Q+

25+
K5**
9Q+
4A++
63*

44-
6K++
6Q++
9K++
K3**

KJ*
8A++
5J++
8Q++
A5**

25++
7Q++
KA+
K8**
A3**

J3**
22-
J3**
37++
24+

76*
9J+
A4**
3K++
QJ*

KA+
88-
53*
A8**
82**

36+
J8*
8Q++
J7**
Q9*

6J++
AA-
6A++
A5**
310++

92**
QQ-
JK+
56+
8Q++

8J+
Q9*
Q6**
Q5**
810+

J2**
33-
104**
A7**
QA+

A Joke Written for My Girlfriend

Last week I thought up a joke for Audrey. Not a joke for Audrey to tell as a part of her act. I wrote this joke for Audrey to think it's funny. Here it is.

Preface: Audrey does comedy open-mics. These open-mics are dominated by "bros" who are probably told by their friends "Dude, you're really funny. You should do stand up." The results are exactly what you would expect, especially if what you're expecting is a lot of unfunny date rape jokes. Wait, that's redundant. So I wrote this joke for her since I know how much those jokes agitate her.

When I was younger and more carefree in the world I did some hitchhiking. I spent one entire summer standing by the side of the road with a small "Need a ride" sign. At times the experience was great. Others it got a little hairy.

There was one time a semi pulled over for me and as I was running up to the cab I saw the "Ass, grass or gas: Nobody rides for free" bumper sticker which I was sure they didn't even print anymore. I didn't have a lot of money and what I did have I wanted to spend on weed. So as I was pulling myself up into the cab by the mirror (something I later learned is a faux pas) I thought to myself I would go for the "ass" option and see about calling the truck driver's bluff. I was a good looking 20 year old but noone would ever confuse me as feminine.

Well, the truck driver and I totally fucked. But I must not have been very good at it because at the next rest-stop she still made me buy her a tank of gas.

Is that funny?

I love that joke and not just because I wrote it. I love it because it contains three inversions and one negation. In other words, there are three points where what you would normally expect is flipped on its ear and once where the absurdity of the underlying point is exposed and used to destroy the point itself.

The first point (and it's a sneaky one which isn't revealed until the end) is when the truck driver is a woman. It reminds me of that "brain-teaser" where the son is in a car accident with his dad and yet the doctor at the hospital can't operate on him because the boy is also the doctor's son. Truck drivers are assumed to be men in the same way doctors are.

Secondly the traditional idea of the feminine sex drive is inverted. This is the idea of women wanting sex and wanting random sex outside of a relationship writ large. In the traditional morality, women who want sex and who want non-relationship sex are either weak-willed and easily-manipulable or whores and home-wreckers. Basically there's no room for a woman to act like we easily assume a (male) truck driver does. This joke inverts the traditional idea by giving a (later-revealed) woman that same and equal interest in sex and random anonymous sex at that.

The third inversion (and the root of this joke) is the idea of the male being made into the object of sexuality. The aforementioned date rape jokes are "funny" because if the woman (and these "bros" are never date raping dudes) is made from a subject into an object she loses her humanity and her rights. The reason rape is a crime is because it infringes on the right of an individual to choose their sexual partners and the extent of their sexual activities. However an object doesn't share those rights. So the making of a male into a sexual object (something which could be done to these "bros") makes that denial a two-way street and the "bros" are driving into traffic.

Which is why the negation is my favorite part. It takes the idea of the male as infallible sexual subject and eliminates it completely. The "I" in the joke isn't "the male as sexual god" whose prowess doubles as ascendancy and overwhelms any *cough* complications along the way. The "I" is an inexperienced 20 year old on the side of the road. While the virility of a 20-something male is sanctified under the traditional morality, in reality a truly experienced individual knows it's not something worth sanctifying.

For that reason the entire system is negated. If the value it holds up as the pinnacle of virtue is something of no value at all, then the system itself is of no value at all. That includes the aforementioned "male as sexual god" paradigm used as a justification for the unfunny date rape jokes. Wait, I already said that term was redundant.

Thirty By Thirty - Finis

As I approached my 30th birthday, I followed through on a decision of how I would celebrate the last year of my twenties.

A lot of people approach their thirties in a mournful state. I should know as, in the last few years, my peers have increasingly become people approaching and then passing thirty. They think of it as the dying of their youth and the end of their best years. I took the opposite tack. I am much happier be 30 than 20. When I was 20 I had no money, had no girlfriend and didn't know who the fonk I was or who I wanted to be. Well, those three things are no longer true. I wouldn't peel back my twenties in any kind of redo because what I did and what happened made me into who I am today.

Thus I celebrated my twenties as this great time I did, went and saw everything I could and enjoyed myself while doing, going and seeing. In much the same way we congregate together on New Years Eve to celebrate the passing of time instead of mourning it, my turning thirty will not be the dying of one era but the commencement of another. They will be the years when I find my way in the world, grow with those people who will be my life companions and enjoy all of the perks of being an adult instead of being an over-inflated kid.

As a part of this year long celebration I have done thirty things which I had never done before and then came back here to write about the experience. My brother originally called it my "busted list" as in I had to do these things before I'm old and busted. Some of the tasks were small and easily completed. Others required planning and assistance. It was not my intent to have a list of thirty items and only accomplish twenty-something. There was a list which was greater than thirty items and your suggestions were appreciated to expand upon it further and into the future. As I said, the intent was to share in this celebration both in the actual commission of the thirty things and also in writing about it in this space.

To that extent I have re-written the Thirty by Thirty mission statement:

Between his 29th and 30th birthdays, Michael Herman celebrated his transition into his third decade by completing thirty tasks he has never previously experienced and embracing the idea you can always find new experiences no matter how old you are thanks to the wonder, beauty and timeliness of Life. He hopes to continue the rest of his life in the same spirit.

MRH 1/31/10

Thirty By Thirty #30 - Read "Macbeth"

It's weird as an English Literature degree-holder to have never read "Macbeth." It's even stranger because the first class I took in college was Dr. Zahorski's EN335 - Shakespeare. There are plenty of classics which I've missed in my years of reading contemporary books for fun and pleasure. "Macbeth" is just the most egregious example. So I sat down, cracked open the play and realized where Kurosawa drew his inspiration for "Throne of Blood".

Thirty By Thirty #29 - ZAIREEKA!!!

In 1997 The Flaming Lips released "Zaireeka", an album meant to be listened to on four separate CD players at once. It's no small feat to get four different CD players and stereo systems together and so I set it as a goal to organize a "Zaireeka" party for 30 by 30. But sometimes your motivation will similarly motivate someone else. As my "Zaireeka" idea did Josh Dibley. He put all the pieces together, invited the people and brought it all together. All credit goes to him for fulfilling number twenty-nine. I just sat in the middle of the room and listened.

Thirty By Thirty #28 - Get Glasses

As you get older, your eyes aren't as sharp as they once were. I can still see fine without glasses. There are just certain low-light situations where I can't see fine details at a distance. For example, I can't read the score on the television across the room in a dark restaurant.

Two years ago when I worked for the insurance agency and had better health coverage, I'd gone to the eye doctor. I got a prescription which I hadn't filled because money got tight as the economy went south. But now that I was on better standing financially, I got a super-duper cheap pair for under $100. Now I'll be able to read subtitles at foreign films more easily.

Thirty By Thirty #27 - Exercise My 2nd Amendment Rights

Gun culture and its attendant hunting culture is something which is handed down by generation. Since neither of my grandfathers or my own father were really into guns or hunting, I somehow skipped over having ever discharged a firearm in my life. Make sure that, if you haven't yourself, you tell your friends who own guns. You will eventually find yourself standing at a gun range unloading an entire ten round 9mm clip into a target. Yeah, it may not be your comfort zone. But that's the point.

Thirty By Thirty #26 - See Morzart's "Requiem"

Nik called me and asked if I wanted to go see Mozart's "Requiem" performed by a full choir at a church in Wayzata. I had a copy of a performance my cousin had been a part of in my car for years. Yet I'd never seen it live. Since it's my favorite classic piece (or 1a and 1b with The Brandenburg Concertos), I said "Yes," in a heartbeat.

Thirty By Thirty #25 - Visit Paris

If you haven't heard about this one yet I apologize. It was awesome. Everywhere I went it was ridiculously beautiful. The highlights were having the Eiffel Tower out my window as I went to sleep/waking up, visiting The Palace at Versailles, seeing all of the art museums and getting to visit Europe finally.

Thirty By Thirty #24 - Bowling League

Bowling is what my mom's family does together. If we're not sitting at one of my aunts' houses having a meal, we're bowling. This goes back to when we would all go to Arizona for X-mas. We would go bowling each night after dinner. If you doubt our seriousness, know that when we all grouped back up at my grandfather's house after his funeral the thing we all agreed to do was go bowling. So when Eric asked me if I wanted to be in a bowling league, I accepted quickly and without hesitation.

The best part about bowling in a league is you get to bowl after league is over and get a lot of practice. So, if you're like me, you learn how to hook the ball like a pro would. Results may vary but it's a work in progress.

Thirty By Thirty #23 - Eat A Fig

So I was at brunch as hosted by a couple of my dinner party friends. They were serving figs which I'd never had in non-Newton form. As I had with the meat raffle, I thought "30 by 30." Figs are even better as fruit without the cake.

Thirty By Thirty #22 - Get My Passport

So there are two reasons to get your passport. The first is so you can travel internationally and we'll get to that. The other post-9/11 reason is to verify your American citizenship when taking a new job. Since I knew I was going to do the former and in this down economy you never know when you're going to be doing the latter, it seemed like a good time to get my passport.

Thirty By Thirty #21 - Run A 5K

During the summer I bike everywhere. I also used to do cardio five days a week. So taking on a 5k would be no problem, right? I started strong. Then reality set in a bit. To get my entire body mass moving, I can't jog. My stride is too long. I either need to walk or run. I alternated between the two and finished in 33 minutes. That's a pretty good time apparently.

Thirty By Thirty #20 - Win A Meat Raffle

The lady approached the table Katie and I were sitting at and asked us, "Do you want to do the meat raffle?" I thought in my head "30 by 30." I took $5 out of my wallet and had Katie pick the numbers. One of the numbers she picked hit. Participate, yes. But also win.

Thirty By Thirty #19 - Swim Across Cedar Lake

Sometimes you begin something without even knowing it. Then you get close enough to the end, you think "Why not just finish it?" I was reading a book at the library when I got a call from Dr. Thom. It was a nice day out (how appropriate I was inside reading) and he wanted to go enjoy it. So we met up with some friends who were lounging at Hidden Beach.

He and I took to the water. Then we swam out past the nets. Then past the buoys. Then we were halfway across the lake. Then we got to the beach on the far shore. Then it's an even longer walk back around Cedar Lake to where our friends were and where the car was parked. So we just swam back across the lake.

Thirty By Thirty #18 - Go To A Drive-In Movie

Drive-in movies are big. Not in the really popular sense though they were once that. I mean big in the sense of physically large. It's appropriate then to see really big movies at a drive-in. So we packed up four cars of friends and drove out to Cottage Grove for the two biggest movies of the summer, "G.I. Joe" and "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen."

Thirty By Thirty #17 - Try A New Recipe

... tried a new recipe. Audrey and I went to Rainbow at The Quarry and got a huge piece of salmon. Then I went to Epicurious and looked up the easiest and most delicious way to prepare it, broiling. After brushing it with butter and cracking a little salt and pepper over it, the fish was met with rave reviews.

Thirty By Thirty #16 - Host A Dinner Party

I have a group of friends who are very good at hosting dinner parties. Everyone has the rest of the people over and we all enjoy wonderful food. To this point I had not hosted these same people for dinner. So I had Sarah, Don, Patrick, Morgon Mae and Jason over and...

Six things you should know about Happiness No. 1 - A Song Playing Quietly On The Radio

Six things you should know about Happiness
By Mark Anderson

1. They say our “chronic happiness level” is governed by 3 major factors:
genetics, life circumstances outside our control and our own activities and practices.
Up to 40% of our happiness level depends on our own actions, according to the scientists.

My chronic happiness level is governed
by a billion factors, including, but not limited to,
the sound of the grinder,
the earth of the beans
mixed with the soapy steam coming from your shower,
the enlightened kitchen window sill
framing an original masterpiece each morning,
the cracking of two eggs
by my own hand,
and the sizzle and flair
of fry-pan possibility...

A Song Playing Quietly On The Radio
By Michael Herman

“What’s the most alive you’ve ever felt?” she asked me.

This was the way our conversations would start. I couldn’t explain it or her to anyone else. It just was this way. I knew how to respond.

“How do you mean?”

This gave her a fork from which I could read her intent. Either she would start talking about it at great length and with asides and footnotes or she would clarify what she wanted to know from my answer. Basically, I wanted to know if she wanted my attention or my opinion.

“What I mean is this. If you had to think about a moment when you experienced what it means to be alive in your opinion, what would that be?”

It was the latter.

“I’d have to think about that. Does it have to be something which actually happened to me or just what that moment would be like if it happened?”

“Either. I’m not necessarily looking for a peak moment like getting a hit in Little League or the first time we kissed. But you get the idea of a representative moment I’m going for?”

“I do. Let me think about it.”

She was a good sport in these moments. I knew she wanted to have explosive conversations where grand proclamations were made about Love and Beauty and Truth. That’s not the way I’m wired though and she allowed for the differences in our approaches.

“Okay, how about this? Imagine a radio. And on this radio is a song. And the song is a very quiet song. On top of that the radio is turned down very quietly. So it’s coming out of the speaker very quietly.”

She was leaning in as though what I was saying was the song coming out of the radio. It was probably involuntary but it also almost broke my concentration.

“Now the room you’re in isn’t noisy or have a lot of people in it. It’s just a quiet room where you’re sitting alone, let’s say. And there‘s this radio playing quietly in the corner. So to listen to it you focus intently on it. It‘s the only thing which has your attention.”

“Okay.”

“The thing you wouldn’t think is how noisy that room really is until you try to listen to the song playing on the radio. It’s so faint and you have to try so hard to listen for it, everything else you’d been blocking out becomes really loud. You hear your own breathing. You hear the floor squeek as you shift your weight underneath you. You probably hear something happening in the next room or outside which you’d been ignoring before then.”

She was being very patient and listening though I knew she probably already had follow-up questions.

“I think that’s what Life is like. There are obviously situations like when we first kissed where the radio is blaring and you can hear the song loud and clear. Most of the time… Most of the time you’re straining to hear the song. It’s when you’re straining you hear stuff you wouldn’t otherwise and that stuff is what Life really is.”

Half Birthday Haiku - Becoming A Bore

Half-Birthday Haiku
By Mark Anderson

The sun lost in fog
Icy slush loves all wheel drive
Where is my checkbook?

Hoppity hop hop
When I think of dead bunnies
My heart splits in half

Turn on your sun lamp
Put a kettle on the fire
Nuclear winter

I miss whiskey eyes
Though they may not have been real
Heartbreak in sunlight

Becoming A Bore
By Michael Herman

John was concerned he was becoming a bore. It wasn’t something which occurred to him until recently. But now that he was aware of it, it was apparent to him. He’d begun becoming a bore sometime in the past as his interesting qualities were smoothed away by the passage of time. Now he was full-on into the process and slowly approaching the day he would actually be a bore.

If he had to nail down an exact day his process of becoming a bore began, it would probably be during the summer following the summer he graduated from college. Initially he had remained very vibrant and his social life was fruitful with many friends, parties and sometimes anonymous sexual partners. That part was when he was still interesting and had fun for himself. Then the seasons changed from summer to fall and fall into winter and winter into spring. By the time spring turned into summer again, he was not vibrant. He found his social life no longer bore fruit and his many friends had dwindled, there were fewer parties and his sexual partners were more anonymous. John, upon reflection, realized he had lost something during this timeframe.

With fewer people who knew him intimately and fewer still opportunities to see those people, John began to lose the edge on what made him interesting. Where he previously had been surrounded by people who shared his taste in music, movies and television, he found himself increasingly surrounded by people whose opinions he did not know about music, movies and television. It’s not that these people didn’t have opinions. It’s that the people who filled into the vacuum of the friends he once knew were not his friends. He didn’t feel comfortable talking with them about television the same way he did with his now-former friends.

Increasingly his discussions became about the same topics he dreaded as a younger man. A good conversation in his new life was less likely to be about an interesting book he read than the exploits of a celebrity couple or an Internet video others had seen. He began seeking out information on these topics. If he was going to have an informed opinion, he would need to get informed on the topic. He began scouring news sites, late night talk shows and occasionally the newspaper for information about what other people apparently give a shit about. He avoided topics which were political, religious or otherwise controversial. Polite conversation rarely had room for these topics unless everyone involved was of a similar opinion. And John was unaware of whether the people he knew shared in his opinions. Soon almost all of John’s conversations consisted entirely of small talk.

Even the conversations he had with the people who had been his closest intimates at one point were now small talk. When he would see a friend for the first time in years, the topic was invariably would be something called “catching up.” It consisted of the other person saying “what they’d been up to” which was more or less a laundry list of their life events since the last time they met told in chronological order. Then John would give the same laundry list and at the end they would agree it had been too long and they shouldn’t let so much time pass next time. Completely forgotten and alien to the process were the things which made them friends in the first place.
What John didn’t realize is he had finally become what he always wanted to be. He was now an island unto himself with no one able to know him really. He’d gained the freedom to be whomever he fucking wanted to be since no one was going to be checking in on him anyhow. It was fully within his capacity to make his world as he sees fit and how he wanted it to play out. As his universe had shrunk, the space he occupied in it expanded until he filled it totally. He was everywhere at all times and all at once.

It was in this position he now found himself and it wasn’t what he wanted at all. He didn’t want to make small talk with what used to be his best friends. He didn’t want to be surrounded by people he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know about celebrity culture or the blockbuster which was making millions in cinemas worldwide. He couldn’t buy into it and that would always prevent him from faking enthusiasm for it. Eventually he wouldn’t even be able to pretend to relate to what others thought.

He was going to have to be himself. He was going to have to give a shit about what he gave a shit about and not worry about things he didn’t. It was going to be difficult because it meant he wasn’t always going to be able to please everyone. But he wasn’t worried about pleasing people he couldn’t relate to anymore either. There would be some people who wouldn’t get him or understand where he was coming from. That was now fine in his opinion because he was willing to sacrifice those people in favor of people who did get him and did understand where he was coming from. He didn’t want to be off-putting or closed-minded. Just reasonable in his expectations of others and of himself.

John experienced something on that day which he hadn’t in a long time. It was a sense of longing, loneliness crossed with maudlin sentimentality. He thought back to when he had intimate friends and real conversations. He thought back and wondered how to get them back again.

The Son In Winter - No Way Jose

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Anchor - Lice

Anchor
By Mark Anderson

I often wake from naps
with an anchor

tied to my heart
and my bed,

that lonely ship,
keeps me from sinking

Lice
By Michael Herman

The very first thing we did was remove the sheets from the mattresses. We were wearing rubber dishwashing gloves so we were protected from the lice and still I did my best to make sure the fabric didn’t touch me or my clothing. I’d worn a few things which were worn out in the case I needed to throw away or even burn them. It was a pair of pants with a hole in the pocket and a t-shirt I received for working on a spring break mission trip when I was in college. There was no sentimental value to either but still I swung my hips aside like a matador as the sheet followed my guide. These were going to be burned. We couldn’t even risk someone else taking them out of the dumpster and reusing them.

“Did you hear anything about this family?” another member of my church service group asked me.

“No, I didn’t” I said lying.

“Man, these people are lucky to be here. They’re from somewhere in Asia originally and they were just farmers there. One of their uncles lived in the city though and he had gone to college for something like engineering or something like that. Well, one of his friends took him to this party one time and there are a few Communists there. He doesn’t talk to them, say hello to them or anything. They just happened to be in the same room as him. Then when the military overthrew the President last year, someone puts word in the right person’s ear that their uncle had been at this party and that it. They had to move away or die.”

I knew the circumstances of their immigration weren’t ideal. I knew they’d come from a refugee camp in South Vietnam. It was one year ago our church elected to host a refugee family and we’d received bulletin updates about their progress coming here to Arizona to be a part of our community. When they’d finally arrived and were introduced at both the eight o’clock and ten-thirty services, our congregation rose to their feet and applauded for these people. They had persevered where we perhaps could’ve not. We settled them into a basement apartment in a square brick-building and some of the older women in the congregation took up the cause of obtaining them furniture. They looked high and low in the community and it was in a Salvation Army store across town they found a couch which we later found out was infested with lice. The children were the first to complain of itchiness and then the adults did as well.

Now here we were throwing out all of their bed linens and scrubbing what else we could before the exterminators came tomorrow. In another room, two other parishioners on the service committee were putting the secondhand cups and china into plastic yard bags. After we’d folded the sheets and put them in their own bags in the back of Pastor’s truck, my compatriot and unloaded the bureaus and dressers of their contents. The family had four children, all under the age of six, so these were hand-me-downs from the congregation. I recognized some of the clothing from when my friends and I wore them as children twenty five years before. They belonged to this family now.

There was only once I took a break and sat down in the middle of the carpet. The mother was sitting in one of the chairs across the room. She couldn’t see me observing her or perhaps she didn’t care. Her eyes were fixed on a spot just in front of the pile. I could see how they carried the burden and wear of the years, even before they’d been nephews and nieces to trouble and risked their lives to be here. It was formed in her frown the misery and hardship she’d seen in her life and now, in America the land of prosperity, continued to happen.

As we left them with a reminder the exterminator would be by at ten o’clock the next morning and they would have to leave for four hours, I wondered if they knew. All of what was left was still theirs. It was protected in these trash bags and wasn’t being thrown out. When they came back tomorrow, they would be able to put their dishes away and re-hang their clothes. They would be allowed to sleep in their new beds scheduled to arrive the day after and raise their children here without worry of someone knocking on your door in the middle of the night. I was humbled knowing I’d been concerned enough of lice to wear gloves and how foolish I’d been to think things as small as lice were worth being concerned.

Audrey Hepburn - Chess

Audrey Hepburn
May 4th, 1929 - January 20th, 1993
By Mark Anderson

I am not a superstitious man. I do not say God Bless You when somebody sneezes. I might say Gesundheit with a thick German accent but that has nothing to do with anything other than I learned German once. I don't cringe when I see peacocks hanging about a theater. The so-called evil eye in their feathers is really quite stunning; I'm quite happy to be seen by them near a theater or wherever. I carried a deuce in my wallet for years until one cashless, drunken night, I spent it on a coat-check. I adore my black cat who crosses my path any time she damn well pleases. Self-fulfilling prophecies. Placebo effects. You get what you wish for. It's all a matter of coincidence, if you ask me.

That isn't to say I have always been so clear minded. On January 19th, 1993, my mother and I decided to rent a movie. Amongst all the titles we came across Breakfast at Tiffany's. "Is Audrey Hepburn still alive?" I asked as Moon River began to echo in my ears. My mother wasn't sure. By the time we got home, we'd forgotten the whole conversation, having rented something else, probably The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

Chess
By Michael Herman

Chess is an intricate game. Adapted from earlier Indian and Persian games, it uses an eight by eight checkered board to simulate war. Each piece can move in its own unique and individual way. The queen is the master of the board, able to move in any direction as far as she wants unless otherwise stopped. The bishop is limited along the flanks and moving in diagonal while rooks are shaped like castles but move like cannon shot in straight lines by column or file. The knights have the special skill of crossing over pieces in their way simulating the long distance attacks the makers of the game only saw in their infancy but knew what horrible terror they would wreck as warfare evolved. The pawns are limited in their destruction but share that countenance with the king. The mollis rex is too vulnerable to commit his own atrocities and gives his gauisus phasmatis on to his subordinates. Chess drives home its very simple yet important world to beginner and world champion alike: We may all be moved around the board by the hand of an unseen master but it is not without purpose.

I know all of this about the game and still I suck at chess. I can look at the board and look at my pieces and look at my opponent’s pieces and nothing comes out. No strategy, no master plan. I am the chess-master we fear in our own lives. I have no purpose to the game, quickly becoming bored with creating a defense or enamored with a ploy to capture a way-begone piece. The worst is when I lose patience with the game. It is when I lose patience I lose control. I become a rash mess and will make an unnecessary move which gives the entire game away. What makes it terrible is I know it is the wrong move as I make it. I’ve played enough games to know if I, for example, move a bishop to place the king in check but do not have a knight covering or my opponent can move a pawn to block the queen’s angle of retribution I should not move my bishop into check. But I will do it anyway, knowing full well my gambit will fail unless my opponent is either an idiot or being charitable. I do it because I want something to happen, some excitement to take me over. For a moment, my move seems bold like I’ve swung into motion an intricate and established plan which will lead to attrition, yes, but also ultimately victory. Really I am just throwing disruption into an otherwise ordered game, plotting to do something so remarkable it has to be memorable.

This is not the strategy of a winner. A winner knows the most important thing is winning. They will sit back and assassinate your pawns and rooks and queen slowly and methodically by waiting for opportunity to present itself and then capitalize upon it. To a winner there is no greater concession than an obvious mistake made out of impertinence. It’s a weakness for them to twist to their advantage and yet you are lucky if their eyes light up. A winner will not even give you the satisfaction of knowing you’ve affected them. The best you can hope fore is they lean forward and make sure their skills haven’t slipped to the point of missing something. You can imagine their interior dialog in that moment being racked with self-doubt and humbled by your adventurous fallacy. In most cases they will accept your piece without even a smile. They will sweep it from the board and wait for the anger to grow from inside you into another terrible idea. These are the players who can become champions.

I will make my move knowing it is not what a winner does. I will make it because that is what I do. There are many ways to win a chess game which go by vaguely Nietzschean names like zugzwang and zwischenzug or poetic license like The Fool’s Mate or The Sicilian Defense. There is only one way to play chess as I would and it is to sacrifice. Too many pieces clutter the board and I play better when I am in the open, free to move pieces in guided chorus from all points. It is the player who happily accepts my pieces I want to play because they are helping me to clear the board of theirs. Often the endgame doesn’t materialize until we are each down to a few pieces. They will have their king, their queen (which dogmatically is to be protected like a king), a rook and a few pawns. I will have my king, two bishops and a knight. From this point the game is exciting to me. The strategy reveals itself in its chaotic fervor to be one unlike the romanticized notion of war as organized and clean. Its ambiguity and chaos is like what infantry veterans describe as the fog of war. It is in this section of the game I can use to my advantage being foolhardy and free.

There has been only one player who has found a counter to what qualifies as my strategy. He was a classmate of mine and the first game we ever found ourselves in played out in a way I was left with my king, a queen and a pawn etching its way across the board. He had no pawns, only his king, his queen and a knight to his side. It was by luck I found myself in the position and really even it was more to my bravado than benefit. Still he looked at the board the way I normally would, not understanding how the things laid out in front of him all fit together. As I promoted my pawn and put him into check I could see he was already thinking of the next game. He tipped over his king and asked me to play again. I accepted and moved my pawn first. His next move was small and conservative. I moved my knight out from the rear. His follow-up was again small and conservative. I played my other knight into the middle of the board and again he was small and conservative. Then, after I brought my queen and he was yet again small and conservative, I realized what had happened. I had engendered a fear in him. He was fearful of getting beat by me again with my unconventional strategy. For all of its little intricacies and ideas of grandeur, my greatest advantage was the psychological one. I didn’t lose once to him for the next three years until his family moved away.

Grilled Cheese - The Machine

Grilled Cheese
By Mark Anderson

My father was a master
grilled cheese maker.

His skills with a knife,
having served as a Marine,

enabled him to precisely slice
one slice of bread

into two thinner slices
between which a slice

of American
could easily be toasted.

The Machine
By Michael Herman

The Scientist woke up as he had each time before He was traveling through time and it always knocked him out It was one of the side effects of the travel and he wondered what sort of long term effects it would have on him Each time he waited for this to be the trip he couldn t remember how to build The Machine Or re build it depending how you considered it

He d discovered time travel He didn t know when in relation to where he was now but it was some where in the range of seventeen or eighteen years ago to him when he d made a correct guess and the answer revealed itself quickly Time as well as space was like a deck of index cards Looking at the deck of cards you might see it as one complete and whole block This was the way humans saw time and space normally But he d imagined the cards fanned out They were still a part of the deck but now you could see they were individual cards Once the parameters were in his mind he was able to take existing transportation technology and modify it for his purposes

The first trip had sent him only a short distance back in time He knew enough about causality to not encounter himself so he would wait until he went home each night to enter the lab From there he further refined the process finally working all day and all night when the other him disappeared into The Machine Soon he was ready for another jump which would send him further back The second trip sent him further back and more refinement sent him even further back than that

His progress quickly outstripped itself He was going back in time distances which made returning to his lab first inconvenient and then impossible The jumps were leading him back to when he was in university and then even further back to when he was in grade school He could no longer just drop into his own work and had to start recreating it Each time he made a jump without the benefit of notes schematics or previously collected data with each jump holding the possibility of forgetting something essential

Soon he started encountering time when they lacked some of the finer and then the basic elements of The Machine It became a new challenge for him He had to find make steal forge invent organize shape or eliminate each element entirely from scratch each time he traveled backwards It made him into a puzzle solver who knew what the final picture looked like but had to make the pieces himself

He knew he was likely reaching the end of how far he could go Even the materials which made up The Machine s parts were becoming unknown He was coming to the end of his journey and his thought as he was initiating the rudimentary Machine he d stood in front of half a second ago was What if this is the last time

He sat up and rubbed the back of his head This like the other times he had no idea how long he d been unconscious only that the process had worked and he was now further back in time than any time before He looked around and saw he was near a road cutting through a forest He planned as he had before to follow this road to the nearest town where he would explain away his stark appearance and begin again the process of re building The Machine

Remembrance - Placekicker

Remembrance
By Mark Anderson

Every once in awhile,
sometimes once a day,
but rarely more than
once an hour,
I forget to breathe
and when I remember,
a tear of joy
(if that's what we're calling it)
streams down my cheek.

Placekicker
By Michael Herman

When I was a teenager, I was on the football team. My hometown was not very large and all able-bodied boys were expected to play football in the fall and baseball in the spring. Even if you were disinterested in sports and would rather be doing something else like I would’ve, our enrollment was small enough that even two or three boys not participating meant the team was dangerously close to not being able to even play at all. Therefore, no matter how you felt about it, every autumn would find you in shoulder pads and every spring would find you wearing a mitt.

The difficult thing was our school was placed in a conference based on geographical location instead of number of students. We were outmatched in every regard, playing against larger and faster teams who had fresh substitutes ready to come in. There was even one school in our district which went to the state tournament every few years. It was bad enough to be drafted into something you would otherwise want no part in. But to consistently lose to better teams made it nearly impossible to see the positive in.

Which is why I caused a commotion the first time I kicked a field goal in practice. It was one of the first practices of the year, taking place weeks before school started That year’s senior class was smaller than usual and some of the boys were still taking part in the harvest so I was one of the eighth graders who was asked to fill in for those who were missing. I was screwing around with some friends afterwards while waiting for my mom to pick me up. We were punting the ball to each other when I got the idea I wanted to try kicking a field goal.

My friend Johnny took one knee dead on to the uprights about twenty yards downfield, I stood a few steps back like I’d seen on television and he faked receiving the snap. I stepped forward, planted my off foot and swung my kicking leg. My foot made the sound of a baseball slapping your glove and the ball flew through the air straight over the crossbar. Johnny stood up and lifted me into the air as I raised my arms above my head in celebration. A coach had seen what I’d done and asked me to kick another one from the same spot. By the time my mom arrived, I was the team’s placekicker.

And I was the placekicker the next five years. I was a natural at it. Johnny would take the snap from the center, he would set it down and, like that first time, I would send it over the crossbar. At first, I would also mimic my celebration from that very first time but then my field goals became commonplace.

Since we were still the smaller school in all our games we didn’t score many touchdowns and I was called on to score most of our points. Our final scores would range from close 10-6 losses to 44-15 blowouts. Occasionally a team would let us hang around at 6-6 or 12-12 and there would be an audible murmur in the crowd. It didn’t even phase me that they were all thinking if we could just get in range with almost no time left, I could kick the winning field goal. I knew if it came to that I could and would do it. Then the bigger school would wake up and we’d be looking up at another loss on the scoreboard. I finally graduated in the spring of ‘86 and went away to college responsible for the most points in my high school’s entire football history.

Slowly the nearby metropolis crept closer and closer via urban sprawl and finally absorbed it into the megalopolis itself. My hometown went from being a farm town to a suburb and families with children moved into upright developments with cul-de-sacs. Around the time my parents finally sold their house and moved away, one of the children of one of those families broke my record. The influx of kids made our team competitive and we were holding our own against our rivals. He took a handoff from the quarterback, turned right and ran untouched into the endzone.

The game was stopped, the public address announcer asked for a round of applause for me and I walked out onto the field with the head coach and the school principal to congratulate the young man. He took off his helmet, shook my hand and someone took a picture of all four of us. There was more applause as the four of us left the field and the rest of the team went on with the game. He could take the time to hug his mother because we were now a large enough school to have fresh substitutes. Chances are he didn't even play baseball in the spring.

The Liar - Reverse Mortgage Pt. 1

The Liar
By Mark Anderson

I have never been comfortable
with the phrase "to be honest"

as if by not saying it
before or after

whatever it is I'm saying
is a lie

Then again, what do I know?
I lie all the time

Reverse Mortgage
By Michael Herman

This morning I was sitting in the breakroom doing the crossword. It was the USA Today puzzle, not the New York Times. The clues aren’t as difficult but considering I’m a scavenger I can hardly be choosy. It, at the very least, gives me the sense of accomplishment of being able to finish it. Sometimes I have to quit the Times or take the puzzle back to my desk to look up answers on the Internet. I’d feel worse about it if it weren’t just idle pursuit.

“Excuse me,” the short squat one said. “We need your help.”

I looked up from number 39 down “It may be about a foot”, four letters. There were three of them. The oldest looked to be in her fifties. The next one was in her forties. She’d asked the question. The last one stood there meekly. She looked to be about nineteen years old. Something about the general similarity of their appearance made me think they were related.

“Shoe,” I said out loud. “S-H-O-E, shoe.”

I penciled the letters into the boxes and turned my attention back to the trio.

“Okay,” I said. “What can I help you with?”

“We need to know about mortgages.”

Someone had apparently told these three about my previous job prospecting sub-prime mortgages before the big crash happened. Four years ago I would’ve considered this a hot lead, people who approached me. Now I wondered what use I could be to them.

“Sure, I know a few things about them. What do you need to know?”

“We were just watching the television,” said the fifty-ish one. “We heard about reverse mortgages and they said they were for old people. What are they?”

I’d been someone who had prospected sub-prime mortgages. What that mean was then, just like now, I was really good at getting people to believe in me, even if I was just talking out of my ass. I straightened my posture and leaned forward on the edge of the table.

“I’m not sure. Why would you need one?”

I was using a trick I’d used in those heady days. It was less important for me to answer a question than to find out what the person I was talking to wanted in the end. Back in the day, of course, I would subtly steer them towards wanting a three-year ARM. Now I was just genuinely interested.

The three of them looked at each other. They all knew why they would be asking me this question. In their mind, they would come to me to get the information, take that information and then make their decision. What they were asking each other now was how much they should let on, how much I should be allowed to know about their decision. The fifty-ish one was the first to speak.
“It’s our mother…” she said.

“Shhhh,” said the young one.

The fifty-ish one held her hand up to nullify her objection.

“It is our mother. She is very sick and she cannot pay her medical bills. The man in the commercial said a reverse mortgage was a good way to pay for outstanding medical bills.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Well, I don’t know that much about them. Is it okay if I talk to someone who might and then get back to you?”

Again, I was using a technique from my earlier career. I knew exactly what I was going to do was go look up “reverse mortgages” on the Internet and read all about them until I felt I had a handle on what they are and what their pitfalls were. In a real pinch, I might even actually call someone who knew about them like my dad or one of his banker friends. The point was when I came back, my opinion would carry much more authority because I’d “talked to someone who knows about this sort of thing” and they’d “told” me what I was going to say anyway. This established trust which I would then use to guide people on to the next level.

They all looked inward at each other. Again they were deciding how much I, a complete stranger, would be allowed to help them make their decision. I could tell this was something which had caused their family a great deal of stress for a long time coming and they were running out of options and feeling desperate. Nothing was off the table for them and yet they were probably wary from seeing other better options turn bad. I’m sure it even occurred to them to just go look it up on the Internet themselves.

“Okay,” the squat, forty-ish one said finally. “We want to know what you can find out.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll let you know what I find. What are your names?”

They told me their names and I stood up to leave. Ten minutes and a stop at the bathroom later, I was back at my desk and logged into the worldwide Internet. I called up a browser window and typed in the words “reverse mortgage.”

to be continued

Katzenjammer - I Am The Electron Pt. 1

(Let's just pretend this went up last night after work. Didn't have time to type it up then.)

Katzenjammer
By Mark Anderson

Heaven only knows
why one loves it so.

I would stand up
but my right foot is asleep.

Sometimes
insurance commercials
break my heart.

I Am The Electron
By Michael Herman

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is one of the most misunderstood scientific theories of our time, on par with evolution or global warming. Don't know it by name? That's okay and kind of proves my point in a way.

The Uncertainty Principle states on a sub-atomic level we can know either a particle's location or its velocity but not both. Most who misuse it utilize it as a way to explain away indefinite situations. It's a lot easier to think a confusing situation is simply unknowable than to dig deeper. This is not what Uncertainty is about at all. There's actually a mechanical reason we can know one or the other but not both.

Let me back up just a bit. We see things because it either emits light or reflects it. In most cases, it is the latter. We see the red of the rose because light hits the petals and all of the different wavelengths are absorbed except the ones out eyes see as red. The red wavelengths are reflected into our eye, our ocular nerve converts it into electrical code and our brain decodes it as "RED." The way we see subatomic particles is the same. A scientist fires a little bit of light at the particle, the light reflects or absorbs on to a piece of film and the scientist decodes what is on the film as "ELECTRON."

The problem is the invisible wavelengths used to see subatomic particles get really powerful quickly. To see exactly where an electron is, the wave has to be focused in such a high frequency it will knock the electron off its course. You know its exact location but instantly lose it in the process. Alternately we can use a lower power, lower frequency wavelength which tells us the general area the particle falls in without disturbing it. By comparing two of these snapshots, we can follow its general movement and therefore determine its general velocity in a "It was kind of over here and now it's kind of over here," way.

to be continued

Five Greeting Card Messages I Never See in Stores - Exchange

Five Greeting Card Messages I Never See in Stores
By Mark Anderson

Happy Birthday
I'm only giving you this card so you won't complain
about not getting anything from me.

Anniversary
Wow. That felt a lot longer than a year, didn't it?

Going Away
I'd say I'll miss you but we'll probably talk more
now that you're leaving.

Graduation
I gave the cash to your parents for safe keeping.

Sympathy
While I'm sorry to hear about your husband's death,
I think we all know he had it coming.

Exchange
By Michael Herman

I'm twenty-three years old and I'm sitting in front of the television. The program I'm watching is the popular sports highlight program and they're showing players just a little younger than me playing basketball. A nineteen year old is dunking the ball over a twenty-one year old when I get a very common feeling. I realize I've never dunked a basketball in my life and now that I'm past my physical peak I probably never will.

I'm twenty-five years old and I'm talking on the phone with my mother. She's telling me about my father like she normally does and I start to listen not to what she's saying but how she sounds as she says it. Her stern, ringing voive which would scold me as a child has disappeared and been replaced by a much quieter and frail voice. As I wonder if she's always used that voice with other people, she stops to take a long breath. I interrupt her story.

"I love you, Mom."

I'm twenty years old and I've snuck into a campus bar with my friends. Now it seems less impressive and I should've recognized a number of kids from my class who were also there. At the time though I'm very nervous and expecting to be caught any minute. My friend who is twenty-one years old puts his hand on my shoulder. I jump slightly.

"Hey, man. Loosen up. Enjoy yourself. No one cares."

I'm twenty-eight years old and I'm at work in my cubicle. My boos has me re-typing a report I wrote six months ago. She's given me plenty of time to basically take out the stats from then and replace them with the stats from now. I may change the way some of it fits together. Changes I would've made if I hadn't rushed it the first time. Otherwise I'm bored and wonder if anyone who will read this report cares.

I'm twenty-seven years old and I'm at the gym. I've been running on the treadmill and I can feel my cotton t-shirt sticking to the small of my back. On my way to the lockerroom I pass the basketball courts. The men, many ten years younger than me, move in quick spasms and one gets past his defender with the ball. He takes two steps to get into the air and puts the ball lightly off the glass and it falls into the hoop.

"Next time, dunk that!" one of his teammates screams.

He smiles and runs back on defense. I wonder if he can or ever could.

I'm twenty-five years old and I tell my mom I love her. She stops what she's talking about and takes a deep breath.

"I love you too."

Imaginary Boyfriend - Chin Up

Imaginary Boyfriend
by Mark Anderson

You know who I'm talking about.
That man you met ten years ago on the train
whose deep brown eyes asked you to dinner,
whose soft-yet-strong hands tracked your every move,
touching your back as he took off your coat,
grazing your cheek as he wiped away a crumb of cake,
whose lips later unfolded you
like an origami box.
Before he asked you to stay,
you had already left the building,
skidding across the ice to your train,
a nonstop, one-way trip
homebound,
safebound,
where the love you claimed you needed,
golden and engraved,
framed easily on the mantel.
Now, as the embers cool each night,
everyone tucked their beds,
you close your eyes and decide
next time you'll stay.

Chin Up
by Michael Herman

He was just hanging there when I first came upon him. I noticed how thin he looked. His shoulders were no wider than his hips and his coal black hair gave him the appearance of a burnt match. If he had been pushed around by larger men for his entire life it wouldn’t surprise me.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

He responded with silence. His focus seemed transfixed on holding his grip and his thin arms held his slight weight completely motionless. His eyes weren’t closed though and I’d seen them turn slightly in my direction when I spoke. I knew he’d heard me so I tried to speak to him again.

“Excuse me,” I said louder. “What are you doing?

“I’m doing pull-ups,” he said quietly.

It was at this point I realized his feet were crossed. I don’t know what additional benefit it offered him except he didn’t need to think what to do with his feet. He could just pull himself up and not worry about touching the ground.

“I’m doing pull ups in sets of 20 and I’m resting between sets.”

“You do them in sets of 20?”

“Yup. I do them in sets of 20.”

“How many sets have you done?”

“So far I’ve done 3 sets. Now excuse me for just a minute.”

His arms began to move and through his shirt I could see his shoulders tense. My initial impression of him as a slight and wiry man was unfounded. He was thin, that was undeniable. Close to his frame his muscles hid as though each had a secret compartment for it to be stored until its utility was needed. I stood admiring him while he lifted his chin to his hands twenty times in rapid succession. Slowly he lowered himself into the hanging position I’d found him in.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Please.”

“Why are you doing pull-ups here?

“I suppose you think it’s odd because this is not a place where you would usually find someone doing them. I do them here at the bus stop because I have a long wait and I want to be efficient with my time.”
I didn’t know which impressed me more: that he had given me such a well-thought and lucid answer or that had not broken the concentration he used to hold his grip.

“Why?”

He set his feet on the ground and lowered his arms from their locked positions. I briefly pondered how I was talking to a stranger and, though I had the best of intentions, my questions may be an annoyance to him. He squared his shoulders with mine and his gaze fixed quickly upon my feet.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’ve learned the hard way to be prepared for whatever comes your way. And on top of that, I don’t want to believe I am prepared for something only to find years of misuse had left me not able to meet my opponent.”

He looked up briefly and caught his eye in mine. Then he turned back to his work and reached his hands up.

“It most frustrates me I must think of the world as my opponent and that I must be prepared to defeat it.”

With that he stepped off his feet and his knuckles flushed to pale white. He hung briefly as he regained his composure and again I watched as he lifted his chin to his hands twenty times in rapid succession.