Mant

Greetings to all who read this,
This moving journal marks important events of recent times. I completed my calculus course. This cause for great elation. So please elate, I can wait. As always if you're reading this and wish you weren't I can remove you from the list. If you're not reading this and wish you were, we need to have a deep philosophical discussion. Tonight's installment marks the first time math has been used to generate multiple laughs in one journal entry. You will need to remember some of your calculus in order to truly get some of the jokes. Anyone who's suffered enough math to get these jokes deserves to have jokes written for just them.

Ants Carry their Dead...

I bet you didn’t’ know this. I know I didn’t. I had to see it with my own eyes.Certain types of ants carry their own dead. After one close encounter I had with an ant, who shall remain nameless, I killed it. What moved me about this particular ant lay in the events that unfolded after the ant had a near-miss with my hand ( I say "near-miss" because it nearly missed my hand. This correction in word usage I borrow from George Carlin). I saw fellow ants roll-up to the scene of their slain ant-fellow, inspect with their feelers, and then one ant picked up his/her dead comrade and began walking away. Normally I'm all for ants cleaning up after my messes but I couldn't have more ants returning to the scene of the crime. I had to whack the witnesses. I made these cute his-hers matching cement shoes (12 pairs in all). Ants all share a similar shoe size so fitting them wasn't hard. Now, they're swimming with the fishes.

In addition to the invasion of my home by ants, I am also visited by spiders. Eesh... I hates spiders. I think it's all those legs. The spiders and I were having something of a land dispute over who exactly ruled this territory. In matters of land dispute, or most matters in general, it is important to communicate clearly. Because spiders speak no language other than their own dark, ultra-high frequency death cackles, I knew I had to teach them to read English. So, I created a perfect trap, an infallible trap. You’ll find on my kitchen counter some baby books, grammar flash-cards, followed by Dr. Seuss, the Sideways Stories of Wayside School and the Spiderwick Chronicles. After this, the literature graduates to more serious and technical materials: Beowulf, Chaucer and Whitman balanced against the dry logic of the Robert’s Rules of Order, Common Sense, and old copies of the Bar Exam. At the end of this literary obstacle course lay my lease agreement and a large collection of virgin, nubile and supple flies. The trap is set. The flies are temptation. The baby books and remedial English books are there to teach the spider English. And to lease agreement is to prove, bryond a reasonable doubt, that I am the rightful renter.  By the time they reach the top, those tiny spiders will know enough English to know it's time for them to move out.

I sit silently in my kitchen, waiting for my first crop of literate spiders to read, once and for all time, that this land is my land. I’ve been sitting here, waiting for the spiders to read my lease, for 3 weeks now. I think they’re in another room building a human sized spider web in the doorway. It's almost completed.

Calculus...
   It is done. Calculus class is over. I finished my final exam early today making sure I now don't have to be present for the rest of the course. This makes time for me to travel to New Orleans for Siggraph (computer graphics convention). After Nola, I'll be in Boston for a week. I remember calculus to be particularly challenging, from the last time I took it. I was last enrolled in a calculus class at the University of Illinois, at Shampoo-Banana, during my undergrad. This calculus class I found much easier. It allowed me the space to drop it early and take Russian Literature in its place. Somehow I found the summation of depressing Russian authors to be less weighty than the summation symbol itself. My first go at dropping calculus was made easier by the strange and wondrous vocal inflections and heady dialects of my instructors. The professor was a German mathematician of note, whose note I lost so I can't remember his name. His teaching assistant was of clear descent. He came from an area in the Eastern Hemisphere, south of Russia, east of India, north of Australia and west of the Pacific. I could always tell when he was speaking because his mouth was moving and clearly and intentionally vocalising some manner of gibberish. It sounded like copper nails falling on piano strings. To be honest I couldn't understand a word he said. I tried very hard. I really wanted to like math even if I had to enjoy it clandestinely and not tell the other painters. Because calculus has a high rate of change of student enrollment I found it all to easy to keep this joy so clandestine that I forgot about it until 12 years later in the middle of my second attempt at a calculus class. I couldn't have picked a better or worse time for round 2.
     On the heels of a break-up it is often recommended to "get back on the saddle," or "do something with yourself," or "hey buddy, my eyes are up here," or "get out of the house you stank-nasty hermit and change the shirt you've been crying in for the past four days." Anger is a fuel by which we keep reminding ourselves not to call him or her back. We are reminded by way of intrusive memories and occasional Alanis Morissette songs that we deserve to be treated better than we were before and just how angry that person made us. While anger can keep us away from temptation to reconnect, if left unchecked it can become its own malaise (at better times) or its own sleep-depriving obsession. Sometimes you gotta feel what you gotta feel and there's no way around that. But when there is a way around it, swapping sources of anger can drain the intensity of a bountiful ire. In fact calculus is a wonderful proxy on which to focus your anger, when you seek to affect the rate and change in rate of you anger. Calculus will let you scream ghastly obscenities at it, at the very heightened expanse of you lungs. Ne'er will calculus take it personally. It is committed to being just as difficult after a 10-minute, red-faced, drool-inducing, verbal slug fest, as it was before you shouted those perversions of nature at it. Thanks calculus. After all my effort (38 homework assignments, 10 quizzes and 4 exams, in 7 weeks) I expect a C in the course... perhaps a B-. Damn... that won't look good on the transcript.  The last exam was was a bruiser. From the very moment that exam was handed to me, its gnarly eyeballs stared me square in the face, set its equally square jaw, inflated its menacingly saggy jowls and howled mathematical belittlements at me... for two whole hours. It called me the little root to its big square. It said I'd never be a numerator, only a denominator. It even said I was easier than finding the antiderivative of a constant and cheaper than an internet calculator. Believe me, that's just mean. I managed to slightly shame it with a few well placed jabs and even a hook, like knowing the limit as x approaches 0 of sin(x) over x or knowing when L'Hospital's rule was unnecessary. Easy. Solving the indefinite integral of cos(x) + cosh(x) all raised to the power of fear squared... that was more difficult. At the day's end, the points were awarded by the judges as follows: Calculus Final Exam score: The Riemann Sum from 0 to 64 with f(x)=x-cubed :: Britton's score: shame. After 1.5 hours of the test the formulas started to look like the sounds my first calculus teaching assistant made when he spoke.
       You know what Calculus? You're not invited to my birthday party anymore.

Bloody Knuckles...
   I'm a man. Therefore I like to punch things and blow things up. If I could get those two things on a comforter and wallpaper trim I'd decorate my son's room in such manly glory. "May he be a masculine child." I've found that the feeling of busting at the seems is a fantastic opportunity to try something new, or grow a little, or even just brutalize a punching bag. Brutalizing a punching bag is awesome. If I could put that feeling in a bottle and carry it with me I would. Maybe I need a portable Weeble. Like calculus, a punching bag feels no pain nor regret at being verbally assaulted. Unlike calculus, a punching bag will taunt you until you let loose and deliver every ounce of frustration in a fusillade of spastic punches and violent upper-body twitches.
     A punching bag, even the non-canvas types, require taped fingers or gloves. One of the many services a punching bag provides is the liberation of wimpy, sissy skin from your knuckles. Just a few robust minutes at the bag and your dermis is birthed joyously into a loving world by repeated punches against a semi-soft, inanimate opponent. The punching bag I have is the type whose base you fill with water or sand. I filled mine with water. Because of it's relative lightness, my punching bag fears me. The range of problems that can be worked out on a punching bag are broad. Having a case of the Monday's? Taking calculus? Suddenly Single? Having trouble sleeping? Having trouble staying awake? Bored? Have too much to do? Too much stress? Have a punching bag and don't know what to do with it? A punching bag can address or completely resolve each of these problems.
    My knuckles have been on the continuum of bloody to calloused for over a month now. I proudly tape my fingers before each round against my foamy aggressor and smile if I happen to leave some extra skin on the punching bag. I'm a man. I like to punch things and blow things up.

-Andrew

I Moved Again

::Mandatory Preamble::
The events discussed in this moving journal relate to both moving and of tidings unfortunate. If you find yourself in a mood unprepared, or unwilling, to digest a spot of sadness then I recommend you put this down and come back later - at a time more suitable. I believe in laughter and make light, as much as possible, of events that are otherwise. I do this as a choice and not to be obnoxious (however, if you knew me as a 7 year old with a dinosaur jokebook you might easily believe that being obnoxious is second-nature). Finding something positive in things negative is what I try to do. So, this journal is dedicated to the notion: if it's not a comedy, you might still be able to salvage it as a dramady.
Oh, and of course... if you're happier to be without these e-mails then let me know and I can revise the mailing list. Conversely, if you haven't received this e-mail and would like to receive future messages I will be happy to amend the mailing list.

Things to Ponder...
When living Life, one has chance to ponder many things. Some things to ponder are frivolous, which is not to say unimportant: can I still eat tacos after they've been fire cooked; can I fit that whole cookie in my mouth, at once; Is buying a Nintendo Wii an acceptable expenditure after a break-up? Of course some things pondered bring to mind serious health risks or ring eerily of the lesser adventures of Scully and Mulder: what Is in my sink that, when dishes are left in it for a while, manages to Etch glass permanently? Should I be showering in the water that comes from the same source as the mysterious glass-etching sink water? Is it just the sink bacteria from dirty dishes left out longer than publicly acceptable that etches the glass of my dishware? Is that thing I just squished really a spider or is more like a light-armor plated tick crawling up my torso? Then, with any life, come the tasks for which there is no room to ponder and yet I find myself pondering upon anyway: Do I really have to start packing my apartment? Can't I train the boxes to pack and move themselves? Should I turn the gas utility on at my house before or after I move in? Invariably we find the answers to be roughly as we thought: no; yes; yes; no one knows because it seems to only happen to me; I'd rather not know but maybe someone reading this will have a better answer for me; see previous answer; armor-plated tick (I think); yes; no; before, if I want hot showers in my first week of moving. Then there are the questions of purpose and pedigree and other p's of portent: What is best in Life? I believe Conan said it best... To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women as you stuff whole cookies in your mouth. Nom nom nom...

Moving...

The first year of graduate school has ended and only one totally haiku e-mail was sent. Let us give thanks. Oh, first things first. I have moved. My new address is:

(my privacy clause in my blogger contract prohibits the releasing of this data...)

For those counting, this marks legal residence number 17 in as many years. My current nesting fantasies center around staying at one address for 2 years or more. Oh, and whenever I walk through certain sections of Target I can't help but think I need throw pillows for my futon. Throw pillows, really? In the middle of one of the very intense nesting urges I called a friend out in California for a little anti-shopping therapy. I don't need throw pillows. I truly do not. They serve no purpose. And yet I can't help admit that they sure would add a nice accent to the living room. Ugh... If you'r reading this, you may receive random calls from me asking for your assistance to guide me away from the "Home Interiors" section at Target. (my thanks for Mr. Mack's voicemail for being the first to take this hit)
But... back to the new house. The current location is ab-fab (minus the ants longer than my thumbnail and the abundance of spiders and the mowing). It's a two bedroom house with a garage, washer/dryer, central air, roof, driveway, clothesline (in olden days, that harken back to tymes when people visited ye olde shoppe and Dickens was a fast-paced novelist, people used to dry their clothes on long hemp-cords that hung outside of their homes where little sun-particles magically mated with the water particles causing them to leave my clothes), recycling, nicely painted walls, front AND back yards. It's a nice place, very homey. It's no larger than the previous apartment but it is free of domestic abuse neighbors, leathery-skinned old men driving lawnmowers attached to chairs, and the old landlord. Of course, there's the reduction in energy costs promised on this new home that make the move very appealing.

I moved about 3 weeks ago now. Most everything is still in boxes. Calculus (summer school) and my new Nintendo Wii seem to take some prime daily schedule real-estate.

After a Break-Up... If it's not a comedy, you might still be able to salvage it as a dramady.

Life after a break-up is complicated. This complication arises from the immediate lack of complications that are present when dating ends. Now I'm forced to find new ways to occupy my time. Did I mention calculus and the Wii? Putting Life back together after such a dramatic event finds me celebrating the little victories all over again. For instance, just the other day I folded my clothes. What else happens after a break-up?

Let me tell you about the virtues of random crying. First, your friends love it. Imagine a quiet Middle-Eastern bistro set to the peaceful backdrop of redneck central, with 4x4 dualie pick-up trucks growling blackened smoke from their custom dual exhaust pipes pointing up to the great fume absorption sponge in the sky, our ozone. Set in this bistro, where red sauce smells quite sharply of Chef Boyardee and the waitress has never played a game of Memory in her life, your friends will look upon your crying over a break-up as emotionally machismo and daring to brave the socially awkward gaps in conversation with random and scathing comments about engagement rings and commitment. Ne'er will your locally grown friends chide you for this behavior that was once thought to be girlish. This is a new time, and you're a new man breaking gender barriers at speeds greater than the sonic boom of the break-up itself. The woman's movement adores you for bringing a fresh blend of nambypambyism to today's modern male.
Oh, and you find spaces on your bed that you hadn't discovered since the last time you were single. Once again... the bed is the right size.

17m:36s of eau du grammont...
     A conversation with a supportive gramma is an ameliorating experience (thanks to Ms. Kubo  for helping me study those big words). When breaking up, much is in turmoil. Physical habits, day-to-day habits, emotional and even spiritual habits are altered or affected by the presence of someone, and then again through the immediate removal of that person's presence. Reminders of that time are everywhere and can sneak to the deepest feelings in our bodies; mine sneaks to the center of my chest. That feeling finds it way to the center. It takes root, and as alarm-clocks are irritating reminders that it is time to leave bliss, so too are those rooted feelings. Every altered habit triggers that alarm-clock. Every stupid song on the radio. It's so easy to learn sadness in a hyper-romantically-aware culture. There are two cures to these blues: 1) comedy (of the non-romantic nature) and 2) eau du grammont.
     When comedy is the cure, my antidotes are "The Lonely Island," "Lego Batman," and "Flight of the Concords." Be warned now... NO SONG on the Lonely Island album is safe for work (and that's one main reason it is hilarious) or safe for mother's or grandmothers. The second cure, seems to be 17minutes and 36seconds of Gramma.
     Sometimes a Gramma is just thing I need to pick me up when I'm feeling blue. I've tried, for a few days now, to find ways to best describe Gramma. Is it her voice, her grace, her general Southern charm all mixed with a hint of the frenetic and wild-eyed artist? It occurs to me then the best way to describe Gramma, aka. The G-Ster, is through food and charm. Imagine a Rube-Goldberg assembly-line contraption that starts with fresh pea-can pie (it's pronounced 'pecan' everywhere outside of Texas). Those pies roll over about 10 feet of airport baggage claim conveyor belt technology where they fall into a large glass distillery. The pea-can pies are smashed with large auxillary hammers and broken down into the smallest particulate construct of pea-can pie, the lesser pea-can pie measureing approximately pi centimeters across. Now the process requires the distillation of the lesser pea-can pie crumbs to the essence of gramma (or... eau du grammont). Add a Texas flag, one brick from the Alamo, and sugar cookies from the bakery at 2411 N. Zarsamora (in San Antonio). Combine these ingredients with the pea-can pie crumbs and voila. You have, in your hand (though I recommend you put it in a bottle first and the hold it because its a liquid and it'll get all over your hands and then people will wonder why you talk like my gramma and that would be a hard one to explain... trust me) eau du grammont. So, what that fantastically distracting metaphor alludes to is, though I'm sure it was totally obvious already, that I love Gramma. After 17 minutes and 36 seconds of talking to her, she made me feel like a million bucks. If you ever need a self-esteem boost, just call my Gramma (1-800-THATS-MY-GRAMMA). She'll hook you up yo.


It's Time to Put Those Things Aside...
I was going to take this space to write about an interesting, informative and hopefully inspirational conversation I had with a student a few months ago. He was failing my class through what appeared to be a practice of over-extending himself with a plethora of commitments. He was calling it quits on my class before the class itself ended. He hadn't taken the final, nor had the due-dates passed for several important assignments. He carried with him deep grief and regret about not doing more to excel in my class and apologized to me personally for his lackluster behavior. Shame and guilt were his companions and I could see them resting heavy on his brow. It saddened me to see this. Though I try not to be emotional with students, his guilt and his shame have very much been my own throughout much of my Life and so I could relate to his heavy head: guilt, regret and shame over heights not achieved and over hurt-feelings caused along the way. Because his companions are my companions too, I asked him if he might take the time to set aside shame and guilt. I asked this of him because I know that shame and guilt never solve a problem. They have never helped me pass a course and it was very clear they were not helping him. I told him that these feelings will always be there when he wants to visit them and that if he puts them down for a bit (to pass my class) he can puck them up again when the work is done. Nothing will be missing and nothing will be taken from him, not even shame and regret. So as I read the title of this section I think of the engagement ring that sits in a box, on a shelf. And I still don't know when the time will be to put that aside.