after the demise of my sufjan stevens cover band, i ceased to practice the piano and began to experiment with some new musical talents: voice and dance. therefore, i was ecstatic when sean invited me to join his boy band.
here is our first live karaoke performance:
for once i feel legitimately vindicated in my 17 point scale absence. since we last spoke, my world has exploded. by world, i mean my friends, my teams, and myself, and by explode, i mean that the last two weeks have been crazy ridiculous.
my friends
sean says that if i only post once a week, i'd better make each post darn good, but as i watch these words tumble from my mind to blogger's posting page, the rust is palpable. it's been nearly a month since i updated this site regularly, and i fear that the blogging cortex of my brain has been attacked by some unseemly parasite.
in the context of the 17 point scale, i'm not sure what that means. it's not like i have a history of poetic profundity on this blog, but something is dying. i suddenly find myself at a loss for words. yes, this mysterious parasite has cast an odd spell on me. as it steals away the anecdotes and observations that (to me) define this blog, it leaves me feeling oddly happy. during the week i live a bright and sunny psychosis, glad that i don't have to ponder the days events looking for rare insight or colorful metaphors to anchor my midnight musings. i can be lazy again.
and consequently i go blind. i fill my world with baseball scores and second round NFL draft predictions. i rekindle my addiction to istockphoto.com. and i forget how to process the world for web content.
of course, this tug and pull is the way of life: i blog and thus i sleep less; i travel, and my piano fingers wither; i fall in love, get married, and have two dozen kids, and my closest friends fade into the forgettable periphery. gain and loss, x and y chromosomes that follow each other everywhere they go. it's odd, i just can't escape the nostalgia for that loss. i long for the days when my blog rocked (okay, long is a bit overdoing it there), i long for the days when i was great friends with this person and that person. i even long for what might have been.
okay, my sentences are beginning to seesaw--that's a clue that i'm becoming overly sentimental, so i'll close. here's the prayer of today's blog: Lord, hasten the day when the laws of nature implode and leave us lossless in your arms. amen.
andrew david. "17 points of light pass behind a dark cloud" belize.
ps. perhaps my blog is back to normal, because that is totally not what i intended to blog about!
tonight i was sean (i.e., i was an offensive juggernaut). during our pregame soccer warm-ups, rebecca reported that sean was at home on the couch; the flu had transformed him into a miserable blob of snot. and after that chat, i knew that i had to serve honorably as his replacement; i had to let his legacy shine. and how better to remember sean then to score a goal? so i did (my first ever, i should add). and then i had an assist for our second goal of the night. whooohooo! unfortunately, the opposing team mounted a comeback during the second half, and we only managed a 2-2 tie, but there's still an itsy-bitsy chance that a tie will be enough to propel the WE PLAY BETTER ON GRASS into the title game.
gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaalll!
father of the s.o. "look out. here come the crazies." ocean shores, washington.
i'm researching the possibility of founding a co-ed soccer team for the spring or summer season and i've already got some possible candidates. if you, mysterious web surfer, might be interested, leave me a message, and i'd be happy to tell you more. my motivations for this rare burst of leadership are the following:
as many of you know, i spent the last 3 years working as a research coordinator for the COGS, a multi-site study of schizophrenia. then, earlier this summer, a research angel came to relieve me of my COGS protocols, scheduling duties, and crashing database. i was delighted. but although i expected ms. sara goodnow to do a dynamite job in my place, i never expected her to be such a valuable asset to the 17 point scale. indeed, it turns out that sara bowls a 120, heralds from rural new york, and is dating a doctoral engineering student. these attributes make her unequivocally qualified as an informant in my latest blogging pursuit, an autobiographical biography of the other andrew (or something like that).
the felicity of sara was revealed at an off-site lunch on an otherwise gray day. seeking respite from another slice of hospital pizza, sara and i tumbled from sean's honda prelude into a philly cheesesteak dive on airport way. we made our way to the counter and pondered the menu. behind the cash register, a woman fixed me with an icy stare--apparently this wasn't the city of brotherly love. i mumbled an order. she frowned and thrust her open palm toward me. scrambling for my wallet i promptly forgot whether i had ordered the medium or large. "goose-chicken," i thought, "i really would prefer the medium," but she was already taking sean's order. "yikes." if this wasn't philly, then where was the characteristic seattle friendliness?
afraid for my food, i swallowed my curiosity. things were getting grim. in retrospect, i suppose that meant we were ripe for a miracle. after all, we tend to notice the light when it's dark not in the daylight. when our sandwiches arrived, we discussed our evening plans. a momentary burn in my throat tore my attention from the conversation. hmmmmmm, horse radish. after a swig of water, i looked up to hear sara talking of engineers, "i don't know," she drawled, "they're just really quiet...maybe it's a brainy awkwardness...."
as sara's words trailed off, my mind snapped into blog mode. yes, i thought, whether they be english profs, computer geeks, or [fill in a random intellectual stereotype, e.g., engineers], brainiacs seem to lack the natural rhythms of everyday conversation. chatting with smart folks is a bit like my morning commute. you crawl sluggishly forward, hit an open stretch after the aurora bridge, take the harbor island exit into gridlock, and then escape into the steady streets of beacon hill. start, stop, start, stop. such conversations are intriguing yet strained.
and, until recently, i would have lumped the other andrew into this category. after all, i rarely watched him interact with others, and our conversations tended to hover in a state of friendly, well-meaning awkwardness. but in the last months, i've realized that this impression of andrew is more likely an indicator of how i respond to people that i perceive as brainy than a true picture of the other andrew. perhaps it's a bit of what sociologists like to call the self-fulfilling prophecy. i think, "wow, that person is wicked smart," and then begin to waiver in my conversational confidence. i flip the censorship switch and suddenly all of my questions, all of my odd quirky perspectives, all of my conversation kindling are deemed irrelevant; they are turned to an invisible mush. perhaps then my ineptitude makes smart person uncomfortable, and, somehow sensing that i expect them to be incapable of anything but dull nerd-speak, they too stall.
if this sounds crazy, consider the following evidence from our case study: (a) over the last few months i have learned that andrew is surprisingly quite gregarious; he laughs, he quips, he speaks thoughtfully; indeed, he seems perfectly comfortable in conversation; (b) actually, my first point has so convinced me that i don't feel the need to continue with this list.
so "where do we go from here? the words are coming out all weird. where are you now when i need you...?"
andrew david. "laughing at andrew's camera skills and blogging troubles" mount pilchuck, wa.
539 to go.
VIII.
heart of darkness by joseph conrad
8/12/01
"powerful descriptions drive these dark tales into picturesque dead-ins, as i can't manage to grasp the central themes in any meaningful or real way."
one of my favorite schizophrenia researchers is sean meichle. i've heard girls (i.e., kate simpson and kris purganan) refer to sean as metrosexual, but in my book he's a rather typical guy's guy. he's a tennis-shoes and jeans ally in my quest for casual work dress; he's an espn regular and a loyal hawks fan; and he prefers dominoes pizza to that crappy real italian nonsense that they serve you at tuta bella. however, there is one odd thing about sean--he can't handle used books. now this isn't necessarily a feminine trait, but when sean spots an old book he reacts like beth to bugs. the taste, touch, or smell of a used book is enough to make him jump. as a lover of all things cheap (and books), this is tough for me to understand. a used book is a loved book. it's a book with character. and in this sense, i love my books more than most folks. indeed, if you visit my library in greenwood, you will find that i scribble all over my books. even when i'm lost (like the first time i read heart of darkness), i still ink 'em up. anyway, for some strange reason (known as practical crit with chris chaney) back in 2003 i transcribed many of my heart of darkness comments in a Word file. so, thanks to the internet, if you have book ocd like sean, you can now see what it's like to read one of my used books without freaking out. just follow this heart of darkness link.
this weekend everyone's going to be talking about the rain and the da vinci code. i'll save the rain for another day. since i'm still a bit bitter from yesterday's blogging experience, i'm not going to bother with writing; i'm just going to hawk a list of thoughts:
the good
1. the movie raises some intriguing theological issues.
2. it's fun to see mainstream seattlelites watching a film that references the nicene council or other fourth century fragments of christian history.
3. for that matter, the movie makes you think, 'gosh, does that jive with what i learned in christian history with the evil dr. ferreiro?' in other words, it almost makes one seek further learning. almost. despite the da vinci code, my christian history text books are still gathering dust...
4. no sex, (almost) no distracting love story, no swearing, no man-eating alligators
5. there are moments where audrey tatou (aka amelie) is cute--not necessarily physically, just in her french mannerisms.
the bad
1. there's too much crammed into this movie. things move unnaturally fast (it happens all in one day) and seem to lack sophistication or development. the pacing just didn't give me a chance to jump in and experience the action for myself.
2. despite tom hanks' supposed versatility as an actor, i don't think he adds much to this role. he doesn't play it bad, but he doesn't play it particularly good. perhaps this is because the film's dialogue is chiefly composed of one-liners and cheesy filler. we never learn anything about these characters -- what makes them tick? WHO are they? -- except for their tragic pasts. moreover, hanks' historian fellow appears to have confused himself with the freaky girl from the ring two.
3. sean (aka msn) tells me that thousands and thousands of americans take dan brown's fiction for fact. i wonder whether that will be true of the movie. in my opinion, the plot had the requisite number of coincidences and lucky escapes for an ordinary action movie. in other words, there were times that i consciously had to suspend my sense of reality. since i was already skeptical of the theological issues in the film, this typical action movie paradigm may have further wounded my ability to swallow all of the artsy/spiritual clues. but it was an interesting ride.
4. ...except when i got confused. at the moment i'm teeter-tottering between saying that the film was too mysterious and not mysterious enough. what i mean is that i don't think it would make a very good poker player; it showed its cards at some of the wrong times. it's tough to explain what i mean without spoiling the plot, but i think the film fails to clearly differentiate between the two key mysterious groups that shadow hanks and tatou.
5. this will make no sense if you don't know the da vinci code's premise. i might be missing something, but it seems like everyone in the film has a distorted view of the theological consequences of the grail. the movie's vision of the grail would lead to serious philosophical questions, but all of the characters seem to think that the nature of the grail also reflects the nature of Jesus. that is, the movie tries to wrestle with the question, 'is Jesus human or God? does it matter?' and it seems to think that the nature of the grail will answer those questions. i may be missing something, but establishing Jesus's divinity or lack thereof based upon the nature of the grail seems like a major (and fairly obvious) logical flaw. so why are all these characters stressing out? :)
6. i think the film wants to preach a gospel of peace and gender equality. it tries to raise mary magadelen to mother mary heights and to provide some kind of link between women and salvation. something like that. anyway, in this context, i thought that it was funny that the female protagonist hardly solves anything in this movie while hanks--the guy--is again and again the hero of the night.
the ordinary
1. ultimately this film is entertaining. it may even make you think a bit. but, grinch that i am, i felt no need to join our theater as they clapped through the first few credits.
andrew david 'a clue' mismaloya, mexico.
state route 99 is the lesser traveled little cousin of i-5. i don't like to play favorites, so i tend to take i-5 during the morning commute and 99 in the evening. however, i think i'm a rarity in this even-handed use of the washington state byways. some seattlites, like neuropsychological and neurophysiological technician sean meichle, pass their props to 99. others are devoted to the eight lane behemoth that is i-5. perhaps the only consensus regarding these north-south tributaries is that they are both in serious need of work, especially 99. as they pass through downtown, the narrow lanes of 99 ascend a series of ancient stilts and pass through a cavernous tunnel. according to most reports, in an earthquake this section of 99 (known as the viaduct) would be a disaster. tonight, as i was navigating north through a sea of red tailights, there was just such a catastrophe. with an odd rumble, my southern slice of highway suddenly crumbled beneath me. my trusty truck lept from the crashing concrete and barrelled through the air, but its flight was doomed. the puzzled craft and i flew headlong into the waiting supports of a still intact northern segment of highway. in the instant that i dreamed this surprising death, i thought 'God, forgive me...' and then somehow kept driving; thankfully, it was just my imagination (running away with me)*. i'm not really sure what spawned this harrowing imaginative burst, but it was certainly surprising.
after arriving safely at home, i whipped out my laptop, checked scores on espn, and then dropped my head on the pillow for a little nap. a moment later, i felt my nose running a bit, but thought nothing of it. this was nap time, no time to worry about a little snot. i lazily wiped my nose with my hand -- something felt funny. snapping my eyes open i saw a bright crimson pool on my pillow -- a bloody nose! what the heck? can someone tell my why, after twenty years of mild nose abrasions and no blood, i suddenly find myself bleeding all over my bed? what the goose? here's google's attempt (oh, i also have a bit of a headache), which could be a bit frightening...
andrew david 'stuck inn here' the tropicana, puerto vallarta, mexico
day 1, the hallway right outside our hotel room. i can't decide if i like the ant-like duo in the bottom right corner of the window. they're probably too small for web-watchers to render much of an opinion...
* corrected link; i was previously trying to link directly to the online music clip, but apparently you can't do that; it only worked temporarily. now the link takes the surfer to the music clip page, and the surfer has to scroll down (or use ctrl-f) until he or she finds the clip.
nonsense 1 & 2 continued...
beware, late night blogging can turn one into a bit of a hypocrite. take the questions that i posed in nonsense 1 as a bright blue example. objectively, these questions share at least two common characteristics. first, bound by the writer's appropriately apparent allegiance to his thesis, the questions have explicit thematic links; each ponders a metaphysical quandry concerning the nature of self (MEtaphysical). secondly, as questions, each of the three utilizes that curly-que punctuation piece known as the question mark. (well, duh, andrew.) it is this second similarity that should drive me bonkers.
you see, during my senior year at SPU i served as the unofficial campus advocate for the annihilation of question marks. of course, i'm not entirely serious; i never joined a punctuation club or made vituperative speeches at language rallies. but conversely, i was much more vocal about my agenda than merely crouching in some dark dorm room corner repeatededly chanting 'question marks are bad.' indeed, as a writing center tutor, i spread my message using a grass roots approach. in the fertile (and occassionally sullen) minds of my fellow students i explained that question marks should be used sparingly, if ever. 'they cheapen your prose,' i warned, 'discerning readers (such as your teachers) will recognize that you're using a question and answer approach because you lack the creative moxy to develop the thought yourself.'
and i wasn't kidding. yes, good writers use question marks. but at the first sign of that strangely stylized punctuation mark, my spidey senses tingle. it stops me in my tracks. alright, here's a real life example. back in 2001 i visited liverpool, the birthplace of the beatles (what a crazy bunch of mopheads; my itunes random playlist just dished out that lost oldie everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey). as joel and i ambled in the general direction of our hostel, he suddenly darted off-course, set down his pack, and fished out his camera. his sudden enthusiasm seemed odd: the street block was dirty, a bit run-down, and all-in-all rather ordinary. in explanation, he laughed something mildly unintelligble and then started snapping pictures. looking up, i saw the following message posted one letter at a time in the 6th floor windows of a dilpidated warehouse: t-h-i-s--b-u-i-l-d-i-n-g--i-s--a-n--e-y-e-s-o-r-e (for a picture, come visit my scrapbook and i). by replacing the 'building' with 'sentence' you should have a clear sense of my feeling regarding question marks....
sooo...where does that leave us? perhaps we should add hypocrisy to the confidence and verbosity that sean attributed to the internet andrew. but first, i must take a break.
to be continued...
several weeks ago an endophenotyper from the university of washington off-handedly remarked on the rambling nature of my blog. he then explained that my entries tend to exude better diction and more confidence than my everday speech. more recently, a research subject accused me of having a 'big voice.' after several phone conversations, he was quite surprised to see a lanky andrew behind the phone instead of some bulky nfl lineman (apparently yesterday's all-time personal record of 137.5 pounds didn't strike him as particularly large). all this leads me to several thoughts that have been repeated elsewhere ad nauseum, but let me add my voice to the fray: am I really many different MEs? is technology responsible for some sort of multiplicity effect whereby the telephone me, internet me, and talking me fail to match up? and whats more real, my impression of who i am or how others perceive me?
