Old Friends Gone

Many of you have heard me rail against messenger bags. Too big or too thick, too short or too long, too many pockets, too many fasteners, too expensive: I can never find one that works for me, and I can't shut up about it.

But it wasn't always that way. Once upon a time in Korea, Gooneechy and I were walking through the marketplace near our house in Seoul when we spied the perfect bag. More than one, actually (they had it in several colors). I grabbed a blue one and he grabbed a black one and we haggled the four-foot lady running the booth down to like ten or twelve bucks each.

Man, that was a bag. Behold:


It was exactly the right size! It had just the right number of compartments! It held everything I needed and not a thing more! It held it's shape without being lined with cardboard or foamcore! I could get things out of it without having to disentangle myself from its clutch or yank on unnecessary buckles, zippers, or snaps! It matched everything I owned!

But you never know how good you have it till you lose it. Well, I didn't exactly lose it, but I gave it to my last companion when I left for home, thinking that in America a great bag like that would be sold any-and-everywhere. Better bags, even. Boy was I wrong. I've never come anywhere close to finding a bag to replace Old Blue.

Last night I was reading through the journal I kept in Korea, and I found this:


It's the tag from my perfect bag, taped in there. Here's the back:


Oh, to be one of those people, the happy people from the white sands and the blue sea. Once I had it good. Real good.

I miss my friend.

That's not all I got out of reading my journal. I also got a bit of that crippling nostalgia that keeps things like journals in a deep closet. Just a bit—a honeydrop inkling of who I used to be and where and why. What struck me this time, though, reading it where I am and when, was how much I miss having a companion. A missionary is with their sidekick twenty-four hours a day, and about twenty-three of those hours are spent concentrating on the same thing. You never have to rely on a single opinion or point of view, and you are never ever lonely. Being a missionary, you not only always know what you're doing and why; you know who's doing it with you.¹ I miss my friends.


¹In mine and nostalgia's defense, I realize that there are drawbacks to that arrangement, that it isn't all good times and ice cream, but you know, I always felt the benefits way outweighed the difficulties. I got along easily and naturally with everyone of my companions except one (whom I liked just fine but who hated me for a reason I could never figure out).

More Like "Three T-babes and Their Awesome Guitar Friend"

This is where I was tonight:


It was fantastic. A big thanks to Nephi for giving me the heads up and to Joe and Emily for not making me go alone.

In the spirit of my recent postings, I hate how any concert makes me want to get up and leave instantly, rush home, and play my own guitar for hours and hours. I also hate that my brother Drew hates concerts. Jon, Mary: that Blues Traveler concert was great. Glad you came.

Continuing Antipathy

Whiteboards! Oh what did we ever do to deserve this, the bane of fine teachers everywhere? I hate 'em! They're ugly! They're always stained and covered with that funky inkdust! They're pretentiously, corporately hip! And worst of all, those curséd markers are always ALWAYS out of juice!

But so that you don't think I hate things unreservedly and without reason (as if there was anything wrong with that), I got on good old Wikipedia to see where the dang things come from. It seems that whiteboards were created in response to some people being allergic to chalk dust. Great. Fantastic. I can accept that, except that later in the article I found this sentence: "Some people are sensitive or allergic to the strong odour of most whiteboard markers."¹

In fact, the more I read, the more inconsistencies I found. Pretty much every advantage was countered with a disadvantage, like how chalk gets all over the room and all over your clothes—but it washes out—whereas dry erase ink never ever does. Or how whiteboards are supposedly easier to see, but "The white background can cause contrast problems for people with vision impairment." They claim whiteboards offer multiple colors, which is a plus, but have they forgotten about, uh, sidewalk chalk? I've only ever seen about four crummy colors of marker, but I've seen entire spectrums of chalk.² Furthermore, the article points out that while chalk is a naturally occurring mineral, the production of dry erase markers relies on petroleum, a nonrenewable resource. Pretty much the only thing whiteboards have going for them is that they are lighter than chalkboards, which is true. The classroom I teach in has this sissy whiteboard on a flimsy frame—the thing can't really take the pressure of being written on without swaying and rocking like it's high on the marker fumes. Would a chalkboard do that? Heck no. Heavier is obviously better. It's a fact that we all subconsciously link weight with quality: Lincoln Towncars over Geo Metros, the Riverside Complete Shakespeare over a Dover Thrift Edition of Hamlet, special edition 2-disc DVD collectors editions over the normal fullscreen edition (widescreen just feels heavier)—even a nice solid box of Cheerios or Raisin Bran feels like quality in the hand compared to Honeycombs or something puffed. I heard recently that they found some old chalkboards in Provo that still held the handwriting of Karl G. Maeser, dated 1900.³ Would whiteboards have survived a hundred years in an attic? I think not.

Is not chalk the very fragrance of academia, the soil in which tweed-jacketed seeds germinate and blossom, the fairy dust left by the muses' touch on our lives? The click-swish of a teacher's chalk sings in sprightly counterpoint to his students' scritching pencils, while the squeek of a dry erase marker is only the sickly rattle of Death's swinging scythe. Whiteboards reek of staff meetings, of stale coffee, and of seas of white ceiling tiles. They breed only weedy buzzwords and brambled flowcharts and offer—instead of an endless dark upon which the spirit might brood, an as-yet-uncreated expanse—only the blaring bleached white of the Corporation, the framed stencil of the Accepted Procedure, the identical albino twin of the Policy Handbook's first page. The whiteboard invites us to sit up and listen attentively to yet another manager, the chalkboard to sit back with El Presidente himself and enjoy today's special: the Awesome Blossom.⁴

 
Chalk art by Sean McAfee

The blackboard is pure potential; it is primordial. The whiteboard is a prescription; it is a fence already whitewashed and Tom Sawyer already off to find adventure in a cave.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Here is what I found when googling for whiteboard art, and here's what I got for chalk art. It's no comparison (although I did find this cool video).


¹Actually, only Brits are allergic to the odour of dry erase markers. Us Americans are only allergic to odors (but the occasional colour does set me off).
²Also I remember the music teacher in Elementary school having this wood-and-wire thing that held five pieces of chalk equidistantly apart so she could draw a perfect music staff on the board in a single stroke. I have yet to see a whiteboard pull that trick. I guess every good board does fine after all.
³Karl G. Maeser was principal of Brigham Young Academy, the school that eventually became BYU. Read all about the chalkboards here.
⁴So it turns out Chili's has a myspace page, complete with an electronic chalkboard you can draw on. Go figure.

More Vitriol

I hate hate freezers that keep ice cream too cold. It's gotten to the point where I don't really consider myself a lover of ice cream anymore, since it rarely excites me. The thing is that there's no good way to get the ice cream to the proper softness once the freezer has petrified it. You can pull it out halfway through dinner in hopes that it might melt a bit before dessert, but only the sides and top really melt, and too much at that. It's like a Hot Pocket in reverse—or inverse, or something. If you scoop it first (good luck!) and let it soften in the bowl you get the same problem. Microwaves don't cut it (scientists!), and I don't have time to let it sit in the fridge for however long it would take to get it nicely warmed.

Like I told Zach: if I'm going to ingest that many worthless calories and whatever else, I'd rather get the full experience, so it's a very occasional trip to Cold Stone for me. Worthless freezers!

More on Cards

I don't mean to harp on about it, but I forgot to mention that there's also the issue of dividing the two decks evenly before putting them in the box. Is there anyone who hasn't just thrown away the Uno or the Skipbo box and started storing them as one tall deck held together by a rubber band or hair binder or something? If you are one of the mental types who has to hang on to the box, isn't it eating you that it gets more and more tattered with each use? And hasn't everyone throw away those stupid blank cards and instructions cards by now? There has to be a better way!

Hateful Things

~Bad sidewalks.
~Burnt-out light bulbs.
~Things without a place.
~How fast the trash can fills up.
~Wearing a jacket and then not needing it.
~Wet shoes.
~Not knowing what someone else is thinking when clearly they're thinking about me.
~Employment websites.
~All websites that aren't anything but middlemen for other websites, that are bald-faced attempts to make an easy buck without actually doing anything.
~Too many keychains.
~A cluttered, dirty car.

¼ of July

Here's something I hate: when two decks of cards are meant to be shoved side-by-side into one box—they inevitably get mixled up and mashded together. There has to be another way.

And since somewhere it's somebody's job solely to devise compelling and efficient packaging for games, someone's dropping the ball. Maybe it's Milton, maybe it's Bradley, and maybe it's one of those Parker Bros., but whoever it is, get with the game. Even the slow scientists are making you look bad.