Alright, so the week isn't over, but I am pretty sure I can give an accurate summary of my classes and what they are going to be like based on M-R.
LING 435: Morphology and Syntax (Prof. Scott DeLancey)
THE CRAZY OLD MAN IS BACK! Ok, not true, I took this class this term BECAUSE he is teaching it. He is a truly amazing teacher, and it is fantastic to learn from him. For those of you who remember when I took intro to linguistics, it included several pieces, including morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, phonetics, and phonology. Well, these subjects have been split up into separate classes, and this one is about morphology and syntax, which go hand in hand. Syntax is the construction of words and sentences, and morphology is one possible mechanism by which that is accomplished.
Conclusion: class will be interesting, both the teacher and TA like me, and it shouldn't be that hard (challenging, but not difficult)
MATH 315: Elementary Analysis (Prof. Weiyong He)
Well, after we figured out that "modify" meant "multiply", this guy's accent wasn't too bad. However, this class is widely regarded as "the worst math class on campus" because, not only is it "the proof class" with automatically means it sucks, but the format is apparently crap, and I am believing this to be true. However, it is a prerequisite for every single upper level class, and so it cannot be avoided.
Conclusion: class will be boring, difficult, and will be the most crap class this term
PHIL 216: Philosophy and Cultural Diversity (Prof. Scott Pratt)
I was told this guy was both interesting and inspiring, and from what I have seen, they were right. The first unit we are doing is all about identity as it applies to race and culture, how identities are formed, and how they affect people/how people relate to other identities and cultures. It is a large lecture class, and so it is pretty boring, but the discussion section we had today about the 'Ground Zero Mosque' was one of the most engaging conversations I have had in quite some time.
Conclusion: I don't really care that much about philosophy, but as it goes, this could look to be an interesting source of conversation for Evan and I (we had a talk about the GZM last night, and he brought up some things I hadn't thought of)
DAN 251: Looking at Dance (Shannon Mockli)
In this class, we will look at movement through a historical, academic, and hands on lens. We will do readings and research, write papers on dances we see, and workshop dance activities once a week. The class is actually part of FIG (Freshman Interest Group) about MTV, and their other class is music class of the same variety, so it is largely freshman, which is not great, but it is a 200 level class, so it is to be expected. It really is too early to tell how good this class will be.
Conclusion: Going to be pretty easy, and hopefully interesting, and will not require a whole lot of work.
DANC 276: Tap II (Jean Nelson)
Well, it is tap dance, but harder than tap I. We learn more things, and learn them faster.
Conclusion: it's gonna be awesome, I just wish it was more than a 50 minute class.
DANC 271: Dance Improvisation (Brad Garner)
This class focuses on solo work, although we will do some contact things. We will work on how to get those creative energies flowing so that it isn't a thinking process when we dance so much as a feeling exercise. For example, today, we walked 50 feet in 30 minutes across the lawn in front of the library, while stripping off layers of clothing (I ended up in just my dance shorts) just to see how people would react. Yeah, it was hard... and it was really interesting to see how people reacted to 30 kids moving so slowly you could barely see them moving, but if you left for 5 minutes and came back they were in different positions wearing less clothes...
Conclusion: see previous
In other news!
I begin my adult classes tomorrow with Acrobalance. I have no idea how many people are going to show up, so planning that class is going to be hard, but I will do my best. I am running 4 rehearsals per week now to accommodate work schedules of my performers. Needless to say, I am not going to have a whole lot of time to goof off between work and school.
My one hour per day of pure relaxation, however, that I have made the rule is to be used only for that unless there is an emergency and I forget to write something for DAN251, is my lunch hour, between noon and 1 (when I have dance or work). This hour is spent 15 feet above the ground, in a tree that we have named Orpheus, or Orphi for short (the species name of the tree, according to Laura, someone who joined us for lunch, involves a word that sounded like Orphi, and we extrapolated Orpheus from that). Orphi has a place for my bag to go, and comfortable branches for everyone to sit on while eating! There is a big hollow area inside of where the needles begin to grow, so nobody can see inside. It is a very peaceful feeling in there, and it is a big time for me to cool down and let things go from the stressful morning.
I have two new projects as well.
1) I am doing a vlog, and the first entry in this, to be posted sometime next week (when I get done editing the hours of footage) will cover today. Things I did today, sort of a "day in the life" video, including me riding my bike around Eugene, walking around campus, eating lunch with Orphi, going to Bounce, and the first part of project #2.
2) By the end of this year, I will have footage of me juggling either by myself or with a group of people passing inside of every single UO building (not including dorms) on campus + Autzen. That last one will be hard. I am going to try to get inside Autzen to film juggling... I'm not sure how I am going to do that one, but I have 9 months to figure it out... Tonight, I checked Lillis off the list - I juggled in the Lobby, which is HUGE! I always have juggling stuff on me, and I always have a camera, so when I have a couple minutes to kill, I will just go to a building, set up the camera, and juggle for 30 seconds and then be on my way. It isn't a terribly difficult goal, but it will be a cool one. And to finish it off, I will video myself juggling in strange places around campus (in trees, on top of things that should not be climbed on top of, stuff like that).
I think that is all I have for you as of yet, but keep your eyes peeled for the entry containing the vlog entry (I will post them on youtube as well at Cobbledick's Vlog), but they will show up here first, and they will be accompanied by annotations and fun stuff. I am also waiting on the correct program to edit them (iMovie HD cannot speed things up properly, and iMovie '08 can't do it at all, so I need iMovie '09) and I need speed up capabilities, because I know you don't want 12 minutes of real time footage of me riding my bike from campus to the south hills... I don't like riding it, I don't know why you would want to see it... Except maybe the cool 2 minute piece in the morning through the fairgrounds when it is really foggy... That's pretty cool.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
New Word: Lazanthetic
To begin, some definitions in preface, according to my dictionary
Lazy: averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
Apathetic: having or showing little or no emotion
My new word, while it is not a perfect blend of the two in spelling or in definition, serves its purpose well enough.
Laz·an·thet·ic
[laz-n-thet-ik] /leiz
nˈθɛtɪk/
-adjective
1. having or showing interest or emotion, but averse or disinclined to work towards the object of that interest
There is a fairly complicated logic behind why the spelling is what it is, and unless you think linguistics jokes are funny, you will simply give me the internet version of a blank stare, which I generally try to avoid.
Now, why have I invented this word? Because in my search through the dictionary, I cannot seem to find a word that describes the phenomenon that I have observed, and so I decided in my somewhat sleep-deprived state to invent such a word.
The above mentioned word was given the necessity to exist this morning. I had decided to pick up a new juggling/spinning tool called a double-sided meteor hammer (or "meteor" for short, because nobody uses a single sided one, and if they use something similar, they call it a rope dart when it comes to circus equipment - if you want more information, I can guarantee you that wikipedia can tell you everything you want to know about it) due to my stupid need to learn new things constantly. Anyway, the basic "need to know" of a meteor is that it is a ~4.5' rope, with two weights on each end. In the chinese version, which was a weapon, they were two heavy metal balls, that when spun into an opponents head... well... hurt. In circus, they can be two rubber balls or something similar for practice, or they can be two wicks for purposes of BURN! I don't have one of these, so I improvised by tying two sock poi together. The rope is a bit short, and the weights aren't heavy enough, and the poi are uneven, so I had to adjust for that, but the idea is there.
I posted this such news on Facebook, greatly abbreviated of course, followed by conclusion that learning meteor hammer is similar to learning poi; very frustrating, and you get hit in places you least expect - in this case, the spot on my head behind my right ear (note: if someone asks you what area of your body you want to get hit gently but repeatedly should you be forced into it, there are two areas not to tell them: groin and the place behind an ear), and this second post was met with some interesting comments, which will be edited for names and shortened to give you the highlights.
Now, I have been preaching this philosophy for years, and it has reached many ears, but not enough obviously, so I shall write a blog about it, and I shall send a link to it to anyone who says such things as Ms. Normal does (there is a joke waiting to be made about her name that I set up completely accidentally, and I am a little bit pleased with myself for it - you'll see it soon enough).
Before you can understand this philosophy of mine, lets call it the "If I can do it, so can you" philosophy, or Tao of Nike (Just Do It! get it?), I will explain to you how I got into the ground based circus arts (i.e. non-aerial/acrobatic, which have stories all to themselves).
When I was around 16 I believe, someone showed me a video of a man named Chris Murdoch doing something awesome called contact juggling, and I decided I wanted to do it, so I went and found some tutorials on ContactJuggling.org, and started learning with a grapefruit. I ruined a lot of grapefruit, but this was a non-issue, considering the grapefruit tree in my yard that produced more fruit than we knew what to do with. If you choose to learn with fruit before you spend money on supplies, use something that is readily available and very round, reasonably large, and heavy (i.e. not a lime). Anyway, I spend approximately three weeks learning the butterfly before I was confident in showing to my parents and friends (with the grapefruit) and decided I wanted to buy some practice balls so that I could stop ruining potential fruit juice. I would not even like to estimate the number of grapefruits met their demise falling off of the back of my hand.
Anyway, I decided to learn traditional juggling as well - it made sense. Now, as many jugglers will tell you, every time you add another ball, the difficulty (and number of drops) increases 10 fold, so when you juggler three balls as supposed to one, you get 100 drops proportionate. As someone who has learned to juggle, I agree with this statement. So I kept going, and kept dropping what were not objects resembling fruit (thank goodness) and I kept working at it. I chased my balls all over the yard, and I picked them up (until the greatest day ever: the day I learned kick ups - my back was quite happy with me that day) until I finally got it.
Finally, now that I have gotten past my basic history, I will get to my very blunt point: YOU THINK I WAS BORN THIS COORDINATED? HELL TO THE NO! I worked my ass off to be able to keep track of three balls at the same time, and to be able to change throws and mix combinations together. How did I manage to do it? I juggled. A lot. I'm talking the kind of a lot where normal parents would say "get off the computer" my mom would yell into the back yard "Stop juggling you idiot, you have to eat sometime" and I would yell back "BUT I'VE ALMOST GOT MILLS MESS!" which I didn't actually get until 3 months later in my father's living room, but that is the story of insane determination and dedication, which is another lesson I learned for juggling, and belongs in a completely different blog entry.
Two nights ago, I spun this stupid thing around and hit myself and dropped it and knocked shit over (every time worrying if my dad and Sheila had woken up, which they didn't... or if they did, they just rolled over and whispered "I wonder what crazy thing Connor is trying to learn now") and kept going. I would take a break every 20 minutes or so to get some water, or eat something, or watch an episode of some TV show I had downloaded. That's what purpose TV serves to me these days - relaxation in between episodes of training. And most of the time, I stretch while watching TV.
Final words, I promise.
When someone comes up to me and remarks about how coordinated I am, or how talented I am, or how amazingly badass and sexy I am when I roll that ball on my arm (ok, maybe not that last one - but the other two I do get from strangers) I just want to tell them that they could do, if they would just obey the Tao of Nike. If they would take a half hour out of every day to learn a new skill, and then to practice it 30 minutes every day instead of watching TV or something else mundane and useless, they would be able to do all that I could do. Anyone who says that they wish they would love to do what I can do, but just aren't talented enough or coordinated enough, they are lazanthetic. They want to, but not bad enough to put their mind to it, and actually work for something you might not succeed at the first time.
So Abby, your reaction to what I do is understandable - we live in a fairly lazanthetic society - nobody wants to fail, so many don't try. And those are the people looking wide-eyed at me on Saturday mornings putting money in my hat for something that they could do. You really are completely Normal - are you bored of that yet?
Lazy: averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
Apathetic: having or showing little or no emotion
My new word, while it is not a perfect blend of the two in spelling or in definition, serves its purpose well enough.
Laz·an·thet·ic
[laz-n-thet-ik] /leiz
nˈθɛtɪk/-adjective
1. having or showing interest or emotion, but averse or disinclined to work towards the object of that interest
There is a fairly complicated logic behind why the spelling is what it is, and unless you think linguistics jokes are funny, you will simply give me the internet version of a blank stare, which I generally try to avoid.
Now, why have I invented this word? Because in my search through the dictionary, I cannot seem to find a word that describes the phenomenon that I have observed, and so I decided in my somewhat sleep-deprived state to invent such a word.
The above mentioned word was given the necessity to exist this morning. I had decided to pick up a new juggling/spinning tool called a double-sided meteor hammer (or "meteor" for short, because nobody uses a single sided one, and if they use something similar, they call it a rope dart when it comes to circus equipment - if you want more information, I can guarantee you that wikipedia can tell you everything you want to know about it) due to my stupid need to learn new things constantly. Anyway, the basic "need to know" of a meteor is that it is a ~4.5' rope, with two weights on each end. In the chinese version, which was a weapon, they were two heavy metal balls, that when spun into an opponents head... well... hurt. In circus, they can be two rubber balls or something similar for practice, or they can be two wicks for purposes of BURN! I don't have one of these, so I improvised by tying two sock poi together. The rope is a bit short, and the weights aren't heavy enough, and the poi are uneven, so I had to adjust for that, but the idea is there.
I posted this such news on Facebook, greatly abbreviated of course, followed by conclusion that learning meteor hammer is similar to learning poi; very frustrating, and you get hit in places you least expect - in this case, the spot on my head behind my right ear (note: if someone asks you what area of your body you want to get hit gently but repeatedly should you be forced into it, there are two areas not to tell them: groin and the place behind an ear), and this second post was met with some interesting comments, which will be edited for names and shortened to give you the highlights.
Abby Normal: good luck, I would have knocked myself unconscious with one... do NOT have that type of coordination.... ~hugs~
Me: nah, can't knock yourself out - my meteors are beanbags. Anything is possible with enough training, though. I worked hard on this for 5 hours straight to get the tricks I know. Practice Practice Practice.
Abby Normal: this is why you're awesome, and I'm a complete nooblet! I need to visit one day and be seriously humbled...
Now, I have been preaching this philosophy for years, and it has reached many ears, but not enough obviously, so I shall write a blog about it, and I shall send a link to it to anyone who says such things as Ms. Normal does (there is a joke waiting to be made about her name that I set up completely accidentally, and I am a little bit pleased with myself for it - you'll see it soon enough).
Before you can understand this philosophy of mine, lets call it the "If I can do it, so can you" philosophy, or Tao of Nike (Just Do It! get it?), I will explain to you how I got into the ground based circus arts (i.e. non-aerial/acrobatic, which have stories all to themselves).
When I was around 16 I believe, someone showed me a video of a man named Chris Murdoch doing something awesome called contact juggling, and I decided I wanted to do it, so I went and found some tutorials on ContactJuggling.org, and started learning with a grapefruit. I ruined a lot of grapefruit, but this was a non-issue, considering the grapefruit tree in my yard that produced more fruit than we knew what to do with. If you choose to learn with fruit before you spend money on supplies, use something that is readily available and very round, reasonably large, and heavy (i.e. not a lime). Anyway, I spend approximately three weeks learning the butterfly before I was confident in showing to my parents and friends (with the grapefruit) and decided I wanted to buy some practice balls so that I could stop ruining potential fruit juice. I would not even like to estimate the number of grapefruits met their demise falling off of the back of my hand.
Anyway, I decided to learn traditional juggling as well - it made sense. Now, as many jugglers will tell you, every time you add another ball, the difficulty (and number of drops) increases 10 fold, so when you juggler three balls as supposed to one, you get 100 drops proportionate. As someone who has learned to juggle, I agree with this statement. So I kept going, and kept dropping what were not objects resembling fruit (thank goodness) and I kept working at it. I chased my balls all over the yard, and I picked them up (until the greatest day ever: the day I learned kick ups - my back was quite happy with me that day) until I finally got it.
Finally, now that I have gotten past my basic history, I will get to my very blunt point: YOU THINK I WAS BORN THIS COORDINATED? HELL TO THE NO! I worked my ass off to be able to keep track of three balls at the same time, and to be able to change throws and mix combinations together. How did I manage to do it? I juggled. A lot. I'm talking the kind of a lot where normal parents would say "get off the computer" my mom would yell into the back yard "Stop juggling you idiot, you have to eat sometime" and I would yell back "BUT I'VE ALMOST GOT MILLS MESS!" which I didn't actually get until 3 months later in my father's living room, but that is the story of insane determination and dedication, which is another lesson I learned for juggling, and belongs in a completely different blog entry.
Two nights ago, I spun this stupid thing around and hit myself and dropped it and knocked shit over (every time worrying if my dad and Sheila had woken up, which they didn't... or if they did, they just rolled over and whispered "I wonder what crazy thing Connor is trying to learn now") and kept going. I would take a break every 20 minutes or so to get some water, or eat something, or watch an episode of some TV show I had downloaded. That's what purpose TV serves to me these days - relaxation in between episodes of training. And most of the time, I stretch while watching TV.
Final words, I promise.
When someone comes up to me and remarks about how coordinated I am, or how talented I am, or how amazingly badass and sexy I am when I roll that ball on my arm (ok, maybe not that last one - but the other two I do get from strangers) I just want to tell them that they could do, if they would just obey the Tao of Nike. If they would take a half hour out of every day to learn a new skill, and then to practice it 30 minutes every day instead of watching TV or something else mundane and useless, they would be able to do all that I could do. Anyone who says that they wish they would love to do what I can do, but just aren't talented enough or coordinated enough, they are lazanthetic. They want to, but not bad enough to put their mind to it, and actually work for something you might not succeed at the first time.
So Abby, your reaction to what I do is understandable - we live in a fairly lazanthetic society - nobody wants to fail, so many don't try. And those are the people looking wide-eyed at me on Saturday mornings putting money in my hat for something that they could do. You really are completely Normal - are you bored of that yet?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)