self-examination

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between self-criticism and plain self-deprecation. I have a habit of making self-deprecating jokes, and I think that's because I worry a lot that other people think I'm a snob (which, let's face it, I kind of am sometimes). It's useful to help other people feel comfortable around me, but if my self-deprecation seeps into my personal life, it can be hurtful - not just to myself, but other people who believe in me. If someone else thinks I'm well-read, but I say that I just have superficial knowledge, what am I saying about their ability to judge character?

I think another way this comes off badly is if someone wants to know more about me. At the beginning of one of my classes, our teacher asked us to write a little about ourselves, and I wrote a few things and then, "and you don't need to know anything else about me." I find talking about myself kind of difficult for some reason. I find bragging loathsome, and I think it's more interesting to gradually get to know someone, not to feel like you know someone just because you know a few random facts about him. I'm not sure if that's the impression I gave though - by wanting to allow others to truly get to know me, I also put up fences, because maybe I have a strange-looking yard and I only want people who really want to see it to take a look. Does that make sense?

I was looking back on my johari/nohari things today. Along with my cynicism, most people said I was smug and distant (but also insecure, embarrassed, and aloof). Maybe I became gradually aware of my smugness and tried self-deprecation as a tool to combat that. But when it comes right down to it, I'm arrogant. I think that most people have misconceptions about the world, and that I know more than them and have better sources. And, maybe I do, for some things, but I want to stop assuming that so that I can care about what they think, instead of just thinking that they're wrong.

In the classroom setting, there is plenty of time to hear other people talk. There's one girl who always talks about how smart she is - how she did well in high school, and how she often takes less time on tests than she's given. It annoyed me a little, along with the newlywed who starts every sentence with "my husband..." I think I felt annoyed because I feel like those are inappropriate conversation topics for acquaintances. I think that might explain my aloofness. I feel very uncomfortable discussing my private life with people I don't know very well. I feel uncomfortable discussing it even with people I do know pretty well. A married freshman year friend of mine visited, and we were talking about Crow, and she asked if we had talked about marriage, and I just gave a short answer and changed the subject. I do ask friends for advice every now and then, but I don't always follow it.

Well, I know this isn't the usual blurb-length blog post for me, but if I'm ever going to feel comfortable talking about myself, I have to start somewhere, even if it is a semi-anonymous website. Please feel free to share your ideas on how introverted intellectuals like me can seem less aloof or distant.

The Dead

In my trendy cynicism, it's rare that a piece of literature really touches me, but Joyce's The Dead does this.

"In one letter he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"

"One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and whither dismally with age. "

gunning fog index distribution

Sorry, just wanted to upload this somewhere where I can keep track of it.

another cute actor

So, I've had my little celebrity crushes (Edward Norton and Timothy Omundson). Today I was watching Jeeves and Wooster, and this guy who plays Rockemetteller, a poet who has to go to New York to keep getting money from his aunt, is rather cute. Oh, and let's throw in another picture of Edward Norton while I'm here. That's all for today.

Sodium intake

I was getting a little dehydrated or something this week, and it occurred to me (after not feeling thirsty at all, but not sweating at night) that I might not be getting enough salt in my diet. I'm supposed to get 2400 mg or so. Breakfast is plain cheerios with some honey, that's some 300-400 mg. Lunch is usually PB&J, an apple, and yogurt, which is like 350 mg from the bread and peanut butter, or today was a fried egg on toast and another piece of toast with jam (so... 400 mg?). Then dinner is spaghetti with tomato sauce, another 400 mg. That's... 1200 mg. Luckily for me, the UK recommendation is 1600 mg, so if I have two piece of garlic toast with dinner I am just about right. Who knew that I was so close to having a salt problem! And hooray for not eating processed food. I just wanted to warn you in case you might also have a sodium intake problem.

&eneral Mills

I just realized that the General Mills symbol is supposed to be a cursive G and not some crazy ampersand.

Video Games!

I can even be snobbish about video games! Last year or so I learned that there are "art" games. They are interesting to play and think about. One of these is La La Land 4. It's surreal and weird, and simply made. But it's like how Kafka would make a game - seriously! Just play it it will take like 10 minutes, and then you will feel surreal and nightmarish. Another less-scary art game is Gravitation. I've only played it twice, but it has some interesting things to say about death and leaving people to go do stuff, and what makes us happy in life. I've played this programmer's other games and they're worth a gander (I just looked at the new Primrose, and it's quite entertaining!). Anyhow, VIDEO GAMES.

quiz follow-up

The results are in and the question should post Monday! In case you can't see the results, the average is like 3.5, without our little outlier. Someone got in a vote after I wrote it all up, but it's basically the same. Most people break up 0-9 times in their dating lives at BYU. Interesting.

Edit: Here is the question.

Poll: How many times have you broken up?

I'm doing some research to answer the question of how many times the average BYU student has broken up. So, if you're a current BYU student, go ahead and answer the poll (RSS readers, please come to my site to vote). If you're an alumnus/a, count how many times you broke up before you graduated or got married, whichever came first. And... please be honest. This is for science, after all.

coldplay is this a homage?

Kraftwerk's "Computerliebe" (1:09) and Coldplay's "Talk" have identical melody lines in their refrains. Like, the notes and rhythm are identical. Rampant copying! Looks like someone on youtube noticed this like a month ago.

edit: Perhaps it's an instance of CRYPTOMNESIA??

lego scholi res liberum

You know how when giving compliments, some people are described as being "true to themselves" or letting their "true personality" shine? What the heck does that mean? It sounds like a euphemism for someone who does socially shady things. But not caring what others think and being yourself aren't the same. Just so you know.

Guess what: I checked out this book called Implementing Evidence-Based Academic Interventions in School Settings. I'm excited, because I looked for a good book on Amazon about research on school psychology, and a lot of it was stupid pop-psych stuff... but this looks legit.

Zuihitsu on The Strangeness of Beauty

Hey, I wrote this for a class and felt like it wouldn't be a total bore to read like most everything else I write. So now it's a part of this blog.

Zuihitsu on The Strangeness of Beauty

The Strangeness of Beauty is nothing like the Japanese literature I’ve read. It is terribly conscious that an American is reading it, so all of the Japanese terms are explained in-text, and some Japanese terms are abandoned for American ones. Fuji-sama (I assume) becomes “Most Honorable Mrs. Fuji,” and Minatoya explains simple things like split-toed socks and the Obon festival. Our narrator, Etsuko, goes off for pages on Japanese history lessons on samurai manners or the significance of bridal gifts. Instead of feeling like an insider, as I do when I read (translated) Japanese literature, I’m suddenly an ignorant white American, and I resent that. I wish Etsuko felt like she could be herself, and I don’t understand why she’s explaining all these Japanese things.

Etsuko often tells too much. After explaining how she always paused to smell herbs in her childhood home, she says, “I loved the aromas of the drying herbs” (102). As if it weren’t already evident! Another time after Hanae shouts, Etsuko tells us, “Mari’s sudden shallowness makes Hanae angry” (158). Does she have to spell it out? Another thing about Etsuko: she’s terribly self-conscious and doesn’t do anything to fix the flaws she notices. She writes, “I’m growing bored with my I-story. All reminiscence, no action” (110). She doesn’t make it more exciting though; she just reminisces some more. When speaking of Hanae’s seriousness, Etsuko says that adolescence is the place for “self-conscious moping” (70). She should have added “I-stories” as a place for moping.

Despite my problems with Minatoya’s style, there are some things I’ve really enjoyed about her novel. Chie feels like a real old person to me. So many times I think elderly people are simplified as either bumbling idiots or wise sages. Chie can be cruel, but she has feelings for her descendents. Sometimes I feel the same way about my own grandma. I lived with my grandparents for my first two years of college, and I found out that my grandma isn’t always comforting and smiling. She has strong opinions about what I should do with my life and the kind of man I should marry. But despite (or maybe because of) her constant reminders that I should look for a good job or get a better boyfriend, she loves me and wants me to have a happy life. And I think Chie feels the same way about her daughter when she says “you walk like a turtle! […] An intelligent turtle, whose curiosity outreaches its stride” (269).

I think I finally understand what Etsuko was “doing” with her I-story. Etsuko explains how one day she and her husband saw many amateur painters, all trying to paint irises, but with all of their paintings looking the same. Etsuko saw beauty in their mediocrity, because it represented their sincere effort. She says this is the strangeness of beauty: “that transcendence can be found in what’s common and small” (350). I think people like mothers and teachers can understand this, but coolly cynical almost-graduate students like me have a hard time with it. It’s unhip to like things that are popular and amateurish… but if I’m going to enjoy art instead of constantly criticizing it (as I do on the first page of this essay), I need to learn to see the good in things instead of constantly finding faults. At the same time, finding flaws and problems in literature is part of what teachers encourage from literature students. Sometimes I find it difficult to just enjoy a book, no matter how common or flawed it might appear.

Another thing about enjoying the strangeness of beauty is that our culture does not encourage it. Mediocre is no longer acceptable, as shown by grade inflation, my high school declining to reveal class rankings (for fear of parent bereavement?), and motivational speakers urging students not to be satisfied with mediocrity, to keep pushing to do their best. No wonder so many students have problems with perfectionism! But seriously, what’s wrong with mediocrity? Plenty of kids are average. Why does that seem so sad to me? I irrationally value excellence and intelligence, probably because I was rewarded for it so often growing up. In the end though, excellence and intelligence are not enough to make me value life.

Going back to The Strangeness of Beauty, Minatoya captures to “madness of love” (67) when she describes the underwear Naomi sewed for Hanae, and the waistbands sewed with a thousand stitches in hope that they will protect soldiers from bullets. It’s just this kind of thing that makes me think how stupid love makes people. But why does it seem stupid to me? I evaluate others’ efforts by the usefulness or beauty of the things they produce. Hanae’s underwear isn’t useful, and only Hanae and her family can appreciate its beauty. The waistbands with a thousand stitches are neither bulletproof nor aesthetically pleasing. In these cases, it’s not the utility or the beauty of a thing that matters but the love shown by the effort of doing something crazy. I think the “madness of love” is something I can understand a little easier - I’ve done plenty of stupid things in the name of love – but I haven’t valued those things as an evidence of an effortful love. Maybe I should start enjoying my love madness.

The Strangeness of Beauty helped me to understand how my evaluations of literature are steeped in my assumption that the style of literature should be exemplary or remarkable. Even if I didn’t think that Minatoya’s style was perfect, she helped me to see the beauty in her own novel by explaining the strangeness of beauty in the everyday and mediocre.

Dining Rooms

We were discussing a play called "The Dining Room" today in class, and how dining rooms are kind of a lost upper middle class tradition (for example, most new homes in Utah don't have dining rooms). We have a dining room in my house of growing up. We used it for some Sunday dinners and whenever we had company over. We also used it to play cards, build puzzles on, banish children to from the kitchen, and to hide under during hide-and-seek. My mom used it for her sewing and paying the bills. I don't think our house is particularly large, and it isn't a separate room (the only separate rooms downstairs are the den and the laundry/bathroom). I guess I'm wondering why my house had a dining room and many of the students in my class didn't have one, or didn't even use it. I have a dining room in my apartment right now, come to think of it, but I think that's because the house I live in is really old, and dining rooms were more prevalent then. My parent's house is just a bit older than I am. Maybe people buying homes there wanted dining rooms.

Anyway, I don't think having a dining room is very practical, unless you eat all your meals there and then would have more room in the kitchen for preparing food. But I guess the point of a dining room is that you don't eat all your meals there, just when you want to be a little fancier. I tend to think that fanciness is a state of mind more than a state of dress... but how we dress can influence our behavior too.

Another thing that came up in class was parts of the play that bothered us. I remembered one scene where a woman is hostessing a birthday party for her son and the whole time is talking to one kid's dad about the affair they're having. While I was reading it, I was amused. But when I was talking about it in class, I was not compassionate at all. I was like "WHY would people have KIDS if they're not going to take care of them? That's so SELFISH. It really bothers me." And I realized that it wasn't the book I was upset about, it was the cases from work that I thought back on. Where kids are coached to say mean things about one parent, or have to visit an abusive parent. It upsets me most when parents are mean or negligent to their own children. It upsets me even more when an abusive parent thinks she's actually helping.

Madsen Cargo Bikes

Um, this company in Salt Lake is making these cool cargo bikes. I'm going to shamelessly put a banner here to enter their July drawing. Click here if there isn't some image.

bone to pick

Dear producers of Bones,

In the episode where they're searching for the call girl in LA - she most likely had body dysmorphic disorder, not "an addiction to plastic surgery." You're perpetuating "addiction" as a buzzword and not a specific problem. Thought you should know. I will list other problems as I notice them.

-Whistler

6/29 Dr. Sweets is a psychologist. Stop calling him a psychiatrist. Also, in the episode with the time capsule, if the woman got pregnant at the end of her senior year, her son would be 19 at the youngest at their 20-year reunion (too old to be a high school senior... or perhaps he repeated a grade?).

7/7 the season 3 finale is completely out of character for Zack. I can't believe you betrayed his personality to add suspense and intrigue. Also, what does Brennan have against Catholics? She seems perfectly accepting of other religions (voodooism, Buddhism, etc.)

Unask

Mu. I feel like I'm asking all the wrong questions. Instead of asking "why are people so annoying" I should be asking "How can I learn to love people." But, even if I loved them, they would still be annoying. I don't care about them, but I should, if I'm going to call myself a Christian. I'm not above them, why do I keep thinking that my not caring about celebrity drama, new movie releases, and traditional romance will put me in a position where I can see reality more clearly? It won't. My reality is just as removed from the "real" as theirs is. While I disdain poshlust, I haven't escaped it - how could I? I live in it.

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with all these potatoes.

A slur, a blur

I quit my job. What a relief. Now it's either find another job or live on the cheap the next four months.

In some strange flurry, I saw Crow again last Saturday. Like snapping a rubber band, it hurts but feels so good. Love it and not sure if I should. Self-distraction to increase self-control futile.
I've got the technique but not the style. Fever and chills, high speeds and cheap thrills. Deduction and reduction, suction and corruption. I've got to stop. Whistler, crop.

I'm not sure where all the free time is going. Reading probably. More cooking. Self-doubt about my graduate program, doubt that I can actually write a paper. More online chatting. As I'm more connected online, I feel more isolated in person. So I've been trying to get out more too.

Royal silent portable

Um... I was at DI yesterday and found a typewriter in the collectibles section. I couldn't pass this chance up, even though it'll need some repairs (and was a little pricey). No, seriously, gorgeous! The glass keys and white letters on black paper are kind of hard to come by. It needs a rubber band thing to make the space bar work properly, and some other repairs (you can see in the first photo that the caps lock is having issues). Other than that, yeah. I think I'm in love.

New isn't always improved

Something I don't understand is why people like new things: new CD releases, new bestsellers, or new TV shows. There are plenty of old ones to choose from, one that are probably of higher quality because they are still around now. The only exception I see is with scientific research, although there are trends and stupid hypes there too. So, I guess this is part of my ongoing obsession with the past.

spoons. oh and me getting all introspective again.

There's something I want you to notice about this photo: the spoon. It seems like every spoon in our apartment is different, and some of them are really cute. This one in particular has a design with roses, I think. You might laugh but it's these daily discoveries of art in my life that keep me happy sometimes.

For some reason I was thinking about my ex-boyfriends today. It always makes me feel kind of sad, like sometimes I can't believe they're still alive and have ideas and hopes that I'm no longer privy to (to any of them reading now: hello!). It's hard for me to imagine them apart from me. Maybe that says something about my relationships - maybe I'm too selfish or unimaginative of desires outside myself. I constantly worry that the people I love aren't who I think they are, that my perception is clouded by my unrealistic expectations. I guess worrying about it won't suddenly open my eyes to the difference between how people appear, how I perceive them, and how they are.

I don't know if I've changed at all over the past few years. I'm not sure if it would be a good thing if I did. Maybe I'm destined to make the same mistakes again and again. Maybe making mistakes will be fun.