MadMup.com

I'd be surprised to learn that there was someone out there who has never thought "I wonder if other people see/feel things the way I do?" Some things are easier than others to come to a conclusion on. I mean, we can all look at a chicken and agree on its inherent chickenness (chickenity?): the beak, the beady eyes, the feathers, the sharp talons - yep, it's a chicken! We can even take into account the different varieties of chickens and know that a Rhode Island Red is just as much a chicken as an Appenzell Pointed Hood Hen (which also doubles as a member of an 80s glam rock group).

But what about colors? Sure, there's a hexadecimal notation for every color - #6e7b67 is one of the greens that makes up the background to this site, for instance - but there's no guarantee that the way I see #6e7b67 is the same way you see #6e7b67.

And then there's taste. Some people profess to like broccoli. I do not. I like black licorice, while Connor does not. Are we tasting the same thing? Chemical breakdown would tell us that, yes, it's producing the same tastes for different people, so the difference is elsewhere. Broccoli's taste mixture of grass and nastiness to me is to other people a ... well, I don't know exactly what. No one's ever really explained to me why they like broccoli. "Because it's good for you" is not a description of taste.

So our brains are wired differently. Is it any wonder, then, that we might think that we don't feel things the same way as others? I get struck with this one the most when someone relates an experience they had and another listener tears up while I'm thinking, "What's the big deal?" I realize that life experiences up to that point may cause one person to react differently than another person to a particular instance, but aren't there universal situations that we can all agree on, an emotional chicken, as it were?

From there it's a pretty short jump to "Do I feel everything differently from other people? Am I a psychopath, able to function in society but not really responding to it, or responding correctly?" I've expressed this "I don't think I feel things like other people" to a couple of different friends and got this surprising answer from them both: "I've wondered the same thing about myself." Strangely enough, that's both an answer and a non-answer at the same time. They haven't really addressed my fear, but in saying that they've had the same thoughts, it tells me that I do have the same thoughts as others.

We're not Borg, nor are we telepathic. There is no way for us to know what another person is thinking or feeling unless they tell us. Even trying to read another person through body language or actions gets filtered by what's going on in our own heads and is therefore also unreliable. Muddying the waters further is the fact that what we learn about one person's emotions and feelings doesn't apply to another person. There's no emotional template and people can't be described by neat little checklists, no matter how much we wish they could be.

I firmly believe that I am in charge of how I feel. My thoughts, whether out of habit or out of instinct or whatever else, make me feel certain ways about certain events. Why am I stressed? Because of a belief system in my head that tells me I'll be in trouble if I don't get everything done or someone will be unhappy with me or that I just won't be able to do things I want to do until the list of things I have to do gets done. But just because I'm in charge of how I feel doesn't mean I understand it. Why do I tear up at seeing a Ninja Turtle awaken from a semi-coma but my main thought when faced with real-life tragedies in the lives of others is "I'm not sure what to do here"?

There's an application on Facebook called "My Personality" that lets you rate yourself by answering questions and then lets you ask your friends to rate you anonymously. It's an interesting look at the discrepancy between how I see me and how others see me. Currently it has this to say:

You think you have antisocial personality disorder
Everyone else is a tool for your pleasure. They have no rights, and you disregard their laws. You are aggressive when it suits you, you lie when it suits you, and your promises mean nothing. You have no remorse.

Your friends think you have avoidant personality disorder
You have an extreme fear of the potential negative opinions of other people and that leads you to avoid social situations altogether. You feel inferior to other people and expect them to reject you. The worst thing that could possibly happen is being embarrassed in front of all of your friends.

The disclaimer, of course, says "Please note: It is extremely unlikely that a personality disorder is actually present, this is just for fun!" Some fun, eh? I sound like the worst sort of person! And the fact that my friends don't see me as quite as bad just tells me that I've somehow fooled them all.

Yes, I know enough to not put a whole lot of faith into a Facebook app. My point is that difference between self-perception and public perception. If we're not even displaying to others what we feel we are, how can we know that others are? In fact, shouldn't that pretty much guarantee that they aren't?

Humanity is some kind of deal, isn't it? Infinitely interesting and scary and boggling. It's a good thing we've got some things we know we can agree on, and maybe that's why chickens were created alongside us.

Labels: IMJW

6 comments

Last year there was a documentary released entitled The King of King: A Fistful of Quarters (Tagline: "Don't get chumpatized") about the world of competitive videogaming. Many of you, I suspect, weren't aware there was a world of competitive videogaming until just this moment. Not only is there, but it's a booming business and full of drama and intrigue, apparently.

The documentary follows Steve Wiebe as he attempts to break the official worldwide high score in Donkey Kong. The score he was attempting to break was 874,300, set in 1982 by Billy Mitchell , who also held records in Pac-Man and Centipede. I won't give away the rest of the movie, as it is strangely fascinating, even if you don't play videogames yourself. (Note: if you live near me and would like to borrow it at some time, just let me know!)

Donkey Kong is a particularly hard classic game, and anyone who has even gotten to the elevator-filled third screen is even now shaking their head at the remembrance of it. Games have changed significantly since then, and many modern games don't even have a point system. In the early days of videogames, though, the points were the thing - indicators of skill, bragging points, and goals to be reached. Twin Galaxies has, since 1981, been the "official" keeper of gaming records, and as the documentary revealed, the process of submitting a score is quite rigorous. One referee talked about the eight hours of videotape he was needing to watch to verify someone's attempt a breaking the record for Nibbler, a game I was only just barely aware of.

While I loved videogames from the first time I ever saw one, I've never been all that good at them. The idea of breaking any sort of record for Q*Bert or Defender is so foreign to me that it passes into the realm of the laughable. I found out somewhere along the way that there's always someone you're better than... but there is also always someone else who's better than you. My ability to finish Guitar Hero in Medium might be impressive to someone who struggles with Easy, but someone who can play a song flawlessly in Expert puts me to shame.

That mindset has filtered into the rest of my life, for better or for worse. I don't have a desire to compete for the most part because of it - I know the chances of me ever being the best at something are so ridiculously slim that I've learned to get to a "happiness level," a place where I enjoy what I'm doing but am not stretched to push myself further. It doesn't take a very sharp eye to see where the problem lies in that outlook. While it has, for the most part, removed certain stress causers, it has made me complacent and even stagnant.

These days I play through videogames for the stories. I want to enjoy them like I enjoy movies, and even fighting games have a layer of storytelling to them. I want to beat a level so I can see the next part of the story. A really engaging game can be a 10-, 25-, 0r 100-hour movie, and I want to see what happens next. That's carried over into other areas, too. I enjoy what's going on right now, and I'm curious to see what happens next.

I'm just hoping against hope that I don't get chumpatized.

Labels: IMJW, life, videogames

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Labels: IMJW, lol

3 comments

This is how I normally look (cheesy grin and all):

I've had a goatee for pretty close to 8 years now.

Then, last fall, I grew out the full beard for the Living Nativity:

I kept it for a while by request, and then it got close enough to the Passion Play that I needed to keep it, so I've had it for six months or so. I like that a full beard saves me time shaving in the morning, but I don't really like how it looks on me. So, on Saturday night, when the Passion Play was done, I shaved it.

All of it:

I've been told it makes me look younger. I've been called "babyface." I've been told I look like the "Can you hear me now?" guy. All I know is that I am furiously regrowing the goatee as fast as I can, and I'm tempted to use Chia seeds in the meantime.

My friend Brian recently shaved his beard, too. He Twittered the following haiku, which I thought was great, even though I never get the itchiness with my beards:

Beard ephemeral
Hair today, gone tomorrow
No more itchy face

Labels: beard, IMJW

12 comments

This seemed like a good day to pass this along to you.

Labels: Muppets

4 comments

My brother is two and a half years older than I am. While that means a lot of different things, one of the things it means is that he started getting mailings from the various Armed Forces a lot earlier than I did. Unfortunately for him, the Army was always offering him all these what I thought were neat things for him to request more information. A seventh grader thinks a pair of wristbands or a T-shirt is infinitely cooler than a high schooler thinks they are. So, since he could get these cool things for requesting more information and I couldn't, I would sometimes send the postcards back. In a few weeks, the bundle of more information would arrive at the house, along with whatever thing I thought was cool at the time.

What I did not understand at the time was that the arrival of the postcard at Army headquarters meant - to them - that my brother was interested in joining the Army. So, to follow up with the more information and the silly whatever, they would often call my brother. I remember him more than once saying on the phone, "Um, I'm sorry, but my brother actually sent that card in because he wanted the compass." I think he even made me tell them once.

Seriously, though, what else were they expecting to have happen? The whole point of them offering the pencils and hats and carabiners was to pique someone's interest and maybe hit on someone who thought, "okay, sure, why not?" and join up, all because of the little thing that got mailed along with the more info. I'm sure it happened all the time.

My brother never did join the army, and neither did I (I often considered it, but my fear of water kinda made that decision for me). I have long forgotten most of the Army-branded things we collected around the house, except for one: an Army flashlight.

It was cheaply rubberized and had a camouflage pattern, with a stark-white "ARMY" emblazoned on the handle. It was about six inches long, and there might have been a hole in the end of it to loop a cord through, I don't remember exactly.

Like most of the Army stuff we got, it was fairly cheaply made, but it did work. Two AA batteries would give it enough juice to light the tiny bulb. Make no mistake - this was no Maglite, this was a pathetic attempt at impressing kids. Sure it worked on me, but it was still pathetic.

I remember this flashlight so vividly because it was so poor. My room at night was pitch black. We lived out in the country, so there were no streetlights providing a soft glow through my windowshades. Lights out meant lights out. I kept this flashlight by my bed, and if I needed to get up during the night, I would use it to light my way to the door of my room and to the stairs. Only it wasn't a powerful enough flashlight to show me where the door was - seriously, this was a majorly poor flashlight. The only thing I could do was set out in the general direction of the door and point the flashlight at my feet. There was enough light to illuminate any obstacle that threatened to trip or maim me, even if I couldn't see the doorway. By adjusting each footfall, I was eventually able to reach my goal.

I'm not sure what eventually happened to the flashlight. I suspect it just fell apart one day of its own accord. I have a couple of new little flashlights now, both of them have bright LEDs in them, and they more than light up where I need to go. But I still occasionally remember that old Army flashlight.

A couple of years after the flashlight had shuffled off this mortal coil, I had occasion to speak on the 105th verse of Psalm 119: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." The verse made a whole lot more sense to me after having that flashlight - as long as I set out in the generally-right direction and took care to take carefully-illuminated singular footsteps, I'd eventually get to where I needed to be.

I still have problems setting long-term specific goals, but I like to think that I carefully consider each next step, and I'm ever hopeful that I'll end up where I'm supposed to.

Labels: family, life

3 comments

Even though I don't like to be cold, there are reasons I don't like to see Spring roll around:

• My winter coat has two inside pockets, perfect for carrying stuff. Spring coat, not so much.
• When the weather's nice, I don't (in the eyes of other people) have any excuse for staying inside.
• The nicer the weather, the more likely it is that the neighborhood kids will play right outside my window, which wouldn't be so bad except that the neighborhood kids are apparently banshees, and with the advent of Daylight Savings Time, they can play outside much longer than they ought.
• Bugs.

I'm sure I'll be able to add to this list as the weather gets nicer and I'm reminded of things.

Labels: quirks

6 comments

Though it's a little later in the season than I typically like to go, I made an appointment to get my taxes done yesterday. My taxes are pretty easy to do, but I will admit to some paranoia about audits and prison and governments being mad at me - I don't have any reason to fear those things, as I'm not trying to rip anyone off, but I think that's why it's called "paranoia" and not "groundedinfactoia."

I'd gone to this place before (okay, fine, it was Jackson Hewitt), but last year I bought TurboTax to try to save some money. It turned out that with the fees to electronically submit my returns, it cost about the same as having them done, so I figured I'd just go back to Jackson Hewitt this year. I called them on Saturday and made an appointment for yesterday.

I got there a little earlier than scheduled and the nice older lady (I'm guessing she was in her early 70s) had me fill out a form. There was a bucket of candy on the counter, so I had a piece of Hershey's milk chocolate, which I've really been enjoying lately, probably as a response to all the bad advice Dove chocolate has given me over the years.

When I'm done filling out the form, the lady takes me back her cubicle amidst a bunch of other cubicles which do nothing to prevent anyone from hearing your conversation, as evidenced by the other tax lady prairie-dogging her head over the wall and jumping into our conversation. It's a good thing I didn't have anything embarrassing to declare - "Well, I was in prison for most of last year, do I have to declare the 30 cents a day I earned making license plates?" or "Can I file jointly with all three of my wives? What if they're each in a different state?" I actually wonder if people get into the tax-preparation business because they like to hear about other people's money and problems. "You owe... let's see... 43 million dollars to the government this year. Wow! That's the most I've ever seen! I'm sad for your circumstances, but impressed at the same time!"

This lady took about 8 minutes to do my taxes, which should tell you how easy they are to do. She asked a couple of questions, showed me what my return would be, and then said, "That'll be $167."

Um, what?

Granted, I hadn't asked about price when I made the appointment, as I'd figured it'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of $60-70 like it was the last time I did this. but $167? I figured it must be a $100 charge since I didn't use them last year. I let her know that this was a surprising figure to me.

"Well, we can hold onto the paperwork until you're ready to pay for it."

"Um, I don't think I'll ever be ready to pay $167 to have my taxes done."

I apologized somewhere between 7-10 times for having taken up her time, and she said "It's okay" in a tone that clearly indicated it was not, and then I left.

I got in my car and Twittered that I was going to Best buy to get a software solution. Literally two seconds after I Twittered that, my friend Brian called and basically said, "Don't waste your money." He told me he had a list of 19 different free ways to do my taxes and then said, "And if you have State Farm Insurance, you can do TurboTax Online for free." As it happens, I do have State Farm, and as it further happens, he was right: you can do TurboTax Online for free if you're with State Farm, both state and federal.

It took me about 45 minutes to get everything entered and checked, re-checked, and printed, but they're done and submitted and I already had an email this morning that said my federal return was accepted. Sweet.

Now I wait 9-12 days to get my returns electronically deposited and then blow the money in riotous living, which in this case is defined as "putting some in savings and most on paying bills." Maybe next year I'll do something even more riotous, like put a down payment on a house.

Labels: taxes, technology

3 comments

This is Bucky from Get Fuzzy.

Labels: it's been said

1 comments

The English language is a beautiful thing. Oh, sure, it's a difficult one - I can't imagine trying to learn it as a second language ("The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough" anyone?) - but it can be downright lovely. I love the way some words sound, the way they roll off the tongue. I often get phrases stuck in my head the way some people get tunes stuck in theirs.

I'm not sure if it's my love of words that makes me love Scrabble or if it's the other way around. Either way, there's hardly anything I like more than a good game of Scrabble. My preferred method is to sit down to an actual game board and feel the tiles and spin the board and enjoy the conversation over the game. I've not played timed games, and I'm not sure I'd like it. The slow pace of a casual game suits me well.

I've literally been around Scrabble for as far back as I can remember. When my dad would have deacon's meetings at church, my mom would play Scrabble with the other deacon's wives. I would watch sometimes, but when I was a kid, it was boring to me. I didn't really understand it. and I certainly didn't know most of the words they were playing.

I don't remember when it was I tried it the first time, but I'm pretty sure I didn't do much better than "cat" and "food." I didn't play again for a long time.

The summer of 1995 is when I began playing in earnest. I traveled with a summer drama team and my mom and dad bought me an Official Scrabble Dictionary before I left on tour. I bought myself a travel edition of the game to go along with the dictionary and played a lot of Scrabble during those 12 weeks. The thing about Scrabble is, the more you play it, the better you get at it. You learn new words and start to remember more and more with each game. It was a great introduction to the game I'd seen for so long.

Since I essentially learned how to play on my own, I followed the official rules included with my travel Scrabble. When I got home from tour and started playing with my mom, I learned that the deacon's wives had varied a bit from the official rules - nothing major, just little things like end scoring and first tile rules, but they were in the rules, so like the brash young upstart I was, I suggested that's how we play - after all, it's how I'd played all summer... and how the game was meant to be played. To my dear mother's credit, she didn't smack the nonsense out of me and graciously adapted to this new way of playing.

There is something about playing by the actual rules that makes the game for me. They define and guide the game, making it the perfect balance of luck and skill that it is. Changes to the rules change the feel of the game and make it less enjoyable to me. "Let's play a casual game!" you say. "Let's include proper nouns and let me look up words in the dictionary to see if they're real words before I play my tiles!" "Oh," I'd reply, "and here I thought we were going to play Scrabble." I don't care for variations like Literati for this same reason - it's not Scrabble. I have no desire to play Super Scrabble, either. What good is a score of 500 if it's artificially inflated by the changed board? A 100-point word in Scrabble is a heckuva play. I imagine that a 100-point word in Super Scrabble happens if you accidentally spill your tiles on the board, what with its quadruple word score spaces and all.

I'll never be a championship-level player, and I'm fine with that. I've read what they do to become championship-level, and I'm not ready to do that. Memorizing lists of 2-letter words and hooks and prefixes and the racks of letters you're mostly likely to get -- it seems a bit more OCD than I want to let myself get. I have a page-a-day Scrabble calendar, I know a few Q without U words, and I know way more 2-letter words than you might suspect existed, and I'm comfortable with that level for now.

As I mentioned, sitting down to a real board and playing is my favorite method, and a two-player game is preferred. More players changes the letter drawing and has more randomness to it. The two-player match is the true test of skill. I don't play against the other person so much as I play against myself, trying to do better than I have before. I don't even mind losing - though I wouldn't want to lose all the time - as it's the process I enjoy. Playing with someone who is better than me is a good way to learn new methods and new words, and I welcome it, even if someone (Marshall) has beaten me five straight times.

I play online these days, as Scrabulous has made it easier. Yes, it's very clearly a rip-off of Scrabble and should be closed down by Hasbro (something they are in the process of, actually), but it plays exactly like Scrabble and has some great features, like letting you play your turn when you have the chance (rather than a whole game all at once), keeping track of your every bingo (using all 7 of your tiles for one word) and keeping track of your rating. There's a version of it in Facebook that is particularly useful, and it says I've completed 79 games there and am in the middle of 7 more. I don't like that I can't converse with people while I'm playing, and I miss the feel of the tiles and being able to shuffle them manually, but I also get to play a lot more and against a lot of different people all over the country and the world. It also challenges my trust in people, because there's no way to know if they're using helpers or word-finders, and I have to believe they are not, and that's a good exercise for my non-trusting self. After all, they have to believe the same of me, so it's a fair trade.

I played Sudoku for a time a couple years back and was enjoying it, but found that I was having trouble doing crossword puzzles and playing Scrabble. There was something about the thought processes involved that made it hard for me to do both - logic versus language or some such. I gave up Sudoku pretty quickly.

Labels: Scrabble

3 comments