Common Misconceptions: The New Millennium

Seven/eight years later and I'm still bitter about this.

There's no year zero. The calendar starts with year 1. Thus a grouping of one thousand years, a millennium, ends when the calendar changes to a year ending in 1.

Now the coming of the the "new" millennium in the late nineties was hot shit, acted like it owned the place, didn't take off its shoes, and put its cold, sweaty drink glasses directly on top of the wood surfaces of your furniture without a coaster intermediary. A factor in this was Y2K hysteria to be sure. The story broke ahead of time, because computers were going to think when the calendar switched from 1999 to 2000 that since they only had a two-digit year marker programmed in that the calendar was actually going from 1999 to 1900. And since all computers are in fact working time machines, computers were going to send the world itself back to 1900 and all the technological advances of the twentieth century would become anachronistic and subsequently disappear by way of self-fixing paradoxes.

Also, every digit in the year was going to change and there would be three zeros and that's really cool guys. Zeros be rolling over like on your analog display clock.

Now let me quote a bit of popular culture minutiae, "The Millennium" episode (820) of Seinfeld:

Jerry: Oh, that's interesting, because as everyone knows, since there was no year zero, the millennium doesn't begin until the year two-thousand and one. Which would make your party, one year late, and thus, quite lame.

Jerry is right and he's wrong here. Newman's party would be one year early, not late. Still since that is when everyone else is celebrating the new millennium, it would instead be lame to be the hipster douchebag who chooses to celebrate the new millennium on the night of December 31, 2000 when the general population ("normies") are asking, "Wasn't that last year?"

Ironically (irony: that's still a thing, right?) none of this matters as calendars are superfluous and based around arbitrary starting dates to begin with, and nations systematically changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian over the late middle centuries of the second millennium anyway. Plus when we talk of the decades, we talk about the eighties as being from 1980 to 1989, and not 1981 to 1990 because calling '90 a part of the eighties is retarded and counterfactual. All one really needs is an almanac to follow the phases of the moon.

The Sporting Life

team sports

rampant fervour

patriotic regionalism

squash

non-competitive

I'm doing something a little different with my post today. See by the original timestamp the genesis for this post was 5:19 PM on December 27th, 2007. And the above bullets were what I wrote at the time. Now often when I have an idea, I'll just put a little something down and save it as a draft for "later." Now sometimes later is a long time away. Currently, later is just over five months. By the time later comes around, well let's just say I had different expectations when I opened this post saying its time has come. More references to flow of space-time, mainly. Now let's see what I can make of this. Blogpost, Ho!

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I try to stay active. But there's only so much one can do. There is something purely rote, about isolated exercise, a "workout," spotter or not. It's just motions, no poetry. These days I spend about 70 minutes everyday on a treadmill. Now I don't necessarily enjoy this. It can feel like an obligation, too much of one sometimes. And anything that is an obligation often and irrefutably will breed procrastination (this blog for instance, for something that as a writing exercise and as such would expect to be fun, is often procrastinated). So often the treadmill will be procrastinated, sometimes until the late afternoon.

Now how do I do something everyday that gives me no joy? Well I love books and I love music, so often with me on the treadmill are a book to read and music to listen to. So this gives me time to read. Now I might love the idea of books more than I love the idea of reading so this makes me make time for reading where otherwise I might not. Likewise, while I exercise my brain, I also get to exercise my body. Obviously reading is not very easy to do while moving at 8.5 km/h, so some of my time is split between speedwalking, a steady gallop really, at 6.4 km/h. A good reading speed. And at the end of these daily sessions, I do feel good. A self-esteem boost! Take that, chronic depression.

But maybe still, was I looking for something more? So, then I come to the conclusion that sports are something that are both exercise and fun. But which sport? There are certainly so many. Each likely with their benefits, and their many many many detractions. I'd occasionally watched sports on the telly, but I had never gotten into them at any really "fan-like" level. There was always a distancing effect created by the rampart fervour and patriotic regionalism inspired in the diehard hardcore devotees (Two birds, one stone; Take that, past-me).

Certainly there were many solo person sports as well. Hang-gliding, snowboarding, boogie boarding, and other singles sports that John Kerry used to distance voters in the 2004 United States presidential elections while George W. Bush threw around a football, and which I quickly dismissed as too blueblood.

And for some reason I decided upon squash. There's always been something about squash. That room, maybe? Is it from the future? Maybe. But there was more. Maybe this idea of my childhood. You don't exactly see squash played, you see. Sure, a lot of courts had viewing galleries. But I'm thinking back before I knew that. Before I could think of it as something competitive, that had star athletes (at least stars in the world of competitive squash), before YouTube clips, before (again) the viewing galleries, it was something where you and your opponent entered a closed room, equipment in hand, and later you exited something decided. There was something mysterious and desirable about that idea.

And that's still something I desired.

Now a closer look a squash. What is all this special equipment you need? Who's going to play this, kings? Definitely a rich person's game, no? Let's see you need a racquet, a ball, probably goggles for safety's sake (stay safe, kids), and most vexing of all this room. This long room, with the hardwood court, and the walls, with the lines going up and down and maybe on angles (say what?!) and what is that, did someone weld a chunk of scrap metal to the front wall? The door closes behind you, everything about it flush with the wall, to be unobstructive, and you're sealed. A space capsule, right? Ready for the future? Well you better be.

So now we have decided upon squash. It's awesome, right (see previous paragraph)? It's a simple sport, requires little material, your relatively free university gym membership, and two or four people. Not exactly team, but less masturbatory than windsurfing. And I'm inclined to say it's not technically a contact sport but... Well think of tennis. Now think, instead of boundary lines, you have walls: you run into those walls. And instead of a net, you have a wall. This results in the two sides of the court (i.e. tennis) becoming mirrored as one (i.e. squash) and both players playing in the same field. Therefore, you have people colliding. Which is usually avoidable. I personally bounce off the wall far more often. Although, those person-on-person collision sometimes also including the floor while keeping the ball somehow in play is the most glorious wonder of this sport as seen from my imaginary perspective from the sometimes nonexistent viewing gallery.

Now you the skeptic say this sounds more like DeathBall 3000 than any fun. Well, fuck you, mister, I ate the horse you rode in on, he was delicious. Squash is pure fun. There's a certain rush going on with all this. When I play it's sort of noncompetitive. I barely keep track of the score (What is it 5-2 me, 5-3 me? Let's say 5-3). It doesn't matter that much. Instead it is a collection of moments. Those collection of moments, like life, add up to something so much more than statistics.

There is a certain moment that comes that I wish to highlight. There's a certain rush of playing that I mentioned. You're pumped. Blood is flowing. Maybe some endorphins being released in your brain from when you flattened your arm against the wall running for that return shot. You're wearing your goggles (stay safe, kids) and they're fogged up, likely from your sexy sexy perspirations (with all the sweaty sweaty pheromones in the air, the sealed room, the close proximity, squash is a highly erotic and sexually charged sport... hey there, wink, you're looking good to all my past competitors).

A calm comes over you. Everything slows down. Everything makes sense. You're moving at the same speed but processing it differently... faster. As if you have conquered time. The squash ball (single yellow dot... long the competition standard before the advent of technology allowed the development of the single yellow dot. What's that smell? The Singularity.) becomes a superdense orb, its own gravity field becoming the new point of relativity, warping the space-time continuum around it. (Or maybe its like that Futurama episode "Three Hundred Big Boys" where Fry uses a tax refund to buy 300 coffees in a day and reaches a moment of zen at the pinnacle and saves the day. Yeah, its a lot like that actually).

Everything slows down. Your perspective is different, warped, better. You have reached enlightenment. That is why I play squash. For those moments of zen, and pure bliss. Then you come down from the mountain, your pact with God made, you look at your partner, wondering if he/she understands, or even made the same pact. Then you make a return, and the cycle begins again.

I wish I could play squash more than I have as of late. I think I played three times last month. And only once, maybe twice a month, the four previous months (i.e. whenever I came to town). I might, I just might, have to join the squash league in the fall. I'm pretty sure that's a real thing.

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Well, I think I acquitted myself well. Happy D-Day, everybody!

Weekly Wikipedia Find: The Wold Newton Universe

It must be literature week here at The Genius Defines. Just kill me now, eh? Am I right, guys? Am I right or am I right?

The Wold Newton Universe takes noted science fiction author Philip José Farmer's notion that famous literary characters were all members of the same bloodline (the Wold Newton Family) and runs with it. This bloodline includes Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Doc Savage, Solomon Kane, The Time Traveller, Allan Quatermain, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, etc. (OMG tag heaven!!1!). Of course, this is no ordinary bloodline to include all these exceptional individuals. Rather, it has been effected by the meteorite that struck the village of Wold Newton in 1795. That's the real-life meteorite which struck the real-life village of Wold Newton in the real-life 1795. The town's descendants then are gifted with extra endowed with intelligence and strength becoming of their fictional statures. Also, a community does not make a bloodline.

Onto the actual expansion of this idea is the sense that these now connected characters can infinitely extracted upon and within each other, looping and looping, so that 90% of all fiction (EVAR!) takes place in Farmer's mind as he shakes a snow globe. It's intertextuality, people; when will you learn (I might remind you that Spock is a descendant of Sherlock Holmes).

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

A Novel Idea III

Postmodernism requires particularly postmodern interludes:

You are watching a film. Spanish, with English subtitles. The lead character in the film, she is watching a film. English, with Spanish subtitles. The universe folds in on itself. Time begins a new. Light travels up to the same distance as just before. You don't notice a thing.