Just some things

So I haven't gotten my results back for my quiz because I want to be productive while that's still hanging over my head as a potentiality rather than getting it and either feeling depressed or happy and using those emotions as an excuse to not work. So no news on that front yet. I have a writing assignment due Thursday, so I need to get to some of that tonight (at least the research bit).

I played some bad handball on Thursday as a bit of a warmup for the tournament on Friday. It was sort of weird because only four or five people showed up, and we all had excuses not to play, so it was slow going. Then came the tournament, and I was feeling really good. My shoulder felt a bit better than it had the night before even. I crushed my car-mate 21-6, 21-3 or so, even with a few more hand-errors than I was comfortable with (he couldn't really punish my mistakes, and I play him regularly enough to not have to worry). I avoided pizza on Friday night, woke up starving and ate too much in the morning. I beat my second round opponent (Mike Gustafson) 21-17 (or was it 21-19?), 21-8, and was feeling apprehensive about the finals against Tyler Stoffel. I lost to him last year. We have very similar styles, so it usually comes down to who gets the last diving amazing shot. Well, that person was me. I destroyed him the first game, 21-4 or 21-2 or so, and I was feeling unstoppable. Sure, my shoulder was feeling pretty bad, but I was totally going to press through. At 17-4 or whatever it was in the first game there was a sharp pain on the inside part of my shoulder (sort of by my armpit) while I served. It got a lot worse in the second game, to the point where I was hitting shots left-handed I would normally take right-handed, and I couldn't really hit the ball hard. I was losing, so I gave away the last five or six points and was ready to just give it up in the tiebreaker. That plan backfired, but not before I thought my shoulder was trashed beyond repair. So I wound up with second place, which was actually the more adorable of the two prizes (little statue things), but pretty inexcusable from a playing perspective.

I went into the tournament with a new mindset, sort of. I've decided I want to be good on a national level. I've been thinking that in the back of my head for a while, but I decided at this tournament to keep things in perspective I would repeat that to myself when I stepped on the court and when I felt myself getting caught up in the moment. That's too easy to do in a one-on-one sport I think, getting caught up in the moment. It becomes a battle into which I invest more than I should. I get so caught up in whether or not I should be losing that I don't remove myself enough to analyze and adjust, or even just relax and focus. So my opponent hit a lucky shot, or a call didn't go my way... Focusing on that isn't worth it, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. So I felt like that match was completely out of my control, but looking back, I don't know if that was actually true. I mean, probably it was, but now I can't help but think that a world-class player might have found a way to win. They always say that's what distinguishes the champions. They find a way to win even on their off days. I was having an "on day," or so I thought, so maybe I just wasn't ready for the abrupt transition. I don't know. So I left in a hurry, disappointed, but armed (not a great word for it, perhaps) with an excuse that I actually believed. My shoulder still hurts a lot, by the way, so at least I can still believe things were out of my control.

I watched YouTube videos while I took notes for my class during my break. This was my first time checking my subscriptions on there in a long time, but this guy seems to be running pretty parallel to me recently, so I figured I'd highlight some of his videos. First, a few months ago he was scared of producing things. I sympathized, because I've always thought I wanted to write seriously, and he seemed to sum up a lot of what I was thinking while I went about not writing. Then I logged in today and this was there waiting for me! I actually couldn't believe it. So that's my segue into the rest of my weekend.

I drove back with Jessica instead of David and his dad because her car-mate had abandoned her to get back with an earlier car and she was leaving right away. And she never talks, so I wanted to get to know her. Unsurprisingly, we filled up two hours of driving with pretty meaningless conversation. It was more of a struggle than I was anticipating, and I wasn't even anticipating it to be easy (since she didn't talk normally). It was that classic awkward silence punctuated by random questions blurted out that led to a couple minutes (maximum) of talking. It was perfectly reminiscent of my experiences driving to and from frisbee tournaments whenever I was responsible for keeping the driver awake and I didn't already know them. So that wasn't quite awesome. Then she got a call from Kristina at Mat's (where she was going after) and I was invited to go along. So, spur of the moment, I went. It was a combination of wanting to avoid school work and wondering what it was people were doing all the time. See, I had already written off my day as taken up by handball, and I was seeking solace for my loss and ready to make my excuses known to the world at large. Basically, I just wasn't looking forward to another night of procrastinating by myself. So I went to a pretty chill party time. There weren't that many people there, so I don't know if it even counted as a party, but I was surprised there were non-handball people there. I was even more surprised that they turned out to be pretty fun/funny to hang out with. Not initially of course. I spent the first hour or so wondering what I was doing. But I also got free apples, so that was good enough, since I was out of food at my place anyway. Then I was enlisted to play "beer" pong (played with water in this case (I assume because beer is messy when spilled (spills happen a lot))). It turns out, I am excellent at this game! I played with Jessica because we were the two people who had just arrived and neither one of us was talking to anybody. She made three or four cups in our two games. We were playing with eight cups instead of the full ten, and neither one of the games was particularly close. Also, people kept telling me random rules that I probably should have known. Apparently I was "heating up" and "on fire" (things you have to yell when you make shots consecutively). Also, our opponents kept having us rearrange the cups (grouping them closer together to increase the likelihood of a missed shot still going in), but I didn't know what the protocol was for that, so I kept shooting at one cup at a time spread out on the table. I guess being sober is probably just like cheating at this game.

Anyway, after two games of being undefeated I retired. I think that should probably be my entire career. Perfect record at "beer" pong. Never drank. Awesome.

One guy went upstairs and passed out, one couple left, leaving a small group of people fighting about whose turn it was to DJ. I avoided it successfully the entire night. My excuses ranged from ignoring requests for me to get up and choose a song to saying I couldn't because my shoulder hurt too much. At least drunk people don't really stick to their guns about that sort of thing very well. So the people I knew from handball were fun to hang out with because I already knew them (Kristina is funny and outgoing, Mat is sort of a nerd, Jessica is nice, if too shy to actually say much, and Alex is pretty great comic relief (whether he knows it or not)), and the other people were hilarious due to their level of intoxication. One guy I just couldn't make my mind up about was sitting in a chair in the corner when we walked in and didn't move from the chair for a solid three hours. He just kept making hilarious faces in response to things. He made mocking faces behind peoples' backs when they said stupid things, made awesome grinning faces in response to funny things, and cracked out a joke whenever I was least expecting it. So I was slowly deciding he was secretly the funniest thing at the party. Then he got up to go do a shot in the kitchen and could barely walk. He had apparently had more alcohol than anybody really knew, which I'm not sure how to factor into my opinion. He kept being absolutely hilarious though.

Alex is an engineering guy who I got the feeling felt almost as out of place as I did. He compensated the opposite way I do though. He chimed in awkwardly when people were talking, while I said nothing instead. He drank a lot to fit in while I drank nothing. He embraced the laughs of people who might not have been laughing quite with him as much as at him, while I joined in on the laughter (to be fair, listening to him try to brag about not knowing what was in his flask was pretty funny.). I didn't actually see any harm in it, since I was confident at least five of the eight of us weren't going to be remembering anything anyway. But then it turned out he had exceeded his limits a bit. This was made evident when they tried to put him to bed. You see, it turned out that I was stranded, since Jessica was drinking and not going to be driving home, Alex was completely gone, and the other people weren't going my direction. So Alex, Jessica and I crashed on various pieces of furniture, while the guy from the chair in the corner joined guy passed out upstairs in the guest facilities. All in all, pretty standard fare. I know I've certainly gotten used to sleeping wherever is convenient. I went upstairs to use the bathroom, and when I got back downstairs there was a bit of a different smell in the air. Oh, and a lot of yelling and scrambling. Apparently Alex spontaneously combusted, ruining at least half of a room. I kept out of it, since there really wasn't much I could do to resolve the conflicts over what to do with the ruined items. So I slept instead.

I woke up, got a ride back, and played some frisbee. Yup, that wasn't the right thing to do for my shoulder, but don't worry; I've been practicing playing frisbee left-handed for years now in my free time, and it's paying off in spades. I didn't throw right-handed a single time in our 17-5 (or something) victory in the semifinals! And I even had an almost full-field throw around my mark for a score that hit my receiver in stride. Granted, I missed a catch because I couldn't quite get my arm extended vertically over my head and threw one or two into the ground, but hey, it all worked out. Then it was time for the finals. We were losing 4-5 with not a lot of time to go in the first half. (I'm setting the scene. It's intense.) The other team had come out playing an actual offensive set, the first of our teams to do so. They ran handler motions, made strike cuts, and eventually even drew up a set play to throw deep right away to whichever person was being guarded by one of our two girls. Things were serious. In retaliation, I made an in cut, caught the open throw, and turned upfield. Sure enough, one of my guys had a step or two on his man, so I threw a forehand, shoulder be damned. It was completed, and the whistle for half blew soon after. So we went into half down a break (starting on D with the score tied). We came out with defensive assignments of our own, and scored four straight. I think I threw three forehands for scores. Then my shoulder hurt, and I switched to cutting. Greg was in fine form as well, coming down with one of the forehands I threw over at least four other people (one of them his own teammate who looked likely to catch it until Greg elevated over him and ripped it away). He then bombed it seventy-five yards to me on the next point. That guy's got skills. We won 12-10, and I am an intramural champion for the first time. I don't need my mom's broomball championship shirt hand-me-downs anymore! I am finally a man! (I think that's how the rite of passage goes...)

Topic change: pornography searches!

The number one porn search term in the southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Maryland is "ebony." In the middle east, homosexual porn is sought out with way more frequency than in other places. So obviously telling people what not to do is a great way of stamping out the things you hate. Or, you know, the opposite of that. Just thought that was interesting.

Topic change: gun control!

I went to a moderated debate on Friday (which came with free lunch, because law school is cool like that), where one guy was a statistics-oriented logical speaker and the other guy was a passionate litigator with lots of courtroom experience. The topic was (you may have guessed) whether gun control helps stop what we want it to stop. The guy with the stats was on the pro-gun side of things. And he was awesome! He went first in the debate, and he opened right up with: here are the statistics on how many guns we have in America vs everywhere else in the world. You know what, we are totally winning the guns-per-household race. Except, wait a second... Let's take a closer look. See this little dot on the graph? That's Israel. Who's been to Israel? (One guy raises his hand.) And do you think there are more or less than 7 guns per hundred people? Did you know that in many countries the statistic is completely useless because it charts private gun ownership, and technically the government owns the guns in those countries? I know I didn't. So in Switzerland of all places, men of certain ages were required to have a gun in the house. But that wasn't in the statistic because the people weren't in charge of buying their guns. They were just handed out! Same goes for a few other countries.

He then preempted his opponent's statistics and explained thoroughly why they were incorrect. It turns out that statistics that compare murder rates between places with gun control vs. guns all over the place aren't actually accurate. It you look at any area that has banned guns before the ban and after the ban, not a single one has had crime rates decrease. Even gun-specific crimes. Unless you count pure gun-deaths. Because those do go down, as his opponent was quick to point out. Of course that point would have been a lot more persuasive if it weren't the case (and hadn't already been shown by the guy ten minutes ago) that the overwhelming majority of these are suicides, which people can do in a different manner.

So then the other guy, the litigator relying on emotions of the jury, the sentimental stories of the people he's seen hurt by guns, the call for guns to be taken off the street, took the stage. And he did absolutely nothing to address the points made by the first guy, which is a huge problem with writing a speech and sticking to it. Sure enough, he tried to quote more impotent facts, like "if you have a gun, the most likely person you are going to kill is yourself, followed by a loved one, followed by a criminal." If you thought this might also be a statistic dependent on the gun-suicide correlation, congratulations! You are a winner! Indeed, and beyond that, the statistic obviously doesn't go into the major reason people carry guns in the first place: to deter crimes from happening in the first place. There was just no persuasive power to this guys sentimental stories when he just kept playing into the first guy's hands. It was actually head-shakingly bad.

I am anti-gun. I am not pro-anti-gun-law. Let me explain the distinction. I believe the world would be way better without guns. Guns suck. They take killing and make it impersonal, when it is the most personal thing you can do (except maybe for having sex). Ending someone's life shouldn't be easy. That being said, because guns do exist, I think gun control legislation is pointless and potentially harmful. As the speaker said, when the pass gun control legislation, who turns in their guns? It's not the people who are planning on committing crimes with their guns, that's for sure. So all of a sudden the people who had guns for personal safety don't have them anymore, and what's worse, the people who still have their guns have a better chance of not being shot when they break into somebody's house at random. So I'll never own a gun (probably), but I also won't tell people not to own a gun.

If you're curious, the guy's name was John Lott, and he has written a book called "More Guns, Less Crime."

Also, because I watched my YouTube videos in order starting from the earliest ones I missed, I didn't even get around to mentioning this one, which obviously applies to me. Because, you know, I really hate the idea of dying.

It's like that crack in my swiss cheese

The swiss cheese looked perfect
package smoothly sliding
from its glossy skin
the way it never does with cheddar
which you have to wedge out
from the bottom
like the last bit of toothpaste,
only to ram back in, slivers remaining
on the plastic's edges
as it refused to go quietly.

But this block of swiss was pristine,
no holes even,
just solid goodness, I thought
until I sliced
and it yielded, cleaved from itself
and I realized
that it fell away twice, the imperceptible
crack,
two thirds down, split each piece
in two.

This happened this morning, and I'm hoping the metaphor speaks for itself. Take whatever you want out of it, or don't even bother! Just wanted to jot it down before I forgot. But now it's on to legal writing. Then maybe another night of battling with my clogged sink. If it's still winning tomorrow I'll try and chronicle what will no doubt have been an epic struggle. So far it has conquered all of the liquid plumber I bought, but I'm mounting onslaught number two.

Thanks for reading!