Totally Random Update with Jazz, Cookies and a Dream About the Pope!

Its almost morning and I'm waiting for butter to thaw. The butter is for the chocolate chip cookies I'm making. I got the idea from my friend's food blog (Foodsnob in LA), where she talks about making cookies using a recipe from the NY Times. I'm using the recipe plus her suggestions. But I'm not baking them yet, just making the dough. Apparently the key to great cookies is letting the dough sit in your fridge for at least a day to let the stuff all come together in a delicious way...or something like that. I'll be baking these tomorrow before I go in to work, so I can share them with work folk. Yay for sharing cookies!

While doing this, I'm listening to Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album. Its kinda crazy. I'm told by Wikipedia and my jazz-loving barista from work that its supposed to be one of his craziest albums, plus it has John McLaughlin on guitar, who I've been getting into. So far, its pretty good, you know, if you're into 27-minute long semi-improvisational jazz songs that feature three drummers, a percussionist, 2 bassists (one electric, one not), 2 electric pianists, an electric guitar and a trumpet. Wild.

That reminds me...I had a dream last night that took place in the Vatican.

I'm not sure how I got there, or why I was there. All I remember is that I attended services in St. Peter's Basilica, which I'm not even sure they do, but whatever. Plus, I'm not Catholic, so I don't really know why I was attending services anyway. The dream started just after services were over and I was getting up to leave. On my way out, I noticed a sketchy looking fellow dressed like a monk, which isn't too out of place, but he did look particularly sinister, you know, for a monk. He was headed for the back of the church, where there is presumably some sort of secret entrance into the non-public parts of the Basilica for clergy only, where they keep all the really cool things they don't let you see on the tour, like dead people's mummified body parts in little shrines...oh no, those are on the tour. Well, I'm sure they have some neat stuff behind closed doors, but its too early in the morning to come up with something really crazy for you.

At this point the dream wanders away from me and it cuts to the Pope in his Personal Jacuzzi...yeah, I said the Pope's Personal Jacuzzi, now don't interrupt me again. Anyway, the Pope, and I know it was the Pope because he had the hat on, even though he was in the Holy Hot Tub, which, I think, is located in the grotto, maybe? Plus, it was a dream, and you always know these important facts like who the Pope is in a dream. So the Pope was relaxing from a long day of doing Popely things in the Papal Spa in the Vatican grotto, when someone sneaks in, slips into the water and tries to stab him! Now here's where it gets kinda weird (?!), before this papicidal maniac has a chance to kill him, some crazy Quasimodo/Gollum looking guy, decked out in ornate vestments (though not Swiss Guard wear, which is unfortunate), jumps out and stabs that guy in the back to save the Pope.

Holy Crap!

The dream immediately cuts back to me, about to leave St. Peter's Square, when Tragedy of Tragedies, I realize I've lost my iPhone! So I have to go back into the Basilica and ask the nice lady in the lobby if I can go back and find it. I explain to her the importance of my iPhone, how I can't be without it for more than a few minutes without suffering withdrawals from not having immediate access to Wikipedia or being able to identify songs being played in the background within 20 seconds or compulsively checking facebook to see which friends have succumbed and posted their "25 Things You Neither Wanted nor Needed to Know About Me" things. She's a nice old lady and says yes, of course I can go back into the Greatest of All Churches of Christendom to search for my lost cell phone and sends some nice Swiss Guardsman to take me in and find it, which was awfully nice of her. Thank God, I manage to find it. Crisis averted. The end. I wake up and go to work.

Sometimes I like to analyze my dreams and derive some sort of life lesson from them, but I don't know if that's possible with this one. I'm not sure I want to know what it says about me that my brain would somehow equate the Pope getting killed and me losing my iPhone as equivelant tragedies. Maybe I don't actually have a lack of religion, I just choose to worship at the Shrine of Technology rather than ascribe to a church's doctrines. Perhaps I am actually a member of the Cult of Steve Jobs and instead of relying on the Holy Bible for inspiration and guidance, I hold my iPhone dear to my heart. Perhaps there is some truth in that, or more likely, it was just a crazy dream with Gollum saving the Pope from getting killed while relaxing in the Whirlpool of the Holy See (yeah, I had one more name for it that I wanted to use).

That's all. Thanks for reading!

-Andrew

Writer's Quandary

Existential ramblings to follow...

I write about a character who is a writer, who writes as if he were a plumber who wants to be a rock star. Or maybe I am a writer who writes as if he were a plumber who wants to be a rock star. Its possible that I'm even a plumber who wants to be a rock star, but I can never tell. Sometimes when I write about the writer I become the plumber, and when I become the plumber I am a rock star, loved by the thousands of screaming fans in the Staples Center, but I am still the plumber, frustrated that I will never be there, but I am still the writer, only pretending to know what it is like to feel that angst, empty of my own emotions, but I am still the first writer, writing about the emptiness that comes with pretending to have emotion. Do I truly know these feelings of which I write, or write about writing, since they aren't my own feelings? Or since I write about them and pretend to feel them does that make them my own feelings? Is it better to go through life as the plumber, or as the rock star, or as the writer, or by writing about all of them do I live their lives? Do I become them? Do I fulfill my life as them, or in the end am I just a guy sitting in a Starbucks alone asking these questions as if they mattered at all, having never written any of it at all?

First Kisses

They're life's most incredible moments. The first kiss of a relationship. Of course you know its going to happen before it does-you've probably been thinking about it for a while: that night, for the past week or even longer! You never know exactly how its going to go down, but you know that its going to happen. And you've wondered about it, you've tried to imagine what it will be like: what kind of kisser she'll be, if its going to be soft and gentle or passionate and forceful. But nothing can prepare you for that moment, that incredible moment when your eyes meet at the end of the night, and you both know, with every certainty, that its about to happen. All of the doubt or wondering about how the night is going or what she thinks of you vanishes when you lock eyes. And the electricity between you, the intense energy built up, is magnetic and it draws you, without any conscious effort of your own, toward each other. And the subconscious connection that allows you to turn your heads at just the right angle and lean in with just the right speed so that when your lips finally meet, all you have to think about is the soft pressure of her lips against yours and the rhythms of her breathing and of your beating heart.

Of course, you don't actually think about any of this when its happening. That's the beauty of the moment: you don't think about anything for those 2 or 3 or 4 seconds. Its just the two of you, connected physically, intimately. When its all over there is that brief silence, when all you can do is smile, and then you lick your lips, to moisten them after the kiss, and you're surprised to taste something completely new. It could be fruity, or sweet, or salty or some combination of those. It could be from the gum she's chewing, her lip gloss, that last drink at the bar, but regardless, it is the taste of that girl at that moment, and you will never taste it again after that night. You take a second, close your eyes and savor the new flavor, wishing you could save some of it for another day, another night. Then you open your eyes, see her standing there, and you realize the only choice you have is to enjoy it while you can. That's when you look into her eyes again, close yours and lean in for the next kiss, and do it all again.

Teamwork, Communication and Rotten Meat

Tonight my roommate and I, who have both taught, individually and together, numerous classes on teamwork and communication, learned a valuable lesson in both of those topics.

Monday night, Clif called asking me to pull out some chicken breast and hamburger meat to defrost so he could make dinner later that night. Being a good roommate, I put the chicken breast in the sink with some warm water and the hamburger patties in the microwave on a plate. Unfortunately, I didn't tell him where exactly I had put the hamburger. So when he didn't see it out with the chicken, he assumed I had forgotten to pull it and got some from the freezer. When I got home he was cooking up hamburger meat so, naturally, I assumed that he had found it.

The next night, we starting smelling a progressively terrible odor in the kitchen (and lately even in the living room). We thought it must have been the garbage disposal, since we didn't have perishable foods in any of the cabinets. Running the garbage disposal with soap didn't seem to help and the candles we lit only masked the odor. I finally became determined on Wednesday night to find the problem. I smelled my way around the kitchen, ruling out all of the cabinets, the sink, the refrigerator and even the stove, before I came to the microwave. When I opened it, what did I find but my conscientiously placed hamburger patties, which had by now thawed out...and begun molding quite extensively. The smell was truly putrid. When I managed to peel the rotting patties off the plate into the trash, the appearance and smell almost made throw up.

So what went wrong here and led to this most disgusting conclusion? It was a complete breakdown of apartment communication. We both made assumptions about the others' actions and because he never called me out on forgetting to grab the meat and I neither communicated to him my actions nor followed up with him, we both had different ideas of where the meat was, that is, neither of us thought it was in the microwave. Therefore, we didn't even think to check there when we started to smell something rotten.

The only good that came from this whole ordeal is a good real world example of the very rotten consequences when teams don't communicate properly. I'm sure we'll remember this story when we next teach one of those classes.

Complexity

I believe in the joys of complexity. Everything is better when it is complex: food, beer, coffee, movies, books, people. What defines complexity? The presence of nuances and intricacies that we can discover, discuss and appreciate, therefore increasing our overall appreciation for it.

The most obvious and prevalent examples of complexity are in art and entertainment. Everybody has talked about the intricacies of a really good movie after seeing it, on the way home or a few days later, and found more to it than on first blush. When we discuss complex movies, it is to gain a better understanding of what we've just experienced through the difference in interpretations or perspectives of those with whom we've seen it. When we talk about a simple movie, its merely to relive a funny or exciting moment we all remember exactly the same. Discussing complexity is intellectually fulfilling, while rehashing simplicity merely recalls a base, surface reaction, such as laughter or intensity.

Discussion is also the reason why complexity is best when it is a shared experience. This is why such things as wine and beer (and even coffee and tea) tastings exist at all. They afford us the opportunity to discuss the various flavors, aromas and sensations unique to a particular blend or vintage or brew. Through sharing our thoughts, impressions and reactions, we gain an appreciation that we couldn't have achieved on our own.

Complexity becomes especially apparent, and important, with repeated experiences. We read good books again and again to find elements and draw connections we had never before considered. On the other hand, we reread simple books to relive the same experience we had the first time. We gain nothing from the second encounter and therefore add nothing more to our own lives by the repetition.

These same rules apply to people. Meeting and getting to know a thoughtful, complex person can be the most rewarding experience of all. When somebody tells a new story or gives an opinion that surprises us and disrupts an assumption we'd made about them, it expands our view of them. When this happens regularly, we discover a deep, three-dimensional human being who, by interacting with, helps to make our own lives more interesting and complex.

Do yourself a favor, the next time you are deciding how to spend your free night, drive past the McDonald's, throw out the generic sci-fi paperback and skip the Budweiser. Go to your local art-house theater with an interesting, thoughtful friend (many liberal arts majors qualify), see the new independent movie (Gone Baby Gone was good) and come back and talk about it over a damn good beer (Stone Brewing's 2007 Vertical Epic qualifies). I guarantee it will stretch your boundaries and make you a better, more well-rounded person, and you'll even enjoy it.

Skywriter

Note: I wrote this back in February and just found it again. It appears I may have been a bit angry back in the winter.

I saw a skywriter the other day on my way to class (contrary to popular belief, I do attend class with some frequency). It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. It was so boring and drawn out and anti-climatic.

When I first saw him he was about half way through with a W and the entire 10 minute trip down Bruin Walk he managed to draw about 5 more lines. At first I was excited, as after the W he drew two vertical lines next to each other. "Wii!" I thought, "he's advertising the Wii! That's so cool!" Then he did a horizontal line across the two i's and made it an H. "Wh"? What is that? What could he be writing? "Why," "where," "when"? Then he starts another vertical, so its gotta be one of the last two. By the time he finishes that 'E' the 'W' is going to be all blown away and people are gonna be like "'he'? He who??" And then the "N" and they say "wait, 'hen'? What's with a hen? Who the fuck cares about a hen??"...Its gonna be bad. I mean, just terrible.

Even if he does manage to write that entire word "when," What do you do with that? That doesn't sell a product or convey any sort of message. Its just vague and meaningless; I don't even think it counts as provocative or mysterious. Its just a waste of time and effort, mostly mine. So, thanks a lot Mr. Skywriter, thanks for a completely unfulfilling experience...douchebag.

Greetings from Italy!

This has been a wild week so far. I've been here for 5 days or something and this is the first chance I've had to sit and write something. Its also the first place I've had internet at the hotel. We're in Florence right now, just got in last night from Siena. We're at a cute little Bed & Breakfast in the heart of the city. There is an amazing view: there's actually a beautiful old church across the street, right outside our window. Incredible.

Siena was awesome. I completely fell in love with that city. Its so cute and nice and...medieval. It was built a long long time ago by the Etruscans so its very different from the Roman cities of Florence and Rome. It used to be huge (over 200,000 people) a long time ago, but when the black plague came through it wiped out over 90% of the population and it hasn't really started building back up since the Marshall Plan gave it lots of money after WWII.

Wow, I just had to stop writing for a second because the church bells across the street started ringing...awesome! I shot a little video of it on Mad's camera, hopefully it comes out.

Anyway, so Siena is this awesome Tuscan city that's just oozing with character and history. You'll have to see the pictures to get a better idea. I wandered around there for hours upon hours while Madeline was in class and I had a great time.

Before that, we spent a day in Rome, since I flew in Saturday night. It was cool, but incredibly warm (80 degrees, at least). I was worried because I had brought lots of cold weather clothing and it was so hot! We saw some of the staple things, including the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and St. Peter's Square (we were a little late and walked up at the end of the Pope's address to the masses, he did tell us to have a good week though, which is close to a blessing, right?

Before that I spent some time in London's Heathrow Airport, which was, well, ugly. We did circle around the city for 20 minutes or so before landing and that was awesome. I think London is next on my list.

I'm downloading pictures from the camera right now and we've taken close to 250 so far. I'll weed through those and post some good ones.

Well, breakfast is calling, gotta go!

Tasertastic!

If you're following this whole UCPD Taser incident, there've been a few updates. The Daily Bruin now has video of the event (warning: the file is over 50 megs, I highly recommend downloading it first). Also, the UCPD released a statement, which can be found in PDF on their web site.

Aside from the disturbing audio and video imagery in the various videos of this encounter, I find the UCPD's response almost as bad. I pulled a few quotes from the report to show you the "logic" employed by the department...

"As the officers attempted to escort him out, he went limp and continued to refuse to cooperate with officers or leave the building."
...
" The officers deemed it necessary to use the Taser in a 'drive stun' capacity." (that's where they jab you with it and zap you, instead of shooting you from afar)
...
"A Taser is used to incapacitate subjects who are resistant by discharging an electronic current into the subject"

Also, from another article on the DB website, "according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes."

So, they deemed it was necessary to incapacitate a person who went limp? I guess immobilization is a proper response for not moving? I'm baffled.

The best part (or worst), is when a kid at then end demands the badge number from the tasering cop, who points and says "if you don't get back over there you're gonna get tased too." That second article points out that a cop threatening somebody who asks for their identification is criminal assault. Way to go UCPD.

I guess we'll see where this all goes from here. I'll keep y'all posted.

Fun with Tasers!

As you may have heard, a student was tasered a couple of times by UCPD officers in the CLICC Lab in Powell Library around 11:30 last night.

If you haven't read the article, the Daily Bruin broke the story sometime this morning. Pretty crazy stuff.

Now, this is the sort of thing we Angelinos have come to expect from the LAPD. I've heard LAPD officers defend themselves saying that going into dangerous neighborhoods late at night can really put you on edge and make you less tolerant of threatening behavior. I never thought about it, but maybe UCPD has to deal with the same thing. Granted, we don't really have "dangerous areas" on campus, but maybe all of those late night studiers at the CLICC Lab, overcome with stress from midterms and upcoming term papers looked a little on edge that night, and maybe Mr. Tabatabainejad's requests to be let go while he was walking out the door were more aggressive than the DB article made it sound. Regardless, I'm pretty sure that "excessive force" would be an accurate term in this case. As a friend of mine commented this morning, I'm guessing there are going to be a few openings at UCPD after today.

Coincidentally, at the UCPD's first annual recognition event last week, an officer was awarded the aptly titled "Meritorious Service/Taser Award." Maybe the officer involved last night was hoping to get it next year.

Oooh, I just found that NBC4 has a video from that night taken with a digital camera. You don't see too much, but the audio is pretty disturbing. You can check it out here. And whoever out there has that video, YouTube is awaiting your submission.