Poem

Here's a poem I wrote.

I call it "Cleaning Your Keyboard."

Here it goes.

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There ya go. I think it's very post-modern. I hope you enjoyed it.

The Wrong Thing

Sometimes I try to say the perfectly wrong thing.

You may think this isn't that hard to do, but it really is.

I know what you're thinking...."How hard can it be to be wrong?"

And I understand your reasoning. Most people look at being right in almost mathematical terms. They think of being right like taking a math test where, for or any given problem, there is only one correct answer and a countably (sometimes uncountably) infinite number of incorrect answers...so if you want to get the wrong answer all you gotta do is write something and you have a 1 over infinity chance of producing the answer you want (sorry, math friends, for treating infinity like a number).

Well, I gotta say that being perfectly wrong is a lot harder than that.

You see, in most day to day situations the right and the wrong answers aren't very clear. We usually deal in shades, and when there are shades we usually have a "more correct" and a "less correct" answer. And when there are degrees, the less correct answers range from "almost plausible" to "so stupid your soul cries."

Here are some examples.

Say a person asks you: "What were the names of the boats Columbus sailed on?"

Correct answer: Columbus sailed on 3 boats: the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria."

More correct answer: Columbus sailed with 3 boats: the Pinta, Santa Maria, and Santa Clara (nicknamed Nina).

Less correct: Columbus sailed on boats with Spanish names.

Even less correct: Columbus sailed on boats with Mexican sounding names.

Least correct: That's a trick question. Columbus wasn't a sailor. Columbus was a detective on a syndicated crime drama featuring Peter Falk. The show was so popular they eventually named a holiday after it."

As you can see. The answer can be traditional. The answer can be more correct and snooty. The answer can be ignorant. The answer can be ignorant and painfully ethnocentric. And the answer can be stupid and a little bit funny.

So, what I'm getting at is there are a lot of wrong answers and each wrong answer (and right answer) has a particular flavor....and somewhere there is the most wrong answer. Finding this wrong answer requires you to 1) know the right answer, and then 2) deviate from that answer as much as possible. This requires skill, and this is why coming up with the worst answer can be a really fun and creative game.

Here's an example of the absolute worst answer.

Last Sunday a girl was telling me about eating disorders. She was telling me the statistics of how many girls have them etc., and I was listening attentively. Now, I agree it's horrible how many people (women in particular) suffer from eating disorders. I also agree that eating disorders, in a large measure, are the result of the unreasonable expectations placed upon women.

But, I also know that there is very little I can do about this, and that I'd much rather laugh than talk about such a depressing topic. So, when she said"Did you know that only 3 percent of women are happy with their bodies?" I thought about all the answers available to me. I weighed the direction the conversation was going. I thought on the objectification of women and how their objectification leads to mental illness and dissatisfaction with life....and I said, "Wow, I bet that 3 percent is really hot."

That, I'm pretty sure, was the worst possible response.

And I'm almost 90 percent sure she knew I was joking.

Anyway, this is a fun game. You should try it out. Just don't play with people who don't like you/are looking for evidence against you/are easily offended. Oh, and don't play this game if you plan to run for public office.

Actually, on second thought, do play this game if you plan to run for public office....it will make your campaign more interesting.

Hope you all have a great day.

Baby Talk

Note: This post has a new title now. The reason for this was I was trying to find a post yesterday and I couldn't because my post titles are so undescriptive. Well, that was one reason. The other was the 1st comment on this post which points out (almost fairly) that I frequently title my posts "update."

Hello Everyone,

Well, first off I wanna say how great it was to have my family together for Christmas. I came back to Utah last week; it was hard to say goodbye to everyone.

One of the best parts of this visit was my little niece, Summer. She is an amazingly cute baby. Somehow her smile is larger than her face, and if you're around her too long it's downright painful because she has more smile endurance than just about anyone, so if you smile back your face starts to hurt.

The only downside of having her with us was her short battery life. She's only awake for a few hours at a time, and she loves to sleep at the worst times...like Christmas morning at 10 o'clock.

Spending time with her made it pretty clear that she's probably going to be an adrenaline junky someday. She likes to be held upside down, she likes flying around like an airplane, she likes being used like a marionette to mimic crazy dance moves (for example: the song "Jump" by Van Halen (with extra high throws in the air when the chorus yells "jump!")).

One time I was even able to rock her to sleep by playing songs with "rock" in the title. I started by rocking her to "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and then I went on to "Rock is Dead" and then "Rock and Roll Band" and then finally the little bit slower "I am a Rock." She was completely out of it by the end.

One thing I don't get about babies is how women talk to them. When Summer would enter a room it was as if every woman in the room were alerted to this by some mysterious extrasensory perception rooted in estrogen.

Once their mysterious extrasensory perception alerts them of the child they surround the mother and baby and then proceed to say the most inane things in a high pitched voice....making sure to say the exact same thing more than once (in case the baby hadn't caught their cryptic message's powerful meaning the first time due to their inexperience with language).

It goes something like this:

"Oh, you're just a little princess aren't you? You're just a little princess AREN'T YOU! Oh, yes you are, you're a little princess."

Then the next woman in the circle has a go and says "You're just so precious! So precious!"

The next lady sees lady #2 is done already, looks down at lady#2 for lack of baby cooing creativity and then starts to showboat a bit with some alternating endearments like "Aren't you just the cutest thing? Oh, she's so beautiful you have a beautiful baby. Yes, you are a beautiful baby aren't you, oh yes, beautiful baby."

As you can see here, that's a person balancing two conversations: one with the baby, and one with the mother. The ability to flatter both simultaneously, and to shift from the high pitched baby dialect to the more formal dialect traditionally used to flatter mothers is a sign that the woman (in this case woman #3) is experienced in the art of baby cooing.

And it goes on like this for as long as the endurance of the baby will allow.

Since I'm not a baby expert I just try to tell the baby things I'd find interesting. For example, when I was home I explained to Summer the etymology of words I liked, how the electoral college alienates voters, and the limitations of the scientific method. I told her to stop me if something didn't make sense or she disagreed.

I took her silence as proof that she is an intelligent and agreeable child.

Oh, and here are some pictures of Summer to give some context to this post.

In other news I did finish that song. Here's the video:

It would have turned out a little better but my fingernails were a bit too short (and I recorded too late in the day so the video is really dark).

I wish I could compromise and only have nails when I'm playing guitar...you know, have retractable claws like a great cat. It's so frustrating to have nails when you're typing or doing something with your hands, but it's even more frustrating to try and play a classical style song when you don't have fingernails...you're just plucking the string with the meaty part of your hand and this is not only uncomfortable, it also sounds horrible.

While recording this song I was so frustrated that I almost went with my sisters to get some fake fingernails.

Cause, you see, my sisters get their nails done ritualistically every time they're both in town. And when they returned from the nail salon after during this last visit they found me sitting on the couch, vulnerable, wishing I didn't have such short and utterly unmusical nails.

When I saw their new long and strong fingernails I thought "that's what I need, I could play with those."

But, that thought was short lived cause then I got to logistics.

To get nails like that would require me to enter a nail salon (and probably be the only guy in said salon). Also, I'd look weird cause I'd only want fingernails installed on my thumb and index finger (is that the right word? "installed"? Does one "install" fake nails? Whatever.)....yeah, I just couldn't make that many compromises.

So, I thought things through and realized that the music would have to suffer for the sake of propriety.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say this morning. Hope you're all doing super.

Hello

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's. My Christmas was as wonderful as usual, and my New Year's was as uneventful as usual...so by my estimation everything was perfect.

One of the really nice things about Christmas is how it brings the whole family together for a few weeks, and this year was no exception. The Christmas was made even more special because we had little baby Summer with us. She's an amazing baby. She has the perfect temper and she rarely stops smiling.

While we were all together my dad created a minus track for the song "A Final Dream" from the album Beethoven's Last Night so my sister, Katie, could record a lullaby for her baby. She did an amazing job. I can't think of a more beautiful lullaby.

A Final Dream

In other news I tried to record that song I was working on, Asturias, but I really struggled to get a nice recording. My big problem was my fingernails were a little bit too short. Also, I haven't been playing the song much lately so I was a little bit rusty. Hopefully I'll get a good copy finished during the next few days to share on here. That was a really hard song to learn and I'd like to have it recorded.

In other other news, I had a really strange dream a few nights ago. I think it might have been caused by the combination of watching A Christmas Carol and all the family interrogation regarding why I'm not married yet (happens every year around the holidays).

As usual, the marital prodding started out with kind wishes...things like, "I hope you have someone next year" etc. After everyone got that out of their system we started the problem solving portion of the discussion. This goes something like "Well, if you did X then Y would probably happen." You can substitute X with anything from "be kind" to "never take a girl on a date to a hospital," and Y with anything from "not freak people out" to "get married."

Anyway, after defending my singleness (and not even a few weeks ago watching A Christmas Carol) I had a dream where I was sort of put on trial and I had to defend my dating past. I guess that isn't too similar to the situation in the Dickens' classic, but it had a similar feel because I was dressed like Scrooge, it happened at night, and I was constantly referring to everyone ruining my slumber as "spirit."

Actually, now that I think about it there was a little bit of Defending your Life in my dream. That's an older comedy starring Al Brooks where, after his death, he had to defend a few key moments of his life from a relentless prosecutor and show that he had behaved correctly.

Well, in this dream I sat in a remarkably comfortable nightshirt all Scroogelike and I was visited by a spirit that accused me of pushing everyone away. Then, the spirit paraded a whole bunch of girls from my past and I had to explain why things didn't work out.

Sometimes it was really easy. For some all I had to say was something like "She was really really dumb and I only took her on one date cause I thought it would be fun....I stopped calling cause I didn't want to have really really dumb kids." Other times I could say "She wasn't a very good person." After these simple explanations the Ghost would just nod and then move on.

The difficult part was later in the dream. The more recent girls I've dated from the past few years were brought up and they weren't dismissed as easily. Each time one of their faded and slightly translucent images appeared I felt like I was making up excuses. The conviction I felt with the earlier manifestations disappeared. Eventually I just had to admit that, regarding one girl, the thing that had ruined our relationship was fear; I had ruined everything because I was afraid. When I admitted that the spirit looked pretty disappointed with me (always a bad idea to make the spirit mad).

What was the most frustrating was how poorly I argued my position in the dream. I've never been handled so well...that spirit really knew what he was doing. He made me look like a stammering, romantically challenged idiot.

Well, I better get on with my day. That was my dream. I know it was pretty strange. Please keep your psychoanalysis to yourself :) I'm only sharing it cause I thought it was pretty funny. If dreams really are the unsorted files from our daily memories than I think my unsorted files are about 30 percent movies, 30 percent classic literature, 50 percent guilt, and 10 percent basic addition.

Hope you all have a wonderful day!