Verde que te quiero verde, pt. 2

St. Patrick’s Day was the other day. Traditionally, people wear a bit of green to celebrate. But I always feel the need to go all out in my Patty's Day apparel. Partially it’s because of my thin ties to the Emerald Isle, and partially it’s because I'm not sure whether or not I'm a leprechaun. My sense of loyalty and devastating fear of the unknown cause me to pretend to be something I'm not, or maybe am. Thus I trudge on, depressed and dressed in green, seeking some semblance of affirmation by putting on a facade and hoping it's not one. People tend to enjoy this outward kowtow to a debilitating inner conflict, so that's how I continue to celebrate. But for those who don’t have emotional issues and the looks of a jolly green midget, simply wearing green does just fine.

In fact, it does highly fine. Several years ago, I postulated that people who wear green are mighty fine. As the SPD came and went this year, I reflected on this assertion; I am of the opinion that this remains true to this day. Now, I recognize that this is an opinion. But I also recognize that not all opinions are created equal, and I wanted to see how my opinion stood up to the indisputable virtues of truth and internet science. Thus I embarked on an interwebbital journey for confirmation bias.

METHOD

I scoured the internet looking for veritable evidence of whether or not people look better when wearing green. The evidence I found was veritable. Below I have juxtaposed pictures of common internet folk. One picture is said internet folk not wearing green. The connected picture is of the same internet folk wearing green. You be the judge as to which one looks better:

RESULTS

Now if you're like me, you're hesitant to trust average people. After all, they're average, and we're all familiar with the law of averages. But I think we can all agree that we know we can trust celebrities. They live exemplary lives and never let us down and are immune to the problems of common riffraff/streetrats/streetdwellers/streetfolk/commonfolk/commoners. Here are some examples with celebrities—people you can trust—, following the same format:

*These are real pictures of real celebrities, and no stunt doubles were used for any of these pictures

Joan Rivers

Robert Downey, Jr.

The Hulk

Neville Longbottom

Britney Spears

Miley Cyrus

Lindsey Lohan

Arnold Schwarzenneger

Michael Jackson

Steve Urkel

Batman

Marilyn Manson

And Lady Gaga

DISCUSSION

There's not really anything to discuss; I think the results speak for themselves. In honor of science and celebrities and veritability, I think it's high time people started making the change for themselves and going green. In fact, I'm so encouraged by the results, I've created a tumblr account on which people can share their success stories. It's a support group of sorts. I've entitled it Trans(vert)mation. Vert is the French word for green. The whole word actually sounds much more exotic and desirable if pronounced with an outrageous French accent. It's okay to be afraid, but don't let it stop you. Feel free to send me before and after pics and I'll add them to the irrefutable evidence of the re(vert)lution. You, too, can reach out to your best self and make the trans(vert)mation.

You're Going to Die, Again

There have long been rumblings throughout the history of the world that, some day, the world will be history. In our ever-nagging desire to be able to predict (and thereby establish control over) the world around us, many people have attempted to pinpoint when exactly the world will transition from presently- and pleasantly-inhabited sphere to historical factoid. There was the Y2K scare. There was that prophet guy. There was that Mayan Doomsday. And now we've got Ragnarök. Oh and it's today.

Ragnarök is the ancient Norse doomsday, essentially. According to Norse tradition/mythology, after 3 years of never-ending winter, a mighty horn would blow and signal the beginning of the end. The gods would engage in mighty battle, destroying everything and resulting in a reset of the human race. Only two would survive to repopulate a new and fertile earth: Lif and Lifthrasir.

I haven't personally experienced 3 years of never-ending winter, but I can't speak for the whole world. There was that polar vortex, which may have included a time warp or a worm hole. And I didn't hear a mighty horn blow, but I did get some nice new headphones and maybe I just missed it. Another downside of having to always be connected. So seeing as how my name is neither Lif nor Lifthrasir, it looks like this will be the end for me. I had no idea it was so close; I wish the Norse would've been a little bit better about communicating these things. All it would've taken was a quick editorial or blog entry to a major news site and I wouldn't have to scramble to find fulfillment and meaning in my life before it's prematurely and violently snuffed out.

A few years ago, when I caught word of the Mayan Doomsday, I decided to compile a list of things to do before I died. I wasn't able to accomplish the vast majority of them before that Doomsday hit. Luckily, the day came and went, and the world wasn't completely annihilated. This was good in general, and especially because it allowed more time for me to complete my list!  !!!  Here's an update on how things are going with my list! !

Join a Yacht club

So the yacht club that I originally intended to join seems to have disappeared without a viable trace of their contact information or very existence. I wasn't aware it was a secret yacht club, or I would've probably tried a little harder to get in. Needless to say, I didn't complete this item.

Start an Emu farm

Technically I didn't start my own emu farm. But I do drive by several farms on my way to work, and one of them has an emu on it that I see from time to time. My crippling social anxiety has kept me from networking with that particular farm owner, but I have a lead. We'll mark this one partially completed, citing disability.

Wrestle a large dangerous animal

I'm not much of wrestler, I'm more of a pacifist. I don't remember where this desire came from, but the closest I've come is probably playing with my nieces. They're not large or animals. But Ragnarök says that there will be ferocious beasts involved in the end of the world, so maybe they'll come this way and I'll be able to complete this goal and update my post to all those who are anxiously waiting to know in their last precious moments on this earth. I'll mark this one AS OF YET incomplete.

Invent something [preferably useful] that gets famous

I don't have many resources to work with as an inventor. But I have come up with some neat app gaming ideas in my mind that would probably definitely get famous. The only qualification was invent it, which I did conceptually, and I didn't establish a timetable for famous, so I'll mark this okay pretty complete.

Have a reason to be interviewed

See this one's a little hard to gauge. Some people might be genuinely interested in learning more about traditionally uninspiring aspects of my life, like my sock collection or my sleight in hanging wall art. So I don't want to deflate anyone's enthusiasm, I'll mark this well it depends.

Wear a speedo in public

Check

Get a real-life massage in a real-life massage place

This one could be open for interpretation as well. I went to the mall yesterday and got a massage in/from one of those massage chairs that are just sitting unhygienically out in the middle of the hallway. So technically it was a real-life massage, but the reality-lifeness of the place is less technical. This one's a well yeah if.

Drive one of those golf carts around campus

I can't even think of anything relatively close to this one. Incomplete

See the aurora borealis

I did look at pictures and even a video of it on the internet the other day. So in a way I guess.

Go to space

No. I did listen to a broadcast that was supposed to show the nearby flyby of a potentially dangerous asteroid in our galaxy. But they didn't actually ever find the asteroid (!) and I wasn't actually in space, so in spirit.

Be in a volcano

Not physically. Emotionally, yes.

Grow a beard

Grew and metrosexually maintained. Check

Evolve something cool

I recently thought of something that I could do that might potentially alter the evolutionary course of my offspring for generations to come, but I don't personally know how to go about conscientiously evolving things. So no not really or AS OF YET incomplete, depending on how you look at it.

Beat up a bad guy

I had a dream about it once, not too long ago. So pretty much no, but I did dream about it.

Travel cool places

I went to the Dominican Republic this past summer, which is a quite cool place. Check

Lay siege to something

Mmm I have a new roommate and sometimes he and his fiancée just sit in our room and I feel weird about being in there at the same time as them so I just kind of wait them out in the living room. Not in a cool way

Something love related, I'm sure

Another ambiguous one. I didn't actually experience an unusual amount of love towards another human being, but it's almost baseball season, and I went on some dates and I'm wearing pants with hearts on them, which are all love related, so sure

So if you count partial completions, I'm at about 5/17. And according to Norse calculations, I have about 11 hours left. That's completing a new life-long aspiration every hour until I go out wrestling a ferocious beast. Doable. Hopefully, this will all qualify me for the ranks of Einherjar. Valhalla receive me!!!

Thom Martin

Oh, what's this? Oh just a picture I found on the internet. Yeah just the frontman of my favorite band coddling what looks to be the same-ish guitar I just purchased. See the resemblance?

Manifest destiny.

Grammar Detective, pt. 1

Recently, I was reading. As the words passed through my brain, one particular combination caused a brain clog. Such was the nature of the unpleasantry that I had to fix the clog. The phrase was:

‘hold my own’

Examples:  I can hold my own in cage fights with wolverines. My roommate holds his own when he’s pixie dancing.

Hold my own? Hold my own what? What does that even mean?

As I researched the phrase, I found things. But they didn’t satisfy. They didn’t make semantic or morphologic sense. I was left empty. So empty…

But then my brain unclogged a bit, and I was able to think. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. Maybe I was missing some key factor. Since the phrase didn’t make sense as presently constituted, perhaps there was a previous constitution that made lots of sense—a sense factory, if you will. Maybe the phrase had changed over time. But from what? Since an own or one’s own is not something that can have an action done thereunto, I decided to investigate this first. The only logical explanation is that the original phrase employed some different manifestation of ‘own,’ a different spelling maybe.

Whilst preserving the phonetic purity of the word, the only other spelling I’ve found is ‘Oanh,’ a Vietnamese surname. Therefore, the phrase, written, is actually ‘hold my Oanh,’ which is to hold this:

Maybe it's a holdover from the war. Maybe it was coined to engender interracial appreciation. Maybe it's a phrase of endearment. By all means, it doesn’t make sense.  ...logically. But it does make perfect sense semantically and morphologically, and the primary purpose of language is semantics. Therefore semantic accuracy is always the goal, and can always be used to sort out confusing linguistic conundrums. Personally, I think it better not to make an Oanh one's own, let alone hold one. But to each his Oanh.

Polish

I’ve often been told throughout my life that I can be anything I put my mind to. After a number and variety of crippling failures, I’ve come to face the bitter reality that that’s simply not true. *sob* Give me a minute…

*clears throat* But I have found a loophole, and, after all, that’s what life is all about: finding loopholes so we can continue to justify living and believing how and what we want instead of facing reality. The loophole in question is Halloween. Every year, on this purportedly hallowed ween, you can be, if just for one night, whatever is within the reach of your imagination and means...

Cue another edition of Arts & Crafts!

I love me some Halloween action. Mostly because I love coming up with and making my costume. If you’re brave enough to peruse my blog (MostlySFW), you’ll find ghosts of Halloween Past. Not specifically ghosts, but costumes. My blog is not haunted. (probably) Most years, I think up my costume early, like sometimes by the summertime sometime. This year was a bit later, but I’m happy with how it turned out. My costume? A totem pole. Would you like to see how I made it? Step into my office.

Prep work

Research. For those who don’t know, totem poles are structures carved from trees by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

They were created usually to commemorate legends, beliefs, lineages, or notable events. I am indigenous to the Pacific Northwest. And in seeking to create my costume and continue my Halloween tradition, I was commemorating both a legend and a lineage of Halloween costumes which came before. I found this very fitting, like hopefully my costume would be.

From a design standpoint, totem poles usually consist of a pole and totems. These totems are groups of figures or characters stacked one upon another, forming a tower of sorts. The most prominent feature of each figure is the face. Sometimes the face is the only feature of each character that is displayed. They also boast some sweet designs and accoutrements. Therefore:

Pole position

The first thing I had to do was give myself the illusion of a pole. Poles are like this    l     . Humans are more like this o-+––< My body is kind of like a pole, but then I have all of these pesky limbs and stuff that totally throw it off. So to reestablish polarity, I had to sever my limbs. Metaphorically. In reality, I just had to fuse all of me together. Instant pole.

To do this, I bought a fabric in which to swaddle myself. When wrapped properly, the fabric hid the fact that I have separate legs; when I was done, no one would have suspected it. To add to the totemnity of my pole, I looked for a fabric that sported a Native American-inspired design. And I found one:

Personal totems

On a totem pole, the next definingest feature to the poles is the totems. Totems in most cases are faces. Totems in this case would also be faces. My face, to be exact.

I stood in the bathroom and took a series of pictures of myself, like a teenage girl. I made a different face in each one, unlike a teenage girl. Once I had gotten a gaggle of faces that I found satisfactory, I took them to a local print shop to have them printed off. Before doing so, I asked the deskman how frequently people printed off weird things there. Deskman told me that people did it all the time. I don’t know if she was being honest or if she just wanted me to print them off so she could laugh at whatever came out. I left that shop with a stack of papers with my own face on them.

I cut out my faces, which was a surreal and terrifying experience. After regaining a sense of reality, and once decapitated from the paper, I attached the faces down my front at equally-spaced intervals.

Wing thing

A stylistic element I added was wings. Some totem poles have wings, and I’ve always wanted wings. To create the wings, I bought poster board and markers that resembled wings. I then did a little bit of research on Native American designs, and began to draw and color and cut. After a while, a finished product was finished.

I detached my arms from the rest of my body and used an ancient Native American technique to attach the wings to my detached arms (tape).

Accoutrements

To emphasize my Native Americanness, I found a few more accessories. First was a ribbon with a pattern. I used it as a headband and wristbands. 

Next was a thing. I don’t know what to call it. But it is a thing that looks like this:

We'll call it a dangle strip. I attached these around my ankles. Last but not least was a cheap pair of moccasin slippers.

Totem Pole

And the final totem pole:

This is me as a totem pole. 

I enjoyed this costume thoroughly. Only a few caveats: It was hard to go anywhere when outfitted as a pole. Poles have/are just one leg, which makes it impossible to walk by definition. This particular pole had wings. But they were fake wings, which meant no flying. On top of that, they make it quite difficult to grip and maneuver a steering wheel. If you've ever had wings before, you know what I'm talking about. Also, people try to carve things into you. Whether it was their initials or those of their significant other or both in a mathematical equation of sorts, I was never keen on the idea and had to disappoint several times. But aside from that, being a pole is cool. Sometimes people wouldn’t know which face to talk to, but that can be seen as a plus. If ever I said something inappropriate or awkward, there was always another face to blame. Also if I needed to escape any other socially-tense situations, I could just assume pole position and people would think I was an actual totem pole. Finely crafted.

And when all was said and done, wings make a nice addition to any and all home decor.

Native Americans know.

What We've All Been Searching For

I recently hit a blogular milestone: One of my posts got to 1000 views. So popular, on the internet. It only took 2 years' time to accomplish, which rounds out to almost 1.4 views per day, 41 per month. So so popular.

Intrigued by such astounding popularity, I got to noticing and I noticed that of my other blog posts, my next nearest one was only at about 400 views, which rounded out to significantly less views per day. This math astounded me and I told it to get out of my life. More research led me to find that the way most people came across the aforementioned post wasn’t because I was cool or because of my writing style or because anyone cares about my existence. It was because people search for things on the internet. My blog is on the internet and it contains things. Therefore, from time to time, particular searches led them to particular blog.

After emerging from a deep and dreary depression, I needed to know what searches made this particular post so popular. I found that people like and/or are afraid of gingers.  Redhead festival, red head festival, red hair festival, ginger head, and scrawny ginger were the most common searches to present my blog to the unsuspecting public.  I don’t know what people were hoping to find in searching such things, but that’s not important. What’s important, as every blogger knows, is views.  Viieeewwwwzz.

If you know me, you know that I am aware of the existence of science (!) .  So. In my ongoing search for knowledge and popularity and acceptance on the internet, I have decided to increase my view total by x using science (!) . I’m going to link to pictures and sites of highly searched things so that people will look at my blog. After all, no one cares about actual meaningful content. They just want the juicy bits. So here are some bits and I think they’re juicy. We’ll see how long this one takes to hit 1000 in comparison to the other one.  Should you feel the need to sign some sort of permission form before participating in this study, here is one, just after the fact. Just print it off and send it to me. Now on to the juice:

Justin Bieber

Miley Cyrus

Obama

Obamacare

Hot women

Kardashian

iPhone News

http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/



BCS

http://www.bcsfootball.org/


Super Bowl

http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/48


Super Bowl Commercials

http://www.superbowl-commercials.org/


Political Unrest in the Middle East

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2045328,00.html



Funny Cat Pictures

http://www.funnycatpix.com/



International Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law



The Migratory Patterns of Caribou

http://www.beingcaribou.com/beingcaribou/backg/mig.htm



Quantum Physics and Yoga

http://www.quantumyoga.com/quantum-yoga/quantum-physics/



How to train bumble bees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoptera_training



Medieval Recipes

http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/



Star Wars Origami

http://www.starwarigami.co.uk/diagrams-by-others.html



Where exactly Waldo is

http://whereswaldo.com/index.html#home



The secrets of ancient alchemy

http://gizmodo.com/meet-the-man-who-decodes-the-ancient-secrets-of-alchemy-633187520



How to get married on World of Warcraft

http://voices.yahoo.com/want-married-world-warcraft-206624.html?cat=41



The Irrelevance of the Presentist/Eternalist Debate for the Ontology of Minkowski Spacetime

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871177406010059



Kissing Tips


http://voices.yahoo.com/how-kiss-well-ten-very-good-tips-219292.html

I think that pretty well covers it. Bring on the science and the viiewwszz.

I've Been Away, Pt. 3

This will simply be my overall impression of the trip, 4 months after the trip:  Amazing, to say the least. But I never say the least. Not on the internet.

One thing that I really enjoyed was getting to know a different part of the country. My first visit saw me spend the vast majority of my time in the capital of Santo Domingo, which is in the south-central Dominican Republic. This time I was stationed in the north. When people hear I’ve been to the DR, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the beaches–they ask me how they were. For the longest time, I’ve had to tell people I didn’t know; beaches do not line the entire island, and there aren’t many nice beaches close to my side of the capital. But this time, si. The north is where some of the most beautiful beaches in the country are located, and I got to go see them with my very own eyeballs–I’ve never been one to borrow eyeballs. My eyeballs tell me that they look just as nice as the postcards in real life, if not better. The north also boasts many mountainous regions–which are also quite beautiful–, and a much more laid-back approach to life. All of these things dieron gusto.

Another thing I found to my interest was getting to know different aspects of the country and culture–specifically education. My first trip was fairly focused in purpose, and the education system was not on the ledger. This time, my trip was also focused. But education was on the ledger. It made up the entirety of the ledger, being the ledger. I’m going to look up the definition of ledger to make sure I’m using it correctly.     Yup. It was interesting to see the role that education played in the lives of many of the people I came in contact with, and to see the ways in which its administration was failing or helping them. Growing up, I was immersed in an education system. I was not, however, savvy to its structure or mechanics. As I grew, I did not become much more aware. But going somewhere where something you grew up with is completely different makes you think about it. So I thought more about educational systems in general: what makes them, what makes them effective, inefficiencies, etc. All of this helped me to understand the people and culture more, as well as my own. All of this dio gusto.

Another aspect of the country that I got my first real taste for/of was that of tourism. Being with the beaches made for a much different experience. Living in Cabarete was very different from living in Santo Domingo. Suffice it to say that, although I was not a tourist, I felt very much like one. And that got me thinking about tourism and its effects on… well, lots of things. Tourism can be good in the sense that it tends to help the economy of a country or area. Tourism can be bad in the sense that it can harm the culture of a country or area. When one’s economic livelihood is dependent on a particular demographic, one caters to said demographic–this is a concept that is at the very heart of capitalism. Industries like tourism tend to be focused on economic and not sociological factors. Sociological factors, however, continue to exist and be affected, whether they be taken into consideration or not. It was interesting to me to consider the ways in which local tourism affected specific aspects of the life and culture there. Having experienced Dominican life outside of a tourist hotspot, it wasn’t difficult to recognize the differences.

I guess having new and swell experiences was the major theme of and takeaway from this trip. Again, living in Cabarete was different than living in Santo Domingo. In some ways, this made me a little bit sad. But mostly because my time in Santo Domingo was so great. I don’t know if I was expecting or even wanting it to be a very similar experience, but it differed in a lot of ways. However, the difference gives me reason to love and be thankful for both. In Santo Domingo, I got to live the life of a Dominican:  I lived in typical Dominican neighborhoods, among typical Dominican folk. I would have an apartment that was of the same quality and on the same streets as the Dominicans that lived there. We shopped at the same places, used the same transport, ate the same stuff, walked the same roads, lived with them in their circumstance. Naturally there were some differences, but for most intents and purposes, I was integrated. I loved that, because it gave me a pure and unadulterated look into these people’s lives. Coupled with the fact that we would go and speak and eat with them in their homes, etc., I feel like that was living the life of a Dominican–that was getting a true taste of the culture. At least as much as an American pelirojo can. In Cabarete, I got to relax and explore a little bit more. I spent a month in one of the windsurfing capitals of the world. I stayed in a relatively nice hotel. Most days, there was hot water. I got to appreciate the breathtaking beauty of the country. I worked with students and teachers in their schools and learned about the educational system that governed their early lives. I got to haggle and explore and seek more personal and intellectual pursuits.  I got to adventure. In both places, I worked towards something that was extremely meaningful to me. I met some of the best people. I got to know new places and new things about a new culture. I got frustrated and I learned and I grew.

The DREAM Project is a cute acronym for a non-profit organization. At first, I thought it to be a little cheesy. But after having participated, it truly was a dream come true. It really does help and capacitate these kids to rise above what can seem like a difficult and insurmountable circumstance. And even from a purely personal and self-centered perspective, it was a beautiful and surreal experience–one that, in ways, can help me to rise above difficult circumstances all my own. Dream on, you crazy dreamers.