MAGIC         PORK

I was waiting for my flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA), which kept getting delayed a half-hour at a time, and started jotting down some notes for a blog post.  Now I’m going back and writing up the blog post and I have no idea why I thought this would make a good post. I’m writing this paragraph after having written the rest of this and I was so bored writing this that I was practically falling asleep. If I was falling asleep writing it, I can’t imagine how boring it must be to read it. So why am I posting it? Because I took the time to write it dammit so I’m posting it. It’s been way too long since I wrote a blog post so you’ll get what I give you.

So as I said, I was sitting at the airport waiting for my flight. I saw an attractive woman walk by in a gray skirt with a pale yellow blouse. I’m bad at knowing what colors match and usually don’t pay attention to these things, but a while back I was wondering to myself if I could wear a pale yellow oxford with light gray slacks.  (I don’t know if there are better terms to use than “light gray” and “pale yellow”. I’m colorblind so I have a hard enough time identifying the right color, let alone subtle shades. I had a disagreement with a girlfriend once because I called my suit “gray” and she said it was “charcoal”. I’m sure she was right, but in my mind it’s classified as “gray”, with subcategory “dark”.) When I’m unsure if something I’m going to wear will match, and I don’t have a girlfriend to ask, I will of course turn to the single man’s replacement girlfriend, the Internet. (Get your minds out of the gutter, people.) Women on the Internet - and they seemed to be exclusively women talking about this – UNTIL NOW - had conflicting positions on this important “yellow & gray” topic. Some LOVED the combination and others didn’t like it. Not knowing who to believe, and not trusting my own instincts, I decided against that combination.

So when I noticed that woman was wearing that exact combination, I thought “she looks like the type of woman that would know fashion and she likes the combination so maybe I should try it”. She walked into the restroom but I decided to keep an eye on the door so I could get another look. But not one minute later, a woman walked by wearing a pale yellow skirt and a gray cardigan sweater. I don’t know what she was doing, but she kept walking back & forth so I got a good look at her. Still wasn’t sure what I thought of the combination. Yes I was acting creepy I suppose, sitting on the floor (DCA has serious lack of seating around gate 35) watching for a woman to come out of the restroom and meanwhile constantly “checking out” this other woman. But I don’t think she noticed me there, and if she did I was prepared to say “Don’t flatter yourself honey. You’re cute enough but that cardigan is too big for you making you look frumpy. And for the record, I was noticing your choice of matching yellow with gray.” If I said that, maybe she wouldn’t have posted something on Holla Back DC about me.

I eventually got bored of looking at frumpy cardigan girl but I never saw bathroom girl come out.  I must have missed her, but it amused me to think maybe she was in there for a really long time. Like maybe she had stopped at Cinnabon across the hall and was feeling the effects now. Yes these are the ways I amuse myself is to think of things like this. I hate how Cinnabon pumps that smell into the air, trying to tempt you to eat one of their delicious treats. Luckily, I saw a stand-up routine by Louis C.K. about Cinnabon (warning – contains very naughty words) and I think of that every time I see that Cinnabon. It effectively neutralizes any desire I may have.

Then I was amazed… I saw two other people wearing yellow and gray. It’s like when I’m reading something and see a word I’m unfamiliar with, and look it up, then all of a sudden I’m seeing that word everywhere. I saw a man in a gray suit with a yellow shirt, and an older lady with gray shorts and a yellow polo shirt. Then again, I saw a woman wearing a neon pink blouse with a lime green pantsuit, so  maybe I shouldn’t judge what’s appropriate to wear from people I see at the airport.

OK this is the point where I got so bored writing this post that I gave up.  I actually wrote that much weeks ago and I just left it unpublished. I have more notes here, and the handwriting is so bad I’m surprised I can read it at all. I think it’ll make for a better post to just list my notes and comment on them:

gray w/ yellow – frumpy cardigan gray yellow shorts wide hips [I was a little more rude in my notes]

gray skirt yellow blouse -> other girl in bathroom - long because of Cinnibon - pump smell in air Louis C.K.

man in gray suit w/ yellow shirt

argue with ex-gf over charcoal suit

——–

also in airport

wireless sucks, AT&T sucks [I can never get a good wireless signal in DCA even though it's supposedly free, AT&T service really does SUCK but that could be a whole post on its own]

Gordon Bierch [sic] way too small… want to grab seat @ bar but crowded. can take it to go and drink in airport but then i’m just an alcoholic [This was intended to turn into some strange rant about how Gordon Biersch is the only place to grab a drink on this concourse and it's usually packed.]

fun to drink w/ strangers [Was going to talk about how it can be fun to sit at airport bar because you get to talk to people from all sorts of different places and you're probably never going to see them again, so at the end you just say goodbye and that's that]

bad handwriting

not enough seating by 35

pants w/ zippers by ankles [This one confused me reading over my notes, then I remembered that I had seen a girl wearing this and I thought at the time I might be able to tie in something about that along with my other fashion comments... but I can't think of why I'd want to comment on that now.]

limited food options @ GB, don’t honor card unless you mail them receipt + then there’s postage [boring rant about how I have a Gordon Biersch card so you can get points but the airport bar doesn't support that unless you mail in the receipt, and how they don't have many food options at that GB]

old lady yellow polo + gray shorts

also saw woman wearing brite [sic] pink pants + lime green pantsuit so mite [sic] not mean anything

tattoos - suitcase or briefcase w/ heart inside it [another random observation that a girl had a tatoo like that on her arm and I couldn't figure out what the heck that was supposed to mean. She loves to travel? Her heart likes to wander (i.e. doesn't like to settle down into a relationship)?]

For those of you that may be wondering about that slightly offensive title, it’s a humorous (debatable) reference to my earlier posts All black tonight and All gay tonight. I also posted an All Latin tonight post so that makes this part four of my award-pending “All __ tonight” series.

This happened Memorial Day weekend but I haven’t gotten around to writing about it until now. I went to the club District in Adams Morgan Saturday night. It wasn’t until Sunday, as I was leaving my apartment, that I realized I had forgotten to close my tab so my credit card was still at the bar. They didn’t open until evening so Sunday night I called and spoke to someone. He said I could come over and pick up my credit card at the downstairs bar at Saki. Saki is a restaurant/club next door to District, and must be they have the same owner.

I was out in Clarendon at the time so I took the orange line to the red line to Woodley Park, and walked across the bridge to Adams Morgan. At Saki, I got in line behind four or five girls. The bouncer was checking IDs and stamping your hand. When I got up to him, he asked “are you with them?” I said no, I was just here to get my credit card that I had left at the bar. He said “oh yeah, you’ll want that” and stamped my hand. I then realized there was a line inside the door too. There is a hallway and at the other end of the hallway is the staircase to the club downstairs. At the top of the stairs was a woman taking money and giving wristbands. There were maybe a dozen people in front of me so I just waited my turn and hoped that this woman wouldn’t give me trouble and try to make me pay to get in.

As I’m waiting in line, I quickly realize… All the people in front of me are women.  Hmm.  And there are women that already have wristbands that are coming and going from the club. I don’t see any men at all. And yeah, there’s a few that look a little… tomboyish? Is that a non-offensive way of putting it? It appears I’ve stumbled upon some lesbian-night at Saki.

The other realization I had was that all these women were black. What the heck is going on here? A black lesbian night? Now might be a good time to describe what I was wearing. I had on a checkered pair of shorts and a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, and I was wearing a pair of Sperry Top-Siders. In other words, I was about as “preppy white boy” looking as you can get. I just wanted to get in there, get my card, and skedaddle. But of course that’s not what happened.

I got up to the woman taking money and explained that I was just here to get my credit card. She said I’d have to talk to the security guy, pointing towards the bouncer that I had already talked to. I said that I had explained to him and he let me in. She then said I’d have to talk to a manager and I said I had already spoken to a manager on the phone and he told me I could pick up my card at the downstairs bar at Saki. So she said okay and let me in.

I walked downstairs into the dark club, music thumping… and immediately abandoned any idea of trying to act like I belonged there. There were literally no men there that I could see, and I looked like I had just come from a day of sailing with my yacht club gents. I even had sunglasses hanging from my shirt. I wouldn’t say the place was absolutely packed, but it was pretty busy. I saw two bars so picked the closest one and made a beeline for it.

The bartender was a white woman – the only white person other than me I could see in the place. She was very busy making drinks so I had to patiently wait for her to get around to me. It was painful. I had to stand there for probably fifteen minutes. To make matters worse, the bar itself is the height of a normal table, not the typical bar height, and the bartender stands in an area lower than the floor, so you’re looking down at her. While that offered a rather nice view of her cleavage (the one positive thing about this experience) it means that I couldn’t even slouch down behind the bar and try to make myself invisible.

She finally got to me and I explained the situation and she said that I’d have to talk to the manager. I told her that I was told it would be at the bar. She gave me a piece of paper and a pen and told me to write down my name and the type of card it is and she’d give it to the busboy. Well she put the paper down in a puddle of water on the bar but luckily I can think quickly on my feet – I grabbed a napkin instead! (I know.. how can it be that I’m not in Mensa?) The busboy had just started to walk away but she called out to him and instructed him to give it to so-and-so and before long, he came back with my card. Hooray! They hadn’t even added a gratuity, to my surprise. (Any bartenders that may be reading this: I did tack on a tip.)

I got out of there, and when I got home I did a google search to figure out what had just happened. I discovered that first of all, it was Black Pride weekend in DC (for black gay & lesbian people). And as for that particular event, “Saki Sundays” in the summer are apparently hosted by someone named DJ India. They’re advertised to be “exclusively for the ladies” and “for that intimate setting” (see here).  So yes, I think we can safely assume my crack detective work was spot-on. Plus the fact that none of them hit on me… I mean HELLO!!! Can it be more obvious?

Side note: I just discovered that somehow the URLs to my posts changed format. Probably happened last time I updated the WordPress software. So most of the links to previous posts of mine were broken. Luckily for me, not many people read this site, and I’m sure even fewer care to follow my links. But it should be fixed now.

I can’t help but feel responsible for this. Last March, I moved to Washington, DC from Rochester, NY and the very next day there was a snow storm. My moving truck hadn’t even arrived yet, because I drove down myself and the truck wasn’t scheduled to come until later that week. I remember thinking it was kind of nice, made me feel like I was back home in Rochester still. The “storm” was something like three inches but it was a big deal to DC.

Now this winter we have two major snowstorms as well as some other more minor storms. Is it because I moved here? Also consider this last summer. It was a very mild summer for DC. It felt more like a Rochester summer than the scorching humid weather that DC is supposed to have. Everyone thought it was pretty nice, but I bet if people knew they’d be getting a Rochester winter as well, they would have said no thanks.

So I take responsibility for this DC. Rather than me adjusting to DC’s climate, apparently DC adjusted to me.

I walked around the other day snapping some photos. They’re not the best quality photos because:

1. It was in the middle of a snow storm.
2. The lighting was horrible (see #1).
3. I’m not a professional photographer, or even a hobbyist. I point the camera, I press the button.

But with that in mind, here are my photos in Flickr (also linked from my Photos page).

I actually went out three times yesterday. The first time, I realized when I went to take a picture that my camera’s battery was dead, so I just walked around to see what was happening. Then I went back out in a couple of hours and took the first set of photos, then went out again around sunset after the snow had stopped and snapped the rest.

It occurred to me that I’ve never walked around taking photos in DC. I mean why should I? Not like there aren’t photos of the Capitol out there. But it was sort of fun except for the fact that my fingers were numb since I couldn’t wear my gloves while using the camera. Perhaps I should do it more often, not just when we have a storm. I’d blend right in with the tourists. I live in downtown DC and there are always people taking pictures. It’s really annoying at times when you’re trying to walk down the sidewalk and someone’s posing for a picture, blocking everyone while they try to get it just right. Once I even saw a family taking a picture of themselves in front of Austin Grill. Austin Grill?? Unless something truly monumental happened in that place - like you reunited with your long lost son - why do you need a picture of yourselves in front of Austin Grill?

I started to become paranoid at one point this summer because it seemed like people were taking pictures of me. I started to concoct wild theories in my head about how I could have mistakenly become a target of some spy organization. Consider:

• I live in an apartment building that’s one block away from the FBI building, and some of the tenants work for the FBI. So right from the start, it’s not completely ridiculous that some foreign spy organization would want to keep tabs on some of the people living in the building. Or that the US might want to make sure there aren’t spies for other countries living there. Ridiculous yes, but not completely.
• I was in a coffee shop (Steam Cafe in Dupont Circle), next to the window. On the way to the coffee shop, I had seen some young guy with a backpack walking around. I looked out the window and there was that guy across the street with a big camera taking pictures. I thought nothing of it, but when I looked back up, he was snapping a photo of the coffee shop (with me in the window). He walked away after getting that photo. Strange… but okay just some hobbyist or student, or maybe he thought I was silly looking, or has a thing for coffee shops? Not enough to be paranoid right? But there’s more.
• I was sitting in the Navy Memorial reading and I look up… Across the circle is a very stern-looking guy in sunglasses. He looked like, well the stereotypical spy in the movies. That’s what he looked like. He had a little camera and was snapping photos. OK, that’s the thing to do at the Navy Memorial, but he took a picture in my direction and there’s nothing worth taking a picture of there. Any other side of that circle there’d be something worth taking a picture of, but behind me there was… what, that little square of grass where people take their dogs to crap? And then at other times, you see people lying in the grass because they don’t realize this, but I digress. So yeah, I started to wonder what that guy’s deal was. He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself, was just sitting there all creepy-like, taking pictures as if he was a tourist but not acting like a tourist at all. Not convinced yet? Read on…
• I walked out the front door of my building, and was walking down the street. There were two young men, one with a camera taking pictures of the other. They snapped the photo just as I was walking behind him. Now that’s nothing out of the ordinary, but then I start thinking… he was positioning his friend as if to take the perfect photo, but why were they even taking a picture there? There was nothing behind him to take a picture of. Except for me - I was behind him, I was the subject of that photo!! OK no that’s paranoia… but wait, there’s more…
• This time I was walking on E street towards 7th and some guy takes a photo, a long shot of.. something.. but I was right in the middle of the photo. I look behind me… What was he taking a picture of? The restaurant Zola’s? That’s the building the Spy Museum is in but not like you can see anything interesting from the angle he was at. I was starting to get pissed at this point - why does it seem every time I leave my apartment someone is taking a photo of me?

I know, I know… that’s crazy talk and since then, the spy activity has died down, as has the tourist activity. There may be a relation there, and you can say that it’s just that I was blowing it out of proportion in the first place, but I say they realized I was just some schmuck and moved on. Or maybe they realized I was onto them and they’re being stealthier now.

I was in a conversation once with one of those FBI dudes that lives in my building. He said he had something to do with cybercrime so I started talking about how all these people were taking pictures with me in the background. I knew enough not to mention my theory about being the target of spies and made it sound like I was just annoyed that tourists kept getting me in their pictures. I said that one day the facial recognition software would be so good that search engines would find you in the background of all these photos… I tell people I’m home sick, they google me and turns out I was in the background of some photo taken at a bar… BUSTED!!  He nodded his head but I couldn’t tell if he was thinking “yeah numbskull, we already have that technology and are using it, if you only knew what your government was capable of..” or if he was thinking “smile and nod and hope this crazy guy doesn’t start talking about alien abductions and the JFK assassination”.

Wow, that has nothing to do with the snow storm at all, does it? OK right… snow storm.. Some more random observations:

• They use these tiny one-man sidewalk plows. I saw one stuck at a street corner. He was going forward, reverse, forward… like he should do when stuck, but his wheels were just spinning. There was snow piled up between his front and back tires and between his front tires and the plow. He wasn’t going anywhere unless that got cleared out, or unless someone helped push him. I watched a little bit and then went up and asked if he needed help. He just shook his head no and looked away from me. Ooookay buddy, knock yourself out.
• I saw a big snow plow stuck in the street right next to my apartment building, its rear wheels spinning. Nothing I can do for that guy, he was on his own!
• The proper way to drive in snow is not to gun it so fast that you fly above the snow. I saw a car barreling down Constitution while I was walking around. The road had been cleared by this point, but it still had packed-down snow on it and was very slippery. I looked in the driver’s side window to see what kind of jerk was being so reckless. It was some young Middle Eastern woman, and from the look on her face you’d think she was just out for a leisurely drive. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was endangering her life and others going that fast. On the other hand, I saw a guy in a Ford Focus gun it when a light turned green and fly up the street, bouncing over mounds of snow. I managed to send a dirty look directly his way as he passed me, and based on his look back, I think he was in fact a jerk that just didn’t care.
• What’s with the umbrellas? This whole winter, I’ve seen people walking around with umbrellas when it snows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that until I moved here. It never even occurred to me to use an umbrella in the snow. If it’s a real wet slushy kind of snow, then I can see it.. maybe.  But even in fluffy dry snow, people use umbrellas. Odd.
• During the snow storm in December, I looked out my window and saw a car that was parked on the street, blocked in with snow. Behind it, a minivan was pushing the car out of its spot. Like bumper-to-bumper, pushing it out. Obviously they couldn’t time it perfectly as the car started to move, so there was some banging between the bumpers, but I suppose if you don’t care about denting your bumper, that’s one way to do it. The car got stuck in the snow even worse at first, but they persisted and were successful. I’ve just never seen that technique used before.

That’s it… no more bulleted lists or crazy ramblings. Until my next post, I mean.

My dear readers, after having devoured my numerous insightful Magic Pork postings, I’m sure there’s one question that’s been nagging you. But so far none of you have had the courage to ask me, so allow me to posit the question for you:

“Kevin, are you ever wrong about anything?”

Well allow me to put your minds at ease. Although my powers of deductive reasoning may far surpass those of other mortals, I do on occasion come to an incorrect conclusion. Case in point: the Pixies.

I had the great pleasure of seeing the Pixies in concert yesterday at the D.A.R. Constitution Hall here in DC. They were great seats - orchestra level, 20 rows back from the stage. I’ve wanted to see the Pixies in concert for a long time. I’m not a big concert-goer and there are plenty of bands that I like that I really don’t care about seeing in concert. But the Pixies are one of my favorite bands and I was psyched about seeing them. They didn’t disappoint - the concert was awesome! When Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black) was screaming and growling on “Tame“, I thought “wow, this guy sounds the same as he did 20 years ago”.

So what’s this have to do with me being wrong? Well for that, we have to go back to 1995, at my first co-op. (That’s what we call it at R.I.T. - a paid internship that’s a requirement for graduation. You take four quarters of co-op. A “quarter” is what R.I.T. has instead of a semester… oh never mind it’s not important!!) I was working the summer of 1995 at a company called Macbeth. They made these instruments called goniospectrophotometers, which I loved to put on my resume for years after that just because it sounded important. The instruments would capture color from four different angles and they had software that worked in conjunction with the instruments to analyze the color, make sure it was within certain bounds and stuff like that. For example, you might use it to make sure the cars that come off of the assembly line are all coming out a perfect “lakeshore slate”. Don’t ask too many questions because did I mention this was back in 1995? I don’t remember much more than that. There were graphs and stuff. It was kind of a funny job for me to have considering I’m colorblind.

There was a girl in her early 20’s that worked at the Munsell color lab there named Anne Marie. We didn’t work together on anything, but somehow we became work-friends. You know, a person you’re friends with at work, but you never do anything with outside of work. We’d usually eat lunch together in the break room. I remember her last name too because I’ve never met anyone with a name like that, but I’ll spare her from having Magic Pork come up on Internet searches of her name and will omit it.

Well one day she let me borrow a Pixies CD. It was Doolittle. I listened to it that night and thought “eh, it’s okay”. I told her as much the next day when I gave it back to her and she was shocked. She was blown away by the Pixies the first time she heard them and she thought I would love them too based on my musical tastes. But just didn’t do it for me.

Fast-forward to a few years later. I don’t remember when, but Fight Club came out in 1999 and I remember being excited that they were playing “Where is My Mind?” at the end so it was definitely before that. Maybe ‘98? I was in a used CD store and saw Doolittle. I don’t know what possessed me to purchase it, but for some reason I decided to give it another shot, even though I wasn’t any more familiar with their music than the last time I had listened to it. I bought it and this time I LOVED it. I then went and bought their other CDs and I became a fan. I couldn’t even comprehend how I could have not loved it the first time.

That’s it. That’s my long-winded story about how I was wrong at one point back in 1995.

I was at a Starbucks in Dupont Circle yesterday that requires a key to the bathroom. I don’t think I truly realized until yesterday just how much I hate that whole practice. I get the reasoning. It’s a busy area and you don’t want people just wandering in from the street and using the bathroom without paying for something, so you have more control over it when they have to come get the key. Even so, I want it to be known that it is the official policy of Magic Pork to unconditionally oppose the use of bathroom keys.

First off, whenever it’s busy, there’s a line of people in front of the bathroom and the key just gets passed to the next person in line, thus circumventing the very reason for the key.

The key is attached to a big piece of plastic saying “Men” or “Women”, so that you can’t just walk away with it I suppose - and also to make it easy to establish which door it goes to. But that big piece of plastic just serves to collect germs and viruses. I’m not a germaphobe by any means. I don’t get freaked out about touching doorknobs and stuff, but during flu season I get a little more paranoid about that stuff. And well, it’s just a little gross, okay? This Starbucks didn’t have anywhere that I could see to hang the key inside the bathroom. I tried balancing it on top of the hand drier but it started to fall off, so I tried balancing it on the edge of the sink and then it just got all wet. All the while, I’m trying to handle as little of the surface area as possible. How many guys are just throwing it on the floor, or shoving it into their pants pocket, or holding onto it while they whiz?

Do they ever disinfect this thing? I’m willing to bet the answer is no. Just like no one ever disinfects the remote controls in hotels and who knows what people were doing before or while handling that remote control. The Starbucks employees themselves have to use the key so it’s being handled by the people making your fancy drinks.

This Starbucks didn’t have any paper towels so I had to use the hand drier which sucked at drying hands. Plus I feel bad spending forever drying my hands when I know there’s guys waiting outside the door for me to finish. So I just wiped my hands on my jeans and exited and handed the key off to the next guy, but I’m sure the key was a little wet from my hands and from the sink. Are you getting the point yet? It’s just gross.

OK I’m not done with the grossness quite yet. I have to complain about the bathroom itself. If you’re going to enforce the use of a bathroom key, you should have a clean bathroom. This bathroom was disgusting. First, it was inadequately lit so it gave it a dark, creepy feel. There was piss on the toilet seat and the sink and floor looked like it hadn’t been cleaned all day. This wasn’t a bar on a Friday night, it was a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon. Clean the frickin’ bathroom. Tangent: I hate when clubs have a bathroom attendant because you’re expected to tip them, but at least if it’s a clean bathroom, I don’t mind too much. But I hate when the bathroom is dirty and the attendant still expects a tip for squirting some soap into your hand and handing you a paper towel. And they never give you enough paper towels to effectively dry your hands. Sometimes they don’t even turn the faucet on for you. Every bathroom attendant should be putting on some rubber gloves and scrubbing toilets and urinals periodically throughout the night. End of tangent.

The bathroom key makes you feel like a child having to ask the teacher for permission to use the bathroom. I’m a grown man, I shouldn’t have to check with a barista if it’s okay for me to go pee-pee. You don’t think it’s not a total power trip for them? It is.

If they’re going to be in charge of handing out a key to the bathroom, they should at least know where it’s located. Once at that Starbucks, I saw the women’s key sitting on the counter (again, gross) but didn’t see the men’s key so I assumed someone was in the bathroom. After waiting 5 minutes and watching some other guy just grab the women’s key and use the women’s bathroom, I meekly asked the barista if they had the men’s key. She replied that if it wasn’t on the counter it must mean someone was in the bathroom. I said okay and waited probably another 5 minutes wondering what the hell that guy was doing in there. Then some other barista shouted out to me and handed me the key that he got from behind the counter somewhere. And do you think he washed his hands after - oh never mind you got the idea.

My mom gave me a box earlier this year that’s full of old papers of mine from high school and college. She found them while cleaning out my closet back home. I wasn’t even sure what was in it because I just shoved it in the corner of my bedroom until it was time to move to DC, and then I shoved it in the corner of my new bedroom. Finally I decided to go through it. Why did I keep this stuff? Did I think that some day I would need to look up my old physics homework?

Looking through this box was mostly depressing because it just makes me realize how dumb I’ve become. The proof is right in my hands: all these homework assignments, in my hand writing, proving that I once knew stuff. I threw out these papers immediately to hide the evidence that I was smarter when I was a teenager than I am now. But I set a few aside to share with you.

Once upon a time, I knew how to solve physics problems. Not advanced physics stuff - I never had to go beyond University Physics III in college - but looking at some of these assignments, I’m like “yeah I remember knowing how to do crap like that”.  Take this question from an exam. The top of the paper says “SPSP 375-371 Practical Exam” and I have no idea what that means. See I’m so dumb now even the heading of the paper stumps me. This is an exam that I scored a perfect score on. BTW I don’t know how to do the “plus or minus” symbol in HTML so I’ll just do “+-” and likewise I’ll write out “degrees” rather than the little circle thingie.

In the preliminary set up of the Equilibrium of Rigid Beams experiment a group of students tied the strings to the meter stick before attaching the clamp! Without the clamp and added mass hanging from the meter stick, however, they were able to level the meter stick, and recorded the following data:

location of “25 cm” hole: 24.950 +- 0.025cm
location of “75 cm” hole: 75.050 +- 0.025cm
location of center of gravity: 52.950 +- 0.025cm
mass of meter stick: 63.4 +- 0.2 grams

mass hanging from “25 cm” string: 50.0+-0.1 grams
mass hanging from “75 cm” string: 54.5+-0.1 grams
angle of “25 cm” string: 34.00+-0.25 degrees
angle of “75 cm” string: 40.50+-0.25 degrees

both acute angles were measured with respect to the horizontal meter stick.

a) Draw a free body diagram of the meter stick with all values indicated.
b) After choosing an axis about which to calculate the torques and clearly indicating its location on your free body diagram, determine if these data are consistent with the criteria for static equilibrium.

This is followed by my neat, well written calculations involving strange symbols and sin and cos of this angle & that. I conclude with the statement, in cursive handwriting (another thing I don’t know if I could even do nowadays without making errors), that ”The beam is in static equilibrium because the sum of the forces and the sum of the torques on the beam both equal zero.” Don’t think I’m bragging that I used to be smart. That probably wasn’t a hard problem at all. I’m saying I’m just dumb now. If someone were to give me that problem now and tell me to either solve it or he’ll chop off my arm, I’d ask “the right or left?”

I had a technical major (started out mechanical engineering and switched to computer science) so most of my papers were of math/science/computer stuff. But my curriculum also included some liberal arts classes. Mostly basic stuff: introduction to philosophy, modern American history, government, 6 psychology classes (that was my liberal arts concentration). Again, I had to face up to the fact that I used to know stuff that I don’t know.

If you were to ask me today about Aristotle’s philosophical views, I’d say that he discovered some laws of logic, but that’s about it. Now consider this take-home test question:

According to Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover - the first cause, the Prime Mover, pure actuality - is the cause of everything. (a) Explain how it could possibly be such a cause, and (b) discuss what that has to do with human beings in particular.

Here’s my essay, which scored a perfect 70/70 and a comment “A very thorough answer”:

Aristotle believes that there is an Unmoved Mover, or pure actuality, that is the cause of everything. Here is an explanation, using Aristotle’s views, as to how this is possible: Every substance in the universe is composed of matter (potentiality) and form (actuality). A substance cannot exist without one of these two components. Actuality precedes potentiality, meaning nothing exists without a cause. For an explanation of Aristotle’s theory of the four causes, refer to the previous essay. [This was the 2nd question on the test.] For any substance we can name, it is logical to say that something else must have caused it (its actuality preceded the substance’s potentiality.) But in order for that other thing to exist, something else must have in turn caused it. Without things affecting each other in this way, there would be no change in the universe. However, with this line of reasoning, there would be an infinite chain of substances affecting each other which didn’t seem logical to Aristotle. For instance, Aristotle believed that the sun moving around the Earth accounted for the changes in Earth’s atmosphere. Then we’d have to ask what accounted for the sun moving (or changing.) If we say the moon accounted for the sun moving, then we’d have to ask what accounted for the moon moving, and so on. Each substance requires an actuality to precede it in order to exist. The answer to this dilemma is that there exists a “pure actuality” that is the prime mover. It is without substance and doesn’t change, therefore it does not require anything to cause it. This unmoved mover cannot be a material cause because it has no potentiality. Therefore it is also not a formal cause because form requires material. It is not an efficient cause because nothing precedes it.  However, it can be explained using the final cause, or purpose. This purpose is what sets everything in the universe into motion. It is the cause of everything, the purpose for everything.

Everything in nature moves towards this pure actuality, attempting to fulfill its purpose. However, nothing can reach this state of pure actuality because matter and form are inseparable. In humans, the highest actuality they can reach is happiness. That is their purpose. There are two types of goals that humans have: instrumental and intrinsic. Instrumental goals are desired in order to achieve a further goal whereas intrinsic goals are desired for their own sake. For example, the goal of my writing this essay is not intrinsic, but instrumental. I am not writing it because I enjoy writing essays about Aristotle, I am writing it because I want to get a good grade on this test. In turn, I want to get a good grade on this test in order to get a good grade in this course. Even things that can be viewed as intrinsic can also be instrumental, however. The only thing for humans that is always intrinsic and never instrumental is happiness itself. Humans desire happiness just for the sake of being happy. Therefore happiness is the final goal of all humans, even if not all humans reach this goal. By being happy we are helping to satisfy our actuality, or soul. By satisfying our soul, we come closer to achieving the unattainable pure actuality. The way to achieve our fullest happiness, and our purpose, is through contemplation. Pure actuality is somewhat like a thought thinking about itself. When we engage in contemplation, we are thinking for the sake of thinking and thus we are coming closer to pure actuality and our purpose. The final form of humans, that which all humans naturally move towards becoming, is that of the philosopher who contemplates.

I remember that class. It was taught by this little man with a gray beard. He basically was what you would expect a philosophy professor to look like. I’m not sure why, because he wasn’t that funny looking, but I would literally not be able to stop myself from cracking a smile when he walked into the room. There was just something funny about him. I liked that guy. It may have been in part because I felt like he thought most of this stuff he was teaching was b.s. too. That stuff I was saying in the above essay? I don’t agree with any of that crap, but the assignment was what would Aristotle think, not what would I think. It hadn’t occurred to me until I took that class that you could appreciate studying about what people have believed over the centuries even if you don’t subscribe to any of those beliefs. Then of course I proceeded to not read any more about philosophy after that. Thus my current dumbitude.

There was something the professor did often that never got old. For example, we were discussing some philosopher’s (I don’t remember who) beliefs about an omnipotent being and he asked if there were any questions. I asked “how could an omnipotent being want anything?” This wasn’t some idea that popped into my head while sitting there in class, I had read Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith and I couldn’t help but bring up that point. He just gave a slight knowing smile and said “Hmm yes…” then looked around and said “are there any other questions?”, indicating that yes, it was an important question that he had opinions about, but no we weren’t going to open that can of worms in this class.

I have a few more papers I could share but I’ll stop here. I’d have to have a couple drinks before I could share an English Composition assignment I wrote entitled “Starlight Elves”. Yeah. I also have an economics paper from high school - I forgot that I even had an economics class in high school! - that’s about aliens from the planet Ryxlen. The point of this post was to show how dumb I’ve become but revealing those to the world might be the ultimate in stupidity.

Not the most original topic, but who doesn’t like complaining about air travel?

In no particular order…

I HATE… when people stand side-by-side on the moving walkways in airports. Hell I hate it when they stand, even if they’re not blocking me. Just them standing there as I walk past annoys me. They’re moving walkways not moving standways. Their point is not to spare able-bodied people the grueling task of putting one foot in front of the other, it’s to allow you to get to where you’re going faster. I’ll typically just walk right up behind someone and say “excuse me”. Or if there’s too many of them and moving out of my way would obviously require a level of coordination that they don’t possess, I’ll walk up as far as I can and have this annoyed look on my face… just so they know that they’re inconveniencing me. I especially love it when I walk past someone on the moving walkway and they give me a look like “what’s that guy in a rush for?” I’m usually not in a rush, I just don’t see the point in standing while the floor moves me at a rate slower than what I could walk at.

I HATE… when people crowd right up against the baggage claim. Let me describe a system that would work remarkably well, and you will never see it happen. The baggage comes out on the conveyer. People stand back at a reasonable distance and watch for a bag that looks like theirs. When they see one, they move forward and check if it’s theirs. If so, they retrieve it. If not, they back up and keep watching. This works because everyone can see the bags. They can also leisurely converse with their traveling companions or people meeting them at the airport. I know, that sounds obvious doesn’t it?

But every time, and I mean EVERY time, people will instead crowd right up to the baggage claim like starving Third World villagers to a UN aid truck. You’ll even have people that are friends of the travelers crowd up to it even though they don’t have any bags. They just want to partake in the excitement I guess. Or maybe they think Santa is working the baggage claim that day giving out suitcases with big red bows on them. I’d like to think that a good half of the people realize the stupidity of it, but since enough people do it that way, they have to follow suit or else get blocked out. Those that get blocked out have to try to spot their luggage by looking between people or over their shoulders, and then push through them to get their luggage when they see it.

Complicating this even further is that as you’re watching for your luggage, passengers from other flights are arriving and immediately pushing forward to find their bags, ignorant of the fact that obviously the luggage that is on the conveyer belt is from flights that got in before yours. Look around you. All these people you see getting their luggage, do you recognize any of them from your flight? Don’t tell me you waited to board your plane, boarded the plane, flew to your destination, got off the plane, and didn’t at any point take notice of any people around you. Are you really that oblivious to the world around you? Don’t answer that because it would depress me.

I HATE… when there’s blindingly bright sunlight shining in through the window and the person in the window seat doesn’t close the shade. They don’t notice that I’m getting blasted full-force like that guy in Sunshine?! Too obscure of a reference? I liked the movie. Cool visuals, great music… then again I saw it on the big screen and don’t know if it would translate well to the small screen. I don’t want to overhype it, but I got totally immersed in that movie. I bet more people are checking it out now that Danny Boyle won best director for Slumdog Millionaire. Speaking of Danny Boyle, 28 Days Later was sooo freaky. Just thinking about that movie makes me feel a little bit uneasy. I don’t mean to knock the traditional zombie, because that has its appeal, but the super-fast zombie was definitely an improvement on the genre in my opinion. Hold on, what was I talking about? Something about planes. Hey wouldn’t Zombies on a Plane make a great sequel to Snakes on a Plane? Maybe not, there’s only so many ways a zombie can jump out at you on a plane. Unless they were zombie snakes but then would you really be able to tell the difference between normal snakes and zombie snakes? No, that’s just silly, it’d be the same movie they already did. Well except that they’re going for your brains. Well no matter, if anyone makes Zombie Snakes on a Plane, I WILL sue because I came up with the idea here. OK now I totally lost my train of thought. Oh sunlight. Yeah it like.. sucks. Or something.  Moving on…

I HATE… when baggage handlers mess with you. This section Mom & Dad may want to skip over. Once I opened my suitcase after arriving at my destination to discover the condoms that I had packed at the bottom of the suitcase lying right on top. It’s not like I was trying to hide them, but just something I tend to be discrete about. But some wiseass baggage handler had opened my suitcase, found them, and decided to put them on top.

Another time, I had done the perfect packing job. I mean I was really truly proud of myself. I used every bit of space effectively. When I got to my destination, I discovered my suitcase had been ransacked. I mean this wasn’t just someone being messy, this was deliberate. There’s no way anyone could have carelessly made it this chaotic. It would have required effort. When I packed my shoes, I put them in plastic bags so I wouldn’t get the rest of my clothes dirty, especially considering I had polished them the night before. I had shoe trees in my shoes to keep their shape. The shoes had been removed from the bags, the shoe trees had been removed from the shoes, the shoes had been shoved back in all crumpled up. My socks were unrolled, my dress shirts had been shoved in there willy-nilly, my condom wrappers had been ripped open (just kidding about that one). I was furious, but nothing you can really do. You can report damaged luggage but there was no real damage. Shoe polish didn’t even get on my clothes. So everything was okay, but I was mad nonetheless. I wanted an option on the form to report “baggage handlers f***ed with me”. (Sorry for the language Mom & Dad, I told you not to read this.)

Perhaps they were looking for something to steal and didn’t find anything. I almost would prefer that because there would be a reason for it. I still think it was just some unhappy worker getting his kicks on some guy that dared to pack a 49.5 pound suitcase. Yeah it was just under the limit - like I said, expert packing job!

That’s it for now, although I’ve got a list going so I’m sure I’ll revisit this. I’ll go ahead and append a “part 1″ to the title.

I was walking down the street today when I saw someone ask the guy in front of me “Do you have a minute for the environment?” I hate those people. You run into them all the time in DC. They stand around with clipboards trying to… well I don’t know exactly because I’ve never allowed one of them to talk to me, but I assume they want you to sign a petition or join some group. Sometimes they tell you the cause up front like this guy, and sometimes I have no clue what cause it is. I just say “no” and keep walking. The worst is when there’s someone saying “do you have some time to help the children?” What a way to try to guilt someone into talking to you.

The man that was approached just said, ”Sorry, I don’t.” I walked past them on the right and was thinking “why are you apologizing?” I never say “sorry” to those guys because I’m not sorry. I just say “no” if I say anything at all. I was glad that I had dodged that one, but then unexpectedly, he had backup just a few steps away. A second man saw me and asked “Do you have a minute for the environment?” It was kind of funny though because just as he was saying that, I noticed a rack of used books and stopped to take a look, so it didn’t even register at first that he had said that to me. But I looked up and saw he was looking at me and just said “no”.

As I was looking over the books, he asked someone else if they had a minute for the environment. Then I went inside the book store. I came out just a couple of minutes later and heard him saying to someone “do you have 30 seconds for the environment?” I got a kick out of that. Somehow within the span of those couple of minutes, the environment was worth half the time it was before. I should have gone up to him and said “Oh, 30 seconds? That’s a different story, I can spare that!” just to see what his reaction would have been.

I overheard two different conversations on a flight recently. To set the stage: I was near the rear of the plane. To my right was an elderly woman and behind us, in the last row, two of her female friends. In front of me were a teenage girl and her young brother, and across the aisle from them was their mother.

I didn’t see the boy when he sat down, but I heard his mom and sister talking to him. Before the plane took off, the mother passed his backpack across the aisle and told him to put it under the seat and if he got hungry during the flight, pull it out and get his snack, but “don’t start screaming”. Well my ears perked up a little at that. Screaming? Then the boy started freaking out about not wanting to fly and being scared. Just over and over saying he was scared and wanted to get off. The plane hadn’t even pushed off from the gate at this point so I knew I was in for a fun ride.

I started to suspect that the boy was developmentally challenged in some way, so I was being understanding about this. Not that I could have done anything anyway - what would I have done, yelled at the kid to shut up? But I did start to wonder if I’d have to break the rules and sneak my headphones on during the no-electronic-devices time period. I’m always a good passenger and follow the crew’s orders but this might just be a necessity, especially since I had my noise-canceling headphones. But there’s another reason I realized that wouldn’t be possible and I’ll get to that next.

The boy kept freaking out and the mother and sister were trying to calm him down. I heard the mother tell another passenger that last year he loved to fly and now all of a sudden he says he’s scared. The sister was trying to convince him that everything would be fine, as the plane was taxiing, and she said “you’re a born traveler”. He must have misheard her but his response was still pretty funny. He said “I’d rather be in a car and be a bored traveler, than be in a plane and be a scared traveler”. I’m not scared of flying, but assuming one is, that’s pretty sound logic. Have to give him that one.

Turns out that almost as soon as the plane was in the air, he was fine. There were a couple of times that the plane made some turn and he got a little excited, but for the most part he was quiet the rest of the flight, until we landed and he thought we were going to land in the water for a minute. It did sort of look like that since the airport was near the water.

The other conversation I overheard was the women sitting next to and behind me. By the way, they all had strong Southern accents. Texas I’m guessing, since I was flying out of Dallas. So picture all this said with a slow drawl. This was also before the plane took off. The flight attendants made the announcement to turn off all electronic devices. Then they announced it again a few minutes later. The woman next to me noticed a young man a few rows up that still had his phone on. The conversation went something like this:

Woman 1: That man up there is still on his phone.
Woman 2: He’s making a phone call?
Woman 1: No, but he’s texting or something. They announced two times to turn off electronics.
Woman 2: Well if we crash then I guess we’ll know why.
Woman 3: Well they won’t know because the black box won’t be able to tell.

All of that was said with absolute seriousness. I have to say, it’s also sound logic if you could bring a plane down with a phone. I don’t know anything about electronic fields or whatnot. All I know is that if it was possible to bring a plane down with a phone, then phones wouldn’t be allowed on planes. Do you really think they’ll go so far as to not let you bring a bottle of water on a plane but they’ll let you bring a device that can disrupt the navigation systems with a press of a button? And if it was that easy, terrorists wouldn’t be smuggling weapons onto planes, they’d just turn their phones on all at the same time. Dastardly!

That being said, I too was a little mad that the guy still had his phone on because if I’m going to follow some stupid rules then I want everyone else to have to follow them too.

I’ve gotten so sick of hearing about Twitter. I always thought it was some weird thing teenagers did but even the software company I work for is on Twitter now. They launched a new marketing campaign recently and when they told us that we’ll be on Twitter (in addition to Facebook) I thought “I give up… I’ve got to check out what the hell this Twitter thing is”.

So I created an account and… well it’s about what I thought it was. You send little text updates to people and receive updates from them. Kind of neat I guess but not seeing the big deal. First off, I already experience that to some degree with Facebook status updates. Secondly, this is what the media are hyping so much? People sending off 140 character messages about random stuff that’s happening? I suppose there could be some useful news in there but it’d be buried under a ton of boring crap.

That being said…

Hey everyone, I’m on Twitter!!! It’s sooo cool. If you aren’t on Twitter, you’re out of the loop. My username is magicpork.

OK, there I tried to sound excited about it. If you try to find me and can’t, then it probably means I’ve already given up by the time you read this. Consider this an experiment, much like this blog was. If you look like a spammer, I may prune you from my “followers” list, but other than that anyone & everyone can sign up to follow me.

If you’re not on Twitter and have no idea what I’m talking about, believe me I didn’t know what this stuff meant either until just this week. Magic Pork is not going away… I will continue to post very infrequent blog entries as I have been. I do tend to have things to say that take more than 140 characters.

Update: Because Twitter is lame, my account isn’t showing up yet when you search for me. If you’re logged into Twitter, try going to http://twitter.com/magicpork and clicking “Follow”.

Another update: My Twitter RSS feed is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/55052591.rss.