Goodbye, World

For the two of you reading this, I've moved my posts to Wordpress. You can find me now at suchvituperation.wordpress.com. Rock on.

I'm Oddly Fascinated with Joe Torre

He's just interesting. Gruff, terse, Brooklyn boy.

John, John, John.

I love your self-effacing humor, your bouts with anxiety, your hideous sunglasses, your obsession with expensive watches. Your attempts at stand-up amuse me. I can even deal with your tattoo sleeve.

But good God man. What's going on with this DVD? The camera angles: queasy; the intermittent interview segments, rough going. Driving in your Mercedes with your tiny dog. Really? A TELEPROMPTER? I mean, come on. You can remember your own lyrics.

If you find yourself saying "my music is necessary," it's time to turn off the cameras, pack up the two-rock, and regroup.

We'll let this misstep slide. It happens to the best of us. Just had to check you on this.

Superhero Ideas

Shrinking Violet: Can shrink to subatomic size to infiltrate enemy headquarters and mess with their shit. This would have been better in the 1970s or so when women needed a bit more of a boost in the superhero department.

Super Sloppy: Solved crimes by inadvertently spilling things. Needs an amusingly named sidekick.

Only Connect

There was terribly sad news from my high-school classmates this week. One of us is not with us anymore. We don't know what was going on with Nate, really, but we know that he had had enough of it, whatever it was; that he cared about his wife and daughters immensely; that he used his energy to make his world a better place using the tools he had at hand.

From Nate's Facebook page, it's clear he had made a larger impact on those around him than maybe he knew. I found him on Facebook about 2 weeks ago, considered sending him a friend request, and then didn't. I thought he might not remember me.

I remembered him. I wish I had sent that.

After a week filled with sad, joyous, and meaningful connections and re-connections with friends and compatriots, I sank into sleep last night grateful for the rich life I have, which is defined in its most essential form in the way E.M. Forster advised: "Only connect."

Schroedinger's Cat, Putatively

Brad's been on a philosophy kick lately. He's got me reading about Derrida. Then he went ahead and dropped an offhand reference tonight to Shroedinger's Cat. You lose me around the first turn on quantum physics, but this concept of quantum superposition seems appealing because of its many applications outside quantum theory.

Schroedinger said that you could demonstrate the concept of quantum superposition by thinking of a cat sealed in a steel box. (Don't worry, this is just a thought experiment.) There is a flask full of poison near the cat. If the flask shatters, the poison is released and the cat dies. If the flask does not shatter, the cat lives. But, Schroedinger asks, is there a state in which the cat is both alive and dead? Quantum mechanics would indicate that the states of alive-ness and dead-ness of the cat would coexist simultaneously. While a state of alive-ness slowly gives way to a state of dead-ness, there's a liminal time in between when both states are true.

Quantum mechanics is based on the theory that complex numbers called amplitudes can be assigned to events, the way we think of probabilities. While many have accepted this postulation, some have objected to the assumptions it leads to. This theory helps us predict the movements and behaviors of subatomic particles, but as we (and Einstein, famously) might object, life isn't like that; you're alive or you're dead. Right?

Yes, Facebook, I'm Still Married.

Willikers. Social media has caused some scandal among my friends and neighbors. Here's what happened. (No, A-Rod and Lenny Kravitz haven't broken up my marriage.)

When I was setting up my Facebook profile, I dutifully entered all my infos in the requisite fields. I checked the box "men" next to "interested in." I indicated where I went to school, and that I'm married. I paid no attention to the subsequent display of this data, and its broadcast to my Facebook pals, until someone pointed out to me that "Interested in Men" was showing up in my profile, which somehow signifies that I'm 'on the market.'

Cut to the other day, when I happened to review my Profile again, seeing now that I'd cut out all the other attributes, it just showed "married." Lest this particular factoid define me, I deleted that from the display. Apparently, this change was broadcast to all my Friends, with the requisite broken-heart icon, as "Lisa is no longer married."

Suppress your overwhelming disappointment, gentle reader, for I am not, as we say, on the market. Marrying Brad is the best thing I ever did. I just don't necessarily want to be defined by only that fact; rather, I want people to know about all of me - the Shark Week lovin', Journey singin', human-pyramid-formin' whole package.