Hi everybody. Yeah I still exist, if you can call what I’ve been doing existing. That is, slogging through the mires of Seasonal Affective Disorder or some other equally unpleasant form of apathy.

To be fair, I’ve had plenty to write about. I just feel kind of guilty depleting my word reserves when I have English papers that I’m supposed to be writing. It’s like I have a pretty limited amount of motivation and words to write and stuff, and if I waste it on here then perhaps I’ll never do my English assignments. Oddly enough, I haven’t been doing my English assignments anyway, so basically I haven’t been doing anything. So maybe I should rethink all of this.

I’m updating this now in any case because it’s SPRING BREAK WHOOOO and I can do whatever the hell I want for the next week. Take that English class! In your face!

Oh I also wanted to mention an exciting offer I received in my email today. Apparently there are pills that can increase the size of my penis! And they must really believe in their product, too, because I got not 1, not 2, but 25 emails about it. Despite the fact that I’ve been opting out of their lists every day for 6 months. It’s funny how at first, I thought I would never even consider buying the pills, but after several thousand emails I’m thinking maybe I’ll change my mind! What do you guys think?

“Those were some interesting insights. I’m not sure how much this relates, but sometimes I find that I actually avoid taking windows of opportunity out of a fear of blowing that opportunity and letting others and myself down. I can say that it’s not the best way to be, because you look back on situations that could’ve led to a lot of great stuff, and realize that you had no reason not to at least give it a shot. Some people as a policy refuse to ‘regret’ any decision they ever make, but I’ve found that is idealistic. Sometimes, we MUST look back and realize that we should’ve done things differently. Luckily, I don’t have TOO many such situations, but there are some, and I wish that I was one of those people that really took advantage of opportunities when they arose. I think I can become more like that.”

- A comment by Andres on my 11/29/03 entry.

I don’t really remember if this was relevant to my initial entry, but it’s good stuff nonetheless. So thanks Andy!

I really don’t like to generalize about the way people’s minds work, because if I’ve discovered anything over the last several years, it’s that you can’t do it. The only mind I can really generalize about is my own, and even that’s difficult at times. Certainly what applies to me doesn’t necessarily apply to anyone else, such I have gleaned from various misunderstandings and misjudgments over the years.

To me regret seems like a natural enough emotion. Customarily things will happen over the course of a lifetime that you are not proud of, and things won’t happen that perhaps could have steered your life in a new, better direction. To me, the people who choose not to experience regret about their decisions may be the same people who chose to live without a history, who live life day by day, minute by minute and don’t take time to reflect on their past and learn about themselves.

These people are not wrong necessarily in living this way; overall they’re probably a much happier people than I am. It’s just that I tend to live so closely in tune with my own personal history that I can’t really understand how people would live like that. In my life, regret means that I’ve made a mistake, and done something that is inconsistent with the way I’ve chosen to live my own life, and it is by understanding such mistakes that I can try to free myself from the impending curse of repeating them. So perhaps it is a healthy thing after all to look upon certain stages of your past with a degree of regret, so long as it is regret with the intent to rectify, rather than of the hopeless variety.

Anyway, I was just thinking about personal history because I just came across one of my old essays from almost exactly three years ago, on George W.S. Trow’s essay “Within the Context of No Context.” Unfortunately I can’t point you to a version of Trow on the internet because I can’t find one, but it’s an interesting read if you can find a print version at the library or something.

It’s fascinating to see how my focus has shifted in three years’ time. But in the words of Walter Pater, “[T]hose impressions of the individual mind to which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; . . . each of them is limited by time, and . . . as time is infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is.”

Well, here’s my old analysis if anyone’s interested.

On "Within the Context of No Context" by George W.S. Trow
30 January, 2001

I finally got my copy of the essay "Within the Context of No Context" in the mail from Amazon.com yesterday, and upon bringing it in off the stoop and freeing it of its box I proceeded to read the whole essay - all 70-odd pages of it - in one sitting. I did this not because I had to, however; I did it because I found it enthralling, and I am glad to still have a chance to react to it. No man could ever profess to be capable of outlining the course of our country's social history over the last century, in an indisputable fashion, in an essay of 70-odd pages. Nevertheless, in this essay, Trow has accomplished the remarkable feat of establishing his ideas, which chronicle and analyze the part of this social history which makes existence within our modern culture unfavorable for a man like Trow. I think what interested me the most about this is that I felt like I was reading my own thoughts after another ten, perhaps fifteen years of maturity.

It seems that Trow is still rather young in this essay, not to say young in age necessarily, but that however thoroughly he has mapped out his argument, it is not completely thorough. He is still confused. The point of this essay is not to provide answers, but to ask questions, increase awareness, and promote thinking and judgment of our culture by his readers. In the essay, he points out many blemishes of American society, but he does little to explain why it has progressed in this manner, or what we as individuals can do to save ourselves. He sarcastically says that we should simply accept all of societies follies, and seek comfort in them. Perhaps he is actually saying, one can be aware, or one can be comfortable, but not both.

Some of Trow's points really hit home for me, for various reasons. Some, not as much, for other reasons. Rather than repeat them, I'd like to extrapolate on them a bit. Trow seems to think that history is inherently good. I particularly liked his example with magazines, where he says that a magazine and a person that form a mutually beneficial relationship, develop a history. Drawing on this definition of history, we find that there is history to be seen in everything: states, communities, neighborhoods, and even interpersonal relationships. There are histories on every scale. And good things come out of these histories, for instance trust, memory, and love, among others. However, there are certain values that define America, and in turn a good American, including independence, and a certain degree of nomadism. Americans are expected to be self-sufficient, and to change, move, and adapt. However, in essence, to be independent is to be lonely, to prefer no-history to history, and to prefer false forms of intimacy to real intimacy. Independence breeds distrust, greed, selfishness, and envy. I do not mean to imply that independence and change are wrong for every person; I simply contest that if a man like Trow chooses to value his histories, then anyone who tells him he is a fool is a fool themselves.

Indeed I was quite astonished to discover how similar Trow is to myself. We are both from printing families; he the fifth generation of his and I the fifth of mine. His writing style was eerily familiar; one much like one I have experimented with several times in the past, although much more refined of course. His ideas reminded me of my own, although again, more refined. He has clearly lain awake many nights trying to piece his experiences together and make sense of it all. One day I hope my experiences will lead me to some conclusions. In any case, the fact that we are similar led me to be reassured a bit by this piece of writing. "Within the Context of No Context" has told me that perhaps I am not wrong to feel the way I do. Perhaps I was just unfortunate to find myself in a society with different morals and values than I. Perhaps the morals of this society do not satisfy a man like Trow or me. Perhaps the only way for us to attain happiness is to stick to our beliefs; to prefer history over no-history; to prefer intimacy over false intimacy; to prefer context over no-context. And yet, in fighting for these things in a contrary society, we run a very real risk of suffering from the greatest loneliness of all.

The essay "Within the Context of No Context" by George W.S. Trow made a great deal of sense to me. I think it's because it was written by a man only some fifteen years older than myself. A man whose situation bears many similarities to my own, and who has had these extra years to experience and to formulate and develop his ideas about the culture of which he is a part. I read the introduction, "Collapsing Dominant," which was written some fifteen years later. It was written by a different man. A wiser man. A man less desperate, less angry, but worn down by the mounting despair he had experienced his whole life. And I'm afraid the points in those essays did not make as much sense to me. You can bet I will be sure, in fifteen, perhaps twenty more years, to read that introduction and see if it makes a little more sense.

By the way, if I had to disagree with Trow on one point, it would be this: the old Richard Dawson Family Feud, in all its empty factlessness and inanity, was a great show.

It wasn’t too many years ago that we would sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, and before we ate we would go around the table and be forced to say something that we were thankful for before we could eat anything. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, but I hate being put on the spot, especially about things like this where everyone has already said “I’m thankful for the food!” and “I’m thankful for friends and family!” and “I’m thankful for being here with you all today!” I am the sort of person who wants to say something heartfelt and original, but whose mind on these particular occasions goes completely AWOL. So what ends up getting said are things like: “I’m thankful for ….” ::glances around room:: “my Nintendo!!” or “I’m thankful for my talent,” which draw the customary mumbles of “Oh, that’s a good one,” but are obviously causing thoughts of “What a brat,” and “What a pompous asshole,” respectively.

I think the problem that I have with the holiday is not that I’m not thankful for all the subjects of those aforementioned stock answers; nor does it have anything to do with those Native-American massacres that took place after the First Thanksgiving that we all reproduced at some point during kindergarten. Not the massacres, the feast. You know what I mean.

No I think that the fact that we have such a holiday speaks to a societal problem: that it is normal to go about your business and take everything for granted for 364 days out of the year. In America, it’s acceptable to focus on the things that we don’t yet have, to toil away to try and acquire these things, so long as we take 1 day out of the year to remember that we actually have a lot of things already. To me it speaks to the greed that is built into our society.

I’m rather glad that on Thanksgiving Day I don’t feel any more or less thankful than I do on any other day of the year. I think that I don’t take those stock answers for granted most of the time.

The food: I definitely don’t take food for granted. I have it set up so that I run out of food about every week and have to walk to the Supermarket in the cold to get more. I absolutely don’t have it as tough as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but it’s still an inconvenience. But it has given me a certain amount of satisfaction to have to keep myself fed this year. In fact, I devoted a whole blog entry to food just a few weeks ago, if you don’t believe that I think about it.

The family: Perhaps this was one thing that I took for granted when I was younger. But I specifically remember a few times when I was at CU thanking my lucky stars that I had a relatively stable family to support me through tough times. Nowadays, my family is fragmented, but I still have been trying to show an appreciation for where I came from through genealogical research and the like. So I think that I appreciate family more than perhaps I let on at times.

The friends: I’ve always been a person who prefers to have a few close friends rather than copious what I feel are superficial acquaintances. The result is that I don’t have that many people that I would call friends, but I feel that those that I do have I appreciate a whole lot more. I’ve tried to stay in touch with many of you that I know from high school and before despite the forces of life pulling us apart. Anyway, perhaps you’ll understand from this why I’ve done things like set up this weblog and harass you on AIM all the time

And as for this Thanksgiving, mine was nice, even without people to spend it with. I had a nice dinner and watched a bunch of football. So don’t cry for me! Not that you were anyway, but still.

The one thing that I am thankful for at this time of year that I’m not the rest of the year is the fact that it is a holiday and I have time to catch up on my schoolwork! Yay!! So now I have to go back to reading and composing, and hopefully I can get all caught up by Monday.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!! Until next time…

Veteran’s Day is tomorrow, the most solemn of holidays. It is a time of year when I like to give thanks to those who have made our nation great. So many people have given their lives over the years for the greater good. Countless soldiers, who have been marched unwittingly to their untimely demise; untold hundreds of thousand of MILLIONS of people who, at the command of our gracious democratic government, have been shot, blown up, maimed, gassed, tortured, stabbed, wounded, and killed, so as to attain the legendary status of martyrdom, but more to the point, to champion one simple, and yet infinitely wonderful cause: to give me a day off to catch up on all this damn schoolwork in which I’ve fallen hopelessly behind.

God bless you, my fallen brethren.

Man, I’m starting to feel like my writing skills are becoming something to frown at. I got back a history paper today that I got a B on. Usually I don’t get B’s on my papers, but this time the professor gave me one because he thought it was a topic that I could have done more with. It was really hard to write a good paper on the topic he gave us, though, because there were two really contradicting ideas that he wanted us to write the paper about. I couldn’t write a very coherent paper including both of those ideas, so I guess I pretty much just chose one idea to base my paper on. I’ll probably go see the prof during his office hours this week so I can try to figure out exactly what it was he was looking for.

Well, at least good grammar is something I can still pride myself on.

This week I’ve been really digging deep into my family history, partly for a school project, and partly due to my own curiosity. Let me tell you, this is one of the most addicting things I have ever done. It’s right up there with smack. Not that I’ve ever done smack before, but you know what I mean.

I think my curiosity has been fueled in part by the fact that every time I’ve asked my folks what nationality I am, they’ve answered, “mutt.” Which isn’t terribly informative.

I haven’t researched all of my family yet, so I don’t have a final tally for my heritage, but so far it breaks down like this:

Exactly 1/4 Norwegian
~ 1/4 (maybe more) Irish
~ 1/8 German
~ 1/8 (possibly more) English
and the rest consists of:
1. Dutch
2. French
3. Scottish
4. 1 dude was from Belgium
5. As yet undiscovered

So all this research has led me to conclude that the best way to describe myself is “European mutt.” Which is more informative than before, so I’m happy.

The reason my family is so diverse is that, interestingly, I have found that most of the lines I’ve traced back so far lead back about 12 generations to people who immigrated here in the early 1600’s, which is about as long as a family of European descent could have lived here in America. And I’ve found people in there that served on the initial continental congresses, and that wrote and signed various state constitutions, and founded colonies and served as governors, and have been veterans in every major American war. Pretty amazing to think about. And just doing some numbers crunching, if you follow back every single line of ancestors back 12 generations, allowing for inbreeding (which there is a fair amount, unfortunately), there’s still a couple thousand people just in the top row of that family tree. When you consider in those days that the average couple had about 13 children (ok I’m exaggerating… but seriously, 8 children) then you can’t help but look at it with awe and astonishment and think, “Damn, that’s a lot of sex!”

But honestly, it does give you a much different sense of scale, and it makes you stop and consider how in a hundred years you’ll probably just end up a name and date on somebody’s chart. Or even worse, maybe even just one of those tree branches that no body cares about because it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Anyhoo, I’m sure my research will continue now that I’m hooked, and perhaps I’ll come back with updates as it gets farther along. Toodles!

In my World Civs class we had to choose a country that we’re following throughout the semester, learning about its history and current affairs and such. I chose Norway, because I’ve been feeling a little guilty that my Granny is of 100% Norwegian descent, and all I know about that part of my heritage is what I learned on that stupid ride at Disney World. We all know what a touchtone of cultural and historical accuracy Disney has been..

Now that I finally have internet in my apartment (YAY), it’s become much easier to follow the news. I found an English-language Norwegian newspaper online, and my first little read through it yielded some interesting tidbits of information.

On article I found particularly interesting was this one. I can’t help by be a little bit bothered by the fact that we Americans think we can just impose our will on other countries and expect them to cooperate. In this particular case, the motives and methods of our current administration are definitely questionable, and I’m inclined not to agree with them. I’m sure they have their reasons for doing what they are doing, but real reasons are just a subset of those things which are not divulged to the public. It’s pretty staggering once you suddenly realize how little you know about the inner workings of your own government, and how much is hidden from the average person.

In conclusion, ugh, I can’t stand politics. Which is kind of a shame, because they are so deeply entrenched in our society that we all are going to have to learn how to play that game in some capacity at some point in order to sustain ourselves.

A couple of other articles from the same paper revealed the following juicy morsels: Norway is both the least religious and the fattest country in Europe. I’m so proud *sniff*