A few thoughts on a few things.

Beverly Hills Pekingese Mix

Entering the world of dog ownership has been pretty funny. It’s been there all along, just hidden until a dog is actually owned. Prior to my enlightenment, I just kind of saw them (and their owners) on the street, and gave no more thought to the issue. Now, I walk down the street and am often yelled at from afar by a dog owner who wants to tell me the disposition of her dog. To this, I am obliged to respond with the disposition of my dog. What a weird social courtesy. Albert and I also go to the dog park occasionally, and it is what I imagine a mother’s group is like—people talking about their dogs, while watching them interact, only stopping the conversation to break up a fight. There are lots of brightly colored rubber toys being thrown around, and many discussions of behavior problems and the best place to get a good haircut. Owners proudly display new tricks that have been learned and occasionally talk about something other than dogs, namely the election.


Favorite Actor

The New Yorker has a nice profile on him--or rather, a nice profile on his weirdness. My love of Marlon Brando began just last spring, when I watched Apocalypse Now, and became momentarily obsessed with the movie. I learned (ahem, wikipedia) that he was asked to lose weight for his role, as his character had been living in the jungle for many months. Of course, he refused, and showed up to the set looking like a bloated sea mammal. AMAZING. The New Yorker further enlightened me on his antics when I learned that he refused to learn his lines after about the mid-1960’s. He never rehearsed for his role in the Godfather. His argument was that people don’t rehearse what they’re going to say, so why should actors? He literally read everything off of cue cards. Eventually, his lines were simply read to him via ear piece. The man is a true misanthrope (and apparently a slew of other things of a psychologically strange nature), thereby piquing my interest.

I mean, everyone is a little weird, right? I really like people who are able to embrace and illuminate some of the hilarious and strange aspects of being human animals in a civilized world. I read Rousseau in college, and the only thing I remember about the dude (and this could be a complete corruption of his words and intent) is the idea that by entering into a society, people choose to suppress their animal instincts, and are therefore held to a different set of standards that we like to call morality. So simple a notion, yet so weird. Sometimes I walk around and marvel at the seemingly unconscious decisions that we make every day in order to function as a collective. Like, for example, waiting in lines or paying for goods and services.

Speaking of the collective, voting day is in exactly one week. I am terribly excited, yet (not so) secretly scared that my countrymen will prove my internal judgments and fears about their true psyches to be 100% true.


Success

Today one of my students told me he wants to be an astronomer-- I know, right? Total success in bringing the excitement of astronomy to (at least!) one student. I think that talking about black holes, special relativity and the northern lights will do that. Among the completely true and totally weird things I have told my class thus far:

1. They will weigh less in Denver (Denver is my comparison city for San Jose because they all know it's a mile high).

2. Time will move faster in Denver, so on spring break they should stay at the beach.

3. If they push their boyfriend/girlfriend into a black hole, then they will see them falling into the black hole for the REST of their lives!

4. When the Earth’s magnetic field flips, we will see the Northern Lights everywhere.

5. When the magnetic field flips, the Superman ride at Great America will be dangerous due to it’s reliance on magnets.

6. Dust has gravity.

7. If the sun were to become a black hole (which it won’t) then it would not affect our revolution at all (even though we’d die without light) (so many caveats to that one).

8. Our sun will die and we will collide with the Andromeda galaxy (I think this one helps establish the idea of morality in their immortal psyches).

9. Cell phones weigh less when the battery is dead. This is explained by Einstein's infamous E = mc2, which equates energy with mass, and also explains the conversion of mass to energy in the sun.