Monthly Archives: July 2011

Poets and Mathematicians

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“I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.”

— Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg is a poet, the author of my favorite poem. I’ve been thinking a lot about his quote this past week, which I’ve spent reading through the Zen Valedictorian articles over at Study Hacks. The articles are a better-expressed version of a life outlook that I’ve written about some on HackCollege, and which I espouse to anyone who will stand still in person: at some point, being the over-stressed, over-extended student in an attempt to be Tracy Flick will fail you. More importantly, even if it’s something that you can manage, at least for a little while, it’s still not an efficient use of your time. The students who stand out are the ones who become very good at something they enjoy. Colleges don’t tell their students that, though, and so you get the sort of student that the Zen Valedictorian articles are critiquing–over-worked and not particularly outstanding.

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I’m in the Target catalog!

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I’m in this year’s Target back-to-school catalog (as is my friend/coblogger Laura). I’m on the back, next to the legitimately kinda funny copy, “Keep your friends closer. Keep your family closer… ish.” (It’s advertising cell phones with which one can presumably screen one’s calls.) My head is right above the cell phone which I actually use and heartily recommend, if you’re going to be on Virgin Mobile. An editor at Target contacted me and Laura about the gig several months ago, so it’s awesome to finally see it in print.

Multiple people have been very sweet and posted copies of this on Facebook, which is very nice of them and makes me realize that folks actually read some of the stuff I put out, so that’s pretty neat! I managed to totally freak out my lab partner by stealing her copy of the catalog, since she didn’t know that my last name is what it is.

In other me-related news, I changed the background for my writing portfolio, which makes me feel pretty silly (it is a very large picture of my face), but whatever. Many thanks to Alesha, who took the photo in exchange for a bike/helped me set off fireworks in a pool last weekend.

Book Review: Daytripper

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A secene from the novel. (Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá)

I spent this last weekend in Athens, GA. In between drinking and setting off fireworks in a pool (fun and awesome!), I made my way down to Bizarro Wuxtry, the comics shop/general haven of weirdness that lives above regular Wuxtry, the music store where REM got its start. (I can’t hear well, and I don’t own a record player, so I prefer the bookstore.) I bought American Born Chinese but had to return it because a page was torn. Not wanting to disappoint the comic store clerk, I picked up Daytripper.

The graphic novel, written by two twin brothers, is set in São Paulo, Brazil. It tracks the life of a man named Brás de Olivia Domingos, who wants to be a novelist but writes obituaries for a living. Each chapter of the book follows him through an important life event, tracking what his obituary would read like if he died after it. The events span most of his life, and are united thematically rather than chronologically. Some of the events are real and some are imaginary; the distinction isn’t clear.

By the end of the book you have a pretty complete picture of his life, including Brás’ long-term and complicated relationships with his best friend Jorge, various women, and his father, a famous novelist in whose shadow he lives. Though not the most compelling narrative in the world (it’s a dreamy sort of book), the stories are interesting and allow you to see a bunch of different snapshots of Brazil.

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Monkey Jesus Loves Me

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MONKEY / Sriram Ramasamy / CC BY 2.0

In the last week, I have noticed that I’ve been running into a lot of monkeys in my out-of-school time. In-school, it’s less weird–my adviser literally runs a lab that studies monkey poop–but there’s usually not that much bleed-over into the real world. However, in the past week:

  • A monkey escaped from my school. The authorities are happy to report that it doesn’t have Herpes B, which can apparently kill people. So that’s exciting.
  • Monkeys stole some guy’s camera and took possibly-photoshopped pictures of themselves. My favorite part is the Boing Boing commenter discussion. I wrote that sentence before actually going to read the Boing Boing comments, because secret hint: my favorite part is always the Boing Boing comments.
  • I came across an adorable video of monkeys that appear to have handlebar mustaches. HANDLE BAR MUSTACHES.
  • I applied for a job at Mail Chimp*, which does not–contrary to what you might think of the name–actually mail chimps. Which is a relief, because chimps can and will rip your face off and/or eat babies.

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There is no Venn diagram here, because I am broken.

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I had this whole amusing thing planned for today, with a Venn diagram of my brokenness. ‘Cause, see, I went on a date this weekend (yay!), and it went well (yay!), which was great because if it hadn’t I would have had to banish this dude from my favorite coffee place, and that’s never fun. But instead I ate a cookie and talked, and those are pretty much my two favorite activities ever so All Was Well.

But the thing I was going to make the Venn diagram about was something I realized halfway through, which is that I am Bad At Date Conversation. I mean, normally this takes the path of me not shutting up while talking about the excitement of freelance writing (it is not exciting), but on this particular day that didn’t happen, because I had the good sense to not talk about work. Which was good! It’s like I’m an AI that learns from its previous social failures, except actually I think that just makes me a person.

So we talked for several hours, which was pretty great. Except that about halfway through I realized that I still have not quite mastered talking, because here are in no particular order the things that this person and I discussed:

  • The failures of Atlanta’s mass transit system, complete with art projects to commemorate them.
  • Thermite.
  • The fact that I know how to make knives out of rocks. (Not well, but still.) Continue reading →