Belt Belt Belt Belt Belt

Baseball is starting tomorrow and Brandon Belt is going to be the starting first baseman for the San Francisco Giants. Beat LA.

Voting For Meaningless Things

I'm about as apathetic and disconnected as anyone could possibly be from my school "community". When it comes time to vote for student government, I tend to bypass it without a second thought. Today, as a graduating senior, I participated in the student government election for the first time. This brings me to today's topic: Voting For Meaningless Things

Last night an acquaintance of mine indirectly asked me to vote for him in the SGA(Student Government Association? That's just a guess because I really don't know what it represents) election. He sent me a link to a rather embarrassing rap filled with terrible beatboxing and uninspired rhymes about his candidacy. I somehow managed to watch the entire thing and not pick up a single idea from it except "VOTE FOR ME!" which I gather was implied rather than explicit, though I could be wrong because I remember very little about it.

Skip to today and I get the reminder email to vote that any well run campaign will generate. This is followed by a personal IM a few hours later. A nice touch that spoke well of his suitability for the position, Vice President of Communication. After dinner I go to the voting area set up in the student center. The voting area was a collection of four tables featuring laptops. Votes were placed by filling out a Google Docs form. On a side note, this is an incredibly insecure system for voting and HIGHLY vulnerable to manipulation, but that's a topic for another day.

The results of this election do not affect me. By the time this board is seated, I'll be long gone from this dreadful place. Frankly, I shouldn't even be allowed to vote. But since I can, my approach to the voting is as frivolous as the results.

This brings me to my two main points:

1. Randomly picking candidates

First, randomly picking candidates. I know I'm not the only one who does this when faced with a slate of unknown choices. While I almost always have the choice of abstaining from that particular decision, I like to make a random or arbitrary choice. The reason being that each candidate has risked something in their candidacy whether its time or reputation or what have you. I think risk takers should have the certainty of being rewarded or punished. Since I know nothing about any of them, I figure giving each one a chance to get my vote is the best I can do at that point. Sometimes I vote for the person with the most interesting name. Other times I'll close my eyes and point. The criteria is different each time.

Some people would call this behavior irresponsible. You'll get no argument from me. It's highly irresponsible and it's always possible that I'll end up electing a Dodger fan to a position of power. That said, I'll continue to do it anyway as a matter of principle. Risk takers deserve that certainty.

2. Abstaining from uncontested positions

Whenever I see an uncontested position I'll refuse to vote. I am of the belief that a contest without two or more potential outcomes isn't a contest at all. Whenever this happens, I think there should be a fictitious opponent, say Bo Placé.

If the actual candidate can't defeat a cardboard cutout in an election, they don't deserve the position.

That Urinal Smell

My floor just got cinnamon-apple scented urinal pads today. A marked improvement over the urine scented urinal pads of yesterday.

Adventures in Paint

I've been meaning to start a blog for some time, but my own laziness as repeatedly stymied my efforts. I hope to maintain this through at least the summer before I lose interest. Past experience suggests this will be yet another Sisyphean attempt at maintaining something with a degree of regularity. As always, time will tell. This blog is planned to be an irregular(Ha! I've already begun justifying my own sloth) collection of coding tutorials/tips, pictures, rants and thoughts.

We'll begin with what is likely to be the most common feature: pictures and some context. These are screencaps that I've lightly edited with Microsoft Paint. I will be calling this feature Adventures in Paint.

First, some context. One of my favorite documentary programs is called Begin Japanology, hosted by Peter Barakan and narrated by Stuart Atkin-Varnam. It's a regularly airing program on one of NHK's channels (NHK World?) and is broadcast in both English and an accompanying Japanese overdub. Each episode explores a different topic in Japanese culture.

This particular episode is about Japanese footwear, specifically geta(下駄) and zouri (草履). About a minute in (1:08) the host Barakan walks on camera at a Buddhist temple. Judging by the gate, pagoda and the amount of tourist foot traffic, I'd guess it's Sensouji (浅草寺) in Tokyo. These screencaps are taken as he's introducing geta and Japanese footwear in general.

This being Sensouji (probably), there are going to be tourists walking around in the background. I don't generally notice them, but for obvious reasons this one caught my eye.

Text: "This nigga..."

While an Asian tourist staring bemusedly at a white guy in a hakama being filmed by a Japanese production crew is amusing, but not all that remarkable, what happens next I found rather delightful.

Like nigga, like son.