Loaded Gun = Pathetic Game

Please excuse in advance the disjointed nature of this post. I will be taking frequent breaks for porn.

I made a huge mistake tonight. I went on a baseball date with Southern Belle and some friends; a great idea because I’m just about out of ways to entertain a girl for an entire night without alcohol (she’s 20!!! uncharted waters!) and my friends are pretty good company. The game was a lot of fun

umm, where was I? Oh right, baseball game.

The game was fun, but it started to drag on a bit so I suggested we head out. Turns out SB has to fly home for the weekend tomorrow morning, and has some packing to do, so coming back to my place is out. At this point I’m already a little suspicious because she hasn’t really been in touch this week, and I’m horny because when I start a relationship I have an obviously stupid thing about not jerking off, so I suggest I come over for an hour or so. It becomes pretty clear that she wants to hang out and after a little making out my brain is on a one way train to sex town. Unfortuntely, she backed off the idea, using the (accurate) excuse that if I came over for an hour, it’ll stretch out longer and she’ll be up all night. At this point, my options are few. I could have retained my dignity, played it cool and waited for her to call me up Sunday. aka the correct move. Instead, I pressed the issue. I could read her signals and knew she wanted to hang out, but unlike the similar situations that had come up the last two times we got together, the venue was not appropriate for the sort of techniques that are actually effective.

When reason fails, and seduction is inappropriate, the pussy within me emerges and I resort to pouting. It’s embarassing even to write this! Now, its not the totally awful puppy dog pouting that killed my last attempt at a relationship (she was a frigid bitch anyway), it was sort of “feigned indifference” pouting that had at least some dignity/entertainment value. Still, I know girls HATE that shit. If I had just taken care of business this afternoon, it never would have happened. I still expect to hear from her when she gets back Sunday, but now her last impression of me before going off to a wedding (and getting all weepy over eternal love) is me begging for sex. Smooth move

part II from below: the story is not that good… I take her out, show her a good time; the only funny part is when I repeatedly suggest we go to bars until I remember she’s not 21… then we go back to my place to watch DVDs, they don’t work, magic ensues.

the date, a week later (part one)

I apologize for all the italics in the last post. I read penny arcade, mostly for the italics, and i needed that sort of urgency to get my point across. I’ll try to be careful in the future. I really hope you read it, though; I worked really hard on it.

In my first post (four days ago) I promised an account of a date to be held that night; perhaps the anxiety of the event had something to do with Young Adventure’s genesis, who knows. Furthermore, I promised to myself two updates per day until I actually had people reading, at which point I could slip into complacency and just dribble out enough gruel to keep the hits going. Since that point is still in the distant future, I will satisfy my covenant by relating a night on the town.

I hit on the girl while drunk, at a house party. How drunk? I was told I struck up the conversation immediately after loudly proclaiming the virtues of shotgunning beers, apparently by myself. In my version, there were two cohorts, but the haze of memory and all… Short, tiny, brunette, three years younger than me (22 – 3 = 19, now 20) , and the only girl there who was not established to be frigid/accounted for. I was ten beers strong, and struck up a mighty conversation. Things were touch and go at first, but when she admitted to being involved in marching band at school (in the south!) I knew it was smooth sailing from there. After another good half hour of conversation I offered to walk her back to the metro, despite having NO idea how to get there (I got a ride to the party). She was completely new to the city as of that week, so I was her sole protector. We stumbled (as I found out later, I was actually the only one stumbling) across the metro eventually and I made astonishingly witty and charming game (she complained about her roommate… does it get any easier?) at getting her back to my place. She was unconvinced, but I got her number and a kiss. Sleep. Hangover. (I later found out she was 100% sober the entire time.  Hilarious)

E-mail with Mutual Friend:

YA: the problem is if you’re pretty sure you only want to hook up with someone, dates are WAY more of a hassle than drunkenly hitting on them. So goes the life of ubersketch, i suppose. but who knows, maybe true love is right around the corner?

MF: a southern belle like that you’ve got to butter up first…take the
lady on a date.

The man spoke the truth. I called her and set up plans for dinner. I decided to go with “Let’s meet at DuPont circle”. Spontanaity, people watching, bookstores, music stores, bars and restaraunts… you can’t go wrong. I put on jeans, flip flops and a decent shirt and headed out to my destiny. Part II tomorrow

Boredom, the Body, and Bliss

The world dissolved around me as I ran. As soon I left Roommate behind me the world faded away, and I was back in that place I had forgotten ever existed. I had been there of course, before, but this only the second time I really looked around, experienced it, pondered it, blogged it. The place is, of course, what is known as transcendence, bliss, or nirvana. Or, its when your mind gives the finger to your body and does whatever the fuck it wants. Thence happiness.

The enlightenment happened in the Grand Canyon. It was day five of a six-day, sixty-mile excursion into the wilderness. In fact, it was day five of six, and mile five of eight that day. I had seen my eleventieth yucca plant in bloom and as my senses began to numb, my mind began to warm up. Why hike? I knew I loved it, but the catch phrases didn’t quite cover it. Communion with nature? Give me a break. Nature could not have cared less that I was tramping around in it, and frankly I had seen enough rocks and cacti to last me several years. No, nature is a great excuse to walk around for hours on end, but in the end there’s something about the walking. Then I figured it out.

It’s not your mind that gets bored. It seems like it… you’re sitting around and just trying to find ways to occupy yourself. But it’s your idle body that’s really forcing you into action. It is like a four year old, but mommy I’m bored, it cries. Think about it. Do you ever, reasonably, objectively, want to look at porn? Do you ever think, you know what would be really interesting right now? some double penetration! No, that’s your body speaking. It likes boners, and it likes touching them. (there’s no way I can spin that to make it sound hetero, so I’ll just let you think about that). Fully active and unoccupied senses are an incredible annoyance to consciousness. You cannot truly live while your body is whining for stimulation and you are busy supplying it. We have two options to free yourself:

1) Menial labor. The realization, on that mile five of seven, was that my body just loved picking out what rock to step on, what little path to take up a little climb, what bushes to squeeze between. It was like a little autistic kid rocking back and forth watching a mobile, and my mind, the relieved parent, could finally sit back in the recliner and read the paper. You can hike for hours without making a conscious decision about what rock to step on, and yet it is a decision that must get made before the first nerve impulse sends your foot out in front of you. This process, finding the next step, occupied my senses and allowed my higher reasoning powers the freedom to wander. Boredom is inconcievable. Your brain wants nothing more than to burrow into its little stimulus-free world and happily think the day away. Nirvana. If you have never worked hard; really hard, on something trivial, then I feel that you’ve missed a chance to really discover yourself. Dishwashing, triathlon training, roofing, or whatever. And yet, when you’ve got your cozy little life together, why would you ever do one of these things. And so we discover:

2) Drugs. I am specifically thinking of alcohol and marijuana, the only drugs I have experience with. Alcohol indeed shuts down your senses. Alcohol shuts down everything. You can’t find bliss with alcohol, but at least you can escape the neverending queue of stimuli. Drinkers often talk about the sweet spot, the buzz, that magical amount of drinks where everything is just so. I imagine that the sweet spot lies in that place where you stop giving a shit about whats going on around you but still have a reasonable amount of self awareness. Beyond the sweet spot, your mind is increasingly only capable of processing one thought at a time. Now it, newly the retarded playmate of your autistic little boy body, must push through your dulled senses and find that one thing in its surroundings to latch onto. Hopefully it is not the fact that your ex-girlfriend is being a bitch, but instead the delightful discovery that shotgunning beers is fun. And passing out.

Now, marijuana. I don’t smoke very often. I believe I’ve only gotten high twice in the past fifteen months. But I’ve done it enough to appreciate how totally sweet it is. Here’s the thing. Getting high doesn’t shut down your brain. Instead you become the King of the Cosmos; floating high above the petty sensory nuisances of the world, free to ponder how amusing it would be if you could just roll it all up, roll it all up in the most delightful katamari of all. My friend P introduced me to this part (the marijuana part, not the katamari part) of the theory, discussing the book A Botany of Desire. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s supposed to be good. Anyway, smoke weed.

There are other ways to acheive nirvana, of course. The obvious omission is music. The optimal state of being for me is deep in a jam, the state of communion and expression where your feelings and interpretation of stimuli bypass conscious thought and express themselves directly in sound. This state of bliss arises not from freeing your conciousness from the shackles of your body, but from integrating it so seamlessly into your subconscious, or perhaps even abandoning it altogether, being free and of nothing but expression.

So there you have it, a semi exhaustive tour of nirvana. When I woke up this morning (at 2 PM) I was bored and had nothing to write about. Too busy being bored that my brain didn’t even have a chance to get working. I did manage to pick up my instruments and jam with myself for a little bit, but it was the run that really did it for me. I left my body to take care of its aerobic duties and remembered why working out is more than grunting and looking at muscles in mirrors. Oh, and don’t run with your ipod. Dumbass

things I own

Hitting on Girls in Cars

I check out girls constantly while I am driving. One day it may get me in an accident. One day it may get me laid. Yes, the first outcome is far likelier. I drove home from my parents house today, and between Baltmore and DC I spotted a shiny new red Mazda3, an extremely sexy car. In fact, the only reason I am ended up with my current car (02 Accord V6) is that I went to a dealer to check out a 3 and they had this car for a much better deal. But I digress. Hot chick.

As I began to lust after the car my thoughts naturally turned to its occupant. I noticed a sorority sticker across the back window and pulled up alongside to see if the girl was cute/alone. Yes/yes. Not way too hot either (this would have spelled my doom as surely as a meathead riding shotgun). And so it was that I began to ponder the logistics of hitting on a girl while driving 75 mph down I95. Something I had never attempted before; but hey, it would make a good story for my blog! Obviously a sign was the way to go, so I prepared my weapon.

Best of all, it wasn’t even a lie! This was stage one of the plan. On the reverse, I wrote “DC?” and if things progressed in a positive manner the last step was to be “#?”. I know, I am a master. Anyway, I pulled up alongside after a few minutes of circling/pondering. First thing I see, she has a piece of paper in her hand. This is too good to be true! I show her my sign, she smiles at me and mouths “thanks,” and then pulls away for good. Either the paper said “Fuck off” or she was just checking her directions. Or maybe it was the fact that my sign looked like it was written in blood.  Ahh well.

I would love to hear your story if you’ve ever picked up a girl like this.

girl from awkward e-mail wrote back. She has been really busy. I actually believe this, since she is a doctoral candidate. She would like to see some jazz sometime, but nothing more specific than this. I am hopeful!

My grades are due!

half an hour ago.

Better get started!

Upbringing

I drove the three hours home from DC this morning, to attend my father’s 60th birthday party. Sitting in the old yard, drinking lemonade gave me a chance to reflect on the life my parents have made for themselves and the way they raised me. One level deep, everything is wrong. I’ve rejected the religion of my parents, which is essentially fundamentalist christian without all the hate. My father earned two degrees and most of a third, then gave up and settled into his “temporary” job. They live a quiet life in the suburbs, they don’t drink, and watch probably twenty hours of tv a week. None of this fits anywhere into the recent ivy grad mentality; which I’ve reluctantly adopted. Life is working hard, going out, traveling with friends, and then leveling up. A weekend night at home is a weekend night wasted. And for the most part, I’m loving it. Yet when I talk about grad school, about looking into tech and consulting jobs after my teaching stint, I don’t take it seriously. I haven’t cracked a math textbook (a college level one) since halfway through my last semester at school, and I don’t have an inkling of what I would do in the industry sector. I’m going to get left behind by my friends, it seems. Could I really settle into a teaching job? Money just has no motivational power over me; so the impetus to move on is going to have to come from somewhere else.

Then there is the question of family. The values I was taught in my jesus-centric upbringing are central to the way I treat other people and lead my life. I know I’ll have a family eventually; if I’m thinking about raising kids now, there’s no way I’ll be ignoring it ten years from now… so the question is; can you raise agnostic kids with a strong moral compass? I’m sure its possible, but part of me wonders if I shouldn’t just take my kids to church. It seems to me that the conclusion I reach about the way I was raised over the next couple years will have a strong impact on how I build my own family. Now, I just have to find a girl that I don’t get bored with within three dates.

I’m afriad of

-getting an STD test

-being this lazy the rest of my life

-never falling in love again

-non-existence

Deal or No Deal

Warning:  this post is completely devoid of the spunk and charm that I want to pretend I have in this blog.  Read at your own risk, and feel free to skip entirely.

The show “Deal or No Deal” is one of the most brilliantly designed experiments on personal economic choice that has ever been devised and implemented, and I doubt anyone involved in the show even realizes it. Hopefully if you are reading this you are familiar with the show, but if not, google it; I am far too lazy to explain the premise myself. The genius of the experiment (although fascinating, I’m not at all concerned with analyzing the entertainment aspect) is that each decision faced in the show has the same fixed parameters, totally known probabilities, and simple calculations. Even the mathematically challenged could ask their family members to sit there with a calculator, punch in some simple numbers, and give them a reasoned answer. And yet, this NEVER happens (disclaimer: I’ve only watched the show three or four times). So here’s how you do it.

Expected Value is the centerpiece of probability theory, and to me the most stimulating single concept I’ve encountered in my pathetic math career*. The basic idea is quite simple, especially in the case of Deal or No Deal: For each possible scenario, you multiply the amount you would earn in that scenario by the probability of that scenario coming true. Then you add it all together, and you get Expected Value (or EV). This is then what you “expect” the final “value” to be on average. In the case of Deal, the possible scenarios are the possible values of your briefcase. To find its value, you add up all the yet-unseen dollar values (highlighted for your convenience on a giant board) and divide by the number of cases left. In an unequivocally real way, this number IS the value of your briefcase. EV is not a wishy-washy approximation. In a repeatable game (think blackjack) with a fixed starting bankroll, if you make negative EV bets, you will, no doubt or uncertainly or luck about it, you will lose all of your money. If you make positive EV bets there is a high likelyhood you will experience unbounded growth in your bankroll.

Think of it this way: as far as you are concerned right now, every briefcase is the same. there are N of them left, and they are worth a total of D dollars. Therefore yours must be worth D/N. Just think; with one simple mental calculation (hint: ignore all dollar values on the left side), you know the exact value of your briefcase. The banker has no clothes. Now the game becomes simple. If the banker offers you a fair price for your briefcase (off the top of my head I’d say 90% of its worth, but if I were going to be on the show I would check out tax figures and run some calculations on my concept of diminishing returns) then you take the money and run. If not, you keep playing. And yet, watch the families who are supposed to be offering guidance to their bewildered contestant. Here are some things that seem to carry more weight in their counsel than simple mathematics: crowd noise, seductive looks from briefcase wenches, flashing lights, gut feelings.

Watching the first episode of this show with my family over christmas break, I expressed my astonishment at the dichotomy between the elegant simplicity of the show and the complete obliviousness of all involved (except, ostensibly, the banker, from whoms pasty ashkenazi visage we are thankfully shielded). To my disbelief, my father, the source of my bell curve-defying (to the tune of three standard deviations) logical capabilities, failed to grasp the truth of my claims. To him, the EV calculation offered no greater truth beyond a good starting point. In addition to failing to completely grasp the concept itself, he did not see how an idea rooted in repeatability had any bearing on a one-shot game show.

The fundamental concept that eluded my father is that being a contestant on Deal or No Deal is not just a one shot event. It is just one of thousands of financial decisions you will make over the course of your life. Over those thousands of decisions you can either choose to make positive expected value decisions, or negative expected value decisions. If you consistently make positive EV decisions, you will end up with more money. Period. In addition, there is no reason to be particularly risk averse on the show, because there can be no negative consequences for losing (save the scenario of a looming unpaid debt to the mafia). Therefore positive expected value is the only reasonable choice.

Later, I will explain why I failed to live up to this maxim by neglecting to spend the half hour it would have taken me to get a 1.5% better loan on my car (and by extension, save several hundred dollars at no risk or expenditure of effort)

Update: after I wrote this post I found this article. It will either affirm, contradict, or have no relevance to my post; I only skimmed it. If this sort of stuff interests you, you should check out this as well.

I’m not racist

I’ve always suspected, or even felt, that I was subconsciously racist.  After growing up in white suburbia, I’ve lived in mostly black neighborhoods for the past two years now; this is where you find cheap rent in cities.  In these two years, I’ve never felt, nor desired to feel a personal connection, to my neighbors.  I mostly keep my head down as I pass an old black couple sitting on their stoop, listlessly watching the day go by, instead of greeting them (that was not a crude stereotype, those are my neighbors).  I stayed out of bars in the immediate neighborhood until I discovered that Wonderland was a bar that white people went to.

A couple of things today got me thinking about it.  First, I was perusing old posts of roosh and he linked to this article; these are the conversations that I could be having with the people I live among; i’m surrounded by diversity and I go out of my way to seek out the familiar.  This is human nature, and I’m not going to pretend that I will change, but it’s worth thinking about.

Then, I was heading out of my house today to drop off a left cell phone, and one of my neighbors (black, middle aged, disheveled) beckoned me over.  Mild discomfort washed over me but I headed over anyway to see what he wanted.  Of course, as these stories always go, he was a really nice guy, was disheveled because he was working on his car, and wanted me to watch it while he ran out to home depot to pick up some parts.  Since I was heading out, I ran up to ask my roommate to do it.  I asked myself, am I racist because of that wave of discomfort?  As soon as we started talking I was completely at ease, but something is going on here.

One more anecdote, then analysis.   Last night I was on the metro, headed out to fairfax for some drinking, and seated near us was a family.  A walmart family.  The kind of family that makes people hate america.  The kids were overweight, dressed in ill-fitting grimy t-shirts, with greasy hair and bad skin.  The parents were obese and glassy-eyed.  I judged them.  I felt loathing for them.  I wanted nothing to do with them, ever.  Obviously, this has nothing to do with race.  And yet, the feelings were the same.  If one of them had approached me, my discomfort would neither have been less or of a different sort than the discomfort I felt outside my house today.  As I drove this morning, the puzzle pieces began to fall into place.  I am not racist; as far as I can tell, not even a little bit.  My prejudicial feelings towards the people around me fall precisely on economic and cultural lines, not racial ones.  (Yes, this is bad, more on this later).

Cultures and races overlap.  This is not my fault, or your fault, or their fault.  It is the fault of lots and lots of people who are mostly dead.  Yes, black males are more likely (statistically) to committ violent crimes than white males.  It is not because they are black, is because the demographics of the more violent cultures are skewed racially.  Regardless of my prejudices, I despise thug culture on a moral basis.  The artists who lead this culture are feeding off the carcasses of the communities they were raised in.  Violence and drugs perpetuate poverty; they might as well be robber barons.

And this is why its so hard to talk about race.  I couldn’t be this frank with my circle of friends.  When you are white and liberal its easiest to shun racially tinged discussion, aside from dissing on the easy stuff.  And yet, how is one to confront his own feelings without honest discourse with friends?  For me, just writing this down has helped.

Now that I have accepted I’m not racist, I have to confront my true bigotry: classism.  I just want nothing to do with poor people.  Last week an old homeless (or just very poor) woman tapped on my window as I drove to work.  She didn’t ask for money, she just wanted a ride to Connecticut Ave.  I turned her down, even though I was driving to Connecticut Ave.  (she was white, by the way).  Despite the fact that this has weighed on my conscience from the moment it happened, I can’t say for sure I would react differently if it happened tomorrow.  I can’t fix myself in a blog post, but I’ll try to keep track of my behavior over the next few weeks and report it here.  If Darth Vader wasn’t all bad in the end, there’s probably hope for me too.