Buried in the sand, Pt. II

I'm finally getting back to this blog after an amazing camping trip out west in Oregon, where we proudly swam in 5 different bodies of unpleasantly cold water: Lake Waldo, Crater Lake, Diamond Lake, some tiny stream near Vancouver, WA, and the Pacific Ocean. Technically I also waded through the small river at Smith Rock, but I won't count that here after our group's decision that being "in the water" necessitates that you hair and your junk (or equivalent) get soaked. Ha.

Luckily I also had the opportunity to fulfill the topic of my final post prior to vacation: being buried in the sand. I hadn't done this myself probably since I was little (if ever? I'm actually not sure...), but as we laid on the mini beach along the shores of Lake Waldo last week, the water a bit too cold to wade around in for more than half an hour, there was nothing else I could think of doing. So I began digging a hole on my own, and after about 45 minutes I jumped in and had my friends pile the sand back on top of me. Here's the magical end result:


Many thanks to my friends, old and new, for helping to make a wig for me out of the strange hair-like moss that blankets the trunks of the local trees and for artfully decorating my mermaid bottom half with intricate scales. Ah, and for the lovely bikini top as well.

I'm sure this is one of those photos that I should never post online lest I run for public office one day ha. But it's awesome, so I'll do it anyways :)

August vacation

Well I've been off from posting for a couple weeks, and now I am frantically preparing to leave for the Pacific Northwest for 10 days of camping/roadtripping/randomness with a couple of friends. Should be awesome. I'll finally restart my posts when I am back the week of the 24th :)

The more sand, the better

As I was writing the post last week, I realized that I touched on another awesome kid thing to do: be buried in the sand. Being buried in the sand rocks, as does burying friends in the sand and then doing unpleasant (note: euphemism) things to their face.

I can't find the photos from my experience with friends a few years ago in Hawaii. But needless to say, the fun involved a failed attempt to use towels to shield the events unfolding within from nearby beach-going families, resulting in innumerable wives covering their eyes in horror and innumerable husbands/sons falling over in uncontrollable laughter.

As a side note, I have no idea who the kid in this photo is, I just found it on a random google image search for "buried in sand" and "awesome". But I'd say he embodies pretty well the overall sentiment of this post and this blog; clearly no one in the world was having more fun at that moment than him.

One grain at a time.. sort of

Last Friday I ventured for the first time over to Revere Beach, the lone T-accessible beach in the Boston area, with a few friends to check out the annual New England Sand Sculpting Festival. There were 8 "professional" sand sculptors from around the country there, each given 48 hours to complete a sand creation from which one would be selected as the winner.

As you can see, these sand castles were pretty amazing, and also included subjects such as a tree full of bananas, broken glass in mid air, a fist with a single extended finger doing something deep and philosophical, and some other stuff that hadn't yet materialized into meaningful objects/ideas by the time I had arrived. There also was a single larger "demonstration" display of a winter cottage amongst trees in the woods that, according to the workers, had been created over the course of a week or so by a small army of sculptors and was not a part of the competition.

Sand castles are pretty cool. I suppose in this case adults were in fact the ones partaking in the fun, but of course it's almost always the little kids out on the beach building things and watching it all wash away in fickle frustration as the tide rolls in. It's not often that you see an adult walking out of the beach shop, neon green plastic pale and shovel in hand.

Not that I am claiming the alternative--laying quietly on the beach listening to the crashing waves--is a consolation prize to cry about. But it wouldn't hurt to see a few more sand castles out there just to prove that imagination doesn't whither away beyond age 12. If nothing else, though, at least entertain the folks around you and let yourself be buried next to one.

Bam!

Okay, I am being kind of lazy, but I want to get up a post. This past week didn't offer anything specifically amazing to talk about, unfortunately. So I figure I'd reach into the bag of past awesome kid things and pull out one of the namesakes of this blog: bumper cars.

Bumper cars are awesome. Period. I love them and I wish they were always around. At my age (and height) I can typically barely fit into one, and I also typically get mild whiplash when slamming head on into someone else. But wow is it fun.

This photo is of two of my friends in a bumper car with a big rainbow "Peace" flag attached at a month-long outdoor carnival in the Plainpalais neighborhood of Geneva, Switzerland in December 2007. I'll assume this is like one of those snapshot photos you see in bad scary movies that is taken immediately prior to something terrible happening. And as you can tell from the look of mischievous terror on the face of the driver (I'll keep friends anonymous here :), this is clearly one millisecond prior to a horrifically awesome bumper car collision.

If only all cars came equipped with bumpers. Life would be infinitely better. And our necks would all be a little stronger.

Fireworks!

So this one was easy following the 4th of July weekend. Who doesn't love fireworks? (I assume those who are simultaneously deaf and blind are not reading this blog) Certainly kids do, although for once this is a subject that is acceptable for adults to enjoy, too. That said, though, laws inhibit our ability to shoot off fireworks of varying degrees from state to state:
So up here in Massachusetts, no fireworks are allowed apparently, although that certainly didn't prevent people from firing them off this past weekend for the 4th of July. Bonus points to Pennsylvania for bucking the anti-fireworks trend in the region and allowing "essentially all consumer fireworks".

And as a fun side note, if you want to blow up fireworks its clear that you should move to Arkansas, which is the only completely "freedom-locked" state (if you will) in the union.

Let's do it in the middle of the street

I seem to have had a nice weekly activity over the past few weeks that fits perfectly into the spirit of this blog. This past Friday night Cambridge's local government did all the work in closing off a block of Massachusetts Avenue (the main thoroughfare through town) in front of City Hall right near my 'hood in Central Square and setting up a big outdoor dance party. For four hours (alas, I was only there for the final 90 minutes) around 1000 people filled the street and danced to blaring music beneath massive colorful lights being shined down from the roofs of nearby buildings.



That alone screams "awesome," but it was made that much better with a one-hour tribute block of songs to the late Michael Jackson.

On top of all of this, they lit up the City Hall building with all sorts of colorful, semi-psychedelic light displays; the spirals on the sides and the saxophone up top were spinning throughout the night.


Semi-spontaneous dance parties in the street = Very cool.

Simple fun in the sun

The fountain cools and wets your skin. The sun warms the stone. The stone warms and dries your skin. Repeat.


Some friends and I doing just that near the reflecting pond in downtown Boston a couple of weekends ago. Definite fun times, almost no effort/money necessary.

Ahhhh, huge tornado! No wait....

It's Giant Twister.

I'll let the photos do the talking. But Giant Twister is pretty awesome, especially when people finally get over their own lame self-consciousness--when we first arrived there were literally 50 people standing around the mat watching the three people playing--and join the fun.


Even after more people joined and the mat got close to full, people still often insisted on staying in their own little space. At one point I attempted to get everyone to try to move to the opposite side simultaneously (i.e. people on the left go right, people on the right go left), but the group as a whole wouldn't take. Then, my three friends and I decided we'd each start in a different corner and then work our way to the center, at which point it was an all out battle to be the last man standing. Of course, I went half way to the center and then fell over on some other random person instead. Nonetheless, very awesome.

Kids never hold back their excitement. Someday adults won't either. (Note: one of those is not true).

UPDATE: It dawned on me that I never actually explained where this took place. This was last Friday night at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) on the waterfront in South Boston. Dan Deacon also performed, and the event was given a scathing review by Bostonist here. I agree with the review, although I also did have a ton of fun, too.

Three week break

Time for a three-week break as I attend a science policy colloquium down in DC :)

Perhaps they're thirsty, too

Serving as a rather direct contrast to the German board games in my previous post, this week's topic deals with one of America's greatest board games (term used loosely) for kids--and, naturally as an invention of American ingenuity, one that requires effectively zero skill: Hungry Hungry Hippos. As described in a 1990's article of similar nostalgia by Edward Allen in the New Yorker: "The object of the game [is essentially] to press your handle down again and again as fast as you can, with no rhythm, no timing, just slam-slam-slam as your hippo surges out to grab marble after marble from the game surface...." No game theory required this time around; in its place, though, lies a wonderful theme song that no child should ever have to grow up without. The fact is, the game is mind-numbingly loud, involves fat, relatively stupid animals consuming large quantities of food, and is made of plastic, probably in a factory in China: in other words, it's the quintessential American board game. But hey, it's also really brightly colored.

And thus, I recently felt the urge to find an original version of this game that brought so much joy to my own childhood, and luckily amazon fulfilled just such a need. The photo here shows the hands of three of my starving friends at the kitchen table pounding away on the hippo levers (clearly, the Brooklyn Lager is in control of the yellow hippo). Unfortunately, playing the game demonstrated the slight tilt that apparently exists in our apartment's foundation, as the northernmost hippo won 95% of the time. So not much in the way of true competition, but wildly entertaining nonetheless, particularly (necessarily?) when accompanied with a few beers.

Ushering in summer with a spontaneous water balloon fight

I unfortunately do not have any photos of the first great Spontaneous Water Balloon Fight of Summer 2009 that took place two weeks ago, on Sunday April 26th. But nonetheless my descriptions here will act as a harbinger (I'm going to assume that word can be used in a positive sense, too) of many more glorious balloon battles to come in the next few months.
If anyone out there is looking to have a ton of totally unplanned, unbridled fun on a hot day, all it takes is $5, a Target store (or equivalent), and a functioning faucet. The key, though, is not to think about it; just GO. Go to the store and find a bag of water balloons (at least 200; you'd be surprised how quickly you go through them and how many break as you make them), bring them home, fill them up with water and stick 'em in a bucket, and go outside.
If you have friends in the area: entice them to come outside and leave a bag of water balloons near where they'll come out. This way, they have a chance to protect themselves as you pummel them with water balloons.
If this tactic is not available, simply call up a couple of friends and start throwing right in the middle of the street--the more innocent bystanders, the better. Trust me, as people walk by, you will feel the jealousy emanating from their old, bored souls as they break a little smile that screams of "god i wish i could just let go of all those god damn socially-constructed inhibitions and join in". And if you've made enough balloons, chances are a couple people will.

Looking for a great board game? Ask a German!

If you're looking to rediscover the awesomeness that is the (not-so-basic) board game, it's recently become clear to me (and is apparently clear to many other board game aficionadoes) that all you need to do is locate your friendly neighborhood German and ask them what they play back home. In the past couple of months I was introduced by two close friends of mine--who happen to be German--to two fantastic board games that exceed your wildest dreams of what constitutes "fun" in a board game setting: Bohnanza, and the Settlers of Catan, the latter of which was recently called the perfect board game.

Both games are remarkable for two reasons. First, they both engage all players during everyone's turn, rather than forcing players to roll, move their piece, have something happen, and then idle painfully for 20 minutes while others make their moves. Second, their entertainment is derived primarily from the tenets of politics and game theory: namely, that you not only do you care greatly about what your fellow players are doing, but winning or losing the game is strongly dependent on your capacity and/or willingnesss to cooperate with each other. Each game is built upon the need to acqure and use resources to earn the points needed for victory; however different resources have different values and gain additional value when used in combination, and the ways in which such resources are distributed among players, particularly early on, is strongly based on luck--in a manner not at all unlike how real life operates. However, how you use what you've been given is really what ultimately decides your fate.

In Bohnanza, each player has a bean "farm" on which he/she can plant a couple of several different types of beans, which are represented by cards; the more cards you lay down, the more you are planting, and if you reach a given threshold number of cards you can sell the harvest for gold coins (whoever has the most in the end wins). However, some beans are scarcer than others (i.e. fewer cards in the deck), and thus require fewer cards to achieve the same number of gold coins. For example, one type of bean may have 24 cards in circulation, and thus requres 4 cards planted to equal 1 gold coin, 7 cards for 2 gold coins etc., while another type of bean may only have 4 cards available, and so planting just 2 may get you 2 gold coins. Of course, the glory is in the ability for players to trade with one another, to screw each other over, or to build the ultimate socialist utopia, as my two friends and I have done in the first game I had ever played, where we all took a highly cooperative approach and magically and unknowningly finished the game in a 19-19-19 tie.

Meanwhile, Settlers of Catan tells the story of settlers (you) arriving on a far-away island where each player seeks to build the largest settlement using the resources of lumber, grain, ore, clay, and wool; however, the board is broken up into an array of hexagons, each of which contain only one of these resources. Moreover, each hexagon is also given a number value from 2-12, corresponding to a possible sum of the numbers obtained by rolling two dice--noting that the extreme values are less probable. The resource in a given location is only fruitful if you have a settlement built next to it and its number is rolled. Once you select a starting location (an important first task, as the hexgaons are randomly placed for each game and thus can result in awkward clumping of resources), everyone competes for resources, again with the capacity to trade with one another, in addition to trading via ports on the coast. Settlers has several other features that lend the game even greater depth, but I will refrain from exploring them here and leave it to others to discover on their own. As the elaborate nature of the game's inner workings emerge, you really become amazed to think that you ever played something as tedious and unfulfilling as monopoly.

Ah, and not to mention that Settlers has expansion packs, of which I have yet to try but will no doubt very soon. In some sense, Bohnanza represents the bare bones of what makes board games with other humans fun--namely, meaningful human interaction--while Settlers takes this framework as the basis for something surprisingly rich and yet still very simple and easy to learn. I'm not saying that I'd give up my Stratego in a heartbeat, but certainly it's sad to think that I didn't have access when I was little to the games the German kids have. Luckily, it's never too late to start.

Any kid's favorite: destroying things

So as I finally get back on track with the blog, I'll start off with a gloriously awesome event that took place on Friday March 20th, 2009: a semi-random (friend of a friend) invitation to a "house destruction party".

Believe me, I was thinking the same as you: what does that mean, and whatever it means, it can't be anything like what it actually sounds like. But indeed it was that and so much more. We arrived to a house that the owners--a group of graduate students or other early 20-somethings--were in the process of remodeling, and so it was completely stripped down. The only things available were a bunch of glass jars, a keg of PBR, and some tables. Yep, you guessed it: good old fashioned beer pong and flip cup, just like the undergrad days.
The beer pong and flip cup tables were in the same room but separated by an annoying half-wall, which is not something that you can typically do anything about in any regular house. However, in this instance, the ~20 folks there had had their fill of unending cups full of beer, and it was time to move on to the main course.

The sledgehammer.

Not too often in life do you get to go to a place where you can drink and they actually want you to destroy things in the process. So here we were, with this close-to-once-in-a-lifetime chance to enjoy smashing stuff that you don't own like a bunch of 8 year old boys.

Everything began slowly, as I think people weren't quite ready to believe that we were actually going to be allowed to do this. Everyone was reluctant to make the first move (i.e. hole in the wall), but after a few tests to check where the studs were and some additional encouragement from the home owners, things got underway...

The idea of a hole in the wall as a good thing made for some great laughs...

(that's one of the homeowners) ...and the sledgehammer was swung with gradually increasing anger, aggression, and restless exhilaration...

And after approximately 20-30 minutes, the room finally began to open up...

After we cleared up the rubble a bit, we figured a few games to celebrate wouldn't be so bad. We have a shovel and some pieces of wall, and an open window--oooh, how about baseball? So we threw some things to hit up in the air and began swinging away.










That's me playing baseball. I'm wearing an industrial-strength gas mask--others were wearing medical breathing masks--since it became a little difficult to breathe with all of the dust/cancer floating around in the air. It was pretty nasty, and without a doubt contained plenty of things that humans aren't meant to inhale; typically this isn't a problem since the stuff stays, well, in your walls.

As a finale, the next stop following the swing shown above on the right is that piece of drywall being struck a bit high and shattering the window. A couple of the homeowners seemed less than pleased with this last occurrence, but others found it hilarious ("We needed to get a new window anyways."). I, for one, was definitely nearly on the ground dying of laughter.

After all that, we shared another beer and then headed on home. It was... ridiculous. I've never been a part of anything like that, and I can't imagine it happening again. We all loved destroying things when we were little, whether it was a fort, a jenga tower, card house etc.--anything that was 1) meticulously built, and 2) not yours. Perhaps that was more among boys, but the girls at this party certainly enjoyed themselves too.

Either way, adults don't get to destroy things too much anymore in a socially-acceptable manner, and it's not something that's easy to set up unless you've got some extra printers to take out to the field Office Space-style. So here's a cheers to having the opportunity to break down a couple more walls that separate adults from their childhoods of creative destruction.

The future: weekly awesome blog posts

Finally, I am declaring a renewed dedication to this blog, in large part because I am actually very proud of this topic and I think this blog could be really really awesome. And just in time for summer, too.

So from now on, once a week, (hopefully) on Sunday nights, I will make a new post on a new awesome thing that kids do that adults should too. Starting in ~3 hours, after I've finally gotten a little bit of work done to assuage my conscience...

The pillow fight

Although I made the terribly unfortunate mistake of thinking that the 4th of April was Sunday rather than Saturday, thereby causing me to miss the Boston-component of the International Pillow Fight, there is no doubt that this is a glorious manifestation of what this blog is all about. Pillows are awesome. Hitting people with pillows is awesome. Getting hit by pillows is awesome. And ignoring all of those inhibitions that say that secretly bringing pillows to a random location in town on a random afternoon to do all of the above simultaneously with thousands of others (2,200 here in Boston, one of the bigger showings among the cities internationally) is somehow strange. I love it. Bummer I missed it, but I will be there next year, pillows and smiles in hand.

Top 10 songs/things of the moment: Late March Edition

1) Hungry hungry hippos
2) Buena Vista Social Club - "Chan Chan"
3) The Beatles - "We Can Work It Out"
4) Haagen-Dazs ice cream
5) Wolf Parade - "Kissing the Beehive" (At Mount Zoomer)
6) the sun
7) the return of warm weather
8) destroying walls (more on this to come)
9) Street bands
10) Marshmallows

Recipe for happiness: snow at an angle, flat smooth object

In the latest installment of awesome things that kids love that adults should too, I cover the spontaneous decision of myself and a couple of friends to ditch work at 4p on tuesday and head over for some sledding. This is clearly on my top ten list of all-time favorite kid things to do (a list that I will actually compile someday soon).
Sledding is just absolutely awesome. It's simple, requires very little of you other than to acquire some sort of flat or softly curved plastic object, find a sloping hill with some snow (or ice if you want a real adventure), and then a little push to propel yourself forward and get the fun started. I truly feel sad for all of those who grow up in warm places without snow in their backyards for at least a few weeks each year.
And here in one of the flattest places ever, from the moment we decided we wanted--nay, needed--to sled (after the recent noreaster than rambled through here in early march, it's not clear we'll get any more big snow storms again before spring arrives) my friends and I would not be denied by the world's conspirators seeking to prevent us from achieving our dreams: as it turns out, here in cambridge
a) It is really flat, and finding a decent hill on public transport was not obvious
b) Target, along with nearly every other store that one would imagine sells sleds, apparently decided that Spring was already here and thus ceased to keep such products in their stores
c) Malls, the closest of which is the only place within walking distance that had a chance of selling sleds, apparently close early for snowstorms
d) Olympia sport, the only place we could find with "sleds", only had in stock snow rockets and inner tubes made for kids (the latter of which was specifically for "Beginners: ages 3-6", as opposed to the "Intermediate: ages 6-9" or "Advanced: ages 9 and up". Yep, we were actually two levels below our appropriate age range.)

Nonetheless, we were able to abandon our remaining work hours outside of class time to find a way to obtain sleds and get out to the only hill in the area, aobut a 20 minute walk from the Porter Square T stop (3 stops from our offices). And let me say, it fulfilled all expectations, including those of destroying our inner tubes on the spikey ice at the bottom of the hill (see left). Apparently 3-6 year olds don't quite have as much fun on them as 20-somethings do. But we didn't care, it was sooo worth the price of a couple of beers at the local pub....

The most boring stand against corporate america in history

So today at the grocery store I was faced with the ultimate in mundane dilemmas: as I watched my groceries get scanned, I noticed (rather randomly, as I really dont ever pay attention to stuff like this) that my $3.99 carton of eggs rang up at $4.59. Yep, 60 cents. Of course, my immediate reaction was what anyone's would be: "Hey, I don't think that's right!" Except that's when the dilemma rears its pathetic head: "Take your receipt over to customer service and they will refund you the difference."
It is at that point I say to myself, "60 fucking cents. 60 fucking cents. Do I really care?" Yes. It's not about the money, it's about the principle. Right? If you don't say anything, then no one will, and they will continue to rip off their customers for the rest of the night/week/forever.
Thus, I haul my newly-purchased groceries back over to the eggs, just to make sure you don't make an ass of yourself should you turn up to be wrong. And indeed, I am not. So I drudge back to customer service and explain the situation. "We'll have to send someone over to do a price check." What? I just checked it. Don't you have a book with the prices in it somewhere? So I am left sitting, again contemplating the question of how inane this moral stand that I have chosen to take really is.
In the end, the guy returns, verifies my claim, and I get 60 cents back. And nope, there is NO policy on giving you the item for free. Instead, though, I am offered a $1 coupon (that's one hundred cents!) towards a future purchase... which I also, amazingly, had to wait for as it was retrieved from the back room. Clearly, it is their intent to make it as annoying as possible to inform them of such price discrepancies, as if it's not already enough of a disincentive that you are spending your own time trying to get a couple of dimes rightfully returned to you.
But it makes you think: shouldn't there be a rule on this? Some sort of a minimum required fine/coupon that is given to someone who gets overcharged? There seems an odd incentive to "accidentally" sell many items for a few dimes more than their actual cost: although customers hate being ripped off, they also have no desire to spend their time, not to mention endure the shameful greed that accompanies demanding something that will inevitably fall out of your pockets and be lost in the couch cushions anyways; meanwhile there is effectively zero punishment for the grocery store when it makes such errors.
In the end, my 15 minutes devoted to this effort hopefully is somehow useful, but I can't help but think that either a) it'll happen again soon, b) it's still happening, because they didn't bother to update their system. But come on, this is a really simple problem that seems like it should have a simple solution in our era of modern technology, right?

Top 10 music/things of the moment

These are my top 10 songs of the moment. Note: non-songs are permitted by the sole discretion of me.
1) TV on the Radio: "Golden age" (Dear Science)
2) Cougar: "Strict scrutiny" (Couga)
3) Pale Young Gentlemen: "Clap your hands" (Pale Young Gentlemen)
4) Moby: "The Stars" (Last Night)
5) Marshmallows
6) Girl Talk: "Let me see you" (Feed the Animals)
7) Okkervil River: "For real" (Black Sheep Boy)
8) Ratatat: "Lex" (Classics)
9) Sigur Ros: "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur" (Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust)
10) Jax liquidation outlet in central sq

Hackeysack for Obama

Finally, back in town after a couple of weeks of traveling insanity, and really 6 weeks of travel awesomeness. Let's recap:
1) San Francisco: 1 week
2) Home home (Madison, WI): 1 week
3) Philly for new years: 3 days
4) Home (Boston): 1 week
5) Phoenix: 1 week
6) DC for Obamafest: 4 days
7) Maine for skiin: 3 days

Just add milk and stir. Delicious!

So after all of that fun, I finally am able to remove the clothes from my bag with the intention of actually putting them away rather than simply washing (read: re-folding) them and replacing them back into the same bag. The travel was great, but my bed and a pseudo-stable daily life is great as well. And with it, some love for my blog, as demanded by the Dutchess of Kickball :)

One of the highlights of the multi-stop journey was no doubt the game of hackeysack that broke out between my friends and I at our spot by the Washington monument during the Obama Inauguration as we awaited His Hopefulness' speech. In our valiant efforts to stay warm on a day that felt a lot colder than it really was (only ~20F), one of my friends' hand warmers--those little clothy sacks filled with some mystery powder that gets warm while probably causing some horrendous form of brain cancer--conveniently transitioned from a chemically-functional warmer to the object of our 12-year-old punk/stoner entertainment, the hackeysack(?), whose activity continued to warm us for another hour or so. (This led us to conclude that this is how those things can actually claim to last 4 hours: by working properly for one hour and then being used as a ball for three more).

Nonetheless, our inventive means of passing the time attracted several others around us to join the circle, and at one point we even had a cameraman film us. Unfortunately we never found out where he was from, but I figure it didn't matter much since none of us had any loud Obama gear on so our scene, while awesome, wasn't going to make it far past some random local station broadcast.

Maybe next time.

Of course, my ultimate favorite part of the whole inauguration scene was none other than the awesomely chaotic outdoor marketplace for obama gear that "you won't find anywhere else in the city": shirts with waaaay too many pictures and random phrases written, a billion different buttons, calendars, scarves, posters... I made it a goal to find the most ridiculous things I could find, and ended up coming home quite satisfied with my winter hat sporting Obama's image in colorful studded form and my "Hope" playing cards. Success.

Philosophizing on the grown up world

And now I introduce the other side of this blog, the other side of me. The grown up world.

I was thinking today about how people fit into the human experience, even when that experience is seemingly entirely human-free. I realized something: For me personally people are what fascinate me, but even in the times when I traveled alone in Europe/Ghana over the past few years, my greatest memories are the people I met. Yes, I loved some of the things I saw too, but why? For example, why do I think Gaudi's architecture (see photo) is so amazing? Is it the architecture? Or is it the idea of a human mind creating something so incredible? Or are those one and the same thing? Perhaps. Is art inherently beautiful? Or is it the interpretation of the world by the human mind who created it what is truly beautiful? For me, it’s the mind.

Similarly, when I look at a city from afar, I think not of the city itself necessarily but rather of all of the years of hard work and ingenuity that a group of individual human beings put into building the city. It’s not the city itself. It’s the idea of a city. It’s the fact that a city could be conceived at all. It’s the thought of time before cities, where someone shows up and whispers in your ear: “In 1000 years, there will be a city of 10 million here in a variety of buildings as tall as 1000 ft. There will be parks, and stoplights, and coffee shops, too.” That’s what I think about. That’s what amazes me.

So it’s people that amaze me. Maybe it’s because it’s people, and the concept of people as the “experiencers” of the universe, that scares me. Sounds a lot like thunderstorms in my childhood.

I dont think everyone thinks this way. Some people climb a mountain alone and for them the experience is being free from society and being connected with nature. I would climb a mountain with someone, and for me the experience is being free from inhibition and being connected with another human being in a way not previously possible. In reality, this isn't 100% true of myself, but I imagine it's certainly more true for me than for the typical person. At the least, it's a break from the traditional naturalist perspective. Surely someone else out there thinks similarly.

video games: should you feel ashamed?

Oh look, it's a new year. New is good, right?

During my few days in Philly over the new year, my friend introduced me to the YouTube-autiful world of "Street Fighter: the Later Years": a hilarious mini-series of the characters from the famed old school video game Street Fighter living as regular (pathetic?) people in the world--e.g. a taxi driver--after the game lost popularity while still maintaining their superpowers.

Video games have always been one of those items that are fun and totally understandable to be played as a child but sad and pathetic when indulged as adults (with the exception of Wii accidents, of course). Even myself, who is a firm believer in all things child, am a bit frightened by their incredible ability to suck people even farther out of the real universe and into some alternate reality filled with ogres, aliens, or, lately, us very same living humans only in creepier animated form.

But then I come upon movies such as the Street Fighter one above and quickly realize the hilarious hidden video game culture buried in the minds and hearts of millions of fully functional (typically male) adults--that even though .001% of us actually still play those games, 100% of us remember in full detail the characters, their moves, and even sometimes the button combinations required to perform them.

So let's give some love to the video game world. After all, I hope every adult clings to fond childhood memories of the first time their city was attacked by aliens in SimCity.

Of course, that was nothing compared to the painful showering of boos you had to endure when you'd click the little button to raise your citizens' taxes. Ah, the memories.