Saturday, March 10, 2001
Well, since I've gotten into the business of plugging things (ewav.com,
followRyan.com—he's got some cool new content up, btw, now that he's
been publicized, including reverential ruminations on the institution
of the roadtrip), I thought I may as well plug this spectacular band that
I've been completely adoring lately (and wouldn't mind seeing succeed,
if only so they'll keep making records). Take a listen to
Collide, at:
http://www.collide.net/aural/
If you don't fall in love after listening to "monochrone," well, then,
I guess you're not me.
In the books department, I'm currently all bothered about Robert
Wright's The Moral
Animal. If you're an evolutionary psychology junkie like I am,
this will really do it for you. If you're new to evo-psycho (which
provides, after a few millennia of buildup, the correct answers to the
abiding and central questions of why we think, feel, and act the ways
we do—in a word, how the human, and its neat little mind, came to be),
this is a great intro survey. It's a little on the cynical side as Wright
explains all our most treasured morals and principles as simple
adaptations for Darwinian advantage; but he does manage to end on a
pretty hopeful note (if you don't mind ethical utilitarianism too much).
He's also a fine, very entertaining writer. This book rocks.
Okay, I have to confess I'm starting to get pretty jacked about this
trip (right! the trip). Rome is going to be utterly awe-inspiring: the
Sistine Chapel—Michelangelo four years on his back depicting the
entire history of the world up until Christ, putting down every
brush stroke of what is generally agreed to be the greatest work of art
by any single human being (you know this
image? right); St. Peter's—the richest and most impressive
church in Christendom, the room two football fields long, the dome at
the end a football field high, building by Michelangelo, interior
design by Bernini (Sara: "after the Vatican, you'll be all done seeing
churches, forever"); Constantine's Arch; the Baths of Diocletian;
damn. And on top of everything else, I've just read that on our second
night in town, the Pope will be leading a torchlit Good Friday
procession ("Venerdi Santa") from the Collosseum past the Roman Forum
and up Palantine Hill.
After that, the Greek Islands: the ruins on Delos, which was
"considered by the ancient Greeks to be the holiest of sanctuaries";
Santorini's cliff-faced crescent isle, enclosing the pure blue waters
of its caldera; Hios, with Nea Moni, an 11th-century Byzantine
monastery, and the mastic villages in the south, among the finest
medieval towns in Greece. And I think we're going to have just enough
time on Mikonos to run by "Super Paradise," a gay, nude beach with
nonstop blaring pop music—and how could you conceivably go through
life having passed that up? (Though some of my travel companions may
harbor divergent sentiments.)
So, Friday night was only nominally Friday night for me—our
delivery date for this NTT project I've been afflicted with is 3/15.
Thus, I'm spending all weekend in a large testing lab, installing and
configuring software that's a little too complex for me to really
understand, plugging in new functionality that I'm also a little fuzzy
on, and all of it in a language I speak very, very poorly (Japanese).
Notwithstanding anticipation of all that, I spent Friday night with a
big pile of guidebooks and an exacto knife. Talk about unnatural
seeming—chopping up books! At any rate, I've lightened my travel
library by several pounds and a good number of cubic inches.
One other thing I'm preparing for this trip: my body. The fact of the
matter is, I gained over 20 pounds after starting this job (14 months
ago). My problem was in two parts: I had a job that A) deeply depressed
me, and B) provided me with unlimited quantities of every manner of free food.
So, it was constantly like, "Hmm, should I go deal with this issue
being flogged by our psychotic CEO? Or should I stay here in my cube eating
chocolate-covered granola bars, burritos, and Haagen Dazs bars?
Well, I guess that question pretty much answers itself." But the
net result was a fully-inflated version of Fuchs. I eventually got over
(mostly) my longstanding inability to resist free food, and have made several
decent lunges at getting back toward my fighting weight. However, now,
finally, I'm really sick of carrying around body fat, and I'm going
for the gold: daily vigorous workouts, combined with a food-free diet
(low in saturated foods 8^), until departure. Soon, I will have a body
that I hope to find much more comfortable to be in; and I can go enjoy
being in it on Greek beaches. Vain but true.
Working on NTT, btw, has once again illustrated that I have one,
small foreign language center of my brain (where every word is made
interoperable amongst languages). When I busted out with a few
comments to someone from our Tokyo office, she was like, "You
speak Japanese?" And I was like, "Un sukoshi." (Hint: the latter
word is Japanese for "little," but the former is not a Japanese
indefinite article; that I'm aware of).
Well, back to shoveling polyglot bits into the ole info smelting mill.
Hope everyone out there is having a weekend.
Michael
