RyanHarne.com

Despite my tendencies to sneeze, to have bright red and swollen eyes, and to become delirious when I’m around felines for any length of time, I will be spending my evening with one ferocious Tiger. And also with lots of fantastic people.

This being my first OS X release experience as a full-fledged Mac user, I am looking forward to tonight with expectation. I’d also like to thank Jeremiah for making me jealous of his iBook when we were those geeks who sat together at lunch in high school.

But I should be leaving!

Amidst my rushing about at work today, I went to the Health Fair 2004 that was being held in one area of the building with several local health organizations present with booths full of information and free testing. Free testing?! All right! Free blood work! Yes!!

I passed on the tests that involved the vials and vials of blood I was to witness being suctioned from people’s arms, but I did get some information about sleeping habits and disorders. This is one of those natural realms I would facetiously say I’ve mastered. My college semesters have granted me several tips and aids in how to have vigorous days with minimal sleep. Certainly, it’s not a sweeping goal of mine to continually lessen my sleep reserves, but when I’m in a crunch, notably during the semester, it’s nice to know how my body responds particularly well to certainly stimula to move into and come out of sleep in a proper fashion.

My last fall semester was brilliant in this area. I got in the habit of taking runs in the mini-gym of West AJ right before I went to bed (after a shower, mind you). Even if I had been studying all night and had been choking myself full of coffee and caffeines, those runs would wear my energy down to a void. Following that shower, I would collapse into bed and launch into REM. The next morning I would wake up feeling stress-free and excited for whatever rolled my way. It became a heavy routine for me, something I honestly look forward to when I return this upcoming fall semester.

Oddly enough, in one of these Sleeping Disorder pamphlets I stole away this afternoon, it recommends that heavy exercise, running included, be restricted to at least 4 hours prior to sleep. This is somewhat of a shock to me; my runs were never spaced any more than about 45 minutes from my inevitable crash into bed. So, it must be conceded that I’ve trained, per se, my body to respond to this pattern quite readily, even beyond perhaps what is naturally typical to the human systems.

Another word of wisdom from the pamphlet cautions having any form of caffeine within 6 hours of sleeping. Six hours?! Some days at school, my caffeine intake would be almost simultaneous with the advent of my deepest rest. And, somewhat strangely enough, upon my waking was when the caffeine seemed to kick in, as if it became dormant in my slumber but suddenly activated when I was in need of it.

I would never be ignorantly blithe about these sleeping suggestions, but I must argue that I’ve been able to adapt to entirely different sleeping and rest patterns than what this handout suggests are commonplace. For a while, I’ve recognized that I maintain steadfast self-discipline in my studies, but perhaps I’m just realizing that I’ve discovered a talent for manipulating my unconscious physical responses.

Maybe I’m an anomaly. Or a freak. I’ll let the critics decide.

A friend several years ago informed me that the 26th of each month was my day. Really?! I never knew I was entitled to 12 full days of the year, 13 counting my birthday. That’s a significant deed on time; I would hate to pay a mortgage of those days if I’m not using them to the maxx.

So, I decided that today would be a good day. A Super Good Day, at that. And it began with a drive to work.

Well, work wasn’t very exhilarating. Actually, it was a normal Tuesday - people taking calls, me ignoring the people talking loudly on the phones, and me taking care of my tasks and projects or at least taking care of one day’s worth of tasks and projects. Ok, so work was as mediocre as it could be, but something has to happen that just blows my mind. I mean… it’s the 26th!

On the drive home, the skies begin to darken. There will be a thunderstorm tonight. Probably just a threat of gloom and a minimal spatter of rain, but the heavens looked bleaker than they could have on MY DAY. Since the weather seemed doomed for precip, I thought it best to take a run the instant I got home.

My run was nice, if you ignored the winds that continually pummeled me diagonally. Alright, something fantastic will happen on this run, I hoped. I’m running and running. Just a typical run so far.

Then it happened. It happened. To my consternation, “it” was less than exciting and rather horrifying but more so just bewildering. You know those cartoon graphics of roadkill where the animal is squashed perfectly horizontal and flat and there are tire tracks embedded into its back? Yeah. So… um.. my run was on the disturbing front to my finish.

But still, there was nothing worthwhile on my 26th. Nothing! And I’ve been at it for… 13 hours so far. This is ridiculous.

Chance was waiting when I returned, however, and I checked my email. Let me just say that I love my sister because she sent me a wonderful link to a wonderful Idaho state government resolution. Then, I found out that a professor of mine sent a letter of recommendation for me for a math department position next fall. Woah! Two-fer. That’s a Walmart deal if I ever heard of one.

Email is a lovely thing.

Tonight gave me a pure sky to look into, up at, to draw me in. First, I saw Venus, who has been hiding away since last autumn; I watched her perched there as she slightly varied her intensity through the moments, seconds. Next, another star came to attention, just a star I suppose, but more star than I could ever be. Then another star came out of nowhere and my eyes adjusted to it accordingly. Then another, and before long I realized that the sky was supersaturated with stars, overwhelmed with pin pricks of light being sent to us from near-infinitely far away.

Just about this time, I remembered that today is the 30th anniversary of the last American helicopter fleeing South Vietnam. I thought about the chaos that was involved that evening. Troops trying to pack onto the sky-bound machines as Vietnamese citizens cried out for the Americans to take them along. But the choppers were already too packed, we could come crashing down into the waters if we take any more. I saw the poignant fear in mothers’ eyes as they held up their infants to the troops, the ones closest were grasped quietly and comforted in the arms of a men carrying enough weapontry to clear out a village. The child was safe in his arms. The communists were advancing and the helicopters had to leave, leave now, no one else.

I bet the skies were overcast that night, not by clouds but because of gunsmoke and the dust that grenades pick up and move around. Even still, I can see the airborne debris calming as the slaughter continued on the ground. And the skies became clear, once full of nauseous helicopter fuels and the whir of propellers, but now the skies were serene even though the ground setting granted sights of oozing blood and twitching flesh.

Today, I finished Catch 22. Nearing the end, I almost threw up. I rushed out of my seat at work during lunch and walked around for a while because the reality of it entirely encompassed me. Try as we must, there’s no way that we can disregard the odious nature of war. Especially unnecessary war. Especially war began as an offensive.

While at Barnes & Noble, I found a book that caught my attention and held it mercilessly captive. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking explains and hypothesizes regarding the various patterns and formulae our human mind grasps instantaneously when coming to a conclusion. The author focuses on the ‘Blink Factor’, those decisions made right on the spot without any seeming conscious effort.

You would be hard-pressed to convince me that most human thought processes actually include legitimate assessment of the decision at hand. People are very instinctive and react often solely based on one-time provocations - it is a natural kind of response, I would suppose, but an unfortunate one. For all anyone knows, this entire blog could be generated by complex software used to simulate an individual person and his individual responses to completely ficticious events; however, upon reading this for the first time, you assumed that there was at least one human behind this website and its content. That sounds like a small assumption to make, but instinctive replies to events are all around us.

A person might lunge at first sight of his spouse’s murderer upon entering a courtroom for criminal trials; that could be a planned effort, but would likely be something drawn from our inherrent nature to take vengeance into our own hands. In a lecture hall, people are less attracted to a monotonous voice regardless of the content, even if it is of great interest to you; an outgoing presentation will always be more effective because humans unconsciously latch onto the more charismatic character. You can take Hitler to be an effective demonstration of that last event, an effective demonstration that built up steam and power before people realized the ramifications of who and what they were supporting.

Even though I am attending college to get a degree in engineering, I cannot masquerade my love for sociology and psychology and all of the sciences of the mind. But don’t assume that I prefer such starched logic all the time, I overtly confess to my storehouses of emotion. In fact, to fully try and attain logic within one’s life would cast that person into a personal social destruction.

There’s simply too much in this world for one person to make sense of.

I have been greatly entertained by the whole “Gawd! There’s a finger in my chili!” debacle. National Public Radio had some brilliant coverage of the closure to the events this afternoon after the woman was arrested by San Jose police on charges of grand larceny. The commentator to the story had a fantastic verbal presentation to the issue, complete with insinuative pauses and muffled smirks. My favorite lines were as follows:

“They [the Wendy’s restaurant managers of topic] checked their hands, as if one of them would forget if they had lost a finger into this ..uh.. the chili mixture. ::delightful pause:: They also said that the finger did not come from another Nevada woman who had part of her finger bitten off by a ::quizzical tone:: snow leopard…. ”

Needless to say, I’m not ready to brazenly blame Wendy’s for any unattended body part I have find in a meal. Furthermore, I’m not even ready to eat at a Wendy’s again; perhaps I’ll reconsider my position once food comes in gel-cap form at which point you can choose exactly what type of food to eat and also how full you feel after the meal.

I do wonder where that human finger came from.