Problems

There's something wrong with the post below and it's bothering me.

The Man in the Arena

I saw Invictus today with my family. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Invictus is a movie starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon set in South Africa in 1995. Apartheid in South Africa has ended but the country is still divided by the lingering feelings from it. Morgan Freeman plays the South African president, Nelson Mandela, who is looking for a way to inspire and unite his country. He campaigns to have the 1995 Rugby World Cup held in South Africa, and befriends the South African rugby team's captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) during the preparation for the tournament. Mandela helps Pienaar understand what it would mean for South Africa if they were to win the World Cup, and Pienaar in turn inspires his team and leads them to victory, uniting the country and lifting its hopes in the wake of apartheid.

This post was not intended to be a review of the movie, but I got carried away a little bit and did so anyways. I apologize for that. This post instead is about a poem and a speech. You'll read about the speech later. The poem is titled Invictus, and was written by an English poet named William Ernest Henley. Mandela is said to have kept a scrap of paper with the poem handwritten on it in his jail cell while he was exiled from South Africa and incarcerated for fighting apartheid. The movie takes its title from the poem, and in the movie Mandela writes the poem from memory and gives it to Pienaar to help inspire him and keep him focused. Here is the poem.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

I like this poem. William Ernest Henley was a victim of tuberculosis and had to have his foot and lower leg amputated when he was a teenager to prevent the disease from spreading to the rest of his body. Despite his one-leggedness, Henley went on to live an active life, dying at the age of 53. He wrote the poem from a hospital bed. I think that the poem is a fitting one for a man to keep in his jail cell during his 27 year imprisonment, and for this man to give to his rugby captain when he becomes the president of his country. I would probably do the same.

Explanation of title: Until now my post might have lacked a point or a focus. You might find it here. The title of this post is also the title of the speech Theodore Roosevelt gave in 1910 in Paris. This seems unrelated to the movie Invictus and South Africa, but I assure you that it is. You see, while the movie depicts Nelson Mandela giving a copy of the poem Invictus to Francois Pienaar, that never actually happened. It is true that Mandela kept the poem in his prison cell, but when trying to provide inspiration for Pienaar, he gave him a copy of Teddy Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech. Despite the fact that the makers of the movie changed what was true to use the title Invictus, I am okay with them doing it, because it made for a good title and a good movie. Here is the most recognized part of the speech, some of you might know it.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

In defense of words

I have a bone to pick with pictures, so listen up images because I'm coming for you. You think you're so high and mighty, think you're the only way for people to really understand anything. "A picture is worth a thousand words," right? Wrong, and this is why. First off, what use is a picture to a blind person? I have the answer to that too, a picture is useless to a blind person. Useless, as in has no use, cannot be used. My second argument, which I think applies more broadly than the blind man scenario, is that all a picture shows is what is happening at that one moment in time. Pictures give no background or explanation, and also lack the courtesy to tell the viewer what happens next. Let's look at this one.

You are probably familiar with this picture. As you know, the guy on the right is Jack Ruby, the guy in the middle is Lee Harvey Oswald, and the guy with the hat and the bewildered expression on the left is J.R. Leavelle. Oswald had just recently assassinated the President of the United States of America, Mr. John F. Kennedy, in Dallas Texas. He was being transferred from the Dallas Police Headquarters to the county jail when Ruby surprised everyone by killing him. Some people think that Ruby and Oswald and whoever else were involved in various conspiracies that resulted in the murder of JFK, but everyone agrees that Oswald was killed by Ruby and point to this picture for proof. 

Now, what have we learned? From this picture we can tell that one guy is shooting another guy in the chest, and that the guy handcuffed to the target appears very surprised that this is happening. That is all we have learned from the picture. We can try to assume things and infer other things from the picture, but other than what we see we have no way of knowing why, when, where, or even how the event in the picture took place. All we know is what we see. I'll grant that pictures can convey emotions, events, and whatnot far more concisely and tidily than words, but without words that is all they are, pretty but inexplicable images.

Magellan

I'm sitting at the table in the New Hampshire house. My dad is sitting at the island in the kitchen fifteen feet away. We're both on our laptops. The snowstorm has covered the trees with a new coat of white and they look like a beautiful painting. It's still snowing, but the flakes aren't like the big, fluffy ones that we ran into on the drive up. They're more like rain than like snow. The dog is having a grand old time playing alone in the snow. He's a little crazy but in a good way. I miss my girlfriend. 

I'm going to Montreal in a couple of days to celebrate the arrival of the new year. I think there are eight of us going, the rest of the crew is going to pick me up here on their way to the border. I have never been to Canada and am looking forward to see our next state. A couple days after I get back from Montreal I am going to London with my family. My parents told us about the trip on Christmas day. I am excited to go to London. I've never been to England. I have been to Italy and Spain. I get the feeling that England is grittier and tougher than Italy and Spain. I'm fine with that. 

Explanation of title: Ferdinand Magellan is credited with the first successful circumnavigation of the globe. He was killed before he made it all the way across. If you type in Magellan on Google he is the fifth link on the page. The other links are for things that are named after him. I called this post Magellan because he traveled a lot and that's what I will be doing soon. 

I'll upload a picture of the snowy trees when I find the cord I need.

The forests would echo with laughter

Snood is a lot harder than you remember it being. At least the first couple games are much more challenging than you anticipated, and they leave you feeling down and bad about yourself. "Oh ya Snood! I was sick at that game in like seventh grade! How can that be hard?" Trust me on this. Fortunately, thanks to my determination and hard work, I shook off the rust and am once again a Snood pro. Sort of. I'm okay at it. For now.

We were driving in Scheib's car tonight on the way to Nick P's. NickM, Joe, and Scheib were smoking cigarettes, and I had a flask full of whiskey in my pocket. We were playing Usher's "Love in This Club" as we cruised through snow covered Needham. Cigarettes, booze, cars, snow, and hip hop music all at once. It was a mother's worst nightmare.

Christmas shopping is less difficult if you go to a bookstore. It is a breeze and much cheaper if this bookstore is the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton. (No I am not trying to promote the store because I work there. I tried applying last summer but they told me they were fully staffed. That's okay with me though because I've that the majority of the employees are a bit strange. It still would have been cool though, I guess I'll just have to open my own bookstore and show them who's really the boss.* Anyways, back on topic) I went there with NickM and got pretty much everything I need for gifts in like an hour. 

Tomorrow hopefully I will be able to play pond hockey. Pond hockey is one of my favorite things, and it sucks that I can only do it for three months at the most, probably less because I go to school in Providence and everybody knows that ponds don't exist in Providence. I am very excited for pond hockey. 

Explanation of title: The title was originally going to be "Who remembers Snood?", which reminded me of a line from the live version of Stairway to Heaven "Does anybody remember laughter?", which is a bit obscure so I used the line preceding it. I feel a little like Joe with a title that's not entirely related to the post. Sorry Joe.

*Bruce Springsteen is the real Boss. There's a picture of him somewhere on this blog. 

EDIT: Success! I finally rid the blog of the ads I put on it last summer as part of my money scheme! They were very annoying and prevented pages from having more than one post.

Almost Done

So here I am, sitting at my computer at 3:30 AM trying to get my brain to focus just a little bit longer on school so I can write my Philosophy of Knowledge paper. I will get a C in that class. At best. I made a mistake taking it, I thought I was smarter/more motivated/a better student than I actually am. Once I finish that I get to write my marketing group's paper, which is supposed to be like 15 pages or something. Great. All this must be done before 3:30 tomorrow, giving me 12 hours that I need to budget successfully. I really should go to bed earlier. I blame college. Even though I have work to do, I know I can get by doing the bare minimum and just focus when I really need to. Right now is one of those times. I'm going to bed. Merry Christmas.

EDIT: Turns out I got a C+ in the class, a very pleasant surprise and one that lead me to believe that maybe if I had worked just a little more at it I could have pulled off a B. Then again, a C+ could range from a 76/77 to a 79, and chances are mine is the lower of the two options.

A note

I started this blog with the intent of making money off of it through the use of ads. I now can't get rid of the one that appears below the first post on the page. I've given up on making money this way, at last count I had earned $12.35 from people clicking these ads, but there is a process to go through to claim this money and I don't want to do it. So thank you Google for making your Adsense feature, as a token of my appreciation I will entrust you with my $12.35. Don't spend it all on one thing.

Monopolies

So I went to Maryland for the last 5 days to visit my girlfriend. She lives there. We met at PC but she's not going back there, at least for first semester. Because of this and because of the fact that she's pretty great I wanted to see her before going to school. To get to Maryland I had to take a plane, a Boeing 717 to be exact, which got me thinking about monopolies. I'm not sure why but I think about monolopies every now and then. I think I am trying to figure out what company might be a monopoly so I can alert the anti-monopoly people and they can bring justice to the world. Anyways. What other company makes commercial airplanes? I don't mean the little guys that fit no more than 12 people and in which the passenger sitting in front is considered the copilot. I mean BIG airplanes that you see at airports, i.e. a Boeing 717 or 7whatever other numbers they have.

Another company I thought might have a monopoly over an industry is Uhaul, though whereas Boeing is airplanes Uhaul is do-it-yourself moving equipment. I thought of Uhaul because I've had to rent a couple trailers this summer to tow firewood back to Needham from Cape Cod and/or New Hampshire so I could sell it to people who would rather spend money on wood than split their own. Not that that's a bad thing. Well maybe a little bit of a bad thing but I can make money off of it so it's all good. Ok back on track. Uhaul appeared to be a monopoly because I couldn't think of another move-it-yourself type company, but then when in Maryland I saw some Budget moving trucks and realized the error of my ways. Sorry Uhaul for slandering your name.

I'm basing these judgements off of my limited knowledge of the monopolies and what defines a monopoly. "A company that dominates its specific industry and destroys its competition" sums up what I'm thinking.

If you ever get the chance to do so, have dinner at Fogo de Chao. It's a Brazilian restaurant and it's amazing and delicious. Mine was in Washington, D.C., but apparently there are some in Baltimore and Arizona and probably in other places as well. Do it. Tell them Jorge sent you. Unless you're a vegan or vegetarian. In that case, find somewhere else to eat. Or stop being a vegan and eat some animals. Either one.

Just another sucker fooled by a fancy name

I work at a summer camp. Well technically that's a lie, it's actually a "program" because we don't have a certified nurse or something like that, but for all intents and purposes it is a summer day camp. The name of the program is "Outdoor Living Adventure", a deceiving name designed to trick both potential "participants" (campers) and potential counselors. I was one such counselor duped by the name and the description of the camprogram.
When I applied for a summer job with the Park and Recreation Department of my town, my interviewers apparently offered me a job working at the pool, a job which yields more hours and more pay than my current job as a counselor. However, me being myself, i.e. not all that intelligent, ignored these alleged advances and became excited at the prospect of the summer program they called Outdoor Living Adventure (ODLA) a program for children ages 8-13 that supposedly involved fishing, hiking, and outdoor adventuring. Seeing as I enjoy spending time with kids, love to fish and hike, and am a master of adventures in the outdoors, I thought this was the perfect way to spend my summer. I now hate children between the ages of 8 and 13.

This is Bruce Springsteen. Be more like him.

Forget fire escape plans, what we need are zombie escape plans.

This is a picture from Spain. I thought it was pretty cool. I guess the slit in the wall was for archers, and it is more narrow inside than outside to protect the archers from enemy arrows.

If you are ever in Arizona or anywhere in the Southwest, do your best to avoid these things. They are called jumping cacti and they are not fun to remove.

Hello and thank you for visiting this page, hopefully I'll be able to say something that interests you but if not then better luck next time. I will attempt to use decent spelling and grammar and can promise you will never see an LOL on here unless it is making fun of someone/thing else. Once again, I thank you for visiting this page and hope I can keep you entertained.