whitney and pedro are married!
here are the photos i took while in stockton for their wedding: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200908WhitPedroWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfS4OCIpuDgGw&feat=directlink.
election time is coming soon and only one thing is certain, i intend to vote NO on i-91 (more on that later). otherwise, i'm characteristically indecisive. i watched a podcast of the cantwell-mcgavick debate and learned a few things: cantwell is a brownnoser, mcgavick wants to build a wall between mexico and california, and there is no clear choice for senate this year. it's too bad mike the mover didn't win the democratic primary.
i assume that i'm not the only undecided voter out there--what if you fence-walkers could get a little voting practice before the election? (that'd be great, you say.) well, here's your chance. i'll play secretary of state sam reed, you don your voter's gown (i couldn't think of anything that's particularly related to voting, but i'm sure that if you are at all patriotic, you must have a voting gown), and we'll get ready to shape some 17 point scale policy.
you've probably noticed that i don't shy away from writing about my friends and acquaintances. i don't gossip (do i?), but i occasionally say some strange things. moreover, i tend to use full names. after chatting with some of my readers, i'm starting to get the impression that not everyone is as gung-ho about last names as i am. for instance, my roommate asked that i not include his full name on the blog. mark explained that he would really prefer to have no information in the public sphere, especially in a permanent, easily-navigable space like the internet. my compromise at the time was "mark t-mandl" (see the well-placed hyphen). perhaps there are other marks out there.
here's my defense for continuing the current policy (or lack thereof):
1. it's my blog, i should feel free to do whatever i want (yikes!).
2. i'm not sure that the 17 point scale fits into any particular genre, but if it were caged into one category, it might be the memoir, close cousin to the autobiography, and therefore, in a rather loose sense, this is journalism; it is a swirling matter of facts, names, and dates that somehow form a broad narrative of, to nearly quote my officemate james o'connell, "the entity that we call" andrew david, and to strip me of my friends is somehow dishonest as a writer and a person (okay, i got a little carried away with that sentence, sorry).
3. although i may share odd things about my friends, i don't write negatively about them.
4. to this end i occasionally consult beth or other friends on posts where the personal content might be in anyway objectionable
5. my audience is primarily composed of people that know me and therefore tend to know one another; thus, the posts are more meaningful to my readers if they can say "boris! i remember boris, he was that chunky fellow who hung out with andrew at the taco time...."
6. likewise, even if readers are unfamiliar with my circle of friends, if they are 17 point scale fanatics, they could begin to get a sense of the frequent 17 point scale guests, and thereby have a more nuanced connection with the blog.
7. what's the use of having labels for every entry if you can't put people's names there?
8. and, most selfishly, i LOVE that if you happen to google kris purganan, MY blog is the first hit. I can't really explain how cool this is to me. it just sucks that "andrew david" still doesn't return a hit in the first 500 entries.
so what do you think? you can vote with a show of hands, but it'd probably be easiest if you leave me a comment. should i maintain my current protocol and do nothing? should i use first names only? should i use no names at all? should i ask people before using their full/partial name in my blog? should i email everyone who has previously appeared in the 17 point scale and ask them if they want their name removed? also, if you would like to email me privately about the modification of your name, feel free to do so...
andrew david. "an odd method of voting" mt pilchuck, wa.
381 to go.
andrew david. "matt basinger's favorite painting" moma, nyc.
skilled practitioners of the written word tend to use images that lack a prescripted meaning and thereby enrichen a text with unexpected layers of complexity. we call this ambiguity (or 'what-the-crap-does-this-meanness'). but in the wrong hands, ambiguity can be dangerous. if unintended, it can confuse, mislead, or frustrate readers. this is particularly true in everyday conversation, where we spend about a 1/5 of our lives trying to make sense of something that somebody else said. and sometimes we get it right.
there is christmas music wafting up through the air ducts. that's right, i live with a guy who listens to christmas music on october 1st. what the goose???
well, i too have my strange musical habits. perhaps the most extraordinary of these unusual tendencies is my analytical assualt on alex layton's mp3 collection. in the summer of 2005, alex allowed me to copy his exhaustive music library onto my new laptop. with the addition of this generous earful, the total number of songs on my computer was 4186.
if i were to rank my friends (and perhaps my acquaintances too) in terms of their musical acuity, alex would be somewhere in the top ten. however, we humans are fallible (and sentimental), and everyone likes to listen to a little crap now and then. thus, despite the impressiveness of alex's musical taste, many of his songs don't strike me as worth the 5mb it takes to keep them alive.
soooo...in order to purge my system of musical malcontens, i elected to rank EVERY single song using the itunes five-star ratings system. while this is a daunting project, the quirkiest piece is yet to come.
in the download-happy world of the single, the prevailing musical mood seems a bit against the concept of an album. still, i continue to embrace the idea that songs are significantly connected in a web of meaning. perhaps i give too much credit to the music industry, but there's something tragic in the disassociation of the chapter from the book. therefore, i will not delete the musical atrocities until i have determined that the entire album is bad.
now, one more word about my methodology: while i support the concept of the album as an important, undivided entity, i have been listening to my unrated playlist in--gasp--random order. at first i rated albums song-by-song, but i soon found that by the last third of an album i was influenced as much by the previous tracks as the song itself. because i was afraid that this manner of rating might make me miss some gems, i adopted the unbiased method of listening to tracks in random order.
wow, it took a lot longer to explain that than i thought...
beth the s.o.. "andrew summiting the highest mountain in the world" cypress island, wa.
by the way, that's the andrew that spends his time ranking music not the andrew that spends his time thinking
my roommate has this unusual theory about air conditioning. instead of pointing our electric fan in the direction of our rooms, he aims its whiring blades at the bathroom--that is, he sends the cold air in the completely opposite direction of our rooms. he claims that this creates some kind of vaccuum, fifth dimension, or high pressure system whereby our home will become magically cooler. mark's dad has a phd, so i tend to believe him about stuff life this. still, when i arrive home at night, i like to hang out on the porcelain throne--for some odd reason, the toilet is the coolest spot in the house....once i'm refreshed, i mosy into my bedroom and prop open the window.
this summer ritual isn't so bad except for nights like tonight when the window comes crashing down on your hand. then, as you nurse your throbbing fingers, you start to wonder about hot days in the artic. you curl up on the couch and sulk, cursing the heat, the fan, and that stupid window. or you might praise God that your name doesn't end in skeith.
that is, today i dialed up my long-time buddy jonathan skeith and learned to be thankful for aching fingers (at first my mood was celebratory: jonathan passed the cpa exam. that means he can begin reintegrating himself into regular life. but then i heard the news: his wife's grandmother died last week. jon and kim spent the weekend at the funeral in idaho. and the other news: last night jon's baby daughter, naomi, had a bad, bad fever. when it reached one of those bad numbers in the low one-hundreds, the family spent the night at the ER. thankfully, the doctors said that it was probably a one-time viral thing. and then): jonathan's brother jacob lost three this last weekend. as he was trying to fish his wife's diamond ring out of a lawn mower bag, the machine got greedy. it sucked his hands from the bag into the spinning blade. in a split second the fingers on his left hand were cut in half. agggggh. painful. unlike the film kiss, kiss, bang, bang (another finger story from this week), jacob's finger tips couldn't be recovered. he'll be stuck with stubs and odd phantom feelings of whole fingers. so, if you pray for random people that you read about on the internet, pray for jacob (or jonathan, or kim, or naomi...), and if a bad day's got you down, be glad for those happy ten.
no pictures today. i'm trying to decide how to handle my pictures of people. they're not great pictures, but they are fun memories. i need to decide what i'm hoping to gain by posting photographs. what's my purpose...?
don't worry, sean, i can occasionally post blog entries from my quiet study corner!
I.
at last count john perkins, the civil rights superhero of 17 point scale fame, had accrued seven honorary doctorates. i'm sure he's a great guy (no, really; i'm quite positive about this. you can check out his bio if you don't believe me. let me warn you though, it's a bio; bios are boring), but (even with his great-guyness in mind) is that really fair? perhaps i'm misguided, but i've always been under the impression that a doctorate connotes a rigorous, somewhat-structured, academic accomplishment. i guess not.
well then, let's spread the love around. hmmm...where to start? let's see, another great guy, my loving roommate mark, has attended almost 7 universities with nothing but a loan to his name. i lack the proper accreditation to offer him any kind of degree, but i've got something even better up my sleeve.
in the winter of 2005-06, mark gave me a christmas gift that unwittingly propelled him into the good graces and high esteem of the 17 point scale: a black shirt with the phrase 'nobody reads my blog' printed boldy across the chest. at the time it was kind of silly (and true), but in recent weeks it has proved an ideal advertising gimmick. for example, i wore the christmas tee to saturday's bingo party and happily found my blog to be the subject of several scintillating conversations. in these contexts, people tend to ask, 'what do you blog about?' it really is a puzzling question; i careen from topic to topic without much consistency. today, for instance, my blog attempts to leveling balance of fame. indeed, because the 17 point scale owes mark a great debt for the free publicity associated with his gift, the 17 point scale is pleased to confer the title of honorary 17 point scale marketing director upon his business savvy shoulders. (take that, great-guy john perkins and all your honorary cronies!)
and now, what about that question? what do i blog about? thankfully, snapshirts.com puts an end to any pointless pondering. their site compiled the overall 17 point scale word usage into a simple word graphic (look left). in case you are unfamiliar with this technology, larger words represent more common 17 point scale words while the tiny words are less used.
