On randomness

The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On randomness

The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On the blank tile

There is a very well-known board game in which contestants put words on a grid that interlock, and they score points and play against one another. Each player has seven tiles, each with a little black letter on it, except for a couple of blank tiles that can be used by players as any letter at all–wild cards, so to speak. The playing board is a colorful grid marked with special squares such as “double letter” or “triple word” and players win by using both the grid and their letters to the greatest advantage, which is all very straight-forward, but just like chess, knowing the rules and developing a strategy are two different things. The blank tiles, which show up sporadically, are a strategic mystery in almost every sense. What point value, for example, constitutes using a blank? Thirty, forty, fifty? Or do you only use it for a seven letter bingo which brings in an extra forty or fifty points? The blank tile is a kind of promise for things to come, a bonanza of points yet to be achieved, an investment in the future. Yet, the blank tile is also a mystery because it doesn’t have a value at all–no points are associated with playing the blank. Even a lowly “a” will get you one point any day of the week, but the blank must derive its value from the other tiles being played. The blank tile brings no value of its own, so while it might be a “z” in “zeta”, that particular “zeta” won’t be worth more than 3 or 4 points. So the blank tile continues to be blank in many ways, unwilling to give up its chameleonic identity, blending with the other tiles as players plot their next moves.

On the blank tile

There is a very well-known board game in which contestants put words on a grid that interlock, and they score points and play against one another. Each player has seven tiles, each with a little black letter on it, except for a couple of blank tiles that can be used by players as any letter at all–wild cards, so to speak. The playing board is a colorful grid marked with special squares such as “double letter” or “triple word” and players win by using both the grid and their letters to the greatest advantage, which is all very straight-forward, but just like chess, knowing the rules and developing a strategy are two different things. The blank tiles, which show up sporadically, are a strategic mystery in almost every sense. What point value, for example, constitutes using a blank? Thirty, forty, fifty? Or do you only use it for a seven letter bingo which brings in an extra forty or fifty points? The blank tile is a kind of promise for things to come, a bonanza of points yet to be achieved, an investment in the future. Yet, the blank tile is also a mystery because it doesn’t have a value at all–no points are associated with playing the blank. Even a lowly “a” will get you one point any day of the week, but the blank must derive its value from the other tiles being played. The blank tile brings no value of its own, so while it might be a “z” in “zeta”, that particular “zeta” won’t be worth more than 3 or 4 points. So the blank tile continues to be blank in many ways, unwilling to give up its chameleonic identity, blending with the other tiles as players plot their next moves.

On Don Quixote as knight errant

This man thinks he’s a knight errant out wandering in the world, righting wrongs, protecting damsels, slaying dragons, and dying for the love of his lady, and that is exactly what he attempts to do. The problem, though, is complex because he is a living anachronism, a knight in a time when knights no longer exist if they ever existed at all. The problem of the mere existence of Don Quixote is aggravated by the fact that all of Quixote’s information about how knights act has been gleaned from a series of fiction novels about knights and their adventures. The crusades have been over for centuries, and the figure of the knight has been rendered irrelevant by the invention of gun powder, lead shot, and the blunderbuss. By the time Cervantes writes about the ingenious hidalgo, the era of knight errantry has been over by more than a century. Most of Spain’s military is now pursuing new aventures in the new world, and central Spain, La Mancha, specifically, has become a social backwater where the locals raise grapes, wheat, and olives, and not much else. Whether don Quixote has read too many old adventure novels and gone crazy, or if something else is motivating his actions may be irrelevant. What is important are his actions while he purposefully reorganizes his identity, rebuilds his armor, changes his name, and sallies out on a new adventure, knowing full-well that there are no knights anymore. He is older, in his fifties, perhaps has a little too much free time, has no clear career or life objectives, and is clearly suffering from a mid-life existential crisis–if he doesn’t do something now, he never will. Instead of being young and virile, tough and toned, he’s skinny, got poor muscle tone, and is running on good intentions only. The question though is exactly that: are good intentions enough in the rough and tumble world of 1605, the cusp of modernity, the kryptonite of the knight errant.

On Don Quixote as knight errant

This man thinks he’s a knight errant out wandering in the world, righting wrongs, protecting damsels, slaying dragons, and dying for the love of his lady, and that is exactly what he attempts to do. The problem, though, is complex because he is a living anachronism, a knight in a time when knights no longer exist if they ever existed at all. The problem of the mere existence of Don Quixote is aggravated by the fact that all of Quixote’s information about how knights act has been gleaned from a series of fiction novels about knights and their adventures. The crusades have been over for centuries, and the figure of the knight has been rendered irrelevant by the invention of gun powder, lead shot, and the blunderbuss. By the time Cervantes writes about the ingenious hidalgo, the era of knight errantry has been over by more than a century. Most of Spain’s military is now pursuing new aventures in the new world, and central Spain, La Mancha, specifically, has become a social backwater where the locals raise grapes, wheat, and olives, and not much else. Whether don Quixote has read too many old adventure novels and gone crazy, or if something else is motivating his actions may be irrelevant. What is important are his actions while he purposefully reorganizes his identity, rebuilds his armor, changes his name, and sallies out on a new adventure, knowing full-well that there are no knights anymore. He is older, in his fifties, perhaps has a little too much free time, has no clear career or life objectives, and is clearly suffering from a mid-life existential crisis–if he doesn’t do something now, he never will. Instead of being young and virile, tough and toned, he’s skinny, got poor muscle tone, and is running on good intentions only. The question though is exactly that: are good intentions enough in the rough and tumble world of 1605, the cusp of modernity, the kryptonite of the knight errant.

On the common cold

There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On the common cold

There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.

On karaoke

I was just at a place on Thursday night that featured karaoke. Like many forms of entertainment, this past-time is not for everyone, but most people think they can sing. Far be it for me to tell them otherwise, but the strange sounds emanating from the stage caused my beverage to go up my nose at one point. I am not a champion karaoke singer–let’s just get that out on the table, but to sing a popular pop tune just like the original pop star did is nye on impossible and very near hilarious depending on how weird either the song or its singer were in real life. One woman really knocked a Stevie Nicks cover out of the park, but the next guy’s rendition of who-knows-what sent foamy suds up my sinuses. But is that the fun of karaoke in all its kitschy phantasmagoria where popular culture mixes black velvet paintings of dogs playing poker with a live microphone, a drunk audience, and dark desires of fame and failure? You never were Engelbert Humperdinck, but you want to sing one of his crooner masterpieces just like he did? You never met Lynn Anderson, but you want to sing about unpromised rose gardens? It is amazing, however, how brave a person can get after a few beers. They pick up that microphone and stand up in front of their drunk friends and start to sing their own weird cover of “Knock Three Times.” I admire their courage, and although I have sung karaoke a couple of times, I’m not convinced that that little world of pop culture turned odd is for me. My karaoke will have to stay confined to the shower, and even then I know when to stop singing and let Johnny Cash do his thing.

On karaoke

I was just at a place on Thursday night that featured karaoke. Like many forms of entertainment, this past-time is not for everyone, but most people think they can sing. Far be it for me to tell them otherwise, but the strange sounds emanating from the stage caused my beverage to go up my nose at one point. I am not a champion karaoke singer–let’s just get that out on the table, but to sing a popular pop tune just like the original pop star did is nye on impossible and very near hilarious depending on how weird either the song or its singer were in real life. One woman really knocked a Stevie Nicks cover out of the park, but the next guy’s rendition of who-knows-what sent foamy suds up my sinuses. But is that the fun of karaoke in all its kitschy phantasmagoria where popular culture mixes black velvet paintings of dogs playing poker with a live microphone, a drunk audience, and dark desires of fame and failure? You never were Engelbert Humperdinck, but you want to sing one of his crooner masterpieces just like he did? You never met Lynn Anderson, but you want to sing about unpromised rose gardens? It is amazing, however, how brave a person can get after a few beers. They pick up that microphone and stand up in front of their drunk friends and start to sing their own weird cover of “Knock Three Times.” I admire their courage, and although I have sung karaoke a couple of times, I’m not convinced that that little world of pop culture turned odd is for me. My karaoke will have to stay confined to the shower, and even then I know when to stop singing and let Johnny Cash do his thing.