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Cartesian_Theatre
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Name: Eric
Country: Canada
Birthday: 7/16/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Breakdancing
Trampolining
Expertise: Philosophy
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/20/2003
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| *sigh*
I just found out that my speakers have been projecting bass down into the apartment below me and causing at least one tenant there grief. I know this, because he knocked on my door to yell at me for a while earlier tonight.
His frustration is understandable--but totally preventable. There've been precedents. First his speakers did the same in the reverse direction. Then mine did, and he mentioned it. So I rearranged (lifting them off the floor, putting cloth and cardboard below and behind them, etc) to mitigate the effect, and left him my phone number so that he could easily tell me if the bass was still booming down to him.
A few months pass, no phone call, no complaints, so I think it's all good.
And then tonight's yelling fit. And the funny thing is I completely agreed with him. There really is no reason any sounds from our apartment should be keeping those below awake, or preventing them from studying properly. That was the very thing I went to talk to him about early on. Furthermore, since I was playing music at a normal volume during the times that he was being bothered, I agreed with his point that we need to not have subwoofers at all if we're going to prevent this problem.
So, seeing as I'm both reasonable, and actually agree with the assessment of the problem as well as the solution, why didn't he just tell me before he got to the point of getting so frustrated that he felt to need to yell at me for a prolonged period? I almost feel bad, but not really, since I gave him a pretty easy way to remedy the situation: call 1 "dude, your music is too loud", call 2: "your music is still too loud. I don't think there's any way to stop a subwoofer from causing problems except to disconnect it". Less than 1 minute total.
It's funny that I'm frustrated with him, considering he was the one who had to put up with random bass blasting him. But it was so eminently preventable-I gave him my number and said "call me if my music is ever reaching down to you." I don't understand why he wouldn't, when it's such a clear step towards remedying a problem. I suppose he might have villified me in his mind, since he didn't even want to let me say anything during his tirade. I will admit I derived some small amusement from his surprised expression when I managed to get
in, 'You're absolutely right, and I would have stopped earlier if you had just called me!'
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| I was feeling a little depressed, so I decided to write a rap. This is probably my best work to date. I feel much better now--nothing like (re)discovering that you're awesome to make you feel better. I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I may just be the greatest rapper ever. Tight rhymes, creative use of alliteration, back to back references to wave-particle duality and Plato's allegory of the cave... what more could you want? So far, I like rapping it over the beat to Mobb Deep's "Quiet Storm".
Nihilist-kissed
Oh ho!
Here’s come the nihilist,
Value
dissipates, lost, dissolved into the mist
The spectre
of naught, undoing all you’re wrought
For being
caught will cost you notions of ‘ought’
Cause in her
clenched fist, no way to resist
There
nothing left for you, oh lost nihilist-kissed
Sometime,
when I feel empty inside
I want to
hide, want to slide into a sleep
I want to
weep, no I want to want to weep
Want feel
like life’s something precious to keep
But in the
end death comes to those who wait
Forecast a
final fate that seems to sedate
That seems
to negate, life’s value and weight
Life so
light, it may as well be a wave
No more
than shadows on the back of a cave
When the
end is a grave, we might as well be in it
No use
being brave, because in the limit
We end up
the same, back from whence we came
It’s no use
to complain, or wallow in shame
When we’re
done the game, there’s nothing left to blame
Even if the
interim’s drab dystopic or lame
Oh ho!
Here’s come the nihilist,
Value
dissipates, lost, dissolved into the mist
The spectre
of naught, undoing all you’re wrought
For being
caught will cost you notions of ‘ought’
Cause in her clenched
fist, no way to resist
There
nothing left for you, oh lost nihilist-kissed | | |
| Despite repeatedly telling myself it's a bad idea, I can't help but feel sometimes that it's my destiny to drop everything and become a full time rapper. I mean, my subconscious is telling me something when I have a dream in which I decide to prove to someone that I'm not awkward to talk to in person by performing an extensive freestyle rap. I mean, what says 'socially adept' like rapping?
I mean, it's even less practical than my other back up plans of (1) being a professional bboy, (2) joining a travelling circus, (3) collecting masters degrees in various disciplines, (4) going to law school, (5) being a writer, (6) being a bum on the street for purely aesthetic reasons, (7) waiting for one of my friends to get famous and being part of their entourage, (8) trophy husband.
Okay, so maybe it's better than (6).
Anyway, I've decided I want to write raps again, and one day put out a homemade album. It'll be awesome. I may need someone to produce for me, though. We'll see how it goes. But I mean, it's got to be a good idea to hone my rapping skills. Cause girls only like guys with skills, and I already have bo staff skills, and nunchuck skills. Wait--if I have too many skills, there might be TOO MANY girls after me.... I guess I'll have to hide some of my skills (good thing I also have ninja skills, and so am a master of deception). It's like in Dragonball, or Naruto where they wear weighted clothing to slow them down to hide their speed and power (is nerd-reference skills a plus or a minus?).
hmm, does it say something about my confidence about my philosophy skills that i have so many back-up plans? Oh, wait, looking at the list, professional philosopher is one of the MORE practical options....
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| Making new friends is a funny thing. It's so hard to know what the best approach is--probably because it differs from person to person, and is context dependent. Someone was asking how I liked it here at U of T, and one of the big differences is that I have to make my own friends--for about 9 years prior, I could kinda just assimilate friends by osmosis that Peter Lee had made. And since Peter was so good at the whole social thing, I never really needed to be. But now I'm 'on my own' so to speak, and it's a really strange thing to *want* to make new friends. Part of what is so strange is that I either don't trust my social intuitions, or don't like what they tell me.
Back in kindergarten it was easy. All you had to do is ask someone, pretty much anyone, 'do you want to be my friend?' and you'd get back 'okay!' And then you'd feel comfortable joining that person to play with blocks whenever.
Then, a few years later you start to realize that just doesn't happen much. Nobody really explicitly asks people to be their friend. That kind of explicit seeking isn't the normal way to make friends, so you infer, maybe it's because there are norms AGAINT it. It's just weird and off-putting. But that's fine, you've been with the same class of people for a few years now, so you have a bunch of friends already. And even if classes merge or new people show up, you see everone pretty much everyday at school, and just through normal interactions you get a sense of what people are like and very naturally start hanging out with the people you get along with best, first at school, then as you become better friends, elsewhere as well--birthday parties, etc.
But then, the world keeps getting bigger. Schools get larger and larger. You stop having a group of people you see all day every day. Life becomes a series of brief interactions with virtual strangers--to see your friends you have to actively plan to see them. But wait, how to make new friends now? The explicit approach has seeemed socially awkward ever since kindergarten. The 'regular interaction' framework that replaced the explicit approach has now diffused away once the artifical constraints of childhood were removed. That is to say that the world is so big and full of options that even if you kinda get along with someone, the chances of running into them again randomly are low. But how can you expect much better than 'kinda get along' in the brief and transitory interactions of everyday life? But it seems like kinda getting along is often too tenuous a relation to arrange to do something else again (it amounts to the kindergarten 'explicit approach').
One thing people do is to try and put back some regular-interaction constraints. Clubs and common interest groups are one way. But it's based on an activity, then all of your interactions are just that activity and you don't really get to know anyone. And if it's not activity-based, what IS it based on and what do you do? Well, okay, so it's not really that big of a problem, depending on the activity and the group of people. One thing I find kinda funny is being the graduate philosophy student union 'social committee'. Nobody else was going to do it, so I figured why not? I just never considered myself particularly social such that I would head/constitute a committee, but I guess that's just context/group relative. Well, I suppose I can do what I would normally do, and just let everyone else know.... play board/card games, go dancing, watch movies....
Anyway, I recently resorted to the explicit method, with email as the mode. It seemed to work okay: "It is always nice when someone wants to be your friend as opposed to your enemy!" For some reason I find the fact that I just explicitly asked in this manner really amusing.
I suppose there's no easy first order analysis that can lead to an optimal strategy. Friendship and making friends are funny things.
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| The new Roots album is really good.
I like R. L. Burnside--it's blues, but sometimes with strong hip hop
influence. A couple tracks featuring Lyrics Born, which are awesome.
Bon Cop Bad Cop is a good Canadian film--really worth watching.
I'm unimpressed with the latest Family Guy and American Dad offerings--have I become too habituated? Have they run out of material?
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