A monkey and his key-bored: July 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

The crap-a-lier's swan song...

Today we donated my 2001 cavalier to an organization that fixes up old cars for women and their families. My parents bought the cavalier for me when I moved to Kansas City (I had to trade my parent my sweet Oldsmobile Achieva for the Cavalier). It had about 70k miles on it when I got it and the odometer read 130,922 when I dropped it off today. My wife and I have affectionately called it the "crap-a-lier" but it really has been a good car for me over the past 4 years. It got me back and forth to Kansas City, and I drove it back and forth to Ames over the course of graduate school. Since I am defending in a little under a month and then moving to Denver (within a few days of my defense), we decided it was time to get rid of it (so it wasn't sitting around in our driveway). I hope it provides hours of sweaty, non-air conditioned driving fun to whomever receives it. Enjoy the documentary of us donating it.

Pre-drive:

Driving to drop it off:

Lost trying to find where to drop it off:

Finally, it is dropped off at Gear Head Ministries:

Everything is better with butter

Friday, July 23, 2010

God said...

I shall bring a mighty flood upon you...

And there was rain.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

A few of the ways I get pumped to write....

So, I try to get myself motivated to write early in the morning by listening to music as I am starting to work on my dissertation, these are a few of the songs that get me pumped:

"On The Run" by Gangsta Grass:

"Long Hard Times to Come" by Gangsta Grass

"Gods Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash

"Lay Me Down" by The Dirty Heads

-There are a lot I fire up early in the morning, but these seem to be the ones I play most recently. Hope you enjoy.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

The curious tale of lazers and Bill's eyes!

These are the videos of my Lasik experience. I got it done yesterday. I am happy with the results although it is a bit more annoying and time consuming than they want you to believe. All and all I would recommend it to anyone.

2 hours before:

Minutes before:

Hours after:

Day after:

Where am I? This isn't my beautiful life (Heads, T. 1980)!

Why the name???
One of my favorite sayings in the world is, "If you give a monkey a typewriter and infinity, he will write the Bible (you can insert any great book here as to not offend a religion)." I love this quote because it really makes several interesting statements. At it's heart it is a comment on probability. Basically saying that if you try at something long enough you are bound to succeed...no matter how deficient you are. It is the basis of science, failure begets failure, until we learn enough from failures that we are able to succeed, and I love science.

I also feel like this statement reminds us all that we shouldn't get too impressed with our abilities as a human race. We are not so far away from that monkey clunking away on the typewriter. Yes, we have invented many wonderful things. But, we have also participated in some horrible wars over odd things, excluded and hurt people simply because they are different, and created general mayhem on the environment. Despite the Parthenon, Shakespeare's sonnets, and our religious tomes we are just one small incident away from becoming monkey's chucking spears (or poop). The image should keep us all humble.

I often feel when I am authoring a blog that I am trying to create something meaningful that will, at the least, entertain people. Associated with that feeling, I often feel like I am flailing miserably. However, I shall keep hacking away, hoping some day probability prevails and I write something meaningful. In the event I do write something worthwhile, I hope I am level headed enough to remember my second point. If not, the five of you who read this blog can feel free to remind me.

And what about keyboard being spelled key-bored? Aside from the fact I utilize the English language like a dog would handle a paintbrush, bored refers to the emotion that usually precedes my writing, boredom. Get it? It is my attempt at being clever and deep.