Untitled

The past: immutable
The present: ephemeral
The future: inscrutable

A Jiu-Jitsu Career Pictorial Retrospective

I began practicing Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in February of 1997 in a small Dojo in San Francisco. It was far from where I lived and I didn't have a car, so I usually only went on Saturday mornings, when riding my bike wasn't an exercise in terror.

I was learning from one- and two-stripe blue belts. Nice guys, but that plus my mere 50 minutes of a very limited number of technique drills and 10 minutes of sparring a week meant little forward progress (but, damn if I didn't learn how to escape a headlock!). Meanwhile my father was living in Torrance, taking several classes a week from the Gracies themselves. I sure was jealous!

In August of '97 I moved to Phoenix. I found the local Gracie Training Association, which at the time was located in Chandler. Like the San Francisco school, the "Bushido Academy" was headed up by 3 low-ranking blue belts. That, plus a 25-mile drive, one way, made me disinclined to go more than an average of once a week, at first.

It wasn't long before I discovered that Megaton's school was less than a mile from where I was living at the time. Given that he was a black belt I was excited to check his place out. My first impression was negative--the school had no A/C, and the people there were not very friendly. Undaunted, I decided to take a few classes. Over the course of a week I chipped a tooth, injured an elbow, and was choked unconscious. The higher ranked students seemed completely uninterested in helping the white belts to actually improve their technique. In addition, even as an ignorant white belt the warm-ups struck me as counter-productive: escape a position when all your opponent is doing is trying to hold you in that position. Everything I'd learned in my minimal exposure to the Gracies told me that escapes were best effected when your opponent was intent on an attack.

From this experience I gained a deep respect for "the Gracie way" of instruction. I returned to the Chandler school and never looked back.

Bruises are part and parcel of practicing Jiu-Jitsu. This photo was taken in September of 1999, but it might as well have been last month, or last year...

"Hematoma" is a word in every Jiu-Jitsu practitioner's vocabulary...

A slightly more serious injury (the result of a throw while I was visiting the Torrance Academy in November of 1999) to the carpometacarpal joint of my left hand...

I know it doesn't look like much, but that one knocked me out of commission for a couple weeks.

In fact, joint injuries of varying degrees are another inevitability, if you're at all dedicated to the art. Aside from the above thumb injury, I've hurt the joint between the metacarpal and proximal phalange of my left index finger (out for over a month), both elbows (at least 3 weeks for those), the MCL of my left knee (another month off), the left glenohumeral joint (another month off), my floating ribs on both sides (chronic injuries that've kept me from an unknown number of classes), and, worst of all, a dislocation of the phalange of my right big toe that was so serious that it broke the skin and necessitated an overnight hospital stay...

The Chandler school eventually was no more. In 1999 my instructors, Nathan and Brad, teamed up with a Karate school in Paradise Valley...

Here's a picture of my car in the parking lot of the school, after a tow truck rolled into it. Note the Gracie sticker on the window...

We didn't stay in Paradise Valley very long. Sometime in May or June of 2000 Nathan moved the school to a room in the back of a Gymnastics school--a place that became affectionately known as "The Dungeon". There was no heat or A/C, and the ceiling was exposed fiberglass insulation (which Nathan quickly covered over with plastic). At least we had our very own cage!

Here's Nathan getting his purple belt from Relson Gracie in September of 2000...

Me and Relson, also September, 2000...

The owners of The Dungeon weren't big fans of us "knuckle-draggers". It wasn't long before we were kicked out of the space. Nathan scrambled and found our current digs at Phoenix Grappling, in central Phoenix. The school's been there ever since.

Over the years it's typical for a school's set of students to change. I'm sure this is even more true of a Jiu-Jitsu school, as the art takes a lot out of you. Even if you remain free of serious injury, there's the matter of being constantly beaten up to contend with. Sticking with it over the long haul takes cultivating a certain level of humility and resolve, I think.

Here's the team in March of 2000, at the PV Karate school. Fun things to note about this picture: Nathan's a four-stripe blue belt; Nabeel Ibrahim, top row, second from right, is a white belt...

Several months later, at The Dungeon...

Here we are being visited by Rolker Gracie. I'm not exactly sure of this photo's vintage, but you can just make out that I'm a two-striped blue belt--and so is Nabeel! Also notice that, except for Heath, who is sitting to my left, all the other students pictured are new...

Another photo of unknown vintage, though I'm pretty sure it's sometime in 2002. Things to note here: Doug Moore, top row, second from left, is a white belt, as is Matt Mallery (top row, second from right); Heath is now a purple belt, while I'm still a 2-striper...

Nathan and Relson...

I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to learn from so many great Jiu-Jitsu fighters. Aside from Relson and Rolker (pictured here with me, Brad, and Nathan)...

...I've also taken classes from Rorion, Royce, Royler, Carlos "Caique" Elias...

...and a number of others that, sadly, don't include the great Helio Gracie.

I took a couple years off when I lived in Virginia, but since I moved back to Phoenix I've once again been a regular at the school (with time off recently for recovery from yet more joint injuries)--which, due I'm sure primarily to its stability from staying at Phoenix Grappling, has grown considerably, and now includes kids classes...

This renewed focus has enabled me to finally obtain the rank of purple belt, after what is undoubtedly one of the longest careers as a blue belt around.

They say the Gracie purple belt is the hardest belt to get, period. If I am any indication, then you won't find me arguing otherwise.

My Strange Diet

During my halcyon college days I weighed an average of around 160 pounds; since I was also 6 feet tall, that made me—in the immortal words of one of my sister’s friends—“buff skinny.” Shortly after I graduated and was cast adrift in the real world, a book in my father's library by Dr. Roy Walford, called Maximum Lifespan, caught my eye. The book detailed Dr. Walford’s quest to find any genuine, scientifically based method(s) for not simply increasing our average life spans, but, more radically, extending the human lifespan beyond our current, roughly 120 year, limit. His researches led him to conclude that the only viable possibility at present would be a calorically restricted diet.

Walford's argument was seductive. Soon I was counting calories, building meal plans, and feeling very hungry. All the time. The tragic irony with the diet was that it required me to think about food constantly. I just couldn't eat it. When I wasn’t worried about balancing my daily intake of macro and micronutrients I was involved in some aspect of food preparation. Over time I began to wonder about the value of an extra 50 years of life—all of it spent thinking in excruciating detail about food. I quit after 10 weeks, deciding it wasn’t worth it.

A welcome side-effect, though, was a general tolerance for not eating much. I remained very slim for several years, until, in my late 20s, I began dating a woman who loved to cook. Three years later I hit my peak weight - just over 190 lbs. After that relationship ended I drifted back down to just under 180.

Sometime around my 35th birthday I noticed a subtle change in my appetite, as well as the way my body seemed to deal with what I ate. If I satisfied my hunger at every meal the pounds would just pile on. Furthermore, this weight wouldn’t come off easily, even with lots of extended bouts of agonizing rowing sessions! I began somewhat obsessively weighing myself every morning. If I weighed “too much” I’d try to eat light that day. Strangely, this seemed a losing battle. I found that this “going hungry” business was happening far too often, and was punctuated by bouts of wild cravings for sweets—cravings that I’d succumb to, usually with either a pint (or two) of Ben & Jerry’s, or an entire package of Pecan Pralines from Trader Joe’s. Not surprisingly, my average weight continued to creep up, despite my efforts to the contrary.

Then, just over a year ago, I was reminded that one aspect of Walford’s research included a study of rats forced to fast on alternate days. On the non-fasting days the rats could eat as much as they liked. Interestingly, these rats saw health benefits that, while not as pronounced as those seen with the more strict version of calorie restriction, were nonetheless significant. My father (who, by the way, is president of Kronos Laboratory), showed me the results of some human studies of alternate day caloric restriction and its beneficial effects on inflammatory response and insulin resistance. Given the apparent role of belly fat in the promotion of various diseases, he didn’t have to tell me twice. I decided immediately to embrace a (modified) caloric restriction diet once again.

Here's how it works:

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I eat some combination of nutritionally rich foods with a total calorie value equal to only 20% of a "normal" day. For men, that's roughly 380 calories. For women, 340ish.

Since I'm lazy and cheap when it comes to food, my typical lo-cal days' meals consist of a couple off-brand slim-fast clones (be careful to avoid the ones with partially hydrogenated oils, though). My father likes to shake things up by substituting a V8 and a hard-boiled egg for one of the Slim Fasts. My friend Lisette prefers eating copious amounts of spinach and mushrooms.

On the remaining days I eat... as much as I want of whatever I want. Strangely, though, I rarely find myself craving pralines or ice cream any more.

It's that simple.

November 20th was my ADCR year anniversary. Today I weighed in at 167. Now, if it were only possible to once again look like I was a college kid...

Partial Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum

I learned something interesting about myself recently. Because of some pretty severe migraine headaches I was having I decided to get an MRI scan of my brain. Imagine my surprise when I found out I have a small corpus callosum!

Here's an image of it:


And here's a "normal" one, for comparison:


Naturally, I was curious about the implications. What has this meant to me, if anything, in terms of, e.g., my personality, my perceptions of the world, and my intellectual development? Sadly, there's not a lot of info out there to help me answer such questions.

Wikipedia's relevant entry concerns only the corpus callosum's complete agenesis, which is associated with some pretty severe developmental deficits - none of which, thankfully, apply in my case. It does, however, mention Autism. This caught my eye because I recently had an ex-girlfriend accuse me (gently) of having Asperger's Syndrome, which is an autism spectrum condition. Perhaps she's right. I'll admit to a certain level of shyness, dislike of parties, and inability to pick up on subtle non-verbal cues, but I'm not in a position to reliably self-diagnose whether I could be considered more than, say, 2 standard deviations from the mean in that regard.

Meanwhile, PubMed is a little more helpful on the subject, though not much. Again, I get the sense, from reading those abstracts and articles, that I should be a lot worse off than I am. Even the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum is unhelpful. This all leads me to wonder: just how unusual is my condition? How strange is it for someone with it to go 38 years showing no real signs of it? MRIs of the brain are expensive ($2K a pop, without health insurance), so not many people get them. Maybe there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of outwardly normal - if a bit shy - people out there who have no posterior corpus callosi.

I've contacted some folks at Cal Tech who are doing research on this. Hopefully they'll have a few answers, but it seems likely that nobody really knows much of anything at this point.

The Thrill of Victory

On June 23rd I was a competitor in the Arizona Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu State Championships. I signed up for the Blue Belt Masters division so that I wouldn't have to fight anyone under 35.

Unfortunately they didn't have a Masters division, which explains why I found myself up against Jamie Varner for my second fight.

The Agony of Defeat

I recently competed in the 2007 Arizona Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu State Championship. I won my first fight, apparently 8 to 0, though I was exhausted for my second match, against my much younger and much stronger opponent, Jamie Varner, who (not surprisingly) went on to place first in the division.

Here I am tapping out to a choke you can see I am only feebly defending against.

What Atheist Do I Be?

Jim just took this quiz and posted his results, so I figured I'd do it, too.

I take serious issue with scoring "33% theist"!

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 75% Angry Atheist 50% Apathetic Atheist 50% Agnostic 42% Militant Atheist 33% Theist 33% Spiritual Atheist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

A Thinking Blogger Award!

Dikkii has been kind enough to grace Die Eigenheit with a Thinking Blogger Award. I am quite flattered and can't help but feel a teensy bit unworthy. I'll try to get over it, though.

The rules require me to tag 5 other blogs (that haven't yet been tagged) that make me think. In no particular order, these are...

David D. Friedman's Ideas

I can always count on Dr. Friedman to present an issue in a way that cuts right through all the extraneous garbage and exposes its most important parts to a withering scrutiny.

The No God Zone

While I tend to find the ubiquitous typos distracting, this blog's surprisingly wide range of topics and irreverent style keeps me coming back for more.

Rightwatch

Narrowly focused, updated infrequently, and written anonymously, this blog is still always worth checking in on, as it aims to expose the seedier elements of the "libertarian" movement. Actually, I strongly suspect that Rightwatch and No God Zone are written by the same person.

The Fly Bottle

If only we all could be as brilliant as Will Wilkinson!

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

I love graphs of stuff. I love economics. Mish's blog has plenty of both, with lots of informative analysis thrown in for good measure. A decent amount of controversy in the comments, too.

Rowing Stats

These are my current best rows for the Concept 2 indoor rower 2007 season. The rankings are as of today and will definitely change (and I will, hopefully, clock some better rows between now and the end of May). If you're lucky enough to have a Concept 2 rower and the absolutely awesome RowPro software for it, you can download my ranking rows from the Concept 2 ranking lists. Great Fun!

Distance	Time		Standing	Date
2000M	07:30.1		613 of 1125 54%	1/7/2007
5000M	19:15.2		439 of 1164 38%	1/8/2007
6000M	23:41.5		168 of 345 49%	5/14/2006
7445M	30:00.0		406 of 891 46%	1/3/2007
10000M	41:52.3		561 of 872 64%	12/24/2006

The Sleeper Has Awakened

So.

Obviously this blog has been dormant a while. My excuse is roughly equal parts of overworking, lack of time, and lack of things I want to say. Throw in an appreciable amount of laziness and you've got yourself a deadly combination.

However, I am back. I managed to leave my shitty job in Virginia and move back to Arizona with only one unfortunate $1000 stopover in Amarillo, TX, to replace my car's MAF sensor, fuel pump, and fuel filter.

Now I am once again gainfully employed - this time at a job that has no overtime and will actually allow me to take every other Friday off! As Borat would say, "Nice!" Plus, I'm living in a nice apartment, not a kitchenless basement "apartment."

Things are looking up. Look for more activity on Die Eigenheit in the near future. For now, it looks like I have several new(ish) comments to respond to.

Oh, the Irony!

I want nothing more than to leave my current job and return to Phoenix. Unfortunately the job market in Phoenix seems not to be doing so well, at least as measured by the sad trickle of new jobs appearing in my various key-word searching RSS aggregators. I'm lucky if I send my resume out more than twice a week, lately. I recently put my father's Mesa address and phone number on my resume, which has at least significantly improved response percentages. Still, given the situation I am seriously considering taking any remotely relevant job, even one that pays significantly less than I'm making now.

Meanwhile my current employers recently offered me a promotion. I told them I'd think about it. Then I did some research as to what the local market rate is for the position and discovered that in spite of a recent $18K jump in salary they'd have to pay me an additional $15K/year to bring me up to "average" - and in fact my current salary is below the bottom of the ranges provided by Payscale.com and Salary.com! Since my employers hadn't actually specified a number in the informal offer I sent an email detailing my findings and suggesting that providing a formal offer and naming an actual amount might help me with my decision.

The funny thing is that if they do agree to compensate me at market rate then I think I'll be disappointed, because it will make it a lot harder to feel good about moving back to Phoenix and taking a lower-paying job.

And A Razor of Love

For some reason I have always been attracted to music that has a minimalist sensibility to it. The unfamiliar ear generally equates minimalism with mindlessly repetitive crap. However, with true minimalism (or should I say good minimalism?) the repetitiveness is intentional and, when handled well, never boring. Compare, for example, the mind-numbing dullness of any song by Prototype 909 with the brilliance of Orbital's Remind. The difference is striking.

Orbital's Remind exemplifies the emergence in the early 1990's of the sub-genre of Trance. Arguably pioneered over a decade earlier by greats such as Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, Trance as an art form can reasonably be said to have found its best representative in Underworld. The above video is as good an argument for that contention as any. Watch it all the way through and focus on the journey that the song takes your mind on. There's a reason it's over 10 minutes long.

As a result of their inclusion on the Trainspotting soundtrack, in 1996 Underworld gained a modest level of commercial success - and even some airplay on "alternative" radio. "Trance" thus began its rapid decline, morphing from the cool minimalist techno it was into the Euro Trash it is today (I knew it was dead the moment I heard an acquaintance of mine who was certainly no music fan declare that "Trance was her favorite" style). Ishkur's Guide does an excellent job of chronicalling the evolution.

By the way, the title of this post is a joke. Here are the actual lyrics to the song:

Everything everything everything everything everything everything everything everything I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible I'm invisible an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? Why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love an eraser of love

I scream I scream I scream so much you know what I mean this electric stream and my tears and I live with wires and energy and my machine this is my beautiful dream I'm a hurtin' no one hurtin' no one hurtin' no one hurtin' no one I wanna give you everything I wanna give you energy I wanna give a good thing I wanna give you everything everything everything everything everything everything everything everything everything and one final scream of love who could climb this high she looks beautiful like a child i feel tears and I wanna scream you know what I mean this is hurtin' no one

An eraser of love

Why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? Why don't you call me I feel like flying in two? An eraser of love An eraser of love

I Remember Making the Body Search

Wire has been one of my favorite bands since I was first introduced to them back in 1990 by Jim Lippard. They're considered a "musician's band," as they were extremely influential, though they never received much commercial success.

Colin Newman (the vocalist in the song above) has since gone on to form his own label, swim~, which features a number of excellent acts, including Newman's own solo stuff, and a collaboration between Newman and his wife, Malka Spigel, called Immersion.

By the way, isn't YouTube awesome?!

The Buzz-Buzz-Buzz, Buzz in the Eardrum

Tinnitus.

Pronounced either TIN-it-us or tin-NIGHT-us, the word refers, loosely, to the subjective perception of a ringing sound in the ears, pretty effectively demonstrated by this PSA. I've suffered from it, as best as I can remember, since I was at least 13 years old, and although for me the volume of the ringing isn't as bad as the example in the PSA, I have to deal with a half dozen or so different frequencies. I tend not to think about them while engaged in normal every day activities, but I truly have no conception of the word "quiet".

There's no cure, though of course you hear all sorts of quack remedy claims, from herbal, to acupuncture, to homeopathy (but, then again, what ailment doesn't a swig of purified water cure?), to the truly bizarre. The American Tinnitus Association maintains a resolute optimism that we are at least on the right path to a cure. Yippee!

Medical science had a big breakthrough with the germ theory of disease, but since then, has there really been much appreciable progress in the field? Sure, they're better at cutting people up without killing them, and people know to wash their hands before they handle food - and we can't discount medicine's adoption of the double-blind study - but beyond that, aren't today's doctors essentially similar to their witch doctor precursors, telling their patients to take this or that magic elixir and call them in the morning?

Maybe I'm being too cynical, here, but I can't shake off the feeling that I'm going to be listening to these damned bells for a long, long time coming.

Tilting at Windmills

I used to have an interest in being an advocate for a worldview. Such an impulse has left me, now, almost completely. I find I am not up to the task. As the iconoclast Albert Jay Nock once said, in one of my favorite essays, to be an evangelist requires "more faith in such processes than I have, and one must also have a certain dogmatic turn of temperament, which I do not possess... I am not sure enough that my opinions are right, and even if they were, a second-hand opinion is a poor possession."

There is no language in our lungs to tell the world just how we feel
No bridge of thought
No mental link
No letting out just what you think
There is no language in our lungs
There is no muscle in our tongues to tell the world what's in our hearts
No, we're leaving nothing behind
Just chiselled stones
No chance to speak before we're bones
There is no muscle in our tongues

I thought I had the whole world in my mouth
I thought I could say what I wanted to say
For a second that thought became a sword in my hand
I could slay any problem that would stand in my way

I felt just like a crusader
Lionheart, a holy land invader
But nobody can say what they really mean to say and
The impotency of speech came up and hit me that day and
I would have made this instrumental but the words got in the way

There is no language in our...


Do you hear me? Do you care?
My lips are moving and the sound is coming out
The words are audible but I have my doubts
That you realize what has been said
You look at me as if you're in a daze
It's like the feeling at the end of the page
When you realize you don't know what you just read

What are words for when no one listens anymore?
What are words for when no one listens?
It's no use talkin' at all

I might as well go up and talk to a wall
'Cause all the words are having no effect at all
It's a funny thing - am I all alone?
Something has to happen to change the direction
What little filters through is giving you the wrong impression
It's a sorry state, I say to myself

Do you hear me? Do you care?

Pursue it further and another thing you'll find
Not only are they deaf and dumb they could be going blind
And no one notices
I think I'll dye my hair blue

Media overload bombarding you with action
It's getting near impossible to cause distraction
Someone answer me before I pull out the plug

Do you hear me?
Do you care?

Should I Be Annoyed?

I obviously haven’t been blogging much, despite intentions to the contrary. Here’s an explanation why:

To: Einzige
From: [Company Managers]
Subject: Assumption of role as ‘Acting Supervisor of Quality Assurance’
Date: July 17th, 2006

On Friday July 14th [Boss Man] discussed the opportunity to become ‘Acting Supervisor of QA.’ If you chose you would assume the role of supervisor of your functional area—Quality Assurance—on a temporary basis for a projected period of not more than 3 months. This would allow the current manager…to transition to her new role within the organization.

We addressed that the organizations requirements for the manager of a QA were considerably more experience and more actual management experience running a dept. [sic] We mentioned that should your performance of these duties be satisfactory we would give consideration [emphasis original] to your assuming the role. This was and is not a guarantee of an automatic promotion or assumption of those duties.

In consideration for assuming these duties temporarily you would receive a $1500 bonus in your August pay and another bonus of $1500 in your September pay if you are performing in that role satisfactorily.

During the week of 7/17, [Boss Man] will meet with you to set the specific expectations for this ‘acting supervisor’ role. We request that you summarize those expectations in your own words so that we can include them in your file with this written confirmation of this agreement and your discussion with [Boss Man].

If after the discussion of expectations you feel that they are unclear or if during your performance of your duties you come upon any problems that you are unable to resolve please do not delay in bringing those problems to [Boss Man’s] attention immediately.

Please sign a copy of this email and bring hard copy to the HR office.

________________Signature
________________Date

I find myself alternately pleased and annoyed about this. For one thing, I have almost 10 years in QA, with over 3 of those in a management capacity of some sort, including managing a team of up to 9 people for over a year. During the initial discussion, mentioned in the letter above, with Boss Man, he seemed a little taken aback when he learned this about me. And thus the pendulum swings to the other side: it’s true that the managers of this company haven’t seen much from me, since I’ve basically been cloistered in the QA department, stuck underneath a “manager” who has never been an effective advocate for the department—or even reasonable QA practices. I learned, after a while, that my complaints and suggestions might as well have been made to the wall. Given this, perhaps management’s lack of trust in my capabilities is understandable.

Nonetheless, no follow-up discussion has yet taken place, and I wouldn’t even have gotten a hold of this email if it weren’t for my going to talk to the HR director about concerns I had that nothing of the original talk had been put in writing. So, I still do not know what it means to “perform in this position satisfactorily.” Worse, the timing of the transition happens to be during one of the worst “crisis mode” crunch times in the history of this company, which is basically always running in crisis mode.

Note also that I am apparently only vying to become a “permanent supervisor,” as they are planning on hiring a “real” manager as soon as they can find someone with over 4 years as a manager and 10 years in QA (thus “out ranking” me). I’d still be getting $18K per year more than I make now, so while all this “manager/supervisor” bullshit does bother, it's not by too much.

An extra $3000 over the next month or so is undoubtedly an attractive carrot, as well, and I have found myself working a lot of extra hours this past couple weeks, with more ungodly overtime planned for the next couple of weeks, in the hope of making a good impression (and getting stuff done that has needed doing for a long time - another rant in an of itself), even though I still don’t know the definition of “satisfactory.”

Finally, all this comes while I’ve been making a concerted effort to find a job in Phoenix and move back there, since it’s where the bulk of my family and friends reside. Should I put that on hold and focus on getting the bonus money? If I do end up getting the “permanent” supervisor role, should I stick with it for a year and leverage my way into a better paying job in Phoenix in a year or so?

This is all so annoying.

Wherein Love of Music?

My grandmother tells me that when I was barely a year old, to get me to settle down for a nap, she would play an LP of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Apparently I would lay there quietly with my eyes closed - asleep, by all appearances - but as soon as the record would end my eyes would open and I'd point at the record player and grunt until she would start it up again. Beethoven has always been my favorite composer - and the Ninth, to this day, remains awe-inspiring.

When I was eight I heard Pink Floyd's On The Run. From the instant I heard it I was fascinated. I've been a Floyd fan ever since, though I was disappointed to discover that not all of their stuff sounded like that. I was fated to wait several more years, yet, before the premier of Risky Business. I still vividly remember the moment when, during the opening credits of the film, the words "Music Composed and Performed By Tangerine Dream" appeared on the screen. I thought to myself, "That's an interesting name..." - and then the music started! At the time I was a big fan of Devo, Yaz, and Thomas Dolby, but I realized then and there that subconsciously I had been waiting for music like this all my life! I became obessessed with finding everything I could by Tangerine Dream. Thinking about it, now, it's kind of hard to imagine a time before Google, when looking up a band's discography was actually somewhat difficult and usually involved physically visiting a library and using a card catalog!

All of this, I think, gives strong evidence for a genetic origin to the enjoyment of music. This is no surprise, really, given recent research with twins (among other things, like the fact that my cats don't crowd around the speakers when a good song is on). On the other hand, I find it strange that both my father and my grandfather are profoundly unmoved by music. They could literally never listen to a strain of music again and feel none the worse for it. Such a sentiment is completely alien to me.

My mother enjoys music, but mainly as a performer, and she seems to have no quality control (sorry mom! :-) ). Maybe, like eye color or male pattern baldness, that's all that's required for a genetic origin, but I doubt we could call it definitive.

It would seem the nature/nurture debate must rage on.

Electronic Music, Digital Culture

For me, it is music—more than any other single thing—that makes life worth living. You may have already guessed this from my large collection of electronic-music-related links in the sidebar. Listening to music is often a sensual, visceral thing for me, like enjoying a particularly decadent slice of cheesecake. The right song at the right moment (usually something by Orbital, or maybe Beethoven) has been known to cure week-long funks I was otherwise sure would continue indefinitely. It’s the closest I get to calling something a reverent or spiritual experience (and I suspect my experiences are just as “transcendent” as any religious person's).

So, you might wonder why I don’t blog about music more often. Well, as someone smart once said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture—it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” One’s tastes in music are about as rational as one’s tastes in ice cream—and, besides, mine are decidedly outside the mainstream. Moreover, I have no interest in making Die Eigenheit more shamelessly self-indulgent than it already is.

Having said all that, I do find myself sometimes wondering, “What is Die Eigenheit about, if it isn’t my peculiarity, hmmm?” I can’t come up with a good answer to that question at the moment (though you might reasonably wonder why I didn’t call the blog “Meine Eigenheit”), so I hope you’ll allow me a little self-indulgence, here. I’d like to recommend that you check out one of my favorite web sites—the one that, for good reason, tops my list of music sites: Static Beats.

If you’re a music lover, but disdain electronic music, then I don’t begrudge you your preferences, but consider this: Does your exposure to it consist entirely of brief stints at the meat-market “techno” clubs, bombarded with the relentless thud-hiss-thud-hiss-thud-hiss that your annoying friends call “electronica” (retch!)? If so, I submit you are unfairly judging an art form by its worst representatives. It’s as if you condemned all of Rock and Roll on the basis of hearing only Poison or Whitney Houston. Give the Static Beats webcast a listen with an open mind and see if you’re not pleasantly surprised at the breadth and depth that genuinely artful electronic music has to offer. Take it from someone who has been a die-hard electronic music fan since the first time he learned about the letter W watching Sesame Street (I’m sorry I can’t provide a link to a video that would clarify the reference. You'll just have to trust that I'm actually making sense, here).

If you are a fan of electronic music then you really couldn’t ask for more. What you can count on from Static Beats is a steady stream of innovative artists on the forefront of the genre, mixed in with just the right amount of classics from the past. The site showcases so much good music that I’m almost scared not to listen to it, because of what I might miss. This has a bit of a downside, though, too, because discovering two or three new must have artists per week is way more than I have the money for. My Amazon Wish List is getting unwieldy as a result, and I’ve taken to forcing myself to listen less frequently nowadays.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it even half as much as I do!

What is this blog about?

Recently, it seems this blog has had a rather narrow focus. I'll admit that I have been slathering quite a bit of attention on John Burley (and though he certainly doesn't deserve it, I do still have 2 or 3 more Burley posts planned). Honestly, though, I have no intention of adding Die Eigenheit to the cacophony of personal finance and real estate investment blogs out there. I mean, what the hell do I know?

So, you see, I have always felt that if this blog's theme is anything at all (aside from its autobiographical nature), then it would have to be epistemology.

As a die-hard skeptic, I take belief very seriously. I often find myself consumed by doubts - sometimes to the point of experiencing a profound (and very disturbing) solipsism. Of late - as you've seen if you're one of the 4 people who reads this blog regularly - this tendency to question obsessively has manifested in my exploration of the the wacky belief that there are actually "secrets" that "the rich" keep hidden from the hoi polloi. This has meant a focus on John Burley, since, of the countless people spouting such nonsense, he's the one I am most familiar with. I will, soon, run out of things to say about that, though, at which point I'll have to move on to other things.

Al Swearengen once said, "If you want to see God laugh, tell him your plans," so I won't bore you with the specifics of mine. But if you were beginning to worry that I might never shut up about Burley this and Burley that, you can rest assured that even I will have had my fill of him before long.

A Shaved Pussy

It's that time of year again. Gamera has started to shed. More importantly, however, he brought home two ticks this weekend - two that I know about, anyway. Their arrival sparked a whirlwind of obsessive vacuuming on my part, as well as a dousing of Gamera with some flea and tick repellant. That stuff is nasty, though. It smells awful, gives me a headache, and clearly irritates Gamera, as well. Thus, the shaving.

Gamera tolerates the process well enough, as long as it's in sessions that last 20 seconds or less. Any longer and he starts complaining. I can usually push it another 20 seconds before he starts biting - as long as I'm not trying to shave his tail or the backs of his hind legs, in which case he gets mad immediately. To mitigate this problem I break up the shaving process into many short sessions over several days.

I swear his hair, when shaved, violates the law of the conservation of mass. It makes a huge mess all over the bathroom, but the 5 months of zero shedding and considerably less worry about fleas and ticks make it well worth the effort.