Inside Darren

Many of you who regularly read my blog may already know that, before Larissa and I got together, I spend a very large portion of my free time agonizing over being single, and trying to figure out the proper “formula” to find a good wife in as short a time as possible. While the journey in building my relationship with Larissa was long and complicated, it was well worth the wait.

In the course of reading over my buddy Joel’s blog earlier today, I came across a link to this article about being single. If you’re a Christian and are struggling with the single life, I think it may speak to you in ways which you need to hear. It’s not all fluffy, pat-answer, “God has a plan for you so be happy” stuff. It’s also not short, so if you’re afraid of reading, then you’re going to have to miss out on the wisdom that this article has to offer.

Click here to read “So, Why Aren’t You Married?”

Reading electric meters is a unique job in many ways. There aren’t many people who do this type of work (I doubt many of you who are reading this know of any other meter readers aside from myself or those who work with me), and in my particular office, we have four people who read the meters for our entire county. I work outside. I work completely on my own, often speaking to nobody else for my entire workday. And I’m not paid by the hour, but rather by the amount and type of meters that I read on each route.

Because I’m paid by the meter, and not by how long it takes me to read them, it’s in my best interest to work as quickly as possible. I know that this route I have in front of me pays $150, so whether I finish it in 4 hours or 6 hours is up to me. I can have a long, leisurely workday, or a hurried workday with more time at home afterwards. Generally, I prefer option 2.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that people seem to get very disturbed when they see other people moving too quickly, or working at a speed that seems out of the ordinary. There have been many times when I’ve been jogging through my route, or even walking at a brisk pace, and found myself being told by people on the street to “slow down!” or “take it easy!” As if my trying to shorten my workday was intruding on their sense of comfort, somehow. I have a few ideas as to why this could be the case.

First of all, people who are running, or even just walking quickly, tend to look suspicious - like they’re running away from someone or something. And if there’s no visible person or thing chasing the person who’s running, they could be running from something imaginary, and therefore be insane. By slowing down and walking at the same pace as everyone else, one gives the illusion of sanity, even if they really are in an insane hurry. Perhaps people would like me to give off more of an “aura of sanity”, instead of the image that I seem to be projecting now.

Second, I believe that we have some sort of psychological need to “keep the pace” with those who are around us. If someone is in the midst of trying to busily accomplish a long list of jobs, while someone else in the room is lazing around on the couch watching TV, either the busy person will give up and join the lazy one, or the lazy one will get yelled at to “get up and do something!”, so that the busy person does not have to feel busy alone. Perhaps my running is making other people feel pressured to run, when they really don’t want to.

Third, people who are rushing are more likely to miss something that is going on around them, and either make a mistake in their task, or get into an accident. After all, we wouldn’t have rules against speeding in a car if people were just as skilled at driving at high speeds as they are at low speeds. Perhaps those who tell me to “slow down” are worried for my safety - that I might trip on their sprinkler and land chin-first in their petunias. Or maybe they’re afraid that, in my haste, I’ll miss-read their meter.

For the record, I have no intentions of slowing down. This is my job, and since I’ve had a few years’ practice at it, I believe that I do it well at any pace, and would appreciate other people not telling me how to do it better. After all, I don’t walk into lawyers’ offices and try to offer them suggestions on how to more accurately rip people off. I trust the professionals, and they should trust me.

For some reason, even outside of work, I’ve always been very comfortable with running from point A to point B, rather than walking - even when my speedy arrival at point B is not an issue. I just have always figured that it’s better to be somewhere, rather than being on my way somewhere. You have to drop a book off at the library? Why walk, when running gets you there twice as fast? You need to walk up 3 flights of stairs to get to your apartment? Take them two-at-a-time briskly, and you’re at the top before you know it! Plod up each stair individually, and it feels like you’ve been walking up them forever.

Some may say that I’m not taking time to “smell the roses along the way”. Well, for starters, I’m allergic to pollen, so smelling flowers is not always a pleasant experience anyway. But here’s the way I see it: Getting places quicker, (or finishing work faster) allows me to “smell the roses” in the places I want to be at, rather than smelling whatever I end up stepping in along the way.

And if there’s really something I should be taking notice of en route, I’m sure God will throw a sprinkler in my path to get my attention.

If I were to say that creativity is a rare trait in this world, I think that most people would agree with me. This is one of the reasons that we hold creative people in such high regard - If everyone could sculpt like Michelangelo, or write like Shakespeare, or create music like Mozart, there would be no lasting value to the works of these artists.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about creativity, the reason why it’s so rare, and how creative faculties have been built into the human race. Let me start my discussion of these ideas with the following scenario:

I remember back when the Nintendo 64 first came out, I didn’t have enough money to buy one, so I rented a system for the weekend, along with a copy of Super Mario 64. Since I knew that I only had Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday to get my money’s worth out of this game, I played it from early morning till late at night, stopping only for the occasional bathroom break, and some snacks.

At the end of that weekend, (besides being underfed and having a killer TV-headache), whenever I closed my eyes, all I could see was that Italian plumber running around in his cartoon world. It was as if my brain had been fixated in one particular pattern of thinking for so long that it had to have a wind-down period before it could restore my thought-patterns back to normal. Much like a runner needing to walk for a while after a race, so his body can cool-down gradually.

In the midst of that state of mind, when all I could see was Mario behind my eyelids, the contents of those videogame-induced-visions were not always elements that were directly lifted from the game itself. Often I would see seemingly random variations of aspects of the game that had been altered slightly in my thoughts. New costume ideas or interesting abilities which had not been built into the game entered into my mind very easily when I was in this state.

The experience described above can be carried over into many different areas - Watch too much Star Wars, and you’ll see lightsaber duels played out in your head. Play too much Tetris, and everything will look like blocks for a while. Watch too much anime, and every time you close your eyes you’ll see giant robots and little girls with big eyes and schoolgirl outfits. The brain becomes saturated, and begins “overflowing”.

The point I want to make about this experience is that in the “overflow”, creativity seems to occur spontaneously. The saturated mind will not simply replay a carbon-copy of its input, but rather, it will modify or reconfigure the elements of the input in new ways. This aspect of the brain, I believe, is a major source of human creativity.

Having only had a little bit of training in Psychology (3 undergrad-level university courses, none of which I got an A grade in), I can’t offer an informed opinion about why the brain does this, but I can make what I believe is a reasonable guess:

I believe that when the mind is in a saturated state, it takes other elements of thoughts and memories, and allows them to “leak into” the saturated thoughts, creating mental images (output) which are novel, but which are actually composed of inputs from various times and sources. It’s like you’re making homemade chocolate from a specific recipe, but then, out of nowhere, some peanut butter gets thrown into the mix, and suddenly you have Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

This leads me to believe that many people who are involved in creative professions (say, clothing designers, or TV show writers) are simply people who allow their minds to become so saturated with the content of their art, that they begin to “overflow” and spontaneously mix in new elements, leading to new and creative ideas without the need for heavy mental exercise.

I believe that all (or nearly all) human minds are wired in this way, and therefore, creativity is something that should be a common experience to every individual. There are three main reasons why I think that, despite the brain being wired for creative output, creativity remains a rare trait in most peoples’ experiences.

First, most people do not allow their minds to be saturated to the overflow point. We limit our exposure to the arts so much that the input level is never high enough to drive up the output level. I realize this principle most clearly in my life when it comes to the connection between reading and writing. When I’m regularly reading each day, writing comes very easily. And if I’m reading comedy, I can write comedy with little effort. When I’m reading an autobiographical work, introspective writing flows naturally. If you want to have higher quality, consistent creative output in any area, you must make sure to have regular input from the same area.

A second reason for the rarity of creativity is that most people don’t have the time to be creative. Even if you reach that saturation point in your creative input, you still need to have time to sit down and capture the resulting creative output. You could stare at clothing catalogues and fashion magazines all day, but if you don’t set aside time for drawing new designs, it’s not going to happen. Sometimes I think that the people who succeed in creative fields are simply those who take the time to capture their thoughts, instead of keeping their ideas locked in the brain until they fade from memory.

The final reason is that people need to develop the skills necessary for capturing the creative output. It doesn’t matter how many amazing new paintings you can picture in your head - if you don’t know how to manipulate oil on canvas with a brush, your ideas will never be realized. Similarly, you can mentally compose all kinds of amazing new songs, but you’ll have to learn how to play an instrument, or at the very least, how to write musical notation, if you want to share your song with the outside world.

It amazes me to think that there could be hundreds of thousands of amazing artists out there who will never be able to realize their ideas because they haven’t had the necessary input stimuli, time, or skill development to bring their ideas out of their minds and into reality.

You who are reading this, keep in mind that you are wired for creativity. Take the time to read, listen, and look. Test your hand at sketching, taking photos, learning an instrument, or writing poetry. You may be a latent Picasso who never took the time to learn what painting was all about.

I came across a program last night, hosted by the late James Doohan (”Scotty” from Star Trek, who incidentally died on my birthday last year). How could the man host a program after his death, you ask? In the world of science fiction, anything is possible. Or maybe the program was filmed before he died. My point is, this show was about UFOs, and it got me thinking.

I’ve always loved stories about aliens. The first two movies I remember watching as a child are The Black Hole and the original Star Wars. When I started collecting the Star Wars action figures, I didn’t want any character that looked human - I only wanted the aliens and robots. I loved spaceships, and ate up anything that had to do with them (which, at the time, were the Star Wars movies, the original Battlestar Galactica series, and Buck Rogers).

But as I grew older and started to learn about the real mechanics of space travel (i.e. rocket ships and the Space Shuttle), I discovered that getting to space and traveling in it was a lot more complicated than movies and TV had made it out to be. Precise mathematical calculations were required if you wanted to survive even a relatively quick trip into orbit and back, and spending time in space was more like spending time underwater than anything else, which is not terribly exciting.

As I started researching the whole UFO phenomenon, I came across all kinds of crazy stories. Pictures of flying saucers that looked nowhere near as cool as the ships I had seen in the movies, but then again, maybe the alien concept of “cool looking” was different than the human one. Perhaps a saucer (or cigar shape, as UFOs sometimes appeared) was more practical for space travel, and aesthetics were not an alien concern?

There were also stories of abductions, anal probing, and government cover-ups. In many cases the aliens were seemingly trying to indoctrinate us with New Age philosophy. In other cases the aliens seemed to have odd sexual fascinations with humans. Many people had to be hypnotized in order to remember alien abduction incidents, since their memories had supposedly been erased before the aliens had returned them to earth.

For a long time, I entertained the idea that aliens might be real. However, over the years, I’ve amassed a list of issues I have with the possible existence of aliens and UFOs, and until they are answered, I’m going to have to stick to the opinion that, insofar as we know, Earth is the only planet with living, thinking beings. Here are some of my concerns:

The most obvious question is, if there really are aliens visiting earth, why don’t they appear in broad daylight, in a public place, where there is no way to question their existence? If they want to make contact with us, that option would make the most sense. And if there is a question of the aliens being afraid for their own safety in such a circumstance, wouldn’t an alien culture with advanced technology have advanced abilities in self-defense? The fact that all the “evidence” for UFOs is shady and easily questionable makes it hard to accept any of it as fact.

Second, the distance between things in space is really, really big. I know that Star Trek makes it look like you can make a quick trip to an alien world with bad architecture in just a few hours, but in reality, the nearest star to our own sun is at least 4 light years away. For those of you who can’t grasp that distance, that means that it takes over 4 years for light itself to travel from our sun to the nearest star. Since nothing travels as fast as light, you can infer that it would take any interstellar traveler a long, LONG time to get anywhere that’s not their home planet. Using our best current technology, it would be a journey of thousands of years. Even if you could live that long, you’d still need food and supplies and oxygen. I find it hard to imagine that aliens would travel so far to our world, only to appear in some fuzzy night-time photos and do a little bit of recreational anal-probing.

But let’s say that the aliens could travel at the speed of light (or at least, very close to it). Suddenly you have a few new problems: Just building up that much speed would take a tremendous amount of energy. We have energy concerns here on Earth, and we’re only traveling at speeds that are tiny fractions of the speed necessary to reach another star. And once you reach that speed, you create new problems - First, with that much kinetic energy, if you were to collide with any object in space you’d destroy it, as well as yourself. A ship traveling at near-light speed would quite easily destroy a planet that it collided with, and that would be bad for the alien researchers. Second, if you wanted to slow down before making contact with your destination, it would take hundreds of years just to decelerate to a non-lethal speed. Like I said - not as easy as the movies would have you believe.

As far as explanations for UFOs and aliens go, let me offer a few thoughts. First, I’m sure that there are many experimental aircraft that are mistaken for UFOs. Second, I’m sure that there are many natural phenomena that we still don’t understand. Third, I’m sure that there are many people in the world who have a vested interest in capitalizing on UFO and alien stories so that they can cash in. Fourth, it’s been shown that people can indeed fabricate events when speaking under hypnosis, and besides, if the aliens had erased their memories with advanced technology, wouldn’t the fact that people can still remember the incidents while hypnotized seem to suggest that the alien brainwashers did a poor job? Finally, I think many UFO obsessed people read into things too much, because they’re looking for some sort of greater meaning that transcends their earthly experience.

All through history, there have been stories and legends of intelligent creatures that are otherworldly, and have an interest in interfering with human affairs. From the Greek gods, many with half-man half-animal characteristics, to stories about leprechauns, fairies, and ghosts. UFOs are the same story wrapped in a 20th century mythos. We take what we can’t explain, match that up with our newest theories, philosophies, and popular fiction, and come up with something that is unprovable, yet persistent enough to hold our interest.

We are very bound to this planet, and the likelihood of any other physical creature being able to make the journey here, let alone survive it, is extremely remote. As much as Scotty from Star Trek peaked my curiosity last night on TV, I think that all of us are just going to have to be content with watching aliens on TV and in the movies, where the camera footage isn’t fuzzy, and the ships really do look cool.

Those who have mastered Super Mario Kart will have encountered that racing skill known as “drifting”. This is when you attempt to turn a corner, but allow your car to slide a bit so that you can really punch the gas as you head into the straightaway. Now, I’m no racing expert, but I believe that in real life, drifting does little to aid you in winning an actual race. Mostly it just looks cool, sounds squeally, and takes a hefty dose of rubber off of your tires.

It’s interesting that Nintendo, who makes Mario Kart, is a Japanese company, because in the latest installment of The Fast and the Furious, the main characters have to go all the way to Japan in order to learn about how to make their cars slide around corners. Maybe if they had done more video game playing and less skirt chasing back in America, they could have got their education in “drifting” without all the hassle of traveling to Japan. But then, they wouldn’t be able to chase any Japanese skirts.

The trailer for The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift can be found at Yahoo Movies, and if you’re expecting it to be dumber than a bucket of pork, I believe that your expectations will be fulfilled. I myself have actually been to Tokyo, and I can tell you first-hand that I didn’t see any drifting at all. Well, that’s not entirely accurate - The layer of smog that I saw from the top floor of a large office building was drifting a bit.

And if you think that watching smog drift gets old fast, I can guarantee you that The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift will do the same.

Recently, I received an email from a friend of mine who I have not seen in a long while. She’s currently in Montreal working on a documentary about street performers, which I know will be absolutely killer, since she is one of the most creative and talented people I know.

What struck me about her email was that she mentioned that she wanted to find out what was going on in my life lately, but didn’t have time to read my blog. She said that it would be better if I sent her an email filling her in. I find this odd, because wouldn’t it take just as much time to read through an email as it would to read through a blog entry or two? It got me thinking about how we read things on the internet, and how modern media developments are affecting our ideas about reading in general.

I know that I often find myself impatiently racing to read through the information on a webpage, flying through each line of text as if I were being chased by a pack of rabid dingos. Generally, I don’t read books this way - Why should the internet affect me like this? I think there may be a few reasons:

First, I may be using the internet just to “kill time” (such a terrible phrase) while I’m taking care of some other task - Say, doing the laundry, or waiting for a rump roast to de-thaw. Consequently, I may not have much time for browsing, and therefore I want to digest the most input that I can in the limited amount of time available.

Second, I may have a whole list of web pages in front of me that I’m anxious to look at, and knowing that I could easily spend 5 min looking at each page, with 10 or more pages waiting to be read, that time can really add up. Especially when you have work that you really should be doing, but are distracting yourself from it on the internet.

Third, and I think this is actually the most prevalent reason for speed-reading, I think that we are all (consciously or unconsciously) a little overwhelmed by the amount of information available on the internet, and in order to deal with information overload, we tend to parse things down to their bare essentials, and not to read anything extraneous. In other words, “Give me the bare facts, without any fancy verbal-dressing surrounding it”.

So when my friend asked me to email her, what she was really asking me to do was to take a mass of information that has been posted on my blog across multiple entries, eliminate any data that is not related to what’s currently going on in my life, and present her with a page of text that does not have to be mentally filtered for relevant content. Which I’ll be happy to do - When I find the time!

I find it disturbing that most people I know don’t care to take the time to read anymore - be it long blog entries, a newspaper, or a good novel. Video and audio media is still readily consumed, but media that is strictly print is severely de-prioritized.

The disturbing aspect of this state of affairs comes from the fact that reading is actually one of the most mentally healthy and stimulating activities you can participate in. It requires silence, which most of us have a profound lack of in our daily schedule. It increases vocabulary and writing skills, which are also severely lacking in modern society. But most important, it activates mental processes which enhance and sharpen our cognitive functioning:

Reading a book forces you to engage the imagination - There is no video or audio conceived by someone else for you passively ingest when you process information in this medium. It’s a far more mentally-active process than watching TV, or listening to an audio presentation. And it is often only through printed media that one has access to abstract concepts: Ideas which cannot be captured by sound and light, but which must be experienced through language directly.

I’m sure entire books (or movies?) could be made which would cover these ideas in full. If you’re going to walk away from this post with anything, let it be this: Keep reading, and make time for it. You’ll find that an hour with a book will stretch your mental boundaries far more than an hour with your TV.

And thanks for reading this entry right to the end. Sadly, the people who need to read this post the most are the ones that stopped after the first few paragraphs.

As I was reading meters today, I came across a deer leg on the ground, in front of someone’s front porch. It wasn’t rotting or anything (it’s still too cold out for that). It was just a furry length of leg, with a hoof attached to the end of it, about the length of my forearm. No blood. No sign of trauma. The only thing that was odd about it was that there was no deer attached to it. And it was lying in front of someone’s front porch.

I calmly walked past it, went around to the far side of the house where the electric meter was, read the meter, walked past the leg again on the way back to my car, and drove off. What could I do? Knock on the front door and ask them if they’ve misplaced a piece of deer? Poke around in the wooded area nearby and look for a deer that the others have been calling “Tripod”? No viable options presented themselves.

Except writing about the incident on the internet.

Let me start by saying this: Apartment hunting sucks.

Until we found this apartment which we are planning on moving into, Larissa and I had looked at a healthy selection of other available dwelling spaces. All of them fell somewhere in the range between “inadequate” and “purgatory, plus utilities”.

One place was basically a hallway that had been divided in two to make a bedroom and living space/kitchen, with a small closet attached to the “bedroom” which had been semi-remodeled to resemble a bathroom.

Another place had an amazing kitchen which was surrounded by a bedroom that was too small, a water heater which was hidden by vertical blinds, and a staircase that led to an unusable door.

We also saw an apartment on the first floor of a house which had appliances that were fashionable in the late 40s, no cupboard doors in the kitchen, and rooms that were all half an inch higher or lower than the room preceding it.

So when we finally came across a place that had new appliances, clean carpets, a bedroom that could actually accommodate a queen size bed, and floors that were flush throughout the entire apartment, we were hooked. The floor plan looks like this:

Larissa will move in on May 1st, and I’ll join her after the wedding. We’re both looking forward to getting out of our basement apartments and living four-stories above ground.

I dwell now at the level of the worms - in May I shall dwell closer to the birds, who eat the worms. Poetic irony? You decide.

I just got back from doing a brief radio spot with John and Doug on AM 900 CHML, talking about The Audio Edition winning the 2006 Bloggie award for best podcast. It was my first time in a radio studio, and I found it to be a fascinating experience.

First of all, let me say that the DJ who was hosting us, Bob Sherwin, is one of the nicest, most gracious men that I have ever met. He had nothing but praise and congratulations for us having won this award, and I discovered that he himself actually listens to our podcast on a regular basis! I’m stunned that there are professionals in the media industry who actually take time out of their day to hear John, Doug and I argue about which Harry Potter film is better.

The studio where we were seated consisted of a round table with about five mics on adjustable arms that could be moved to any position that you needed. There were several chairs (one for each mic), and one large, more comfortable chair for the person who actually is employed by the radio station.

Bob had some sort of control apparatus in front of him (I didn’t get a good look at it) and various papers with what I’m guessing is stuff he’s supposed to say (although I did find a Sudoku puzzle among the papers on that desk).

The DJ faces a wall with a large window, which looks into another closed studio, where another man is sitting, whom I’m assuming is the producer. Whatever his title, he was the one telling Bob when to talk, selecting the bits to be played before and after our segment, and recording our conversation so that clips of it could be played later.

There’s also a very large digital clock on the wall, and another digital readout indicating the outside temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit. DJs are always having to tell you what time it is and what temperature it is outside. Just in case you have no clock, and no means of sticking your head outdoors. It would be extremely handy if you were in solitary confinement, but had access to a radio.

I was surprised by how “fly by the seat of your pants” everything was. I always thought DJs would be getting ready, practicing stuff they have to say, and getting their papers and notes together for upcoming segments when they weren’t talking. But Bob was shooting the breeze with us right up until about 2 sec before he went on air. He did some traffic and weather, chatted with us for a few more minutes, and then we were telling the world (well, Hamilton) about our podcast.

Now, John actually is on the air at CHML every week for 30-40 min talking about movies already, so he was very comfortable with the whole setup. He did most of the talking, and sounded very natural. Bob commented to us off-air that John sounds great on the radio. I guess that’s why he’s a successful podcaster.

Doug and I interjected when we could, but there was honestly very little to say that wasn’t already being said by John or Bob. I felt a little… I won’t say “nervous”, because that wasn’t it; I was quite comfortable, actually. Maybe the best way to put it is that I wanted to make sure I said something, otherwise why was I there? At the same time, it’s not my show, and really, Doug and I were only there because John asked if he could bring us along.

When we were done with the broadcast, we all shook Bob’s hand and went around to the production room, where they were giving John a CD recording of our segment.

A digital copy of the radio broadcast will be available online at some point. I’ll update this post with the link once I have it.

Regular readers of this blog may remember that once per week, I contribute to a podcast which is run by John Campea and Doug Nagy for The Movie Blog. Back in January, I mentioned in this post that we had been nominated for a prestigious Bloggie Award, under the category of Best Podcast of a Weblog. A few days later, I put up this post, talking about an article in the Hamilton Spectator which covered our nomination.

Well, earlier this afternoon, the winners of the 2006 Bloggie awards were announced, and The Audio Edition won for Best Podcast of the year! John, Doug and I were stunned and elated that we actually got chosen! There was at least one other podcast in the running whose listenership was over the million mark (ours is somewhere around 10,000 listeners), and somehow we managed to pull it off!

As I mentioned earlier tonight when we were recording today’s podcast: Finding out we had won was like the feeling of starting summer vacation after finishing grade 4 - The future feels like it’s made of golden candy.

A hearty thanks to all of you who listen to us, and who voted for us in the contest. This could mean very big things for the future of this podcast. Our listenership should leap in numbers, and there may be some media coverage - After all, we were the only Canadian podcast nominated in the category, and this is the first time that a non tech-oriented podcast has received recognition at this level.

For those in the Hamilton area, you can catch John, Doug and I on the radio tomorrow evening (March 14th) on AM 900 CHML sometime around 5:40pm. My goal for the broadcast is don’t sound like an idiot. Doug’s goal is don’t swear.