Salutary Neglect (Or "To a Spider")

Today I saw that my tomato plant in the front yard, a variety called "Golden Pear" (the photo of the fruit at left should corroborate the appropriateness of its name) is actually doing very well, despite months of (apparently salutary) neglect. Ditto for the eggplant (called "White Crescent," photo below at right.) Though fully cognizant of historical precedent, I have decided to bring this period of salutary neglect to a close, albeit without the introduction of a Stamp or Sugar Act; hopefully this increase in attentiveness will not be met with open rebellion or revolution from the garden.

Although the plants have flourished in terms of fruit production under the regime of neglect, close inspection of the eggplant leaves revealed that it has been beset by pests (from the looks of things, flea beetles). At first glance, the tomato plant seemed pest-free, but its prodigious growth has lent it a jungle-like appearance that masks insect damage, and makes assessment of its true health a little difficult.

In fact, closer examination of the Golden Pear revealed that it has been besieged by a host of locusts, dozens and dozens of small- to medium- sized grasshoppers who are destroying fruit and foliage alike. O_o

Needless to say, I went on a grasshopper killing rampage: with one hand I grasped a plastic jar, into which I deposited the little fiends one by one after snatching them with my free hand. I will allow them to bake in the sun as they lament their iniquity. On a clear, sunny day such as today, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to render them lifeless.

In my jubilee of insecticide, I noticed a large brown spider who had made her web between the needles of the Japanese pine that decorates our front landscaping. I considered what a waste it is kill all these grasshoppers when the spider's belly would make a perfectly good repository for them. From the tomato plant I plucked one smallish insect (anything too large might escape the web, kick the spider, or sport a thick exoskeleton that would prove inpenetrable to the spider's fangs). This felicity of this arrangment pleased me so much that I decided to make my feeding the spider a morning ritual, and to compose the following little poem:

To a Spider

O spider, spider, you alone
Doth sit upon your silken throne.
While feckless others hop or crawl,
You nimbly spin your doily-wall.

With luck, you'll labor not in vain:
Regaling insects for your pain.
Your dinner knife to them's the Sword:
When they taste death, you taste reward!

But still you've got no guarantee
Of dinner, for some escapee
Just might abscond and thwart your plan—
There go the schemes of mouse and man!

And so your work for naught won't be,
I'll bring you dinner—it's on me!
So from my yard I'll pluck a pest,
And drop him in your silken nest.

Now greet your guest, this pesky bug:
Embrace him in your eight-armed-hug.
Though he's unhappy, we three have glee:
The garden plants, and you, and me!

The One Year Anniversary

While my real birthday (and the birthday of my teeming brain, the organ, not the website) was a little more than a week ago (happy birthday!), today marks the one year anniversary of my teeming brain, the website, not the organ.

Happy anniversary!

To celebrate this special day, I have selected my 10 favorite entries from this first year as the only sort of present I thought I could offer online to my readers. (The original plan was to rank them, but when that proved a little too difficult, I resolved simply on listing them in chronological order instead.) For new readers who may not be familiar with the older entries, this should provide an easy way for you to enjoy the choice fruits without having to sample every apple in the basket. For those who've already read all the entries, you can enjoy them all over again; there's nothing like a good re-run. ^_^ Happy reading!

It droppeth as the gentle rain...
Let them have dominion
Birthday/deathday
White Christmas (pt II)
State of the Union, cont'd
Icy Stabs
Student Profile #5
Let them Eat Cake
Taking Sexy Back
Inheritance

And what awards ceremony would be complete without some runners up (the ones that were closest to being selected as "top 10" are at the top of this list):
Waffles vs Thermals (surface issue & real issue)
Eavesdropping
Defying Expectations
Daffodils
On My Stubs

Thanks to everyone who has left comments. Compliments are always well-received, constructive criticism is welcomed about half as often. :) Please continue to be patient as I try to catch up on my entries.

Genius and Dummy, Part III

…As the days and weeks passed, the confidence Steve placed in Alvin continued to deepen, until the intimacy between the two rival even that between the professor and his wife. It was then that Alvin knew he could elicit virtually any information out from his supposed confidant without raising suspicion.

“So, your electronic voice synthesizer, did you just come across it in the Sharper Image catalogue one day?” Alvin asked, broaching the subject as jocularly as possible, hoping the light-hearted humor would distract Steve from his true intentions.

“Elaine’s ex…David…designed it specifically…for me.” Elaine, of course, was the professor’s second wife.

“Promising,” thought Alvin with sinister, conniving glee, in the belief that his enemy’s enemy is his friend. “I couldn’t have designed a more felicitous arrangement.”

* * * * * * * * *

“Of course I was furious when she remarried!” began David as the preface to a lengthy and dramatic tirade, most of which can be omitted here for the sake of brevity. The central message of his diatribe was that he felt particular betrayal at his wife’s choice of a new mate in Hawking, who was not only David’s associate, but a quadriplegic. “Imagine the shame I felt, being left for another man…and not even a whole man! The shame—and betrayal! Sure, I’ll do anything to help. Lemme know what you have in mind.”

“It’s really delightfully simple. I’m quite surprised you hadn’t thought of it yourself,” said Alvin with that special twinkle in his eye for the second time that week…

“Marvelous!” cried David, “I really don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself. Then again, I wasn’t in a position to carry out such a plan, even if it had occurred to me sooner. Well, Hawking’s voice synthesizer is a rather old model. There really are much better and newer ones out there, but he refuses to replace his current machine because he said he ‘identifies’ with the voice it produces. I guess he’s just comfortable with it. It’s controlled by an infrared switch that monitors his blinking; the switch is clipped onto his eyeglasses. Some of the commands are also activated when he scrunches his right cheek. To disable the voice system, all you have to do is deactivate the switch on his glasses. You could remove it entirely, but someone close to him would probably notice it’s missing.”“Right,” Alvin responded with a nod.

“Now, there’s another tricky part,” David continued. “You’ve probably noticed that in the Hawking residence, doors will automatically open when he’s approaching. The same in his office.” Again, Alvin nodded. “His wheelchair sends out radio transmissions to ready the doors, so he can also control those from his wheelchair. If you deactivate that system, people will notice that the doors aren’t working, and get suspicious, so you’ll have to figure some way around that.”“Right again. Thanks for all your help. I know this info won’t be coming free, so how much is it going to cost me?”“That’s really something we should have discussed before we had this little chat, isn’t it? I don’t need anything; the satisfaction of seeing Hawking squirm, or sit motionless in misery, is all the compensation I need…Then again, you’re coming into a large sum, so you could probably afford to cut me in on a £100,000 or so, right?”

“Greedy bastard! Yeah, alright. And remember, if I go down, I’m taking you with me, so no word on this to the coppers, ya hear?”“Did you just step into a time warp that transported you into 1920s Chicago?””No, sorry…talking like that just makes me feel so cool. Alright, now I’ve gotta run. I’ve got an hour dinner break, and tonight is movie night, so that bought me a little more time, but after that I’ve definitely gotta be there to give Steve his sponge bath,” said Alvin, a small shudder going up his back as the last two words passed over his lips. “Thanks again for the help!”

Inheritance, Addendum

...which leads me to my third point. [You'll have to see the previous entry, otherwise this one might not make alot of sense. And even if it does make sense, it's probably alot harder to appreciate without the context.]

Christ died for me, and I am way, way, way infinitely in the red; not just because I am washed in his blood, but because I can't say I did a single thing to deserve the inheritance I have received. Thinking about the very generous endowment from my uncle has given me an even deeper appreciation and insight into my eternal inheritance: inheritance comes only through the death of someone who loves you very much, and the greater his life on earth, the greater the treasure with which he will leave you. Little good will come of feeling guilty over receiving such a spectacular gift; such guilt is only warrented if the gift is squandered or ill-used.

1 Peter 1:3-6 "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials."

Ephesians 1:18-21 "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come."

Inheritance

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

—Prospero, The Tempest. Act IV sc i

[Editor's Note: Though the idea for this entry was conceived a while ago, recently I decided to modify it for submission to Market Place, an NPR show that deal with business and investment, but which also occasionally features personal stories about money. Because the story is intended for strangers, I have taken advantage of "surprise" elements that won't "surprise" anyone who actually knows me (viz. the way in which I became an outright home-owner). ]

I have achieved the American Dream—of sorts. At the age of 26, I am a homeowner. It's not the full Dream with a wife, and a white picket fence to keep in our 2.5 kids and our dog, Rusty, (and to keep out JWs, and any solicitors not offering Thin Mints), but still, the home has always been the hardest part of Dream to achieve, hasn't it? The rest should pretty much be downhill from here. [The house, after all, is the human equivalent of the assortment of insects the males of some species of birds use to attract a mate; once you have the dowry ready, the females are sure to beat a path to your door. And once you have the female, the kids should come as naturally as swimming to a fish...and after that, there's just no stopping the JWs or solicitors.]

Still, even without the complete Dream, I am a homeowner. Not just a borrower paying off the bank, but the owner with his name on the deed, with the house completely paid off in full. And I acquired my home during the peak of the housing market bubble (or, as Mr. Greenspan might say, "from the top bubble in the 'frothy', irrationally-exuberantly driven market"), in February of 2005. And, even more remarkable, the home is situated in Los Angeles county, one of the most inflated markets in the nation.

So what's my secret? Shrewd business dealings, A Warren Buffet-like mind for investment? Nope. The fact that I own 20% of the property, with my sister holding an equal share and my mother owning the remainder? No, not that either.

I inherited the house from my great uncle. Oftentimes when I tell them I live in a house that I own with my sister, they ask if my parents bought it for us. When I tell them I inherited it, the response is invariably either "cool," or "very nice." It seems that they have forgotten (or never realized in the first place) that one's inheriting something necessitates someone very close to him to have died. And in this light, there seems to be something very "not cool" and very "not nice" about living in my own home.

So, there is a considerable amount of guilt, whether justified or misplaced, associated with my home ownership. Sometimes it feels like blood money, not in the traditional sense [if colloquialisms can be said to have 'traditional' definitions], but insofar as I profited from a relative's death. Rationally, I know that he wanted me to have his house, and that his death was ineluctable—a fact made more salient by the fact that he was 88 at the time of his passing. So his house had to go somewhere, and he chose to bequeath it to me and my sister. Of this I am certain, because I am the one whom he asked to drive him to the attorney to adjust his living trust to include us.

Moreover, I neither caused nor wished for my uncle's passing. On the contrary, when he began to show signs of senility and fragility, I moved in to his house to help care for him. I learned to test his blood sugar twice a day to keep his diabetes in check. I learned to which of his four medications he needed at which doses and at which intervals. When Alzheimer's began to take over, and he wanted to eat foods high in carbohydrates at all hours of the day and night, my sister and I devised a system of chains and locks around the refrigerator to keep him away from dangerous (high sugar) foods; we moved other snack items out of the pantry, and into closets, backpacks, under furniture—anywhere we thought we could stow items to thwart a potentially perilous spike in his blood sugar.

And my sister and I were the ones who pleaded with him to shower and change his Depends (c) when his dementia took over and exacerbated his recalcitrant personality. Not only did I bathe and shave him, but I endured the olfactory torture when our best efforts to induce him to shower failed.

Ostensibly, my listing of the duties I voluntarily accepted serves to legitimize my acquisition of my uncle's house, but in retrospect, I see that it really just demonstrates how uneasy I still am, uncomfortable enough to feel the need to make such a list justifying my inheritance. In part, the list imbues me with the sense that somehow I earned this house, that I worked for something that, in fact, I really did not work for. These are measureables—how many times I made him breakfast, or went out to buy his groceries; how many times I tested his blood-sugar, or chained the refrigerator to prevent it from getting too high; how many times I showered him; how many times I drove him to the doctor, &c, &c.

Yet this type of rationalization never really mitigates the guilt, because it's impossible to measure how much I cared for my uncle in tasks done, or duties fulfilled. And even if these things did constitute a perfect, complete set of criteria, I still can't say that I earned the inheritance, because is inheritance is just a special kind of gift, and gifts must be free; that which is earned is "wages."

Which (rather clumsily and disjointedly) leads me to my second point: my uncle did ALOT more for me than I did for him, so on the cosmic ledger sheet, he is still way in the black, and I am way in the red, as far as our relationship is concerned.

When I gave his eulogy, I mentioned something in passing I had generally taken for granted; I included only by way of example to demonstrate some larger, seemingly more important point (which, at the time of writing this, I have forgotten). "From my earliest days in kindergarten to my last day of high school, he dropped me off at school each morning, and picked me up again each afternoon." Then I remember an audible gasp coming from the room, followed by an approving murmur as each person turned to his neighbor to agree how selfless and dutiful my uncle had proved himself to be. Later I would reflect that he not only chauffeured me to and from school, but he also picked me up from band practices and competitions, shuttled me to work on school projects at friends' houses, came to get me after MUN trips, often having to wait in the school parking lot because there was traffic, or because our bus was delayed for one reason or another. And I do not recall him once complaining about hours' long wait. This list does not include the various functions for which my sister needed transportation.

And this is only one part of his "duties" list, a list that far exceeds the very poor one I have constructed, exceeds it in the quantity, difficulty, and duration of the responsibilities. So I suppose my little project of justifying my slice of the American Dream has failed, and instead, I have slipped even farther into 'unworthiness.' Perhaps all there is to do is know that all I have inherited shall eventually dissolve, and hope to pass it on to someone else when my little life is rounded with a sleep.

Genius and Dummy, Part II

…Thus began Alvin’s two year tenure as the official assistant to Professor Stephen W. Hawking. At first, his duties included only menial tasks, such as chauffeuring Hawking around, picking up his dry cleaning, and brushing his teeth twice daily. For Alvin, however, this initial relegation to such tedious chores was serendipitous, as it afforded him time to brush up on his particle physics (a hadron, Alvin learned, is a category of subatomic particle, and not a transposition of a colloquialism for arousal), and on his cosmology (a white dwarf, as it turns out, is not just a pejorative for Kerri Shrug).

Faithful execution of those simple duties earned Alvin the professor’s trust, and slowly his responsibilities increased: sponge-bathing Dr. Hawking, releasing press briefings on the professor’s latest discoveries, accompanying him to cosmological symposiums, and eventually, even polishing the particle accelerator (!) Among his new chores, Alvin’s favorite was maintaining the physicist’s website, by virtue of the fact that this was an arena in which he could act with confidence and speed.

“I guess I’ve always been considered a little geeky because of my interest in computers, and my programming job,” Alvin confessed to Stephen (or “Steve,” as Alvin now referred to him at the professor’s insistence) one day while debugging the professor’s laptop in his office.

“Oh…really?” Steve replied via his computer-enabled speech generator. “How…odd…isn’t your…graduate work…in…astrophysics?”

“Yes! Yes—of course! I mean, astrophysics is my life! Gotta love those hard-ons. Hadrons—I mean hadrons! But everyone’s gotta have a hobby, too, right? My hobby is computers, just a little something I like to do on the side. By ‘job’ I meant the part time job I took to help pay the bills during graduate school.”

“But doesn’t…your fellowship…pay…for…that?”

“Oh right, my fellowship…but I’ve been trying to buy all the parts to assemble my own observatory, so I can track the motions of the stars from home. So I’ve been saving up. Anyway, I was saying that I feel a little awkward around people sometimes. Communicating with them is hard, and social situations can be uncomfortable.” Steve’s eyes, one of the remaining body parts over which Lou Gehrig's disease still permitted him control, shifted their gaze to the ground as if in embarrassment. “I know…” he began, “what that…is like.” A long, deep silence of mutual understanding filled the room.

This was just the sort of personal breakthrough Alvin had hoped to induce with his comment, but from here, he was unsure how to proceed. Was it better to advance the conversation and hope to make more connections, or just let their new spirit of empathy due its work without words? Fixing upon the former course after an appropriate pause, Alvin continued, “well, I guess I’m really in no place to complain about problems with communication. Given the difficulties you face, I’m in no place to complain about anything…I mean, here you are, the brightest mind of our time, yet in this cosmic injustice, that great mind is stuck in such a crippled frame. What I wouldn’t give—what I wouldn’t give!—to trade bodies with you, to give you all the physical freedoms I have, to ease your scientific discoveries and enlarge humanity’s understanding of our place in his universe.” Alvin paused thoughtfully, then continued, “now look, I’m acting so condescending. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have presumed to have the slightest understanding of what life for you is like.”

“No, don’t…apologize,” replied the robotic voice. “How often…have I thought…the same thing. In interviews, I say…my disability…has taught me…more about life…but if I could…I’d trade it all…for a normal life.” And for the second time that morning, the eyes that gave light to that great mind were cast downward in apology and embarrassment, as though their owner had for the first time revealed his greatest secret.

Sensing that there was little more he could say to sneak deeper into Steve’s sphere of trust, Alvin simply nodded, gave an empathetic hug, and let one tear roll down each cheek as a symbol of his commiseration.

As the days and weeks passed, the confidence Steve placed in Alvin continued to deepen, until the intimacy between the two rival even that between the professor and his wife. It was then that Alvin knew he could elicit virtually any information out from his supposed confidant without raising suspicion.

JT & the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat

Ok, this is not really about an amazing technicolor dream coat, an amazing coat, or even a coat at all, for that matter. But it is about the total lack of appropriate jackets (or any items of apparel with long sleeves) that one might wear in public for a casual breakfast.

So we went out to IHOP this morning to eat, to celebrate (I suppose) Linda's matriculation at the UCLA school of architecture. She was down to move some of her stuff just before classes begin next week. Probably because my room faces west, the air felt a little chilled this morning, a condition exacerbated by my having forgotten at night to close the window I left open during the afternoon to let out the warm air.

Having just moved back to Cerritos from Whittier last week (when the weather was quite warm), I am still in the process of moving my belongings, the most notable category of items of which I was bereft was long sleeved clothing. Without a reliable weather forecast to have guided the packing process, I found myself only with items appropriate for warm weather, or formal occasions, neither of which characterized of the occasion then before me.

I did, however, have at my disposal what seemed an inordinate quantity of clothing inappropriate for almost any event, that is my "costume" type clothing that I kept in Cerritos for storage—mostly silly items I got on a whim, or things I picked up because, at the time of purchase, they seemed like good halloween attire. For example: a Japanese-style silk robe; a happi coat from a gift store in Kyoto; a Japanese schoolboy uniform [you can imagine where many of these treasures were discovered]; a cap and gown (from my high school graduation); a tuxedo jacket with coat tails; and a manchurian collared, kung-fu style shirt with silk knot buttons. Such was the assortment of pieces from which I would have to choose if I decided to escape the cold, and instead, risk possible disapprobation.

I resolved upon the last item (the kung fu-style shirt), since it seemed both the most able to provide the level of warmth suitable for the meteorological conditions, and also the least offending of my options. That "least offending" did not equal "inoffensive" should have become clear to me at Linda's house when her mom viewed my attire and asked, "oh, JT, are you going back to China?" In fact I am planning a three-month stint in Guizhou beginning this coming January, but when pressed, Linda confessed that her mother had no way of knowing that, and only surmised my impending departure based on my unusual outfit.

Breakfast at IHOP was enjoyed by Linda, Pam, Ben and me (the four members of our circle who are both post-school and pre-career). I was able to finish my pancakes with minimal gawking from the other patrons. (Not that being stared at is always bad; if one has a sufficient ego, it is but a small step to imagine oneself a sort of celebrity, or a figure so like Adnois that he must accept the fact that others cannot resist gazing upon him.)

This episode taught me that, especially in an age dominated by the reality of global warming, I must be ready in season and out of season for all types of climatic deviation.

[I wanted to include an image here edited by Photoshop, but as of the time of publication still have not purchased said program. The picture will be of the variety in which I put a collage of images of myself together in one photo, each of the different "me's" will be wearing on of the aforementioned long sleeved shirts. When I get Photoshop and finish doctoring the image, I will upload it to my blog, along with this re-posted entry.]

Genius and Dummy. Part I

The Associated Press article mentioned in this fictional creation is an actual news story from the AP wire. (While it is no longer available on CNN.com, it can be viewed here.) In fact, the article was the genesis of my ideas for this piece; I imagined what kind of person would be suited for the task of personally assisting Mr. Hawking, and my thoughts spiraled toward the ridiculous until I arrived the following:

As on any other day, Alvin hit the snooze button once, but only once—he contemned pressing it any more as decadent and self-indulgent—before rolling out of bed and getting ready for work. As on any other day, he embarked on his 90 minute crusade against the L.A. traffic. And as on any other day, he checked his email and browsed the morning news before beginning another arduous workday of chatting on the internet and surfing on the web.

But that is where the similarities with a typical day ended. While reading the goings-on of the world, Alvin came across an article from the Associated Press via CNN.com entitled “Wanted: Assistant for Stephen Hawking,” beginning as follows, “Wanted: bright graduate student to assist world-famous scientist. International travel, developing computer systems and dealing with the press required. Renowned astrophysicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking has announced he is looking for a graduate student to work for him one to two years.”

“I could do that,” Alvin mused to himself. Dealing with large groups of people, particularly verbally adept and aggressive groups like the press, would prove challenging and outside his area of comfortability, but, reasoned Alvin, it would ultimately prove a minor inconvenience relative to the payout he hoped to gain.

The larger hurdle to overcome was, of course, the requirement that an applicant to the assistantship be a “graduate student.” Alvin was not, nor had he ever been a graduate student of anything anywhere, let alone a specialist in theoretical astrophysics, the discipline from which Professor Hawking would most likely expect candidates to come. His less-than-germane background notwithstanding, after pulling in a few long overdue favors at his alma mater and some massive bribery, in a matter of days Alvin found himself endowed with a handsome, prestigious (and spurious) fellowship that would have normally taken several years to obtain.

From there, the rest was really quite simple: he faxed over his newly enhanced resume to Professor Hawking’s office at Cambridge, and with a few minor snags, passed the over-the-phone interview. He was invited to England for an in-person interrogation by the professor himself, during which time Alvin’s observations about the bizarre nature of the professor’s computer-assisted speech were confirmed. And although Alvin’s sometimes-awkward style of conversation might have hurt him in any other interview, Professor Hawking, perhaps biased by his own lumbering method of communication, found it oddly endearing. This unexpected advantage, coupled with his inimitable resume, made Hawking’s choosing of Alvin all but inevitable.

Happy indeed was the look on Alvin’s face upon receiving the congratulatory phone call from the professor’s secretary. So overjoyed, in fact, was he that Alvin was barely able to muster the focus needed to pack his things in compliance with the secretary’s insistence that he fly back to Cambridge “at once” to commence his assistantship to the renowned physicist, Commander of the British Empire, and best-selling author.

Thus began Alvin’s two year tenure as the official assistant to Professor Stephen W. Hawking.

Six and Twenty

At 12:00 midnight, I turned 26 while at Pam's house today. Happy Birthday!

There is really nothing special about the age of 26. At 13, one becomes at teenager; at 16, one can drive, and at 18, he is inundated by a deluge of new entitlements. Twenty-one is special because that age affords one the rights to drink alcohol and to gamble (fun, though not really two privileges that I have taken the license to enjoy). After 25 (the age at which one can rent a motor vehicle), there really isn't much for which to wait until 30, when one is constitutionally old enough to serve as a United States senator. Although I have some personal aspirations and objects of anticipation for the coming year, there really isn't any institutionalized benefit to turning 26.

So 26 is just about getting a little older, and feeling the aging process. I have this strange, schizophrenic relationship with my age. Sometimes I feel very young, for example: the time my student mistook me for a classmate. I was substituting for an SAT II biology class, and when I announced, "okay, it's time to start class," with a startled look she replied, "oh, are you the teacher? I thought you were a student!" When pressed to give a precise, numeric estimation of my age, she proffered up "17." Yay.

At other times, I can feel the cruel effects of time's merciless assualt on my physical and psychological being, namely the thinning of my hair and gradual decline of my once-rapid metabolism. I could lament the passing of my youth in more detail, but the entries I've already published regarding age already testify to my neurotic fixation with that dreaded topic.

Below is "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now," by A.E. Houseman's , a poet I re-discovered when I was studying for the GRE literature exam. Of course, the poem's focus is not really aging, but the speaker's urgent need to bask in the beauty of nature in his youth.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Souvenirs

Accosted by the unrelenting coverage of this fifth Anniversary, I debated whether to think about the Attack or to take a break from It. After all, It has come to dominiate nearly everything in the news nearly every day since then, so perhaps for one day, it would be good to have a rest. "Perhaps," I reasoned, "that is the best way to commemorate September 11: simply by resting, and taking one day per annum on which hijacked planes, collapsing towers, terrorism, Islamism, the Middle East, the war in Iraq, WMDs, IEDs, oil, and everything that has slowly become confused and amalgamated with '9/11' needn't be thrust to the forefront of our minds."

I found it ironic that in attempting to justify my mental holiday from 9/11, I was forced to give it so much more thought than normal. Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in. And maybe that's simply another way that the Attack has come to dominate me and other Americans: we cannot be satisfied with remembering the dead; we cannot be satisfied to be left with the grief, and the outrage, and the revulsion precipitated from the events of that Day. Born along with those emotional responses—or, perhaps born from them—was a compulsion to dissect the way the Attacks changed the world, changed our country, changed our lives.

And I think our national obsession with September 11 invites us, on this day more appropriately than on any other, to consider whether it is healthy to have our psyches so ruled by one single day. For the whole of last week, KCPP did an entire series devoted to such topics: How did 9/11 change Americans perceptions of Islam? How did it change our interactions with Muslims? How did it affect teens? How does it affect young children? How has it affected education? How has it affected the justice system? How has it affected our national security? How has it affected popular culture? How has it affected comedy? Maybe it's just too much introspection too soon.

As usual, I was rendered completely ambivalent by two warring factions within my own mind. On the one hand, I do feel that we, as a nation, are in desperate need of a September 11 holiday; on the other, I also recognize the need to honor the memory of those murdered on that day, to contemplate the causes of the Attacks, to consider how to make our homeland and the world (more generally) safer and more free, and to use the event as a milestone against which we can evaluate personal, national, and global growth since that day.

If I may be said to have reached a conclusion from my deliberations, it was that it is altogether fitting and proper for a contemplative mood to predominate each September 11 and the days leading up to it. A "9/11 holiday" on which we, for 24 hours, deliberately assume a national amnesia of what transpired five years ago today would smack of sacrilege to many, in as much as it denies that real people were killed in a barbaric way, and of juvenile denial to all, in as much as we would be hoping to alter the past by pretending it never happened. [As an aside: how completely ridiculous are the Iranian refutation of the Holocaust, and the Japanese disavowel of their war crimes during World War II? Talk about smacking of sacrilege and juvenile denial!] Besides being silly, avoiding the truth about the Attacks would simply be impossible. Not unlike a family reunion in which Aunt Sylvia's husband is noticably absent: everyone knows she had an affair and he left her, and everyone is thinking about it when they see her, but no one will mention it, so all must share the embarrassment in unacknowledging silence. I don't want the Attack to feel like a dirty family secret we can't or won't discuss, even for one day, because that just gives It more power over us, the power to supress our memories and voices.

So what shall we say then? Shall we forget on all other days so that memory will abound once a year? God forbid! Unfortunately, the reality of September 11 and the ways that it indelibly altered life can be neither escaped nor ignored, and perhaps this is the most inconvenient truth about the situation. We must bear the memory and the consequences, notably the percipitous militarization of our nation (Orange and Red alert levels, the deployment of friends and family to distant lands, the rising cost of energy, a burgeoning national deficit, and recently, restrictions on liquids aboard aircraft). The great legacy of the Attack is the way that it changed the American paradigm: we are no longer protected by the seas on both coasts, and hence, are locked into a perpetual state of vigilance. [See how easilly I have lapsed into this digression, catalized by the "compulsion to dissect the way the Attacks changed the world, changed our country, changed our lives."]

Maybe next year at this time, instead of such a languid, cerebral investigation of whether and how to think about September 11 and what it means, I can explore how I feel about it, how my friends feel about it, and how it has affected our day-to-day lives.

Panda Inconsolable

Today I read a headline that said "Panda Inconsolable After Crushing Newborn" on my AOL news ticker.

So struck by the incongruity between the words "Panda" and "Inconsolable" was I, that a skein of questions flew through my mind. I found myself so preoccupied by the rapid series of queries that, for several minutes, I forgot all about the hyperlink and the informative article to which it led, the article that I later found rather inadaquate to satisfy my thirst for knowledge.

My first string of questions began "how would one console a panda? Aren't all pandas inconsolable by nature, since people lack the means to comfort them? Moreover, how does one determine if a panda needs consulation at all? How does one determine if a panda is in a good mood or a bad one?"

This line of thinking logically led to another chain: ""how can one tell if the panda has slipped out of its good mood? How does one know it's not merely a chronically sad panda? An emo panda? Maybe this was a manically depressed panda whose depression just happens to coincide with its infanticide. Is the panda just putting on a show of grief, because it knows the zoo keepers expect it to be sad, and it doesn't want to appear a bad mother or an unfeeling psychopath?"

And finally I arrived at my most epistemological speculations regarding pandas: "what constitutes 'sad' in pandas, and how can we gauge it? How do we know whether we have actually 'consoled' a panda, or if its mood lightened naturally over the course of time?" I think many of my questions hinge on the couching of the headline in terms usually reserved for humans.

The headline's anthropomorphic treatment of the panda reminded me of Ellen Ullman's "Dining with Robots," in Best American Essays of 2005. In it, Ullman recounts a metaphor used in her first programming class; her instructor informed the students that programming is like a recipe: give the computer the right instructions in the right order, and it will produce the desired product. As the essay unfolds, Ullman dissects the metaphor, ultimately concluding that computers are nowhere near sophisticated enough to grapple with the nuances in Juliet Child's preface to her recipe for Sauté de Boeuf à la Parisienne:

“This sauté of beef is good to know about if you have to entertain important guests in a hurry. It consists of small pieces of filet sautéed quickly to a nice brown outside and a rosy center, and served in a sauce. The following recipe can easily be prepared in 30 minutes, or in less than half the time if the meat has been sliced and the mushrooms sautéed ahead. In the variations at the end of the recipe, all the sauce ingredients may be prepared in advance. If the whole dish is cooked ahead of time, be very careful indeed in its reheating that the beef does not overcook. The cream and mushroom sauce here is a French version of beef Stroganoff, but less tricky as it uses fresh rather than sour cream, so you will not run into the problem of curdled sauce. Serve the beef in a casserole, or on a platter surrounded with steamed rice, risotto, or potato balls sautéed in butter. Buttered green peas or beans could accompany it, and a good bordeaux.” For 6 people.

Ullman notes, for example, that computers would require eyes to identify a "nice brown outside" or a "rosy center" in the beef; they lack taste buds to discern "a good bordeaux" from any other wine. Moreover, a computer would have a devil of a time making sense of the phrase "important guests." Throughout the essay, Ullman identifies ways that computers simply are not people, and lack basic traits of humanity that we take for granted, making computers' cooking from recipes virtually impossible—at least with a savory, satisfactory result. In the end, she concludes that even with advances in artificial intelligence, there are intrinsically human characteristics with which non-human machines cannot be endowed. The danger, rather, is that in an increasingly automated, globalized world that serves to minimize individuality, taste and sensibility are being sacrificed in favor of efficiency and standardization. The danger, Ullman notes, is that people are becoming more like the machines they designed to serve them.

If you're interested in the panda story, the link is here. Or, you can read it below:

BEIJING (Sept. 8) -Staff at a zoo in southwest China are in mourning after a sleep-deprived panda dropped her two-day-old baby and crushed it to death, local media reported on Friday.

"It was very sudden, but also unavoidable," Guo Wei, panda department chief at Chongqing city zoo in the southwestern region of Chongqing, told the Chongqing Business News daily.

Ya Ya, a seven-year-old panda and new mother of twins, "appeared tired" when nursing the younger cub in a patch of grass, the paper said.

Her head sagged, her paws separated and her baby fell to the ground next to her. The panda then rolled on to her side and crushed her baby beneath her.

The tragedy occurred because she hadn't slept or eaten properly since giving birth, Guo said, adding that Ya Ya lacked motherhood experience.

According to Guo, the zoo had tried on several occasions to separate the cub from its mother for their safety, but Ya Ya "was very cautious" and would "roar and bare her teeth" at zoo-keepers.

The elder of the twins was in good health and being cared for, zoo officials said.

But Ya Ya had proved inconsolable, wailing and looking for her baby after its body was taken away from her.

"Pandas who lose their young tend to be depressed for a month or so," Guo said, adding that the zoo would assign people to care for her and provide special food to improve her mood.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 09/08/06 01:47 ET

Boredom Inexpressible

Here I am at Austin's house blogging (synthesizing one entry while experiencing the content for another). My good host invited me to view one of the two websites he created this weekend. I was less than fascinated. He stopped.

After a few restful minutes passed in which Austin and I tended to our respective computer duties, then Alvin arrived. Eager to demonstrate his programming prowess to someone who might be more appreciative than his last victim, Austin says enthusiastically, “lemme show you the webpage I made.” Alvin's response? “Cool!”

“Cool”? “Cool”? In the vast expanse of my mind, from the huge array of words in my working vocabulary, I don’t think I would have selected the adjective “cool” to describe the process of creating a webpage.

That tiny, monosyllabic hipster reply has opened Pandora's box, and now I am caught in the aftermath. It's like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark in which the villains open the Ark of the Covenant, and the spirits which guard its contents fly out and kill them for gazing upon it, while Harrison Ford and his friends remain protected because they keep their eyes shut. Except instead of guardian spirits, they're words about computer programming; and instead of coming out of a sacred vessel housing the Almighty, they're emanating from the mouths of my two friends; and instead of killing the villains quickly, they're tormenting me with boredom inexpressible; and instead of having been able to prevent this by shutting my eyes, there is nothing I could have done to escape this heinous fate.

OMG, their conversation was so intensely boring. I’m talking scales of magnitude more boring than anything else I have ever experienced. Time itself seems to be slowing down; I don’t think their “conversation” (if I can use that term to describe this travesty of dialogue) will ever end. Processes formerly imperceptible to me now move at a snail’s pace. I think I can discern the movement of photons from the lamp, as they leave the light bulb, travel across the room, and strike my retina.

I was trying my best to ignore the sea of words in which my poor cochlea were drowning, but to present the reader with a sample of what I’m experiencing, I will listen in and type what I hear.

“PSP,” “hacking Youtube,” “pipe the information to another site,” “web 2.0,” “images low in color,” “I like theory.” “Me too, but I’m into application too” [what theory? What programming theory is there? Isn't it all 'application'?] “BMP is the worst.” “How can I do this in one pixel?” “gradient something something,” “I know how to set up a server to serve a webpage.” Artifacts, flat colors, gif, deprecated, xml, css, css zengarden, compression, encode mp3, locksis compression, tagging…

Ok, I can't take it any more. [Sorry to those of you who are interested in that sort of thing and wanted more samples. You can talk to Alvin or Austin directly if you want to hear them discuss PSP and locksis compression.] Although it's difficult to imagine, I can just barely wrap my mind around the fact that there are people out there who not only would program for money, but might voluntarilly discuss it in their free time without the expectation or desire for financial compensation.

What is harder for me to understand is how their mouths aren't melting from spewing out such intensely boring discussion, or how my ears have remained intact even after exposure to their soporific babble. After a little contemplation, the only theory I have to offer is that although their prattle is unimaginably dull, it also rouses in me a strong response of disgust and dread, and these passions counteract what would otherwise be pure boredom. (I suppose my visceral response acts sort of like an acid-base buffer, which donates or absorbs protons as needed to maintain a relative homeostasis.)

Doesn't subjecting me to this programming-talk constitute a crime against humanity? Someone needs to get Kofi Annan on the phone pronto, and tell him to get the ICC ready to handle one of their most disturbing cases ever.

Prayer of Repentance

Tonight Jay [of J-Talk] sent me another IM. While I cannot pretend to the conversation's ability to amuse (at least relative to the J-talk episode), I will categorically vouch for its depth and its value to me in effecting spiritual, moral, and intellectual improvement.

From our chat, I gathered that Jay has been asked to lead corporate prayer at his church tomorrow; he has been directed (or has chosen of his own accord) to pray on repentance. I have reproduced his prayer below:

Prayer of Repentance: September 3, 2006 CCCC

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"

Almighty God, Your invisible attributes—your eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So we are without excuse. We have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

In front of You we make no pretense of living sanitary, pleasant lives as we do before others. We are weak, frail, stumbling creatures, and we lay open our hearts before you.

God, we are tempted in so many ways. There is sin in our lives that we love to play with, that we tuck away in some corner of our mind, that we long for and cherish, that promises to satisfy and comfort.

But these things are hollow--these things that consume our energy and deaden our senses.

Some of us are sinning with regard to achievement and status. We sacrifice time and relationships to get our promotion or raise our gpa. We long for recognition and admiration. We equate a bigger house and a nicer car with true success. And we have been doing this for so long that we yearn for power and money and prestige instead of yearning for humility and holiness.

Some of us are sinning with regard to relationships. We harbor hatred and resentment. We secretly plan retaliation and fantasize about it. We hang on unforgivingly to our bitterness and hurt those we love deeply. At the same time we turn relationships into idols. We hold approval by a parent or a spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend in higher regard than approval by You. And we have been doing this for so long that in moments of joy and in moments of crisis we turn first to man before we turn to You.

Some of us are sinning with regard to the covenant of marriage. We sin against our bodies. We commit adultery in our hearts by lusting for what we do not have. We watch television and movies that inflame our desires. We walk willingly into the trap of pornography. We read books and magazines that tantalize us and urge us that the world offers satisfaction greater than the holy covenant of marriage. And we have been doing this for so long that we believe the lie that sex and marriage exists primarily for our own selfish pleasure.

Some of us are sinning with regard to safety and stability. We feed our anxious hearts by dwelling on endless possibilities. We hoard and save in hopes that our insurance policies and our retirement accounts and our security systems will forever preserve our comfort. We follow the path that is most cautious and most prudent rather than the one that is most fruitful and gives you the most honor. When we leave our neighborhoods, we walk to the other side of the street and grip our bags more tightly. And we have been doing this for so long that we call it anything except sin.

Each one of us harbors sin that leads us to doubt your sufficiency and your wisdom. You know our hearts and we confess that we have offended you. As David prayed, we acknowledge that it is against you only that we have sinned.

Your justice must be satisfied; our penalty must be borne.

We have seen the destruction brought by floodwaters and tsunamis. Your coming judgment is far more destructive, far more comprehensive, and far more certain than any flow of water. And we are far more powerless to stop it. On our own, we are hopeless. We confess that powerlessness to you and declare it to each other.

Powerful, knowing, and just God, we approach your throne through our great high priest Jesus Christ. We who believe and embrace your promise depend on His mediation to bring us to You. We praise you that though our sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

We turn away by the power of your Spirit from the empty promises of sin.

We ask for your forgiveness and rejoice that it is ours in Jesus Christ.

May our repentance give you honor here today.

Amen.