As an Australian, I was never really taught about MLK, the civil rights movement, or any American history at all besides a brief note about their departure from British rule. I’ve heard the words, “I Have a Dream,” referenced in random places but never understood the remarkable events that inspired it, the bitter struggle to get there and the subsequent violence that both preceded and followed it.

As a kid, I remember installing Microsoft Encarta, a digital encyclopedia that was competing against several others in this new age of CD distribution and multimedia. I remember that while the vast spans of text were practical, they weren’t particularly interesting compared to the animations, videos and sound clips. It’s where I learned how a nuclear chain reactions worked, DNA sequences, the moon landing, and the first paragraph of Dr. King’s speech. Being so young at the time, I had no idea what the complicated rhetoric meant or its historical importance.

Even now as a full-grown adult, I don’t think I could ever understand what it means. Not having lived it, breathed it, nor ever believed such injustice could exist in a country such as this one; I can’t understand.

A few years ago, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, I was alone at home doing absolutely nothing. Flipping on the television, I found a documentary on the civil rights movement as led by Dr. King. I saw footage of Washington’s empty streets before it turned into the extraordinary gathering around the Lincoln memorial. The strength and faith to trust in democracy and peaceful protest. It helped me understand a lot more about the context of the speech; it demonstrated the complicated issue of race in this country and, most of all, it showed that America is a country that fights to march towards greater and more equal civil rights despite what the popular opinion of the time will be.

I’ve been thinking about it. The reason Indie Bloggers shut down remains a mystery but if I had to guess, it was because there was too much work involved in reading submissions and scheduling them. Either way, massive props go out to Stacy for making it such a worthwhile site stocked with rich content and no advertising. I’m sure it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get the site to where it was.

I’m approaching this idea from an engineering perspective. I’m slowly pulling together a site that rigs a submission form to post directly into WordPress. Then I can have moderators log in and approve whichever submissions are good enough to be published. The final part is the scheduling. I could either have a bot that comes in and schedules posts based on the date they were approved or I could just manually schedule things so that way we don’t get eighteen consecutive posts about revenge sex. TO BE DECIDED.

Anyway, drop me an email if you’d like to be one of the first submitters to the site. Or maybe if you want to be a moderator. No promises if this site will even get any readers but it will be a good exercise.

1. What’s your favorite form of punctuation?
2. If you could relive any one day in your life, what day would it be?
3. What do you think it would take for you to stop blogging?
4. Have you ever had an “almost” moment – where it seemed like things were just about to start but they never actually did? Job-wise, relationship-wise, friend-wise, etc.
5. What would your dream bathroom look like?

Explain in detail! :)

I’d like to offer the same to any readers of this blog. If you’d like me to interview you so you can blog about it, leave a comment and I’ll email you some questions. Be forewarned that I will send you Jon-Stewart-quality questions: ones that are super insightful and well thought-out but ultimately serve to set me up for some punchlines.

Favorite Punctuation

Funny that she should ask this. She’s the only person I know that actually writes complete sentences in IM with periods and capital letters. From this, I infer that she is a proud writer with the highest respect for the craft and the language. Or maybe she’s just spend too much time writing papers.

My favorite punctuation mark is the semicolon. It’s a widely-known but rarely-used mark to link together related clauses or list out items where commas would be unbecoming. I like it because it puts just the right pause in the rhythm of a sentence: longer than a comma, shorter than a period and without the added noise of an extra word.

Runner up would be the sarcasm mark which I see a lot in closed captions, e.g. “That’s so great (!)” It must be an uncommon usage because I almost never see it used outside of this context. I like the way it takes the loud bang of a exclamation mark and mutes it between two parentheses.

My least favorite is the interrobang, used to combine a question and punctuation mark into one. It just looks unwieldy and doesn’t have the finesse of ligatures.

Reliving Any One Day

I’m not sure I could pick one. I’m currently in a pretty happy place and I don’t ache with nostalgia for any particular day. Maybe as a joke, I’d go back and relive the day that I first saw Groundhog Day. That would be deliciously meta but nobody else would be around for the joke.

Ok, if we want to get really sad here, I’d go back to that day I last saw my grandpa alive. He was lying in a hospital bed, pre-op, and about to go in for another round of bypass surgery. I had not been present at his previous surgeries and I had no knowledge about the gravity of the circumstances. As we left his room, my parents told me to hug my grandpa and say goodbye and I remember thinking it was such an odd request because I almost never hugged my grandpa. Ours was a strong familial bond but hugging was simply never part of the regimen. Nonetheless, I embraced him because I thought surgery must be pretty scary so maybe he needed all the moral support he could get.

I wasn’t dissatisfied with the way I said goodbye but I wish I had known exactly what that goodbye meant.

What Would It Take to Stop Blogging

Blogging has been that constant in my life for the longest time because I’m so connected to the internet. I spend 8 hours a day at a computer and then I go home and spend some more time on my laptop. In between, I use my phone to read the internet. It’s insane, I know. It’s why my hard-working, blue-collar parents probably don’t think too hard about why their son is paid twice as much as they are to sit down and wiggle his fingers all day.

I can’t think of anything that would make me stop. It would have to be something completely unexpected. Like I suddenly form a meth habit or some EMP knocks out the entire internet. It’s like asking what it would take for me to stop walking.

An “Almost” Moment

Job-wise and friend-wise, nope. Relationship-wise? Ergh. It pains me to even think about it. How close do you have to be to count it as “almost”? Like when I feel like I can stand on a box and almost pluck the full moon out of the sky?

There were several paragraphs here and I deleted them. You’ll have to take my word that they were very well-written and yet hard-to-read.

Dream Bathroom

I haven’t thought much about this but I imagine a contemporary, minimalist theme with maybe a touch of zen garden. I haven’t got any real ideas about colors but I want a very modern sink and one of those floor-to-ceiling glass showers that could fit two people comfortably. Oh and I want wireless speakers that my iPhone or computer can stream to so I can listen to music in there. And I want the softest towels imaginable, ones that caress like a lover’s touch. And magical mirrors that are resistant to fogging up.

Oh, and heated tile floors. Mmm.

That’s all, folks. As I said above: if you’d like to be interviewed, leave a comment and I’ll email you the questions.

Don’t start freaking out though because I didn’t actually do work. I just sat there and performed my usual morning routine of checking email and blogs. When it came to that time where I would usually start work (around 11am), I instead fired up my laptop and watched Iron Man whilst tucking into my first cup of coffee.

Afterward the coffee and the movie, I was all buzzed. I wanted to be all badass like Tony Stark and create things and tinker and look really smart. Childish, I know but I was being driven by caffeine. I thought about when I was reflecting on my New Year’s resolutions and how Indie Bloggers no longer exists.

I’d like to run an Indie Bloggers-style site that features a curated set of blog posts from interesting but lesser-known writers all over the internet. I’d want it to basically be an homage to the original except with a happier color scheme and a well organized archive. But I see a number of huge obstacles in my way:

1. Ego

This would essentially be an exercise in boosting my ego. While a community organizer should certainly be proud of their achievements, I’m more cynical and I think that like most websites driven by ego, it’s been thought of a zillion times already and it would die a slow death once it no longer becomes fun.

2. Content

I’m probably too cynical about writing style; I’m no connoisseur of the literary arts. I roll my eyes at poetry, free form prose, giant slabs of text with no paragraph breaks, and lack of punctuation. Not to say that I expect everyone to be a perfect essayist on the internet, it’s just that these remind me of the horrible things I wanted to write in my youth. I cringe because I understand the sentiment all too well.

3. Updating

I do not read very many personal blogs. The ones that I am subscribed to, I tend to skim over. At work, I develop a short attention span and I just don’t have the patience to read through everybody’s personal diatribes. This would certainly be counter-productive to running a website that highlights excellent personal writing.

Perhaps I would be better served sticking to my older idea of making a free WordPress theme for people to download. That could be fun and simple.

Another thing, I bought a Wacom tablet back in November and I’ve barely touched it since. I never really allowed myself time to draw except when I was stuck in class and bored out of my mind.

Now, it looks like I need to simulate those conditions again in order to want to draw anything. I’m not sure I have the discipline to do this when I’m at my computer because it’s so easy to open a browser window and just numb my brain with inane crap.

Does anyone remember when I wrote my new year’s resolutions for 2008? Well, I did. And now I’m going to recap them quickly for you.

One week of exercise

Never happened. I cancelled my gym membership 13 months ago and if anything, I’ve gained weight and lost muscle this year. Also, I haven’t seen a doctor for a long time now. I’m fully aware of how stupid this is and yet I find no willpower to steer me away from this course.

Continue with my savings plan

Well, I got hurt just like everyone else did with the big drops in the markets. This year, I got a little carried away with investing in individual stocks and I haven’t been saving as much ever since I paid off my car loan and got a new credit card. But for someone my age, I’m doing ridiculously well and I’ll do my best not to squander that.

Make out with a white girl

I actually did this in late January, not long after I made these resolutions. It taught me the valuable lesson of impaired judgment whilst drinking. A lesson that I will probably learn again this year (albeit in a different fashion, hopefully).

Visit two major U.S. cities

Well I got to see San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Portland. I think I filled up my quota. In 2009, I’d like to see the other coast. And maybe, once again, feel soft, friendly Canadian soil underneath my feet.

Get published on Indie Bloggers

Indie Bloggers was a barebones website for sharing interesting blog posts from non-famous blogs. I did get published in February and it was a lovely surprise. A few months later, Indie Bloggers shut down and it was taken over by a domain squatter. I might be mixing up cause and correlation here but I have a feeling I led the site to its downfall by stinking up the place.

Anyway, that’s all for resolutions for this year. I don’t know if I care to make any for 2009. I’ve got everything I want already and I am optimistic enough for the future that I have no specific wishes, I’m just happy to see each new day arrive.

One thing, I am a very emotional eater. It takes a lot for me to start being rational about my food. In my mind, I think about my next meal and healthy food tastes like cardboard whilst deep fried crunchy food is like being hugged by a unicorn. Reality rarely matches up with this – junk food just makes me feel lethargic and guilty – and yet I continue to do it! Thankfully, I don’t fit the single white female cliche and I don’t medicate my problems with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s but I will eat steak and burgers. Yum.

The other thing is that I’m emotional about work. I have to feel it, you know? If there’s some task that is shit-boring, it will take me five-times longer than the average person to complete. And it’s not some passive-aggressive thing to prove to my boss that my skills are being wasted, it’s just that I need to be entertained like a five-year-old. If something is going wrong at work, it’s soul-crushing.

The same thing applies to all my creative tasks. Like this blog re-design, I was aching to do it for a while and I got so wrapped up in it but as soon as I let myself relax at home, I ended up spending hours playing my Xbox. And it wasn’t even a good game, it was just an exercise in numbing the mind. I sat there and I thought to myself, I’d be so much happier creating something right now than pissing my time away but I could not drum up the willpower to do so.

These irrationalities of mine work against me. One makes me crave junk food when really all I want is tasty food. The other makes me lust for shiny distractions when I’m really aiming for some sort of self-accomplishment.

The problem here is that discipline was never my strong suit.

One is a memory. Just before Lachlan and Geraldine left Seattle, I took them to eat hot pot at a Sichuanese restaurant. While we were pulling in to the restaurant, I was trying out my Short Round impression on them. As we were leaving, I was doing some other impression of like a funny conversation with a hairdresser or taxi driver or some other everyday occupation except that I had my wires crossed and it was more like Short Round the Taxi Driver. Anyone remember what that occupation was?

The other one is a yearning. My girlfriend and I recently watched The Lion King over the weekend and I want to draw some sort of parallel between the movie and this election. It doesn’t work; there are none. I think I just have my wires crossed again.

P.S. Mufasa’s death? Still super freaking sad. Re-watching this has just solidified the idea that Disney are far better at creating sad moments than happy ones.

Ok, well, Radiolab is a show that covers a different topic every week that relates to science, philosophy or the human experience. It’s complicated to explain but at its core are Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, two guys who riff off one another to try and string everything together.

I want to talk about two of the shows that I listened to. They introduced ideas that would make some question, some take offence and others, like me, feel like the world is magic again. I apologise that the ideas are buried in 60 minute audio files but, like a good book, it’s worth it. Just shut off your obsessive multitasking for a while and listen. You don’t have to read what I write here but at least go listen.

(So Called) Life

In the episode, (So Called) Life, they explore the idea of humans tinkering with DNA. There’s this one seed of an idea in there that’s really powerful: a bunch of students have to do experiments with E. coli but it smells awful. They find a place that sells genes for producing nice odours, they buy a nice one and they breed new bacteria that smells better. Cool solution, right? But they just invented a new form of life! Previously, no E. coli known to man smelt this way.

The episode also briefly talks about places that create synthetic genes. You just pay them and tell them the DNA sequence and they build it. How different is it to paying a company to build you a piece of software? Or perhaps designing a piece of furniture to be built and added to your home?

Forget all the scary stories of designer babies, cloned sheep and genetically modified food for a second and just think about the opposite side of the spectrum. Students dicking about with some bacteria in a petri dish. A bunch of Gs, Ts, Cs and As in a sequence. It’s not that different from traditional computing. Life Itself, as a computing system.

Make me an algae that eats carbon dioxide and poops out bio-diesel. Make me a cow that grows human hearts on the outside like an apple tree grows apples. Make me a living sac that I can attach to me and it will just feed me with nutrients and deflate like a juice box. Make me a pet Godzilla. Is there really anywhere to draw the line?

The (Multi) Universe(s)

The second episode I want to mention is, The (Multi) Universe(s), which is just my favorite thing in the entire world. It’s an idea that is getting more popular in science fiction and basically there’s an infinite number of universes with infinite versions of you and even more infinite slightly different versions of you. Somewhere in this other universe, there’s a person with your looks, your hopes, your dreams reading this blog. They have the exact same thoughts contained in your head right now. They just started pondering if having an exact double is possible.

You could say that’s impossible. But, in the example they use, it’s hard to imagine flipping a coin and getting heads 4000 times in a row. But if you keep flipping, you’ll get it eventually, right? Just keep flipping, the probability is there. 50% to the power of 4000 or something. So in a big-ass infinite universe, why not the probability there’s another Jack? Or a Jack with one more eyelash. Or a Jack who has blond hair. Or a Jack who likes watching Oprah.

One assumption we are making is that creating an exact copy of Jack is just getting the right combination of particles in the right place at the right time. We’re assuming there’s not unique “kiss of God” here. I’m just a collection of atoms arranged in a certain way. Arranged another way, I might be a very large fruit smoothie.

Let’s keep this assumption because the really interesting part is coming up. They introduce this amazing concept that anyone who enjoyed The Matrix would love. Think of how ridiculously improbable it is that you could roll the dice and create our universe as it is now. This cute little solar system supporting this tiny blue speck that’s covered in water and intelligent life forms. Consider how much boring shit there is out in space; what are the odds of creating a hospitable ecosystem by chance? Isn’t it more likely that our world is the work of an Intelligent Designer?

Well, if you want to play the ponies, yes. It is more likely. But it’s more like this: since we’re talking about infinity there, then yes, we’ll get intelligent life being created by blind chance. But this is intelligent life! If they’re half as curious as human beings are, they’re bound to think about the universe and run simulations. Even if there were an infinite number of universes with intelligent life, there is an even greater infinite number of simulated universes with simulated intelligent life.

What makes us so special? We’re just particles. Sluggish bio-computers that obey our input and our programming as dutifully as the spellchecker in Microsoft Word. We might observe that we have free will but we also “observe” that the washing machine has a mind of its own when it’s malfunctioning.

In short, I love the theories of infinite universes. Listen to the podcasts I linked to, they do these topics a magnitude more justice than my ramblings ever could.

I mean, it made sense back in the day when everything was done over the phone because internet was still new and scary. You could call people and co-ordinate meetings, disseminate little bits of timely information or just bitch about your day. Those are all great things that are done so much better by SMS and the internet. My want to be online, have email and write short little pieces of text is so much bigger than my want to hear someone’s voice.

There are very few people on this planet that could tell me, “Hey Jack, carry around this cancer box with you in your pants. When it rings, drop whatever you are doing and hold it up to your ear so I can beam my voice directly into your brain.” If my mother asked me to do that, I would decline. My boss? No way. My friend? I’d tell them to email or IM instead. Barack Obama? Yes. He could read me the Illinois phone book and I’d just sigh and tell him he has a dreamy voice. (Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, Obama-phone!)

Carry around the internet in my pocket? Yes. I find it so darn useful. I can check for directions and never be afraid of getting lost anywhere that has decent Google Maps coverage. I can search for restaurants and check out reviews. I can entertain myself on bus rides, coffee lines or waiting rooms. I can find answers to those stupid questions that come up during everyday intellectual curiosity.

At the end of the day, having mobile internet is not super important. I love having directions all the time though because I get lost a lot. Otherwise, I can do without. I can almost do without the phone part too. So in reality, my lifestyle is such that I could be one of those people that lives without a mobile phone and it would be a small-ish inconvenience, like, not having a credit card but I would not die. Being the gadget freak and Apple fanboy that I am though, I lust after the iPhone. It is my current obsession in the way that you obsessed about the Sex and the City movie, the way you think it’s important to buy extended warranty, the way you think a Collector’s Edition is somehow more valuable or perhaps why you spend so much time being anxious about petrol prices. It’s irrational, it’s crazy, it’s expensive but I must have it.

I started this morning with a defrag. That’s not some weird type of espresso or hangover cure and it’s not some horrible euphemism for whatever bodily processes that may take place in the morning. I literally sat down at a computer, clicked Disk Defragmenter and then shuffled off to work. You know how some people cannot stand a messy room or a sink full of dirty dishes? I cannot stand a slow computer. I sit down at friend’s computers and, without them asking, I tinker with things.

SR 520 Evergreen Point Floating Bridge

On Saturday, I was backing out of a parking spot. So was some lady opposite me. I didn’t notice her until I was part way out and, in hindsight, I just kind of stupidly sat there and wondered if she saw me. When it became obvious that she had not seem me, I should have honked. Instead I tried to make the car go forward but I was not fast enough. She scratched my bumper. She was apologetic and kind of sweet. I was not angry but I don’t know, I was all business. We exchanged phone numbers, I took a quick photo of the damage. Now that the repair estimate has come back for $640, I feel kind of bad for her. It would be easier on my conscience to take money from an asshole and not a sweet Japanese lady.

Last night was dining with Diana. A sushi restaurant in Madison Park where I stupidly thought I had the palate to appreciate expensive stuff like delicate little pieces of foie gras. She spent $20 on dinner, I spent closer to $50. The cheaper stuff was actually really good so next time, I know what to do. Namely, I need to stop being so goddamn pretentious. Besides the price, it was good to catch up with an old friend (Diana is hella old, she’s like FIVE MONTHS older than me but I love her all the same).