I finally saw (500) Days of Summer, and I liked it. A lot. But I also found it to be exceptionally depressing, although I couldn’t initially figure out why. The narrator is up front about what we’re getting into – “You should know up front, this is not a love story.” – and we quickly see that it’s meant to be a story about love, and it’s probably not going to have a typical romantic comedy ending.

And yet we’re conditioned to watch movies a certain way, with certain expectations, and it’s difficult to shake that conditioning even when we’re warned ahead of time that that ain’t where this thing is headed.  But I digress. On balance, the movie ended with me feeling sad. And I’m not sure whether that was what was intended. After all, the point seems to be that, sure Tom has his heart obliterated, but there’s always another season waiting around the corner!

But what’s the point, Tom? Ok, you met someone new. But how many (days) do you get this time, and to what end? In a way, I feel that the central theme of the movie is dark: fatalism. No matter what we do, no matter what we think is going on, we’re steadily plodding along toward the end, even from the beginning. The best we can hope for is to make our journey as satisfying as possible. Some journeys will end happily, like Summer’s, and some may never end or will end badly, like Tom’s probably will.  Tom decided that architecture would be more satisfying than writing greeting cards, and he seems really into it. But he was also really into Summer, and we know how that turns out.

But there’s also something even a little darker, if only because it seems to be true. The crux of the movie is wrapped up in a Tom-crushing line from Summer. Tom says to Summer, “I need to know you won’t wake up tomorrow and feel a different way.” Summer’s honest reply: “I can’t promise you that. Nobody can.  Anyone who does is a liar.” And she clarifies this idea the next morning in response to Tom’s inquiry as to why Summer’s past relationships didn’t work out: “Nothing happened really. It’s what always happens. Life.”  And we’re suddenly dropped down the existentialist rabbit hole.

Well. Ok. So. Why did I like this movie so much? First of all, while I don’t necessarily agree about life being fatalistic, I probably agree so far as romantic relationships go. We’re programmed to look for love, to find a soulmate. Shoot, even the creation story describes the first woman as a helpmate for the man. She was created to help him live life, to be a companion. And so we pursue relationships like our lives depend on it. And we continue to do this despite the overwhelming evidence that the ultimate romantic relationship – marriage – ends in disaster more often than not.  So why do we pursue relationships when we know all the good times will most often be trumped by the bad? I think Tom would like to know as well.

But there were some artistic touches that stood out beyond all the sadness. The copy-room kiss was one of the better-written and acted scenes I’ve seen in a while. Tension is built, resolved and replaced in a matter of seconds, and I think we know how Summer and Tom feel in that moment. The “Reality” and “Expectations” split-screen was fantastic. I think most people have experienced that and just about everyone knows that the two screens will rarely match (if ever). In fact, the entire movie could be said to describe the differences between Tom’s expectations and reality.

There was a nice bit of Sixth Sense-like directing. There are a few scenes where I wondered “Are they really there together, or is Tom imagining this?” At the end of their trip to Ikea, Tom and Summer hold hands, but there’s a distance between them that seems large. The hand-holding seems almost imaginary. On the train to the wedding, I wondered if Tom really saw Summer, or if he was just hoping he saw her, using her to cope with this uncomfortable situation so he wouldn’t have to go solo. On the bench at the end of the movie, if Tom were sitting there alone, and another person saw him there, the observer would have no idea he was interacting with Summer. Was this just Tom’s way of finally saying goodbye? Ultimately, all of these scenes efficiently accomplish their objective: to emphasize the ambiguity inherent in relationships. Tom was constantly wondering, “Will she ultimately reciprocate? Am I alone here?” And we, as viewers, were asking the same questions.

Preface

I recently bought a new laptop and, as I transferred my old stuff to my new laptop, I found this unfinished blog post.  I’m pretty sure I initially wrote this some time in early 2006 (possibly late 2005).  I wish I had found this before the 2008 election as it would’ve been fun to revisit in light of the major issues that drove the election.  Anyway, I want to get this posted while I’m thinking about it.  I’ve copied it here unedited, but I’ve added an afterward at the end (it was unfinished and I wanted to wrap it up instead of leaving it so open-ended).

Me on Machiavelli on welfare and government redistribution of wealth

I’m just about to finish up Machiavelli’s The Prince. Last night, I went to dinner at my favorite local cafe and my server asked if I was reading it “for fun”, to which I replied, “I wouldn’t say it’s ‘fun’, but I’m between books right now and I had this laying around, so I figured I’d give it a shot.” Even in his introduction, the translator says that he’s not sure we can really “learn” much from Machiavelli, but that his writing is insightful, at least as far as the mysterious Machiavelli is concerned.

As I began reading, I couldn’t help but agree with the translator–I didn’t see myself learning a whole lot from this experience. That was true until about half way through the book when I stumbled upon his chapter on “Generosity and Parsimony”. There, I found what I thought was some interesting insight into today’s politics in America.

A brief summary of a tiny part of The Prince

Before I go any further, I should probably give a brief summary of The Prince. I almost wrote something like, “For those who haven’t read and have no desire to read The Prince…”, but that’s just fluff. Really, I’m summarizing for myself so I don’t have to ever read it again. Anyway, a “prince” is basically a “ruler” and Machiavelli talks about how princes come to power, how they maintain their power and some general rules to live by for princes as they try to maintain their principalities. So, his chapter on “Generosity and Parsimony” is another section designed to point out traits of an effective ruler.

Machiavelli essentially says that, although it may be immediately beneficial, giving lots of stuff to people to win their favor is ultimately a trap that will bury a leader. I think he’s talking about bribery, but he’s also talking generally about giving gifts and freebies to the populous at large. He contends that there are several problems with giving things to people to gain their favor. The first is that all the things given have to be taken from somewhere else: he’ll either have to give of his own possessions, which will eventually run out, or he’ll have to take from others and give of their possessions which will eventually make those “others” his enemies and will also eventually run out.

Once the giving stops, the populous, having been spoiled by his generosity thus far, would be discontented and he would lose favor with them. A couple clichés come to mind: “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” and “Ignorance is bliss”. If you give stuff to people, especially if they haven’t earned it, and you stop giving them that stuff, they’ll become very restless; if you never give them more than they need, they’ll never know what it’s like to have excess.

Back to my point

But I said this has to do with today’s politics, didn’t I? Here’s how: Socialism, welfare, unemployment and entitlement are all hot-button issues today. Right now, the two opposing schools of thought are: 1) We recognize that people have needs and we believe the best way to satisfy those needs is to give them opportunities to work, earn a paycheck and fend for themselves and 2) We recognize that people have needs and we think that those whose needs are fulfilled should help out those whose needs are not fulfilled. In a nutshell, it’s “bolster the economy and create jobs” versus “tax the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have-nots’”.

Although he wasn’t talking directly about welfare, I think Machiavelli’s point is valid: giving generously to the “have-nots” by taxing the “haves” seems wonderful until the “haves” get sick of it and demand that the “have-nots” work for their wages. Of course, I don’t believe that people should starve because they can’t find a job, and I believe America is a country that shouldn’t let that happen. People will fall on hard times and our country is wealthy enough to help those people out until they can get back on their feet. But they’ll never get back on their feet if they don’t have any incentive to stand up.

A sidebar on Giuliani’s Leadership

A few months ago, I read Rudy Giuliani’s Leadership and I was very impressed with some of his political philosophies and tactics. Most impressive, though, were his results. He only briefly discusses his take on welfare, but I think it was a great philosophy: When people are without jobs, other citizens should be helping them survive. But, part of helping them “survive” is helping them learn a trade, find a job and get off of welfare. Giuliani’s system provided seminars, vocation training, job hunting and other resources to those on welfare and, as a result, he dramatically reduced unemployment. I think the most substantial tenant of his welfare philosophy was this: If you’re on welfare, we’re going to provide you with all the resources we can to help you find a job, but you only have a certain amount of time to draw benefits and then we’re cutting you off. His philosophy was to “teach a man to fish”.

Back to my point again (and some butchery of my own interpretation of Giuliani’s philosophy)

I suppose my real problem with an open-ended welfare system (and the same goes for strict socialism) is that the system is not designed to actually help anyone get off of welfare. Instead, the system is designed to endear those who are on welfare to the providers, and ultimately to provide votes for the providers. I think it’s easiest to explain this by going back to the adage I mentioned earlier. The adage goes something like this: “Cook a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” To take this a step further, say there were two businesses, each related to the fishing industry, but in different ways. The first business sells fishing gear–poles, lures, line, etc.–while the second is a fish restaurant. The first business would be most interested in increasing the number of fishermen in its area. This business understands that more people fishing means better sales for poles, line, lures and such. The other business would be interested in keeping people hungry for fish and would prefer that people spend their time at the restaurant buying and eating fish because the more people that eat fish, the more revenue they’ll get. More importantly, the latter would realize that it’s bad for people to learn to fish. If people are catching their own fish, they don’t need a restaurant to cook and sell them fish for a significant mark-up.

In both examples, the analogy would extend into the political world as “revenue” equals “votes”. Giuliani’s philosophy was to teach people to fish, but also to give them a couple vouchers to the fish restaurant so they can eat in the mean time. The opposing philosophy would be to have the general population provide unlimited vouchers to those in need so the needy can eat and aren’t motivated to learn to fish on their own (I wouldn’t learn to fish if I knew I’d get three square meals a day at no charge to me).

Afterward (and a bait-n-switch from welfare to populism)

As I read back over this post, I feel that maybe I was talking more about populism than social programs.  I was a little off on some of my terminology (I guess I know what I meant by “open-ended welfare”, though it seems like I could’ve worded that more eloquently), but I think was mostly on point.  The 2008 election was largely driven by populism: Obama ran on a fundamentally populist platform, focusing on “change”, “hope” and other feel-good words for the masses while remaining fairly opaque about himself, his own ambitions and his specific plans; he also focused on taxing the rich and redistributing wealth, creating tons of social programs and spending many billions of dollars while offering little by way of explanation as to whom would fund these programs. It could be many years before we know how many of his promises he’s able to keep, or the cost of trying to keep those promises.

But politics and elections are based on promises (empty and otherwise), so what differentiates normal politics from populism?  To me, the differentiator is not so much the target demographic, class or audience, but the advisability and feasibility of the ideology being preached.  Are we making these promises because they’re best for the country, and ultimately for “the people”? Or are we making promises because they’re the key to maximizing votes for this particular election?  Are we bailing out the Big Three because that’s what’s best for the industry and the country? Or are we bailing them out because we need to save some jobs in the short-term, and a lot of those jobs are union leaders and lobbyists in DC?

I should write this down so I don’t forget about it.  We had a doubles foosball tournament at work today and my team won.  Then I went home for an hour or so and got ready to go play a couple of single-table ten-dollar poker tourneys.   I hadn’t played with this group before, but they’re mostly guys that I know and it was a good time.  I won the first tourney and didn’t cash in the second.  I’m sure winning a foosball tourney and a poker tourney on the same day puts me in with some strange company.

iPhone!

Also, I bought a 3G iPhone today.  I woke up at 4:30 and got to the AT&T store at about 5:30.  We were in the doors at 8:30 and back out again by 9:15.  Of course, the iTunes crash prevented me from registering the phone for several hours, but I’m up and running now.  So far, I’m really impressed with the iPhone.  I still need to finish loading all of my music, but texting, surfing the web, using the iPod and GPS are all super useful and really easy to use.  The only thing I’m not excited about is my new $100-plus cell phone bill.

Remember that time when I said I was going to try and make a substantive post every two weeks? Me neither.

So, here’s what’s been up since my last post:

Well, obviously, we’re more than SEC Champs these days. Since we whooped up on OSU, we’ve become the first school to hold both the basketball and football National Titles in the same calendar year. I don’t have much to say about that except that it’s great to be a Florida Gator. Oh, and I feel we’re a strong favorite to repeat in basketball… and look out for us in football next year.

Speaking of next year’s football team, it looks like Urban Meyer is a recruiting genius. But we don’t have a chance next year because we’re losing so much on defense, right? I don’t think so. I think our defense was great this year because we had a lot of talent, but also because we were so well coached. I think after spring practice and our first couple games this fall, we’ll be back on track. Also, our schedule is much more favorable this year and our offense is going to put up some serious numbers. I think our coaches will have the defense ready (though maybe not quite as good as last year), and our offense is going to put up better numbers this year. I think this year’s offense will make last year’s look pretty timid.

Moving on, um… I’ve been reading a lot. I recently finished reading Tipping Point. It was excellent, and it helped me have a new perspective on causality. It was interesting to get a better picture of what can make things “tip”. Here’s the analogy that comes to mind for describing what a “tipping point” is: Paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit; it doesn’t burn at 450 degrees (in theory, or whatever). It’s not that 450 degrees isn’t hot, but that 450 degrees isn’t hot enough to cause the paper to burn – to tip. At 450 degrees, the paper is just hot; at 451 degrees, everything is on fire. But there’s not much difference between the two numbers. That one degree is just enough, in addition to the previous 450 degrees, to make a bunch of stuff happen and finally catch the paper on fire. And so it is with social epidemics – things will often be going on as they always have, and then some small thing suddenly causes those things to become something bigger and much more obvious. The book basically tries to break down the individual factors that contribute to something reaching its tipping point.

I am currently reading Fast Food Nation, which is pretty boring, but educational. I guess I’m learning a lot about what goes on behind the scenes in the “food industry”. The book goes through a brief history of “fast food”, then goes into the specifics of where most of that food is produced, who produces it and how very evil the whole process and industry is. Ironically, I keep finding myself craving a good hamburger while I read it. That ain’t right.

I’ve had a good run playing poker online recently. I spent some time working on my cash game, had a really, really good run, then took a break when the law of averages roundhoused me in the face (but still ran at about 5BB/100 hands for about 5K hands). I jumped back into MTTs and recently had a pretty big score in a $30 tournament. There were 113 people and I took 2nd for $678. Normally, I’d be very pleased with that finish except I battled back from a 2-to-1 chip deficit to a 10-to-1 chip lead (over about 25 minutes of solid heads-up play)… but then I lost a coinflip (AKs vs. TT), a 70-30 (King high vs. QQ), then lost another coinflip (all-in on a QTx flop with two hearts – I had KJo, he had 8h7h and flushed the turn). By the time all that was over, the blinds were so high we were just gambling. I lost one more flip and that was it.

Anyway, I’ve been to Jacksonville several times over the past couple months and I’ve enjoyed being able to get home so easily. I’ve seen my family several times and I’ve spent time with some friends too. It’s nice to be able to head up to Jax whenever I want, and it’s especially nice that I don’t have to burn vacation time or like $500 a trip. As I think back on my time in Dallas, it really seems like it was just an extended internship or something. I never really felt “at home” there, and I was always in a “wait and see” mode. I knew I’d either move west to pursue acting, or I’d move back east to be near my friends and family. Texas was never really a long-term option, and I’m really glad I ended up back in Florida. It’s hard to describe the overall increase in my quality of life since I moved, but it’s pretty drastic.

I bought a digital piano a few weeks ago. It’s a Kurzweil PC88 and it’s in pretty great shape, especially considering it’s probably 10 years old. I have been surprised how much dexterity I still have, and it’s been fun playing “by ear” instead of just reading sheet music. I can tell my musical ear has definitely matured since I’ve been playing the guitar. It’s nice to be able to just sit down and play something that’s in my head (at least a slimmed-down, easy version). Hopefully I’ll stick with it and become pretty decent.

I think that’s about all I have for now. I’ll try to make it back before April.

I’ve officially moved to Gainesville and I’m starving. I left yesterday morning around 10:00 (CDT) and I arrived in Gainesville around 3:00 (EDT) this afternoon. I think I made pretty good time considering I was driving a big moving truck with my car in tow. In retrospect, I’m pretty surprised I didn’t hit anything or flip the truck. Also, it turns out I’m pretty competent when it comes to backing up trucks with trailors attached.

Anyway, I haven’t eaten in about nine hours, so I’m going to get some dinner. Hopefully I’ll be able to partake of some kinda’ local food.

EDIT: I ended up eating at Mi Apa Latin Cafe. It’s a nice little Latin place near my old place (which is actually someone else’s old place). It was quick, tasty and their menu is pretty good. They have a lot of different fruit juices for those who like that kinda’ thing. The papaya juice was a little tart for my taste, but that’s probably because I used it as a chaser for my Coke.

I have a lot of updating to do, and I plan to start this weekend. I need to talk about my life since the move, Florida Football (I’ve been remiss vis-a-vis all things Gators lately) and probably a bunch of other stuff. I’ve been sick, so that’s my excuse.

A friend of mine recently called to ask if I would recommend some books for him. He wanted me to recommend good stuff that he was probably supposed to read in high school, but didn’t. He also mentioned that he wanted to read stuff that might be be fodder for allusions and pop-culture references. Finally, he’ll be listening to these books on audio books, which he’ll borrow from the library. Here’s what I recommended:

• Animal Farm – Very short political allegory about the Russian Revolution.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany – Long, but an excellent, excellent story. Occasional language, but not much at all.
• Catcher in the Rye – Medium length, good, classic story. The language is occasionally kind of rough because it’s written from the perspective of a teenage boy.
• 1984: This is a pretty long book, but it’s referred to a lot (both directly “Man, that’s straight out of 1984!” and indirectly, “That’s totally Orwellian!”). It’s very interesting, but dry reading.
• Fahrenheit 451: Shorter book, and a pretty interesting read. It’s about censorship and how governments try to control people… I think one of the more interesting aspects of this book was that it was written in the 50s as a futuristic book, and some of the author’s predictions into future technology are spot-on.
• Scarlet Letter: This is prototypical “Early American Literature”. It’s a medium-length book, pretty dark story. This is alluded to pretty frequently (I just saw it referenced on a TV show a couple nights ago).
• Catch-22: This is a very, very funny book. Heller’s sense of humor is almost exactly like mine (very dry, sarcastic), and he’s a fantastic writer to boot. It’s basically a satire of the American military. It’s pretty long, but very good. I think there may be some mildly “dirty” content… it is about soldiers after all!

I was careful to let him know when a book might contain cuss words or otherwise risqué language because he has two young kids and I’d hate for him to be cruising along with his two-year old, listening to Catcher in the Rye when Holden drops an F-bomb, dirtying up junior’s vocabulary forever.

That is all.

A friend recommended this book, so I thought I’d give it a read. I was really impressed with the spirit of the book and I’d definitely recommend it. I felt like there were two themes to the book:

1) Correlation does not imply causality. People often find a correlation between two or more things and assume that correlation demonstrates a causal relationship between those things. This isn’t necessarily true and there are often many other factors that need to be considered.

2) Asking “Why?” can help us discover very unusual and interesting things. Accepting opinions and hypotheses without scrutiny can lead us to false conclusions and rob us of genuine understanding. Repeatedly asking “Why?”, even when the answer seems obvious or at least trivial, can help us uncover interesting relationships between seemingly unrelated things.

It was a pretty quick read, but it helped me see that I should probably be thinking deeper and more critically than I typically do.

We’ve had two more games since my last post. The first one, we led until just a few minutes left in the game, when our team basically just ran out of gas and couldn’t convert on offense. It was a very frustrating game because we outplayed the other team, but they had a big size advantage and the refs allowed them to beat up on us throughout the game. In the end, they simply wore us down and ended up winning by three (we’d led by as many as 12 in the second half).

This week, we got our second win and it felt pretty good. As with most of our games this year, we jumped out to an early lead by playing efficient offense and very good man defense. We didn’t score many points–30 on the game–but we only gave up 20 points total, eight in the first half. Personally, I had a good game on the “intangible” level, but I only scored two points. I was very tired before the game and I never really had my legs under me. I took a few three-pointers, but it didn’t take me long to realize it was going to be tough to hit them since I was so flat. I started head-faking a lot and that allowed me to dribble-penetrate into the paint and get easy looks from close-range or dish out to an open teammate. I typically chose to pass because I wasn’t having much luck with the inside shots. My only points came on a head-fake where I drove all the way to the hoop and laid it in. It took me too long to realize that I should’ve been dribbling one more time and going for a lay-up rather than pulling up to shoot. Their 2-3 zone was soft in the middle and I wasn’t taking as much as I could from it.

Anyway, we got a win and we’re up to 2-4. We can still finish the season ranked third and get a decent seed in the playoffs if we win out.

Basketball team has fallen to 1-3

The week after we eked through our first game, we got pounded by the defending champs. After a bye, we got beat by a mediocre team even though we were within five points with about three minutes remaining. This week, we lost to another mediocre team by one point even though we led most of the game.

In general our problem can be summed up in one word: Inconsistency. We can’t get the same guys to show up from one week to the next (our roster is nine deep, but we probably have only four guys who are there every week) and that inconsistency leads us to be inconsistent on offense. Last night, I’m pretty sure we led all statistical categories except FG %, FT % and Points. We took a lot more shots than they did, we had a lot more rebounds (especially offensive) than they did and we took probably twice as many freethrows as they did. We played great defense, took good shots on offense, drew a lot of fouls, but simply couldn’t put the ball in the bucket.

Personally, I felt I played one of my best all-around games in a while. I ran Point Guard most of the night and I was very comfortable in that position. My passes were on target and usually to a wide-open man, I don’t think I had any turnovers and I had six points on something like five shots. My six points came on consecutive three-pointers in the first half. Both shots felt and looked perfect and were set up because my team got me the ball when I got open on the weak side of the floor. I’m pretty sure I only had three points scored on me, and my defense was pretty solid off the ball.

It’s frustrating to keep losing (especially to inferior teams), but I guess we can’t really expect to win if we don’t have the same team from week to week. We need our guys to start showing up so we can start getting into a groove.

New basketball season begins 1-0

Well, the summer basketball league has begun again and most of the usual team is intact.  The previous season’s PPG leader isn’t playing, but we picked up another guy who has some Juco experience.  We started out playing pretty poorly and found ourselves down by 13 early in the second half.  Things started to turn when we finally began clamping down on defense and getting some stops.  We got some turnovers, began executing on offense and starting slowly closing the gap.  Down the stretch, we ran some good set plays, hit some big shots and tied it up to send the game to overtime.  In the two-minute overtime, we outscored them 2-1, all on freethrows.  I felt like we were definitely the superior team for about the last 15 minutes of the game.  It felt good to get the win.

The highlights for me were few.  I only had six points, all on 3-pointers.  The first was in the first half, and it was a nice, high shot over a very tall defender.  The second was pretty critical as it was late in the second half, when we were still down by six.  A player in the left corner passed me the ball and I began to dribble to the top of the key when they double-teamed me.  One defender was a little behind me (on my left) and the other was coming up on my right from the freethrow line.  I dribbled the ball to my right hand, crossed it over behind my back (away from the approaching defender on my right, as he was coming in very low for the steal) to my left hand, pulled up and drained the 3-pointer to bring us within 3.

Anyway, we’re off to a good start, but next week we play the team that beat us by one in the championship game.  It’s gonna’ be a tough game.