Buying a Powerball Ticket - The Key to Happiness, Fulfilled Dreams, and Camaros?

My local paper, the Pioneer Press, ran a syndicated article today telling how, even in these hard economic times, people are buying lottery tickets. In fact, they are buying more lottery tickets than they normally do. I thought that this was only true of alcohol sales during a recession, but I guess I was wrong. Perhaps, even, the two are related?

I can, however, attest to booming Powerball sales at my station, though this might have more to do with the recent improvement in odds and the Chevrolet Camaro giveaway promotion than the poor economy.

The article goes on to interview a Tennessee man who concedes that, yes, the money he spends on the lottery ($100/week) would be better spent elsewhere, but “everybody has dreams.” This is how this man copes with life - by entertaining his dreams.

I like dreams. I think that, sometimes, dreams can generate increased productivity. But not these kinds of dreams. Not dreams that only exist to help release dopamine into you system - that help you ignore what’s going on around you.

A few fortnights ago, I accidentally bumped by elbow in to the touch-screen lotto machine and bought myself a $1 Northstar Cash ticket. What followed was the worst Friday night that I can remember (other than St. Patty’s Day, 2007. But that is another story entirely). My entire evening was spent fantasizing about what I would do with the money, in this case $62,000 before taxes, if my ticket happened to be the lucky one. Would I give it away? Invest it? Use it to go back to college? Donate it to charity? Move somewhere else? Go on another roadtrip? The possibilities were so endless that I could not concentrate on my job, ideas to write about, or even sudoku in the paper that day. I was completely lost in la-la land, and I hated it. I hated not being able to focus, not being able to concentrate on the present.

Two things resulted from this experience. The first was any lingering temptation I had to play the lotto was completely annihilated. The second was that I now understood why people played the lottery even though the odds of winning are so miniscule. They don’t buy to win, though that would be a nice bonus. They aren’t throwing money away - rather they are buying a positive psychological effect, a ‘high,’ as it were. They are buying the opportunity to fantasize for a day, or a week, or however long it is until the next drawing.

So what is the point of explaining this? After all, if you already play the lottery, this is all familiar to you. If you already refrain, chances are that this article isn’t going to change your mind in the slightest. I’m not condemning those who play the lotto or saying that it is somehow “below” me. Everyone has his or her vices. Heck, if you live in Minnesota, I encourage you to play the lottery. After all, that money is going straight to the state, and the state is the one who’s going to be paying for my health insurance in a few months. Buy all the Powerball you want, and I hope you win that Camaro, too.




_DZ

My Top Nine Albums Going Into 2009

This post is more for my own benefit than anything else. I just think it would be fun to read this next year and see what is different.

In no particular order:

Aladdin Sane - David Bowie

Bowie’s effort from 1973 (the same year as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) is an absolute joy to listen to. The music is so innocent and carefree that it makes me wish I was 16 again, going to a drive-in movie.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports - Brian Eno

Another album from the 70’s, this piece of music shines in that it is interesting and forgettable all at the same time. It plays just as well through headphones as it does as background music for a room. And at only four tracks long, it is easily to keep track of which piece is playing.

Urban Mythology Vol. 1 - Free Form Funky Freqs

I literally cannot stop listening to this CD. This is Vernon Reid’s (of Living Color fame) latest effort, and it is essentially a jazz-rock fusion jam session. Very little of the music seems rehearsed, rather the album has the feel of three musicians who play together all the time taking some time out to record some of their jams. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the album is that if would be an interesting listen even if it were just the bass and drums. Reid’s backing band is that good. The guitar sometimes seems like just the icing on the cake.

Invisible Touch - Genesis

I bought this CD at the same time as Aladdin Sane, and it has received equal if not greater rotation in my iTunes. This is just straight-up, feel good 80’s pop art-rock. At just eight songs, this album is short and sweet.

En=Trance - Klaus Schulze

This was my first taste of Schulze’s music, and it remains my favorite work of his so far. This CD is just four tracks long as well but, at eighteen minutes a track, listening to it is possibly the most blissful way to spend an hour. Complex synth arrangements and impossibly intricate rhythms intertwine to give the listener a beautiful taste of 80’s electronica.

Ocean Machine/Biomech - Devin Townsend

I first heard Devin on Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion record, and that led me to purchase his 1998 album Infinity. While Infinity is indeed brilliant, Biomech surpasses it in nearly every way, taking Townsend’s brand of metal to new heights. (It should be noted, however, that Ocean Machine/Biomech did come first). The album is produced using the wall-of-sound technique, which will sound harsh to most virgin listeners. Once you get used to it, though, it becomes an inseparable part of the aural experience of the CD. Biomech starts out slowly but solidly, and by the end of the track six, “Voices in the Fan,” the listener is primed for the superb, seamless second half of the CD. Indeed, I could say that the 13 tracks on the CD are only eight - the first seven including Voices and then everything after that.

Oxygéne - Jean-Michel Jarre

Another short album (only six tracks), but a beautifully innocent piece of music symbolic of the early exploration of analog synthesizers. The simplicity and playfulness of the music keep luring me back for more.

Perpetual Burn - Jason Becker

Jason Becker is somewhat of a hero of mine, and the guitar work on this, his solo debut shredfest, is absolutely mindblowing. He was 19 at the time of its release, and should he not have fallen ill to ALS at 21, might have become the greatest guitar god of the 90’s. Again, another short CD, with the eight tracks totaling to 55 minutes of metal.

Ultra Payloaded - Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party

The former frontman of Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros returned in 2007 with this CD, after coming to the conclusion that, despite his fame, if he didn’t continue to make music, no one would care about him. That being said, this album is absolutely rock solid, guys-night-out, party rock. Featuring Peter Hook from New Order as well as ‘Peppers bassist Flea on select tracks, the album is a non-stop showcase of what Perry Farrell is capable of doing when he decides that he wants to make music. Talented musicians flock to him, and he can use them craftily to produce a stunning piece of concept-rock. The guitar work of Nuno Bettencourt (formerly of the band Extreme), was something I had not heard before but greatly enjoyed.

Albums to Listen to More this Year:

Fortissimo - Virgin Black
1.Outside - David Bowie
Audentity - Klaus Schulze
Mirage - Klaus Schulze
Mistaken Identity - Vernon Reid
Zen Arcade - Hüsker Dü
Wired - Jeff Beck
Real Illusions: Reflections - Steve Vai
Mothership Connection - Parliament

2009: Goals For The New Year!

I’m not a huge fan of the word “resolution”, so rather I chose to make New Years Plans. As in, ‘things I plan to do this year that may or may not make me a better person but hopefully will make me better.” They are as follows:

✓ Read at least twenty new books this year (I like to re-read books, so at least 20 NEW ones)
✓ Read through the Bible in a year (I’m doing it historically)
✓ Not buy a single music CD or track (I already own enough music to which I have yet to listen. Mostly classical.) Since there were times when I bought upwards of ten a week, this might be tougher than I think.
✓ Double my amount of posted entires on my blog (last year I had 87, so...174? Wow, that’s a lot.)
✓ Memorize all the logical fallacies on this list.
✓ Produce a piece of ambient music that I actually like. So far all the ones I’ve done are totally uninspired, at least in my opinion, which is the only one that counts.
✓ Give away at least five Macs (as per this post). Last year I gave one!

So that’s it. A pretty short, but hopefully demanding list. Let’s see how I do!

2008: A Recap!

This, the end of 2008, is a good time to reflect on the past year, much like I did a year ago. Since then, I have had made eighty-seven posts on this site that chronicled my life and thoughts throughout the year. I suppose now would be an appropriate time to post my recap of things I did and events that happened over the past year. This time, though, it will be easier, since I have written many more of the events down.

In 2008 I:

• Left Pennsylvania
• Sold my first car
• Bought a huge van
• Went roadtripping!
• Saw Buckethead, Saul Williams, My Brightest Diamond, Haale, and Joe Satriani play live
• Rocked a Hitlerstache
• Discovered ASofterWorld
• Discovered TED videos
• Voted
• Sold one Mac G4 and bought another one five months later
• Moved to Minnesota
• Found a new job
• Ate a raw onion whole
• Furnished a room entirely from Craigslist.
• Bought a fixie and learned how to ride it
• Got to drive some pretty sweet cars
• Added at least 52 CDs to my library, and got rid of close to three times that many
• Got into Jane’s Addiction
• Rocked most of Guitar Hero on expert
• Gave away a computer to someone who needed it
• Bought and sold a lot on Craigslist.
• Went kissless (!)
• Had no health insurance (or “self-paid”, as the pharmacy likes to call it)
• Relied on God’s grace a LOT

Outliers, a book about successful people like Malcolm Gladwell, by Malcolm Gladwell

I spent a large portion of my day today reading through Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book, Outliers. In it, Gladwell takes a look at the underlying factors that contribute to the rise of what we typically call a “successful” individual. The book looks at the stories of several prominent people in todays world, among the Bill Gates, Bill Joy, the creator of UNIX, and The Beatles. Also critiqued are the Asians and their math skills, youths in Canadian hockey leagues, and the entrepreneurial tycoons of the late eighteen-hundreds like Rockefeller. Mr. Gladwell asserts, through these stories and others, that the rags-to-riches stories that we Americans love to hear are far and away simply untrue. Successful people, no matter how much innate ability or genius they have, are still the product of their times, their heritage, their circumstances, and a lot (Gladwell estimates at least ten-thousand hours) of work. Sometimes dumb luck helps, too. Outliers is essentially a collection of stories that reinforce this point.

While the book is certainly well done and thought provoking, it does little to assist the reader in thinking about his or her future. The book is a look at history, and since we can’t know the effects of the present on the future, it does little to comfort those who are struggling to be successful. Main points to take away from it are:

1. Hope you were born at the right time
2. Hope you network with the right people
3. Know your history
4. Work really, really hard

These points apply to almost everyone I consider successful. Take guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen, for example. He was born in 1963, making him ten years old when Jimi Hendrix died. He watched the funeral on TV, and after seeing a clip of Hendrix performing, took up guitar. He practiced incessantly all through his teen years, aided by his mother who let him drop out of school after she recognized his talent. He took up an apprenticeship with a luthier which allowed him to get some practice in even while at work. He wasn’t a rich kid whose parents paid for expensive guitar teachers and equipment (not that that would have necessarily mattered). He got good because practically all he did every day for ten years was play guitar. He easily had his ten-thousand hours in by the time he was 21, at which time he moved to L.A. at the prime of the metal scene. Eddie Van Halen had come on the scene just five years before, and now every kid in Southern California was trying to shred like Eddie did. And then arrived Mr. Malmsteen, who had been doing just that for the past ten years. Of course he was going to be successful!

The thing that most struck me about Outliers, though, was the point Gladwell pushed to people like me who haven’t put ten-thousand hours into anything yet. That point? Identify what you are good at. Figure out what you’ve had success doing in the past, and pour more coal onto that. To that I would add, “Make sure that’s what God wants you to do, or otherwise it will be futile regardless of your effort,” but the point is still the same. To be successful, you need to know what you’re good at. Maybe it’s cabinet-making, maybe it’s computer programming, maybe it’s being a jack-of-all-trades that is useful to a degree in just about anything. Regardless, isolate that, and full steam ahead!


_DZ

Recapping Christmas of last year and being thankful

I have a lot to be thankful for this Christmas. I suppose I had a lot to be thankful last Christmas though, too. I guess the underlying lesson is that Christmas helps me realize things I am thankful for.

Last Christmas started with me posting this early in the morning. I was alone, as the family I lived with was away in the southwest United States visiting relatives and my own family was enjoying a mild-weathered Christmas in Japan. I had an entire house to myself, and I was planning a rather laid-back Christmas day. I had opened presents with my family via iChat video conference the night before (Christmas morning their time), and with no presents to open or parties to go to on actual Christmas Day, I had a lot of free time.

The day started with the usual breakfast and dressing, and then I decided to take a nice long Christmas drive in my sports car. (I probably am still one of the few who drives alone for the sole pleasure of driving.) I walked out to my car only to find that I had left the headlights on for the past day or so (I didn’t have to work on Christmas Eve, so I stayed in) and my battery was dead. Undaunted I pulled out keys to one of the family cars and pulled it near to jump-start my Nissan. A successful jump later and I was on my way, cruising merrily along the Pennsylvania countryside. Then my car started choking. And bucking. And coughing. And flashing the dash lights. and then it died. I sighed. I had no idea where I was.

I got out of my car and walked around, trying to find the nearest intersection so I could phone my friend Shanan who was still in town and tell her where I was. I couldn’t find an intersection, so I decided to hang out outside my car and read a book until someone drove past whom I could hail. I kept a collapsable chair in my trunk (the colored kind that you get at Wal-mart), so I set that up, took out my copy of David Bowie’s biography by David Buckley, and started reading.

I hadn’t gotten far when a white Silverado crew cab pulled up next to me and asked me if everything was OK. I motioned to my open hood and asked if they had jumper cables. They did, and soon I was jumped and running. I drove maybe a block, however, before my car exhibited the same symptoms and promptly died once again. What a great Christmas so far!

Undaunted, I decided to call my friend Kirah, who I thought lived somewhere nearby. After a brief conversation during which I attempted to describe my whereabouts, she told me that she and her dad would be willing to drive out and find me. Yay for generous friends!

They arrived in their white GMC Sierra sooner than they thought they would (apparently I really had no idea where I was and described somewhere much farther away) and I was jumped once again. We let both cars run for awhile to make sure my car charged sufficiently this time, and soon I was driving, with Kirah riding shotgun, to her house. Her dad thought that my alternator had gone, but since no garage was open on Christmas, was going to allow me to park my car at their house.

Once at their house, they decided that it would be only proper to have me join them for their Christmas dinner. I was taken aback, self-conscious, and incredibly grateful all at the same time. Taken aback at the sudden change in my afternoon plans, grateful for their generosity, and incredibly self-conscious because I had dressed for a morning drive, not for a family Christmas dinner. I was wearing ratty jeans, sneakers, and a threadbare sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. The sweatshirt was blue with cows on it, and it was worn over a white long-sleeve pajama shirt. I could not possibly have been any more underdressed.

I ended up staying at their house for the rest of the day, enjoying a incredibly tasty meal, fellowship over games afterwards, and meeting many engaging people related to Kirah in one way or another. I’m sure I apologized for my appearance on the hour, but Kirah kept assuring me that it was OK, even though I didn’t believe her. She was even willing to drive me home (a ten minute drive away) very late at night after the party was all over. It was indeed a Christmas that I did not expect.

As I sat in my room and reflected on the day, I listed things that I was thankful for. I was thankful that my car only needed a new alternator. I was thankful that I had broken down near Kirah’s house instead of somewhere far away. I was thankful for mild weather that I could sit outside in. For good food. For fellowship. For warmth indoors as the temperature outside dropped. For friends. All the things that I usually took for granted were suddenly brought to light. Heck, that in itself was enough to be thankful for.




_DZ

Narrative of this years Christmas experience coming soon!

The Common Fallacy That Technology Can Replace Effort

Part of my daily Internet routine involves hopping on Craigslist.com and browsing the listings of all the Apple Macintosh-related items for sale or trade. It is definitely more out of habit and curiosity than of need, but it does afford me some interesting insights into the second-hand Mac market. I find that, in view of the overall number of Macs for sale, a disproportionately large number of them are being sold by the amateur creative types: the aspiring graphic designers, music producers, and videographers. Their typical listing includes a high-end MacBook or Mac Pro (computers in the $2500+ range) and usually some expensive software like Photoshop, Logic Pro, or Final Cut Pro. The system, deducing from the hardware specifications, is usually less than six months old - which begs the question, “Why are so many people dumping high-end systems so soon after purchase?” The answer, I think, can be found by considering the availability and raw power of such systems and software and their corresponding position as status symbols. People are trying to use powerful technology as a short-cut to avoid effort, and it doesn’t work.

Moore’s Law dictates that computer hardware capabilities double every 18 months, effectively rendering older technology obsolete rather quickly. In this extremely fast-paced technology environment, software has a heck of a time keeping up. More often than not in the rush to make new programs available for the newest system, developers aren’t able to fully harness the hardware’s capabilities. In addition to this rush, new system architecture sometimes requires programs to be re-written to prevent from being rendered obsolete. The result is that programs never become more usable per sé, rather they are sold as the same program as before with more features added in each new release.

Because of this feature creation-fest we have extremely powerful software that requires users to read thick volumes of literature in order to learn how to use it. A guide to Adobe Photoshop Elements (the really stripped-down version of normal Photoshop), for example, tops out at over 400 pages. Imagine the guide to the full Photoshop experience!

Amateur professionals simply do not have time to read 700+ page manuals or guide books to software that will be obsolete in 18 months. These days, to really know how to use a powerful piece of software, you have to either go to school and learn it or have a job that trains you in it. Preferably both.

Regardless, the software and hardware makers still tout their products to hobbyists as “powerful tools for the amateur professional” or some other equally catchy tag line. Just because a product is available, however, doesn’t mean that it is for everyone, as evidenced by the number of people who buy high-end Macs only to find out that learning Final Cut Pro takes a lot of time. They paid for their $5000 setup with a credit card, and now they have to offload it before the bills start to pile up on a piece of incredibly powerful technology that they cannot harness. My own PowerMac G4, for example, I bought from a guy in his late twenties who admitted that he “bought it for music production before [he] realized that [he] had no idea how to use Pro Tools.” Expensive technology, surprisingly, didn’t help him become a better musician.

Buying expensive tools does not make up for lack of talent or drive. Technology cannot solve those problems. If I aspire to be a professional photographer, buying a $1500 SLR camera might make my color look a little better or my pictures more in-focus, but it cannot improve my framing, lighting, or ability to be in the right spot at the right time to nab that action shot. If I don’t have the motivation and humility to take a bazillion pictures and study them relentlessly, owning a $1500 camera will only make me feel bad about having another expensive toy that I don’t use. I would probably sell it and use the money to buy something I actually need, like food.

We can see this over-reliance on technology in other media as well. The popular day-time T.V. show “The Doctors” recently aired an episode in which a panel of doctors fielded questions from the audience related to sexual performance and other topics of that nature. It was billed as a kind of “we’ll answer those questions that you are to embarrassed to ask your partner” type of episode. Really, society at large? Really?

Never mind actually communicating with your partner. Never mind having an open channel in which you can broach such topics as these. No, please take those questions and ask them in front of a TV audience, because that makes for good entertainment. You will get your answer, thanks to the technology of daytime T.V., and your partner will be none the wiser!

If you still don’t think this is a problem, consider the 12/15/08 Dear Abby column.

DEAR ABBY: My adult daughter, "Marsha," lives at home and will walk in and start a conversation or tell me something while I'm watching the news or some other show I'm interested in. Marsha never seems to arrive during commercials, which I'd gladly skip.

If I don't stop what I'm doing and pay full attention to her, she becomes offended. I feel she is interrupting. Who's right?
-- JAMES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

DEAR JAMES: You are. However, a compromise might be to invest in a digital video recorder. That way you can "pause" whatever you're watching and return to it when interrupted.

Talking this issue through with his daughter is apparently too much to ask. Buying a TiVo is an easy solution, and hey!, it only costs some money. Apparently if you throw enough money at a problem or use technology creatively, it will go away? I wish that were true.

The truth is that investing effort in something is usually the only way to make it truly valuable. This is the same whether you’re talking about relationships, social problems, or even making a good movie or record album. Technology can be a great tool in helping you such things, but when reliance on technology becomes thought of as a shortcut to success, the result can only be disappointment.

Allow me to wrap up with a personal story. When I was in 9th grade, I discovered file sharing networks. This was during the "golden age" of file sharing before it was all deemed a legal threat. Immediately I was granted access to a huge library of “free” powerful software applications used by professional studios all over the world. My cable modem spent untold hours as my faithful slave, bringing me Adobe Photoshop 6, 3D Studio Max, FruityLoops, and AutoCAD, among others. I eagerly installed them, but then I hit a wall. What was I going to do with them? I wasn’t particularly creative, either artistically or musically. I had no interest in industrial design or 3D rendering. Professionals used this software because it allowed them to do what they loved to do - they used it out of necessity. I was a 15 year-old kid who wanted to say he had experience with expensive software applications. I fiddled around with the programs for a bit, but then when I found out that they were incredibly complicated, I lost interest. I had no time to read thick books. I had no real drive to learn Photoshop. I just liked it because I could put weird warping effects on peoples’ faces. I used maybe 1% of the total features available to me.

I currently use Photoshop 5.5 and Illustrator 9 on my PowerMac G4, mainly to produce the three-panel comics that I post on this site. These are old versions, but I don’t care. I use Photoshop for resizing, adjusting color, and very light editing. Version 5.5 helps me accomplish that. I chose Photoshop over free editing programs like GIMP because, though GIMP may be advanced, it would require me to learn a new user interface. I don’t want to do that. Learning Photoshop for my Yearbook class took me long enough as it did, and if I have to settle for a cheap, outdated copy of Photoshop because of my refusal to re-learn a new program, so be it. At least I know how to use it for what I want it to do, which I think is certainly more than can be said for the guy trying to pawn off his quad-core Mac Pro on Craigslist.



_DZ

The Explanation of "1+1=田 "

I suppose it is high time I explained the former header of this website. The title is just one of many elements that reinforce the an overarching theme of things not being as they initially appear - not as they seem on the surface. As a missionary kid, I often feel that people I meet label me for their own convenience. It is there way of interpreting me - by sticking me in a neat “third-culture kid” box. I feel that this is a gross oversimplification, and in doing so actively work to defy such labels. I work to stay unclassifiable, and an innocent, seemingly nonsensical equation, 1+1=田, exemplifies this in a multicultural context.

At first glance the equation just looks like a simple first-grade math problem with a Japanese kanji character tacked on the end. This problem, though, not only makes sense to every Japanese elementary schoolchild, but it also makes them laugh. The equation, once explained, is trivially simple and is a practical joke that is played on any unsuspecting first-grade classmate. All it really is is just smashing the 1+1 together and then splitting the equals sign so it rests above and below it, resulting in the Japanese character for rice paddy, read “ta”. This character, easily identified because it actually looks like a real rice paddy, is one of the very first kanji that Japanese children learn in school. In practice, the riddle looks something like this:

“What’s 1+1?” one child will ask another.
“Two,” the second dutifully replies.
“Wrong!” the riddler gleefully announces, “It’s actually 田!”

The victim is left to solemnly ponder his stupidity and newfound knowledge. Should the victim already be wise to the “田” answer, the riddler can still outsmart him or her my claiming that the correct answer is found by smashing the two numbers together, or 11. In extreme cases, the riddler resorts to using the “correct” answer, two, as the right response to the riddle. This results in much laughter and spreading of rumors among the class that Little Jimmy doesn’t even know that 1+1=2. How stupid is HE!?

Yes, kids can be cruel, but by the second semester any joker still stupid enough to pop the question is met with a scornful look and a bored, rapid-fire answer of “2, 11, or 田.” Something simple becomes annoyingly complex.

Growing up in Japan as a white, blond, foreigner, I was the subject of many such pranks, and usually the last one in the class to catch on to the tricks and gimmicks going around. Allow me to give another example.

The game of rock-paper-scissors is universally accepted by the Japanese kids as the de facto way to settle disputes. Since most elementary school disputes involve people not getting what they want, in order for one to get what they want it is essential to master the psychological aspect behind the game. Jan-ken, as it is called in Japanese, is used in everything from playground games to serious rug-rat judicial processes.

When it is played as a game is when the kids are free to be the most creative with it. Normal jan-ken involves three hand positions - fist, palm, or two fingers out. This gets boring rather quickly when played repetitively, causing the initiator of the match to use some creative juices to turn a simple game into a complex question-and-answer exercise. Consider the following:

Kid 1: “Hey, let’s jan-ken.
Kid 2: “Ok.”
Kid 1: “Jan, ken, poi!”

This is standard procedure, equal to the American “rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

Kid 1: ”I win! Let’s play again.”
Kid 2: ”Ok. No prisoners this time!”
Kid 3: "Go for broke!"
Kid 1: “Jan, ken, how-many-hairs-do-you-have-on-your-head?” (said in Japanese, of course)

Kid 2, in a grievous effort, has extended a closed fist.

Kid 1 and 3: “Haha! You’re saying you have no hair! What are you, BALD? Baldy baldy baldy ha-ha-haha-ha!”

Kid 2 walks away, sullenly, dejected.

The appropriate response in this situation would have been to vigorously shake both hands and have your fingers simulate a considerable amount of hair. A display of an open palm, paper, would also be acceptable, but only barely. In this way, school-kids keep adding questions that require specialized hand gesture to answer. This can lead to some amusing but incredibly demoralizing mistakes, such as when one gives the hair-on-the-head response to the newly conceived how-many-porno-mags-do-you-own question. This might indeed be the playground jungle at its cruelest.

All that to say that not everything is a s simple as it appears to be - not everything can fit neatly into a box. To extend that personally, not every missionary kid grew up in an alien land ignorant of cable T.V. or pogs. “1+1= 田” goes to show that every person is much more complicated then first impressions make them out to be. Not only might they not be normal, but they might even defy your “normal” expectations of someone radically different. Just because I grew up in a different culture doesn’t mean that I will look normal through everyone’s kid-raised-in-Japan lens. I can recognize this about myself, and I hope to make it a lifelong ambition to recognize it in others as well.





_DZ