patchouli! knowledge can be acquired so fast but how much of it is actually retained? i try to keep a running list (and a co-authored blog) of words that i encounter in my everyday reading. there are lots of words that i understand, but cannot define. i can use most words in a sentence, i can provide context, i can fuzzily describe what a word might mean or feels like; at gunpoint however, i could not give you the textbook definition of most words. i realized this maybe three years ago, at which point i took it upon myself to look up any word that i didn't know the exact definition of. obviously, this task proved to be too monumental. there are too many words and only so much time in a day. so now i just look up words that i'm confused about. which still amounts to maybe ten or twenty words a day.

realize that my everyday reading consists mostly of gossip rags, online sports sites, entertainment magazines, movie reviews and random internet articles. none of these categories would be considered high brow or educational. but yet i learn so much.

for example, i learned what "patchouli" meant maybe six months ago. and now i see the damn word everywhere. in one issue of entertainment weekly, i saw the word three times. i usually read ew cover to cover -- if i can get my hands on it. take this "patchouli" example and imagine how many other words i gloss over or don't comprehend when i'm reading about life after seinfeld or the newest hbo show. i'm missing out on so much even as i catch up on the lives of our celebrities.

and to think that big fun words like "higgledy-piggledy" are escaping my attention and are somehow nestled into my lowbrow readings. do readers of espn.com or the other useless junk i peruse even know what these words mean? apparently people everywhere are as smart as hell, even if they're more into lindsay lohan's breasts than international politics.

it saddens me how many words i don't know. and how many words i look up but immediately forget. but then it's such a thrill when words finally reveal themselves to you. like you've peeled back the curtain on yet another wizard of oz. "ha, i know your dictionary definition. gotcha you bastard." and how good does it feel to learn a new word and then incorporate it into your everyday vocabulary? it feels [insert big and descriptive word of your choice].

"the surest way to spot a nonreader: someone who comes into your house, looks at your books and asks, 'have you read all these?'"

one day it'll all make sense. some people are too pre-occupied with what everything means. in going from point A to point C, was a particular point B required? or would it have been more efficient to skip that point B and go straight to C? and if i did go to B, what did i learn or get out of that experience?

more simply put, was that job/relationship/vacation/dinner worth it? well, according to steve jobs, it's all worth it.

"again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. you have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. this approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

so which do you believe in? destiny, a higher purpose, karma? what's going to make all of your dots align and connect? and say some dots don't connect, and some of them seem superfluous and misleading, is that bad? is that wasted time? if we're to live every day like it's our last, aren't there a whole slew of things that we could toss out the window? maybe certain points are totally unnecessary and we lose more by indulging in them than we gain by trying them out.

but one can't think like this. because days are long. twenty four hours is long. we need time to waste time. there's the fear however, that all your time will be wasted if you're not moving forward. "keep learning, keep pushing." towards what though? if you don't belive there's an ultimate end point, one that you can clearly envision and strive for, how can you know where and when to push?

as we approach the years where we're supposed to accomplish things, is it time to save your strength to push towards something concrete? and not to just push for the sake of pushing? if you can't have some tangible proof for your efforts, was it ultimately worthless?

i've lost myself so i'm stopping.

while i'm at it, what does "my soul is like a pawnshop" mean? i read that statement somewhere and i thought it sounded potentially profound. but i can't divine the meaning or significance behind it. maybe there's another part of the sentence i missed out on or something.

mack the knife. do you think it's true that in matters of friendship backstabbing -- when a friend steals the girl that you like or maybe hooks up with your ex -- that guys are more forgiving than girls? this statement was postulated at a souplantation, so it possesses the ring of truth.

so, why are guys more forgiving of each other's transgressions? do girls have a longer memory? do they take things more personal? is there something fundamentally different about male and female friendships that allows one to more easily forgive backstabbing?

my hypothesis on this matter is that all guys realize they are capable of being backstabbers. girls tend to have smaller female circles and a higher sense of perceived morality; guys realize that they all have the potential to be benedict arnolds. so if a guy friend "slips," you can hate him, you can shun him, but in the end, it's the friendship that matters more. maybe you permanently lose some trust, maybe irreparable damage has been inflicted, but somewhere in the back of a victim guy's mind, there's a voice saying "hey, i might have done that under similar circumstances." or even "i have done that under similar circumstances, i'll let this one slide."

does this mean that guy friendships are "stronger" because we realize that in the end, we all have the potential to be biologically programmed bastards? maybe. i mean, it's tough for the pot to call the kettle black.

meteor shower. it hurts me to say it but the days of good comic book movies are over. arguably, there weren't that many good comic book movies to begin with. the first few supermans and batmans were supposedly good. x-men was pretty good. but everything from spiderman to daredevil to hulk to the new batman to the upcoming superman and the fantastic four sucks -- or will suck. the only way comic books will get any respect anymore will be through graphic novels like sin city, which resemble superhero comic books only in form.

the golden age of comic book movies lasted what, four years? and i am sad. do you realize that at the apex of this movement -- after the release of x-men 2 -- i had females asking/admiring me for my x-men knowledge? do you realize this? i had something valuable to the opposite sex. x-men made me cool, if only momentarily.

so, i expected a bigger and better mainstream push. i expected tv series chronicling the adventures of the x-men, plus all of their spinoffs like x-factor, the new mutants, excaliber, etc. i hoped against hope for names like banshee, havok, psylocke and cable to become part of this decade's vernacular. but no, i doubt we'll ever see it happen.

why will this catastrophe occur? because x-men 3 is gonna suck. big time. read this if you don't believe me. any time you've got frasier crane cast as a super agile and super strong "beast" in your superhero movie, you're done for. there's almost no chance that this third movie will defy the rule of craptastic third movies. part of the reason is a poor development team, part of the reason is that x-men has succeeded beyond its means, most of the reason this movie will suck is because bryan singer has left.

if you've never given a second thought to the impact a director can have on a movie, compare the first two x-mens to this upcoming third one. the first two came from the director of the usual suspects, the third one will come to you from the director of the rush hours, brett ratner, aka chris tucker's bitch.

see where i'm going with this? x-men 3 will suck. and with its suckage, superhero movies will die. maybe not immediately, but it'll die. again. maybe it'll die forever this time, never to rise phoenix-like from the ashes in true comic book fashion. after you've raped and pillaged the most beautiful and marketable comic book franchises, what else will be there to do the next time around? the green lantern? the avengers?

my only hope for successful movie franchises lie with derivative fantasy series like dragonlance and forgotten realms. will drizzt do'urden ever make it onto the big screen? i hope not if the results are going to be like the mind numbingly bad lord of the rings trilogy. is it time to give up hope on my youthful loves being displayed accurately for the masses? probably.

memorial day 2006, the planned release date of x-men 3, is the nail in the coffin. trust me.

last call. i've never gone to a bar to have a round of drinks with the boys. or engaged in male bonding over a few beers. maybe it's because i'm not a big drinker. or maybe it just doesn't happen like that. the closest i've ever come to one on one male bonding over anything has been over a hookah -- or maybe coffee and an omelette. actually wait, i lied. there's been some instances of male bonding over drinks, but that was in new york, where the only public places to hang out are invariably going to be bars.

so when i think about two buddies stumbling out of some bar, arms over shoulders, red-faced and laughing, i can't relate. like, at all. in my experience, male bonding happens over video games and sports. or just through repeated exposure to one another. male friendships grow like fungus. slowly but surely. i feel like with female friendships, you put your time in early, and then you adjust as you see where it goes. with girls, there's always a period of talking and "getting to know each other."

so female friendships tend to work in reverse of male friendships. female friendships have a steep friendship spike in the beginning, leading to a possible drop off. with guys, it's a slow incline until you're amazingly best friends for life. does this hold true from a female's perspective?

follow the leader. being in a city where you have no idea where anything is is very disorientating. but it's also kind of nice. to just follow and not have to think about where you are. this must be what it feels like when people go visit friends in new york. every street corner feels familiar, every subway station exits a thousand and one ways. that's why, in any urban city, you need a compass. people are always talking about "north of such and such a street, west of the park." unless you're gifted with a natural sense of direction, it's nigh impossible to figure out which way is what. and most cities aren't as perfectly gridded as most of manhattan is. actually, even with perfect grids, the blocks in manhattan can be so long that you can't read the next street sign anyway.

so, i carry a compass -- two actually -- so i that i'll always know which way is magnetic north. as a society, we've lost touch with our senses of direction. simply observing the sun's position used to impart so much information, now we're lost without gps and a fold out map. everyone needs to spend six bucks and invest in a small clippable compass, preferably with a cool carabiner. maybe i should start collecting compasses and then giving them away to friends. perhaps this is my destiny.

oh yeah, i'm in san francisco. it's day seven of a ten day trip. this is supposed to be my "would i ever live in san francisco?" trip. so far i'm still undecided. but i'm leaning towards no. i like the relatively open feeling of most of san francisco, in comparison to new york, but it's still too city for me. i don't like the idea of having to walk everywhere and taking a multitude of buses. am i past the city phase in my life? did i ever even have a city phase in my life? to be decided.

nice bookstores here though. and the internet cafes. i'm watching x-men on a big screen while ibooking it in a coffeeshop. lovely. it's amazing how i can sit here for six hours doing nothing on the net, while at work, i need to get up to move around every half an hour or so. i think i was genetically engineered to sit in cafes. this is my destiny.

ear ring. i thought i wanted to be a concert person. i thought wrong. concerts are for people who enjoy the energy that a mass of maniacs can generate. concerts are for people who don't care about the well being of others around them. concerts are for people who can withstand the standing. concerts are for people who don't feel like functioning ear drums are important. i am not one of those people.

june has been, and will continue to be, the month of concerts. there was common last wednesday, roots yesterday, and digable planets this upcoming sunday. depending on how things line up, i'll be going to digable again and then hopefully, cross my fingers, the alanis (with jason mraz) concert.

what have i learned after my concert experiences? well, for one, i'm not an open standing area concert goer. i know, totally uncool and totally old. i don't really need or want seats, but i don't want to worry about elbows in my face, or a guy's tush push coming way too close to my nether regions. i don't want some rhythm-less idiot gyrating away in front of me while i wonder if i've ever danced this close with a male before. i don't want your best beyonce impression or your awesome body roll. i just don't want it, do i have to explain why?

i don't want to worry about big hair, big asses or big people period. it must suck to be a bigger guy at a concert -- i mean, everyone hates you. even the friends you went with probably hate you. nobody can see over a mountain, even if the mountain ranges in size from just under six feet to well over.

at the common concert, i felt small and very slight. at the roots concert, i felt like i was relatively tall and an imposition on the people behind me. the roots concert was filled with asians. the common concert, blacks and whites. amazing how a change in crowd can make you feel adequately sized. i'm tall, i'm tall! but if i'm tall(er) i feel like the short(er) people behind me can't see anything. am i just being overly sensitive?

i also don't want to be one of those guys who half pushes their way through the crowd but then stops right in front of some five foot no inches girl. i mean, is that the wackest move ever? i'm gonna start bringing tasers with me to concerts. *zap* "sorry, you're within my static electricity zone, i suggest you move." hate these guys. have they no sense of chivalry?

also, at concerts, it's hard to move or dance. i mean, everyone feels the need to be really close to the stage -- because being closer means a better experience? i don't know. i prefer being on the uncrowded outside wing of a concert. this way, i can dance if i want, or bob side to side arrhythmically if i want. well, actually, i'm pretty arrhythmic regardless of whether i want to be or not. oh well. i'm telling you, the side is where it's at. i don't need to be that close to the stage, i can see just fine from the back. i'm tall remember?

anyway, when i'm in public, i don't want to worry about people to the fore and aft of me getting an errant elbow. i have sharp pointy elbows. and soft eyeballs, which i'd like to preserve for at least a few more years. i mean, after a concert, i've probably permanently damaged my sense of hearing, must my other senses suffer too? stop raising your fist and pumping so hard jackass. stop clapping so enthusiastically, you're way off beat. idiot.

my hate for mankind is never stronger than at concerts. nobody cares about the people next to them, it's every (wo)man for himself. and then you have the artist on stage screaming about "love, love makes the world go round. put it up for l-o-v-e..." fuck. if love ruled the day we would have demarcated standing spots during concerts and separate sections for short/tall/smelly/clean/drunk/undrunk people. concerts are just too much chaos for me.

i think i'm a listen to CDs loudly in my car kind of guy.

so much for being a cool concert goer person. hey, at least i tried. then again, i'd bet there's not much pushing at celine dion concerts. maybe i should re-evaluate my taste in music. celine's got some catchy tunes, right?

oh, but one thing about concerts that is cool. great moments. like when floetry closed their set with a rendition of the song from coming to america. "let's hear for my band, sexual chocolate."

i got 101 dalmations but a bitch ain't one. it's not often a pink clad book with images of girls in various states of repose captures my attention. but this book, about girlfriends, present and ex, is awesome. it looks like a chick lit book on the outside, but as is the case with most chicks, looks can be deceiving. the book is a collection of relationship stories, all written by a man in exactly 101 words. it's amazing. here's a sample while i go off to compose my own 101 words.

"my girlfriend left me, and i started crying in my sleep. my nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. the press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. they tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. i watched the coverage. people were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that i should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl."
-anthropology, 101 true love stories-

ryde and die. having a swimming pool in your backyard is one hundred times more likely to kill your child than having a gun around, as stated in freakonomics. even taking into account some mitigating factors, a child probably still has a twenty five times greater chance of drowning than getting shot. so what do you do? not install a pool in your new house? buy a retractable cover for your pool (which actually makes it more dangerous)? use the community pool policed by bored and distracted high school lifeguards? buy a really big tub? dig up the slip'n slide?

how do we take these kinds of statistics into our lives, ones that clearly show us that one thing is more dangerous than the other. for the longest time, i had this quote up in my bathroom: "more people are killed annually by donkeys than die in commercial airline crashes." that statistic turns out to be highly suspect, but it was amusing anyway. donkeys killing more people than airplanes? now i have nothing to fear but donkey rides.

while it's easy to avoid donkeys, there is a certain amount of risk we have to live with. cars for example. cars may cause a high number of deaths and injuries, but most of us need vehicular transportation. we take the risk of driving because the accompanying reward of travel freedom is worth it. now, for something like drinking and driving, the reward to risk ratio probably makes less sense. but maybe some statistician could prove that drinking and driving isn't as dangerous as eating candy bars, i don't know.

how about getting on a motorcycle? nobody needs a motorcycle, but lots of people covet or own one. bikes are fun. bikes are fast. bikes are dangerous. there's a reason why mothers cry when their sons get on motorcycles. bikes, and a generic biker's mentality, are designed for achievement of a rush. nobody gets a rush at 50mph, that rush only comes at high speeds, risky speeds.

most anecdotal evidence i've heard about bikers involve the time "i almost died" or "crashed but only broke my collarbone, femur and half my right pinky." it's almost a badge of honor, a rite of passage, to crash and live to laugh about it.

but what happens when you don't get to live and laugh? every time you get on a motorcycle, your survival rate drops dramatically. or so i've heard. just this morning, a programmer here at work lost his life riding his special edition harley to work. he died maybe a mile from here, t-boned at an intersection through no fault of his own. that silver metallic beauty we all admired in the parking lot led directly to the loss of his life.

james also got into a similar type of accident less than two weeks ago. same type of intersection, same work day traffic rush, same reckless driver running a red. but the difference was that james was in a car, so he was left with nary a scratch on his body. two accidents, same circumstances, nearly the same locations, two entirely different outcomes.

is the moral of the story here that bikes are dangerous and shouldn't be purchased and enjoyed? hard to say. you have to risk a little to live a little. and hey, who am i to opine about endangering one's health? i still smoke. and that makes less sense than riding a motorcycle if you think about it. at least with a motorcycle, you could probably qualify your joy. i can't qualify the joys of smoking -- there's nothing particularly joyful about it.

so when you hear that someone dies from a motorcycle accident, or dies from lung cancer, what do you think? i think "he knew the risks, he paid the price, too bad." so when i see my friends mount up, or i myself light up, a similar statement goes through my head. i don't want them (or me) to die, but hey, do what you gotta do right? heed the warnings, minimize the risks, and make sure you enjoy the rewards enough to make it all worth it.

but when something bad happens, well......you had it coming?

under the table and dreaming. there was a movie that came out a few years ago that i'd always meant to watch. i never got to watch it and promptly forgot about it, until i saw it at a bookstore being sold for ten dollars. so i picked it up and watched it. i'll pause here for congenial applause.

the idea is to remain in a constant state of departure while always arriving. it saves on introductions and goodbyes.

it's a trip. perhaps an amazing trip, but i can't tell yet. it's a very confusing movie. not because the plot is convoluted or poorly executed but because the dialogue was hard to follow. it's a conversation movie, but not really a conversation. just a ton of monologues and diatribes about philosophy and dreaming and life.

"the basic plot of the film is based on a physiological phenomenon known as 'lucid dreaming'. lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming."

that's what the plot of the movie is based on, but actually watching it, you have no clue that this is what it's about because you're constantly distracted by words, ideas, and images. the visuals of the film are amazing. it's a live-action film underneath animated layers, so the actors, backgrounds and shots are bathed in cartoon lines and colors. it's an interesting effect. kind of annoying and dizzying at first but then the animations start to make perfect sense.

watching the movie, i couldn't help getting lulled into a state of near sleep. as much as i wanted to pay attention to every line and every word, i couldn't. the words came too fast and furious. the ideas were too plentiful to grasp. nobody can concentrate that hard for that long. kind of a sad statement actually, on our mtv induced attention spans, but also an ode to how deep the movie is. i wouldn't call any of the ideas particularly ground-breaking, since it's like a philosophy 102 class, but presented in this format, the material is intimidating and overwhelming. that's how i felt, overwhelmed. i'm gonna have to watch this movie like twenty more times, in ten minute snippets, to get anything out of it.

i'm afraid that i'll love this movie after i've watched it those twenty minutes. because i think this is the kind of movie that i should like, that i want to like, so i'll make myself like it. which makes me wonder if i'm just kidding myself. maybe this movie is bad, but i'll say it's good, just because it's supposed to be right up my alley. and i want to be up my alley. it's like i'll turn myself into who i think i am, rather than going along with what i actually am. you know?

and on really romantic evenings of self, i go salsa dancing with my confusion.

oh yeah, the name of the movie is "waking life." and the director, richard linklater, is a name that i always keep an eye on, as he was the director of slacker, dazed and confused, and before sunrise/sunset.

"this entire thing we're involved with called the world is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others' presence. the world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. our eyesight is here as a test, to see if we can see beyond it. matter is here as a test for our curiosity. doubt is here as an exam for our vitality."
-speed levitch, waking life-

gotta be the shoes. this may not mean much to you if you're not shopping obsessed, but i bought sixteen pairs of shoes and eight pairs of pants/board shorts yesterday. that's right. sixteen shoes, eight board shorts. all for the ultra low price of thirty two dollars -- total. what? how can this be? am i buying used second-hand crap clothes? nope. i bought next season's hit clothes at bargain prices. could life get any better?

before this fortuitous friday, i was in a clothing slump. clothing costs so much nowadays and the desire to buy anything priced over twenty dollars had to be curtailed. but going to the ripcurl sample sale solved all of that.

word had spread throughout the day of a sample sale down the street from my work. when i first got there, i was excited just to see ten dollar board shorts and ten dollar pairs of shoes. but as the end of the sale neared, the prices kept dropping. five dollars for shoes. five dollars for board shorts. then two dollars for board shorts. then one dollar for a pair of shoes. by the time i heard that shoes were a dollar, i had already outfitted myself with a huge box and had started grabbing any matching shoes that i could get my hands on. it's amazing how good so-so shoes can look when they're priced to buy.

one thing about sample sales, all the sizes are uniform and if you're not that size, tough. i wear size 32 waist and have size 9 shoes. guess what the sample sizes were? yup, as it turns out, i am the perfect sample size. there is a shopping god. on other thing, sample sale shoes usually have a hole drilled through the soles. so you have to get rubber cement to fix up the hole, but that's a small price to pay for new shoes.

did i ever tell you that my number one clothing goal is to own tons of shoes?

grabbing clothes without a care about the price is the most liberating thing ever. need to double up on some shoes -- one for wearing, one for backup/display? do it, it's only a dollar. i was shaking from the aftermath of buying so much and spending so little. we literally were the last people in line. we closed out the sample sale. and now we're practically sponsored by ripcurl, my new favorite brand.

i wanted to post pictures of my box of shoes, but i gave most of them away. i was too excited to have shoes and shorts to give away that i forgot to take pictures. but rest assured, on the feet and surrounding the loins of all of my friends, rests the plunder of two hours at the sample sale. best day ever.

that's why i couldn't be happier
no, i couldn't be happier
though it is, i admit, the tiniest bit
unlike i anticipated but i couldn't be happier
simply couldn't be happier

'cause getting your dreams it's strange,
but it seems a little -- well -- complicated
there's a kind of a sort of : cost
there's a couple of things get: lost
there are bridges you cross
you didn't know you crossed
until you've crossed and if that joy, that thrill
doesn't thrill you like you think it will

still with this perfect finale
the cheers and ballyhoo
who wouldn't be happier?
so i couldn't be happier
because happy is what happens
when all your dreams come true
well, isn't it?
happy is what happens
when your dreams come true!
-wicked, thank goodness-

the sting. does anyone take criticism well? it's hard to find someone who will smile and thank you after you criticize them. and like really criticize them, not stuff like "oh, socks and sandals don't go well together. maybe you should change." but when you criticize something that someone actually cares about, how do most people react? maybe they respond positively at first, and they might even thank you for your candor, but afterwards, i feel like a lot of people start to turn what you've said into something personal.

"why did that person just criticize me? who are they to say i didn't do something right? they don't know what they're talking about. they don't know me. fuck'em. who do they think they are?" and at that point, your well intentioned criticisms are lost in a swirl of denials and defenses.

and when you're the one giving the criticism, it should be assumed that you're criticizing someone to better themselves, and not just because you think it should be a certain way -- if it's not, hold your tongue. there's also being overly critical and then trying to be constructively critical. it may be hard for someone to take one without confusing it with the other. make your criticisms count.

and even when we give out constructive criticism, our inner nice guy tends to kid-glove it. like you hold back in fear of hurting people's feelings. in fear of permanently injuring your friendship. so we say one or two bad things as opposed to the fifty you really think. but really, if you're gonna take your shots, and they're asking for it, why not give'em the double barrel? why hold back anything?

sensitivity shouldn't be an issue between two really good friends. it's better to be honest with our criticisms, rather than careful.