Let There Be White

Here's what happened to me last Thursday.


So, I broke my tooth two Fridays ago and have been on the way to getting it fixed. (Btw, I broke my tooth on popcorn. By God, it was delicious popcorn, no regrets, but I honestly have no idea how I manged to break my front tooth doing so. It's not like I pick up each piece and bite into them with reckless abandon. Popcorn is more of a stuff-face type of food. Pick up handful--shovel into mouth. Repeat.)


I have to get porcelain crowns on my front two teeth now, so before that I needed to get my teeth whitened. Easy procedure, yes? 

Pffffff...

I had it done Thursday morning at 7am, and they put me on Nitrous Oxide for an hour. I was like, "Ok" cuz the nurse was like, "You'll be back to normal once we take you off it." And I was like, "Ok" again, and they pulled this red nose-mask over my, well, nose, carefully hiding the stench of what would soon be my poison underneath the subtle hint of strawberries.


Well, it worked for a while and I was trippin' (I could go into detail about this, paint a picture, write a No. 1 Hit Single and make millions, but I digress). But after an hour I basically overdosed, and felt really sick, so I motioned to the dentist and said "Iiia eeAal iikh," (I couldn't move my lips--but he apparently speaks "Garble"), and he turned off the gas and put me on oxygen instead. But the procedure was only two-thirds done, so I had to do the rest of it without the pain numbing stuff and that hurt like the fires of some mighty, evil beast. So, it was either: be sick by this gas, or feel the pain of the procedure. I chose the pain.

Anyway, so after it was done, I was woozy and tired and clutching onto the receptionists desk for support as I paid the woman (who didn't seem to notice that I was seriously considering sleeping on her counter top), and I dunno how I managed to drive home, but once I was there, I collapsed just inside my door and lay there for a very long time. I couldn't go to my first class (Arabic, even though I'd already done my homework and stuff) so I thought: "Well, this will have worn off by my second class, which is at 1, so I'll just sleep until then." Silly me. And believe you me, I most definitely would have gone to class. We had our 2nd test ever in that class, and I managed to miss it. 


Anyway. Long the story was long. Thursday was awesome! kinda sucked. But I'm better now, no complaints, so no worries.
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My Yellow Americans

Does the flavor of a lemon affect the way we perceive the color of a lemon?

      You: "Lol wut?"

Allow me to elaborate. So, if you look through any third-grader's school supply list, there's gonna be a box of 805 crayons listed on there, and within that box of 805 crayons, there is a crayon labeled "Lemon Yellow." But it's not really so lemony in color, is it? It's much, much more vivid than an actual lemon, and much more vivid than the other yellows in the box, like, well, "Yellow," and it's a ballpark's throw away from "Goldenrod". (Doesn't even come close to that one). By comparison, the "Lemon Yellow" crayon is much more intense than it's counterparts, though not quite as violent as highlighter yellow, (it doesn't jump off the page and punch you in the eye with quite the same ferocity), but it is still vivid enough to feel very at home in the 80's.

But the actual, real life color of a vine-ripened lemon-fruit is not really so painful to look at as the crayon color "Lemon Yellow" would suggest. In reality it's much similar to the regular "Yellow" color in the 805 crayon box. So I gotta wonder, is the flavor of the lemon, that "dear god what did I just bite into" sourness affect the way we perceive the color? Does that intense flavor we associate with the fruit combine with the way we see the fruit's color? For example, say a lemon tasted like, I dunno, cardboard or rice or something, would we think to associate it with such a strikingly acidic color as "almost-highlighter-yellow"? Probably not. We'd think "Lemon Yellow" was actually a more brownish, dullish yellow, like that "Ew Yellow" that you see on cars sometimes.

No. It's that flavorful adventure, that painful but satisfying taste that gives the "Lemon Yellow" color its intensity. Least that's what I think.

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Bye-cycles

So, I saw this bicycle the other day. It was the most unusual bicycle I've------

Wait. 

I gotta stop here for a moment. A new train of thought has just occurred to me, something I've been harboring for a while. Hold on to your knickers.

Okay. I see a lot of bicyclists every day... bastards. I mean, "Hey! Hooray for you! You're saving the environment by not polluting the air with toxic car fumes, or whatever. And you're staying healthy while you do it! Yay!" No. I don't really feel that way about bicyclists. I find the whole "I save the environment!" to be a little counterproductive in this particular instance.

Allow me to elaborate. (You holding on to your knickers?) So, there aren't too many bicyclist lanes here in Austin. Weeeeeell... yes, there is, perhaps compared to other cities in Texas, there are actually a lot of bicyclist lanes. HOWEVER, there are not enough!!  Not nearly enough. And because of this, bicyclists tend to act like cars, and like cars they drive/ride in the lanes made-for-cars. Okay, whatever. It's just like being a motorcyclist right? WRONG. Because motorcyclists can keep up with the speed of traffic. Bicyclists can't. Caaaaaan't. But bicyclists are apparently unaware of this fact and continue to be ignorant enough to think that they can keep up with the speed of traffic, and therefore they take up an entire car-lane, but in reality, they're just really damn slow. They are not as fast as cars are. And as a result of this, car after car after car gets stuck behind them in two-lane, super-busy traffic, and, as a result, are forced to slow down. How is that saving the environment? Bicyclists cause cars to go slow, thus putting them at more red-lights, and stopping them more often than is necessary so that their cars are out in the open for longer periods of time, and when one bicyclists affects--let's say--20 cars a day (minimum, by God, it has to be more than that,) that is a significant increase in the amount of pollution leaked into the air by all those extra minutes those cars are sitting at those infinite-stop-lights.

There is an easy solution, however. RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK. Goddam, it's right there. Nobody is walking on it! Just pedal on over there. Save everyone a headache. 

Anyway.

Oh, yes, what I was originally saying. I saw the most unusual bicycle the other day. You know how tall awnings are on the outsides of buildings and shops and things? Like 12 feet or something. Well, this bright blue bike was parked outside a store, and the seat of the bike was level with the awning. It had a little ladder on the back of the bike leading up to the seat. Pretty neat. Would've like to have seen somebody actually riding it (on the sidewalk, cough-cough).

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Black and Blue

So, blue-jays are dicks. 

I saw some black birds happily picking through the fresh grass today, finding some stuff for munching, when a out of nowhere, (completely unprovoked so far as I know), this blue-jay comes pelting outta the sky like a missile, eyes blazing, and slams into one of the blackbirds, causing him to drop whatever he was eating. The blue-jay expertly picked the item-for-munching out of the grass and -- what did he do? He ate it. Right in front of the blackbird. He didn't even have the decency to steal it properly and fly away with it, eating it humbly in his own home. No. He ate it right in front of the blackbird, while the blackbird stared daggers at him but did nothing. When the blue-jay was done, he casually floated away in a cloud of arrogance, and the blackbird watched him go, feeling non-confrontational, but clearly wishing him an early death. 



I suppose I can't really judge all blue-jays based on this singular incident. However, this isn't the only fly-by food-stealing done by a blue-jay I've seen in  my lifetime. They've got a mean streak running through those carefully glossed feathers, I guarantee it. They enjoy food more if it's stolen, I can only assume.  So next time you're out on a jolly, carefree picnic, you might want to keep a careful eye on the skies, because heaven knows they could whoosh down in a blur of blue and white and make off with your entire sandwich before you even had a chance to taste it. 


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How Now Frown Cow?

Weeeeell, it's been a while since I've posted on my blog, and since the only things I've been posting about lately are grumbling rants about a lack of creativity or long-winded recounts of ill-spotted sicknesses, I've decided to go in a different direction for my next post. It is TWO THOUSAND TWELVE baby, the year of alliteration!

(Although, I guess that's not really true... The "thousand" doesn't really count since it makes the "th" sound instead of the "t" sound, soooo it's not really alliteration after all.)

ANYWAY. I know I moaned excessively in my last post about being unbearably uncreative or what-have-you, and maybe  there is a bit of underlying truth to it, but that's not to say I am not happy in Austin. In fact, I'm actually the happiest I've ever been over an extended period of time, (excluding the days when I was under 4 feet tall and drew on the sidewalk in chalk all day and ate my sandwiches in shapes. You can't compare adulthood happiness to the simple-minded happiness of children. I mean, I was happy all day with just some paper, colored pencils, Oreos, and a marathon of Rocko's Modern Life on tv).

In sharp contrast to my younger days, I haven't really been too happy since leaving high school.  In fact, UNT drove me friggin insane.

So naturally, despite changing to UT in fall of 2011, I was still determined to be miserable because that's what I was used to. I didn't know what it was like to not be tired all the time and stressed out to the point of hair-loss. But now....... I do. And it's nice!

I enjoy Arabic. I like the language. I like the learning environment. I think my future looks promising (assuming the world doesn't end and all that). So even though I still have a lot of work that must be done, it's manageable and sometimes... dare I say it... enjoyable. I won't drag on this post for now. But I want to keep things moving forward rather than just standing still.

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School is...

Well, school is… it’s… It’s ruining me, that’s what it is! It’s destroying my mind, laying waste to all my ideas, ambitions, creativity. I have no desire to do art anymore. I have no desire to write anymore. I don’t want to do anything anymore!

In the year that I wasn’t in school, I had so many ideas I thought I might burst from thinking too much. There wasn’t enough time in the day to think about everything I wanted to, to write all the words flying through my head, to draw every image that flowed like visual poetry through my fingers.

And now, all I think about are my classes, my work, my duties, and when they’re done, and my homework is finished, I don’t want to think about anything anymore. I don’t want to paint, or draw, or write. It’s horrible. It’s a wall I can’t seem to scale, to get over: a creative block that could rival the Great Wall of China.

I’ve never really felt this way before, even when I was in school previously. I think it’s because… this is the first year in my whole life where art has not been a part of it. Even when I took Theatre for a semester we still had mini-art projects that kept my creative mind at work. But now… in Arabic… there’s no room left in my head for anything but vocabulary. And grammar. And culture. And whatever else we’re learning this week or last week or next week or any week.

I make it sound as though I don’t like Arabic. But I do. I think. It’s kind of interesting, I guess. I feel like I’m accomplishing something, I suppose. It’s just… sometimes the doubts in my head about learning this language are just too overwhelming to deal with.

I used to think my years in Communication Design made me hate art. And they did. Art was my passion, my life, and my time in Comm Des was like rehab for my art addiction: it made me never want to do art again. But now that I look back upon it, in hindsight everything is clearer. As much as I hated Comm Des, it was still art, and I was still forced to think in the creative sense, outside the box, be different and unique from everyone else. Learning a language is not like that. The language is inside the box, and jumping out will only cause confusion and distress. There is no vocabulary outside the box. The grammar must be kept at room temperature inside the box at all times. The culture would likely shrivel if exposed to the toxic airs outside the box. We are encouraged to stay inside the box, where it’s safe and comfortable and everyone is thinking along the same plane of thought. But that plane is so flat and barren and so very… very... empty.

It’s driving me mad. I hate the box. It’s cramped, and crowded. Most people live in this box. It smells. It's monotonous. It's miserable. The walls are so square. There’s hardly any light in here. We need air! We need color! We need words! We need life!

I need life...

Not so Hot

So, about a week ago, I finally began to recover from an illness which I carried for two solid weeks. At the very beginning of my sickness, before I was actually ill, I predicted that I was about to get sick. So, naturally, I went to the doctor so I could catch it early, before it could start kicking my ass. I was in the room with the doctor for about three minutes when he determined I wasn’t sick because I didn’t have a fever. In fact, he determined I was just getting over a sickness, which is absurd because I hadn’t been sick previously. So, like an idiot I left without challenging him (doctors have this interesting knack of convincing me of their perspective, and the instant I’m out the door, I’m like “wait a second… wtf just happened in there?”), and that night I was struck with the fever I didn’t have because I “wasn’t sick”.

Every night the fever hit me, for two weeks, starting around 7pm and ending around noon the next day, leaving me exhausted, fatigued, and extremely achey. I saw a total of five different doctors in those two weeks, trying to determine what I had, and conveniently I never had a fever when I went. Two ER visits, two trips to the Allergy doctor, one trip to the Infectious Disease doctor, and two IV’s and three blood-draws later, they never determined what I had.  It wasn’t the flu, or mono, or anything typical. The closest they could come was Typhus Fever, but in the end, even that wasn’t correct.

I missed 7 days of Arabic class. We can miss a total of 10 before we get an F in the class. I don’t plan on missing anymore, because I need to save at least a couple of those absences for accidental over-sleeping or a random bout of stomach virus or something.

I’m better now—except for a tiny amount of residual fatigue—but dang, what a great way to spend two weeks: in hospitals, lying in bed while my head is on fire, worrying about the horrifying looking rash spreading across my limbs, and getting needles stabbed into my arms until they bruise.

Welcome to Austin: have an unnamable viral infection!