Finals and the Halfway Home show

Alright, so this picture accurately represents me during finals week.

Me in my room shirtless growing my finals beard. I don't think I put on a shirt once that week (except when I was going to take finals), seriously. I got through them all though, and so far, I know I got 97% on my linguistics final, which was four essays, between 12 and 16 pages total. So, yay me! Yeah, finals sucked, and I was dealing with another round of sickness during my philosophy essay writing time - 100.5 degree fever. So if I get a bad grade on that essay, it's because my brain was cooking while I wrote it. Yeah, finals were crap, but this term will be better. Have a schedule.

Dance classes: tap III, african I, improvisation, contact improv, men's dance
Math: Differential Geometry
Philosophy: Love and Sex (gen-ed class that looked like it would be the most fun of the ones I could do)
Note: no classes before noon - I win

ALRIGHT! On to what you actually want to hear about! The show!
So, it was Halfway Home, half way through the time to Burning Man. If you don't know what burning man is, you have no purpose on this blog - go do your research and then come back and read the rest later. Seriously - go, read. If just the wikipedia article, go, find out.
The event was a fundraiser for several camps within the burner community. So I didn't get paid - too bad for me, but I had a blast anyway. The music was fantastic (including a remix of BYOB, and a particular favorite, a remix of Levan Polkka. Again, if you havn't seen it - go - watch - learn) and we were in the company of many fantabulous dancers. There were some other fire dancers there too from the general portland area. Two, in particular, I want to mention. Jay Peace who did some fire juggling, and we had a cool conversation about juggling clubs and had a bitch party about how annoying it is to juggle fire (if you don't know, quicky explanation: when it is nighttime, and the fire is going, it is hard to see anything other than the fire - but you have to catch the handle. Basically, fire juggling is not comparable to club juggling  - in fire, you have to catch the thing you can't see, but assume is there) and I found him on facebook - yay! The other one was Baby Doll. She is a hooper who does some fire eating too (respect!) but she was unlike any hooper I've seen in a while. She threw out some new tricks I had not seed before, but being that I am not a hooper, it is not that impressive to impress me. But what she did was more subtle. The way she moved had a quality in it that I really only see in aerialists, a movement independent of gravity. When most of us initiate movement, we do it from our core because that is how we walk. We move from the hips - center of gravity, and then our body follows. When we turn our head, we move from the center of the body. But when you are in the air, you can move from anywhere to initiate movement, and it produces the flowing, beautiful effect we see in good aerialists. But she had this same quality, and she was on the ground. It produced an effect where it looked like she was floating. It was seriously cool.

So I did two rope sets, neither one too difficult, but I threw out some one my more personal tricks (captain underpants, for example) and had a good time with it. However, on my second set, I forgot to pull my high-rise pants up all the way, they were just regular-rise pants, and since I was performing with a mesh shirt, my stomach was pretty much bare with no protection from the rope. Yeah, I got burned, and it sucked.

I was working with a woman named Harper Chang, who was doing silks. We had met about a year ago, once, and were working together now, it was fun. We decided at around 4pm we were going to choreograph a duet piece, where I was holding her up. Props to her for trusting me enough after such a short amount of time to perform a duet piece with her just hours later. Well, we did - kept it pretty basic, but it was still awesome. Crowd response was pretty frickin' excellent.

Then I did my fire set. I ripped out one of the better fire eating/breathing sets in a while. I pulled off the sustain with back bend, and got the full 180 degrees, something I have not been able to do in a while. I also have perfected the tripple blast (breathing through my own previous blast, with no torch - it is a speed thing), perhaps too much - they are getting so close together it is hard to tell them apart. I didn't think I would ever tell myself to do a trick worse to make it look better. All was well until the double extinguish. I burned my lips pretty good.

Haha, who am I kidding. I do that every time with the same result. I think my body just is so used to getting burned there I don't even care anymore. But it get's worse...
I figured out a new trick I could use for closing, and I have been using it ever since I moved to Oregon. I do it whenever I have an outdoor show and it is either raining, or it rained recently. I lean down before I do the trick and touch the ground, getting my hand all wet. Then I just straight up grab the torch in my hand and put it out. Well, the ground wasn't as wet as I thought it was. I didn't have as much water on my hand as I thought I did. I figured that out in a single instant, as I heard a hissing sound and thick white smoke rising out of the top of my hand. Thick white smoke as a result of the fire that was using what used to me a part of my hand as fuel. Technically it was really fucking hot metal that touched my skin and I wasn't protected by water like I thought I was, but it sounds much better the other way. But there was some fire burns too (i.e. the rest of my hand). It isn't too bad, I can still use it just fine, it just looks really gross (and it felt like it was on fire for about 24 hours) because I have these giant blister type burns on my palm, and the kevlar pattern burned into three of my fingers.

And through that extremely not fun experience, I learned something about myself. Something that I would have figured out earlier if I had bothered to pay attention, because this has happened many times. There have been times when I am executing a trick, and I know as soon as I do it that I messed up, that I was going to get hurt to some degree. Or I start to get hurt and realize why. But what makes me, me is that I don't stop. Last night, when I saw that the fire wasn't going down as fast as it should have been, and that my hand was starting to get burned, I didn't drop the torch and jump back. I held on to that thing until I was sure the fire was out. Then I dropped the torch all dramatic-like and bowed. I left the torch sitting there and walked back inside. Then... well, then i was less composed. Poured some cold water on the burn and then went back outside to clean up. Note: this is what a safety should be doing.
This fire show was awesome for two reasons: got a couple new tricks, and got seriously noticed by the portland fire community. I got a lot of business cards and people asking for my name and if I was on facebook. I might have some more portland gigs coming up! Plus, if I have anything down here, I can just give Jay Peace and Baby Doll a call and have them come down and kick ass!

Alright, that's all from me, I'm out. Nap Time!
~Fenix

Why Professors Hate Math Majors

We think of everything in terms of numbers, probability and variables to be solved for. Using these things, math majors are incredibly good at calculating EXACTLY how much work we don't have to do.

For example, I have a 108% average on my midterms (prof gave WAY too much extra credit and graded very generously), both worth %15 of my total grade. I got a 24/25 on participation, which is worth 25% of my grade (worth way too much in my opinion - when participation matters almost as much as both midterms combined, you know you've got an issue), and a 15/15 on my article review, which is worth 15% of my grade. If you run the math on that, I have 71.4% out of an available 70%

My final exam, which is comprised of four essays of varying difficulty, is worth the final 30% of my grade.

Here are some interesting numbers for you.

If I don't do my final: 71% = C-

If I do half my final and get decent grades on the two essays: 81-86% = B- to B

If I do three of the essays and get decent grades: 88.5% to 93.5% = B+ to A-

If I do all of them and get at least 80% on them: 95% = A

Right now, I have written two essays and they are near perfect (considering how this class grades, I'd guess they are at least 6.5/7.5). If I were to stop now, I get an 84%.

Lets think about this: based on where I am now, I can get away with getting 43% on my final exam, and still get a B in the class. This tells me two things: 1. I did very well in this class leading up to this term and 2. the grade percentages in this class need to be reworked.

So, why math majors are dangerous: I know that as it stands right now, the lowest grade I could possibly get is a B, so even though I have two essays in front of me that are gonna be really hard to write, I know that they don't have to be great, because even if I only get 50% on each one of them, I still get an A-. This encourages me to work less hard. Although doing anything less than my best simply isn't in my nature, and I will write those essays as if my life depended on it, I am merely pointing out that if I wanted to, I could slack off. I love giving myself perfect and justified reasons to not do work. Whereas most people will just make up excuses to be lazy, I make mathematical deductions and proofs as to why I can afford to be lazy.

LAZINESS QUANTIFIED! (that will be the name of the book I publish, and it will be all about why math is fun, and how you can use it to get by in your daily life, including uses of algebra and calculus)

I was all worried about these essays last week, but once I let my math brain take care of me, I feel all relaxed. It could almost be described as warm and fuzzy, even to the point where I can justify writing this note when I have essays to write!

I have done this in almost every one of my classes at the end of the term, and I have almost never done the last homework of the class if I am doing well, because it usually happens that a class with homework sets it at roughly 25% of the grade, and with 8 or 9 homeworks, each one is worth 3% of your grade. And with me being the guy I am, and having a good idea about how well I will do on the final, I can almost always deal with throwing away 3%.

Try it sometime, if you work your ass off all term, finals become much less stressful if you know exactly how much work you have to do to get a certain grade!

Open Showing, winter 2011

So my Tap III class got to perform in open showing, winter 2011 (where all the dance technique classes show off their stuff). We were given three combinations from our class time, and as a group, organized and choreographed the routine. We had a class of seven, four were supposed to be at the show, we ended up with three, which is how I ended up in my own row and in the middle. Acoustics are pretty bad in that theatre for tap, and that coupled with a crappy camera results in a not so great film of it. But, I still think it is pretty epic.
Enjoy!
Tap III, Winter 2011
I also did a modern piece, but I decided to perform it that morning, and I didn't know it that well, so I am just gonna keep that one private on my computer where nobody can see it but me :-)

No Slut-Talk, let's make it happen

*This is a message I wrote to some friends of mine in the middle of a thread which I had been absent from for a while, and while I was gone, they were talking about a girl who seemed to be getting it on with multiple guys. She would hook up with one guy when he came back from portland, and at least two other guys as far as they know seem to be getting with her. Having just watched "Killing Us Softly 4: Advertisings Images of Women" coupled with my already strong interest and stance on sexuality and specifically my exploration and definition of the word slut as supposed to promisuous, which I am still working on, and plan on putting here soon when it is done, I had some things to say. This is my message to those young girls. 

I just spent the last 45 minutes watching a speech presentation about how advertising affects women in our society, and there was a bit on men too, but that is not relevant here.

I want you to be very careful when you use the word slut. I have tried to define it in a certain way, and it is very derogatory, and sometimes applicable, but that word is so hurtful, unless you mean it, I don't want to ever hear you use it.

Slut: someone who doesn't know when to say no, and ends up having sex with anyone who asks, usually as a result of low self-esteem and feelings of un-worth

Promiscuous: being promiscuous is having lots of sex, generally with multiple partners, but is not born out of negative feelings, but out of self love and the realization that sex is fun, and if done well and safe, can be a good thing in your life.

Sex is not a bad thing, and sex with multiple partners is not necessarily a bad thing. I will likely never invite the two of you in to know about my own romantic and sexual history (nor do I expect you have any interest in hearing it), however, nobody calls me a slut, except in jest. Calling someone a slut implies that they feel bad about themselves, and while this is subconscious, the effect is making them feel bad about themselves, and this usually leads to more of the behavior that got them branded as a slut in the first place.

Last year, I was a boy toy to a married couple, and I have been a booty call on more than one occasion. I have taken the walk of shame more than once as well, but I never see it that way. It is called the walk of shame because casual sex is looked down upon (as you so aptly demonstrated with your remark about cough slut cough), and this is a fundamental problem with the way we view sexuality.

I am a huge thinker about the way sexuality and gender works. I have always been fascinated with two things: what makes people chose the things they do, and how sexuality works in our society, and I am almost always angered by the way I see both of these turning out.

There was a petition going around for the "no fat-talk week" from one of the sororities on campus, I don't know which one, and I signed it, but I signed it on a piece of paper being held by a women wearing a push-up bra, bleached blonde hair, colored contacts, and all I could think was that we needed a week to emphasize that. I think we need a week for "no slut-talk" and a week where everyone gets out of bed, combs their hair, and goes to school and that's it. No make-up, no hair dye, no colored contacts, no bra. I want people to start seeing other people as people, but no matter how much I try, I can't seem to get anywhere - so maybe I can start with you guys.

(You had no idea I had such strong feelings about this did you?)