I don’t typically use this space as a venue for book reviews (I tend to do that over at GoodReads), but I just can’t seem to pass up this opportunity.

I have just finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs , a book whose title is oddly fitting despite Klosterman’s hardcore word-choice. That said, the title is probably the most shocking part of the book itself, which is truly a peek into the mind of a modern genius. Finishing it presented me with an odd desire - the second that I set the book down on my coffee table and sat up, all I wanted to do was pick it back up and read it once more. But this is merely one of the interesting predicaments that this book has put me into since I turned its first page.

Before I explain, let me first make a small (but necessary) confession: there aren’t many issues that I can exactly pinpoint myself as having, but I think that I can honestly say that I have issues keeping my mouth shut about something great that I’ve discovered. Maybe it’s the Market Maven mentality, or simply a seemingly annoying personality quirk, but I cannot deny that I, upon finding something new an interesting, cannot help but share it with those around me.

While Apple products are usually my vessels for such advertisements, this week it was, without question, Klosterman’s manifesto. After both laughing out loud and stopping to think about the true depth of what I had just read, I couldn’t help but share various parts with my roommates or whoever was close-by at the time (regardless of their expressed interest in what I was saying or Klosterman was writing). Of particular noteworthiness was a series of questions introduced as “the twenty-three questions I ask everybody I meet in order to decide if I can really love them.” This was an interlude between chapters, and involved questions such as:

“For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a twelfth-grade level. They can’t talk and they can’t write, but they can read silently and understand the text. Many cats love this new skill, because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention the utter frustration of being unable to express themselves). This being the case, do you think the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find this cartoon to be an insulting caricature?”

It is writing like this, or even this line of thinking, that makes the classification or even description of this book nearly impossible. Klosterman has chapters devoted to topics ranging from Saved By The Bell, to country music, to The Real World. And he does this in the most curious of ways - the book is organized quite literally like a mixtape, with seemingly arbitrary song lengths attached to each chapter name in the table of contents.

I was fortunate to spend this July 4th weekend with a fantastic group of people, I could not help but tell them about the sheer brilliance of what I was reading. However, each time that I tried explaining to them what the book was about, I either sounded like a blind-faith fanboy or a blabbering buffoon. The reason for this difficulty, as I only realized later, has mostly to do with the fact that Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs could best be described as a series of blog posts. Not this sort of blog, but the kind of blog that Hank Moody would write for Hell-A magazine, the kind of blog that keeps you glued to the screen with the strange desire to simply be the author’s friend. Klosterman’s blog (which is both much-needed and non-existant) would be filled with pages of the most well written, pop culture infused, ADD-natured panache available on the internet today.

That’s basically how I feel about Chuck Klosterman now. Given the opportunity, it’d be extremely fun so simply hang out with the guy, not in a “hang-out-with-a-famous-person” kind of way but in a “I-could-really-see-myself-being-friends-with-this-guy” way. So to speak.

If you were born between 1975 and 1990 and haven’t read Klosterman’s masterpiece, I highly recommend Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs . Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever said a sentence like that before.

As I sat there, in the back of my grandparents’ English class, the same biweekly ESL class that they have attended for over a decade, I couldn’t help but smile. Shying away from her usual routine of worksheets and parts of speech, Sandra, their faithful and time-tested teacher, recently embarked upon a new course, asking each of her devoted students to dedicate half of a class period to a presentation their country and city of origin.

There they were, all sitting with their specific group of friends like high school never ended - learning. But on this day, and in that room, they weren’t learning about greetings or grammar - they were learning about each other. Setting aside the truly astounding fact that they still want to be in school after the lives that each of them has lived, I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that I was surrounded by some of the most amazing people alive today. Here they sat, listening intently and discussing the peculiar similarities between countries like Belorussia and Iran, writing down new words they heard along the way, growing together and moving ever-forward at an age of undeniable slowdown. To watch them interact and bridge gaps which they could not have dreamed about in their home countries was an experience I won’t soon forget.

As I’ve grown up, my grandparents have been an undeniable force in my life, one of guidance and ideal, trust and unwavering support. Rare is the day that passes and I don’t speak to them, if only for minute. But those days without those talks do sneak by with the emptiest of spirits, only to be followed by the darkness of unquestionable regret.

For these are the people who raised our parents, who raised us, who molded the very dispositions of those that I hold so dear in my life. But they are not merely parents - they are children, and friends, and siblings, and lawyers, and engineers, and doctors, and survivors. They are the last links to a past that seems to be fading away by the hour, never pausing or stopping to breathe the smallest breath.

After their almost 90 years, and more than 60 years together, no better founts exist for requisite lessons about philosophy, life, love, and everything else that might arise along the way. But lessons or not, with or without the experiences from dark days of the old world and the old life, I declare now with the full force of meaning that my grandparents are some of the most amazing people that I will ever meet. If in the end I’m even slightly like them, or achieve even a small portion of what they have, that will be a life worth living.

Two AM and here I lay, blanket and comforter shielding me from the fan-induced breeze blowing gently above me. I can’t seem to calm my mind, prevent the endless parade of disjointed logic which keeps me from rest, as if we weren’t meant to unite.

This year has been different, three months have gone by and yet I find myself faced with the sort of thoughts that could only creep up on you, slithering slowly under the sheer gravity of unbridled possibility. Needs, family, health, happiness, duty, deference, priority, time - they occupy the mental real estate previously reserved for what now resembles stability by way of unopened eyes.

It would neither be fair nor accurate to describe my life as anything short of perpetual positivity, peppered with lows no more frequent or taxing than those of others. But as I turn from side to side, subject to subject, I can’t help but wonder if this is truly the path that I’m supposed to be on, the path which down the road assuages any previously plaguing qualms. I realize that only hindsight can provide this sort of guarantee, but that doesn’t seem to make me want it any less.

Likewise the ever permanent presence of life’s pinnacles and troughs fail to keep me from staring up from down below. Perhaps this staring is beneficial, an uplifting sign of the aberrational nature of my current state. I sure hope so.

There’s something to be said for family, for home, for the existence of a place where it all comes together. I’m not quite sure how to assign words to my current state, but nonetheless here I am. There’s a Russian movie called Make It ‘Til Monday that offers the mantra much better than I ever will - the movie asserts, as its overarching theme, that happiness is being understood.

There are, and always will be, those in our lives who offer unmeasurable positivity, intrigue, and sanctity. They provide unparalleled uplift where life has lowered all visible manifestations of hope, and much needed support where circumstance has abandoned any earthly form of buttress. But those qualities alone, despite being integral strands in the tapestry of situations that face us all, fail to form a holistic picture of what is truly required. This diversity of friendship, even in small quantities and regardless of form, provides a valuable (and indeed much needed) element of growth, helping create mutual understanding, tolerance, and stability. But diversity alone rarely suffices, lacking the sort of fundamental comfort that I seem to be devoid of these days.

Family seems to fill this void more and more these days, and as time goes on I find myself growing closer and closer to the people who made me who I am today. With the continuous bewilderment of those around me, I continue to talk to my family several times a day, if only to say hello. Words doubtfully do justice to how truly important this element of my life actually is, but I pale at the thought of life without it.

It is therefore that I find myself in a newfound state for the last several days, missing my parents as they travel around Europe for the first time without me. Despite being the foremost advocate of this vacation (it was much needed and I’m glad they went), I can’t help but feel a bit down. Call it separation anxiety, call it an inability to “cut the cord.” I just call it missing the ones I love.

Have you ever run into an ex and witnessed first hand that what you two once had is going on just as it had before, except this time, without you? It continues, even better than it did when you were involved. Unpleasant at best, but dismal more than anything else.

Well luckily I didn’t run into any ex’s today. In fact, that hasn’t happened to me yet (and I’d like to keep it that way). But an almost parallel situation unraveled before me tonight, and like it or not, here I am writing.

Tonight happened to be the ASCE Spring Faculty Student Social, a complicated event to plan, but one of the most rewarding to experience after planning it. This Faculty Student Social, like the one the year prior, and the one before that, the best social to date. Well planned, well executed, well done.

But it was the meeting afterwards, the first meeting of the ASCE Alumni Advisory Board, that put me in my current state. The board consists of past ASCE officers (mostly from my years of service) coming together to provide current ASCE officers with insight and advice on how to improve ASCE.

The details don’t matter as much as the situation itself: here I was, on the 7th floor of Davis Hall, once again meeting with a group that was an undeniable (and unbelievably significant) part of my life for the four years of my undergraduate education. Surrounded by those that continually surrounded me back in those four years, I once again heard the voices of a group of people devoting their time, energy, and sanity toward a simple but worthy common goal - helping others.

Although it was absent in the course of the meeting, the somber duality of that gathering hit me the second I walked out of the building. It was only then, on my moonlit walk back to my car that I understood just how large a part of my life ASCE was, and just how large a hole it left when it ended for me. Since my involvement, the organization has grown, matured, and prospered in ways that I could not have imagined, and their invitation to this meeting meant more to me than they will probably know.

Tonight allowed me to once again give back, to work together with people that I genuinely care about and respect. And sitting there, offering advice and helping make decisions brought a smile to my face that I hadn’t shown in quite a while. But the sobering truth of that meeting was that those days are now over, and little exists to bring them back.

Indeed everything has its proper time, place, and end, yet here I am again, faced with just another example of my voluntary exit from a situation which likely improved with my withdrawal, but left me missing that which I had lost.

Settling. Not down. I take no issue with down. Those that know me well know that I’ve had no issue with it for as long as I can remember. My issue is the seemingly inherent (and unavoidable) conflict between compromise and settlement, between idealistic desire and attainable reality.

I get it, I’m still young. I have yet to completely figure myself out, nevermind anyone else. But in that same sense I feel that I have a pretty coherent understanding of who it is I am, as well as who it is I seek. Sure, I’ve been spoiled by my past - I understand that. But that same spoiling yielded yet another slice (or addition) to the mold that I hope to one day (soon) fill. It just comes down to the fact that I’m not sure anyone fits. And more importantly, I’m not sure anyone will.

It was different for those before me. I know it must have been just as difficult in decision, but was it not simpler in simply the idea that there was, in all senses, one less hoop to jump through? I believe it was. The options must have been severely limited by proximity, availability, even kin - but how is this not the very best example of less being, well, more? One less hoop is clearly not the answer - but it sure did help.

But as day becomes week, and week, month, these seemingly attractive portrayals of uninstigated meetings, of unintentional crossings, of unexpected finds, seem all the more unreal, and hence unrealistic. They meet, they click, they work. But how true-to-life, how believable, and most importantly, how probable really is that?

Well let’s start with true-to-life. For the vast majority of the population, its more than true - its the way it seems to work. But what if a percentage of the population was all of a sudden eliminated from consideration? Not just any percentage, one of significant proportion. Does it still work? Sure. Alright, let’s remove a second percentage of the population that remains, removing just as much if not more than before. Does it still work? Probably not.

So that shoots a hefty bullet through believability, does it not? Luckily for now it doesn’t, but what I fear most is the day that it does. And the reason for such pessimism is the very idea of probability. How hard is it, even for those brilliant and truly amazing people around me, to find any pertinent sort of compatibility? Its staggering. And despite (or in spite of) their quirks and intricacies, they are highly appealing people. Its incredibly difficult for them, and yet they do not suffer from the same tunnel vision affliction that I can’t quite escape (I don’t even want to). For them compatibility appears sufficient. That’s hard enough as it is. But two additinal hoops?

Sorkinistic simplicity, yet again, rings true: “It should be hard. I like that it’s hard.” Anything short of difficult would lack the kind of unadulterated appreciation that is so vital here. But often the halcyon days of the past, those days that have engrained their almost touchable details upon my memory, highlight a period of the most appealingly pliant bliss. Those days are gone, and young or not, the time has come for self-realization to mean more than someone understanding himself. These are the days of today - some up, some down, but ever-forward. The only question is - who’s coming with me?

I turned to one side, and thought of things trivial and frivolous. I turned to the other, and thought of things critical and grave (this is my tried and tested tactic for sleep induction). But no matter to which side I turned, I simply could not seem to get some sort of strange verse out my head. It wasn’t something that I’d picked up during the day. In fact, I’d never even heard it before. Yet no matter what I did, I couldn’t help but recite it over and over:

So I rolled around, did my best to get it unstuck, but nothing worked. Frustrated and sleepy, I finally reached for my iPhone, charging on the nightstand beside the bed, and decided to write down the very verse which seemed to banish me to insomnia. Except that when I finished writing the verse, I didn’t finish writing. I just kept writing, verse after verse. From out of nowhere.

Now, let me be the first to disclaim that this cadence ridden logorrhea is far from brilliant, or even poetic by any standard. But what’s of interest is that I have no idea where it came from, or why it chose to come out in verse. After doing some research, it turns out that the ridiculous manner in which I chose to express myself lacks any sort of name, other than tail-rhyme or “aabccb.” However, I was reassured to discover that this type of rhyming scheme is typically employed by satirists and those seeking a lively and humorous tone. My verses were neither satirical nor humorous, but, sure enough, they were mine. Alright, enough description, here it is:

Now that you’ve read my peculiar midnight creation, you can take comfort in the fact that this exercise in lack of appropriate tone, meter, or subject matter has taught me one very important lesson: that I, in all senses of the word, am not a poet.

This post combines a few things I’ve been meaning to write about, but they are too specific to warrant their own posts. Enough introduction - here goes:

The Diddle Factor

Last summer, I was sitting around with both friends and family and I was introduced to an interesting term. The term was called a “Diddle Factor,” and has one of two definitions, each of which is slightly different, but they both general correspond to the same thing. A “Diddle Factor” is defined as either:

1. The amount of money that a person is willing to throw at a certain problem to make it go away quickly; or
2. The amount of money that a person is willing to part with, without thinking twice about it.

In the end, both definitions really relate to the same thing. The Diddle Factor is not mine, and I cannot claim any responsibility for it. However, it does lend itself to several intriguing ideas.

First of all, everyone has a different Diddle Factor, and its quite interesting to find out what people’s Diddle Factors are - the result might surprise you (when my sister said what hers was, her husband was quite shocked at the disparity between them). Second, a person’s Diddle Factor is highly correlated with the period one’s life is in i.e. throughout one’s life, one’s Diddle Factor changes.

A google search for Diddle Factor did not yield either one of these definitions, so I thought that such a great term deserved its place online.

Internet Culture

Maybe it shouldn’t be called Internet Culture. Maybe it has some more appropriate name. Regardless of its name, what I’m referring to is the ability of the internet to bring complete strangers together for only a second, both walking away with something new. Let me provide an example.

My friend Lisa was browsing my website with its new design and happened upon a bug that didn’t let anyone see the previous pages of posts. The bug had to do with one of the plugins that I installed on the site in order to simplify navigation and links.

After browsing for a solution, I simply could not resolve the bug. However, on the website that provided me with the plugin, had comments from the plugin users on it, one of which was by a guy who had the same “previous post” problem but had resolved it. He didn’t say how, but he happened to leave the name of his website with his comment.

Without thinking, I immediately went to his website, went to the contact page, and added his screen name to my buddy list. I don’t know why I did it - I rarely would bug a stranger about some obscure tech question - but nonetheless I added him. The next day, he signed on, I instant messaged him, and he took two minutes to explain to me how to fix the problem.

After he signed off, and my problem was solved, I stopped to think about what had just taken place. Here is this random guy (he was from some town in Georgia), who I basically stopped on the street and asked to help me. And he DID. That’s amazing.

Age and Decency

The last thing I’m going to say is this: I find it extremely interesting that the older we get, the more appalled we are that our peers lack the fundamental qualities that make up a functional, social, being - respect, decency, and pliability. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have always thought that the older we get, the more complex the challenges we are faced with become. However, that’s not necessarily the case.

More often than not these days, I find myself shocked not by people’s inability to deal with complex situations, but rather their lack of basic tools to even begin to tackle the issue at hand. Only now, when looking at how my 1 and 3 year old nephews are developing socially, I realize the sheer gravity of day to day interactions with them. Each interaction, regardless of subject or context, functions as an additional reinforcement or adjustment to the social being that’s being molded on the inside.

I can only hope that somewhere between their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunt, uncle, and friends, they learn those indispensable tools that are so lacking in some people. In fact, I’m going to do my best to make sure of it.

So here I sit, on the tan bamboo couch, feet resting on the coffee table, engulfed by an unimaginable paradise, warm wind slowly blowing across the evergreen leaves that are more here than not. Kauai is truly a sight to see, offering one of the most varied landscapes of any place I have been to, all on a small green island in the Pacific.

Starting the new year here was an idea that I’m quite proud of coming up with. It all started in our little 4 passenger Opel Zaphira as we drove across the lush German countryside which, remarkably, was a different shade, but nonetheless, similarly green. I began telling my parents about this island and its treasures, its sea turtles and its canyons, and just then it hit me - why not let them experience it first hand? Why not indeed.

When we got on the cruise in Norway, I immediately found myself emailing the Albers (who were amazingly helpful), about reserving their house for a Hawaiian New Year’s getaway. Although New Years was booked, and I remember being a bit sad that we wouldn’t be there for that special day, today I can honestly say that it would not have mattered.

That’s because with each trip I make here, and with each night I spend here, I realize that each day here is a special day, both unique in experience and the same in enjoyment. I guess what I’m getting at is that this place is amazing. In the exact words of my father, I have fallen in love with this place.

——– ———

I wrote the words above in the middle of our trip to Kauai. Now, on my first day back, I can honestly say that nothing has changed. Maybe time will blur the island’s beauty the way it did before, but I doubt it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.