Curling

I spend a substantial amount of my time at work with a tv in sight. Lately it has stayed tuned on to the Olympics; I've loved it. But one thing that may be the most remarkable about these games however, is just how much coverage curling has gotten. Curling? Yes, curling. During the late morning to early afternoonrom CNBC is covering curling on a daily basis. No other sport - not hockey, not skiing, not snowboarding - has gotten the consistent coverage that curling has recieved.

At first, upon watching the players curl their stones down the ice, sweepers vigorously preceding it, derogatory thoughts of, "this is stupid" and "what a goofy sport!" kept recurring in my mind. But since it was the only Olympic sport on, it stayed on the tv and consequently stayed in my view. And guess what? After awhile I started to actually enjoy the game. Surprisingly, it involves a substantial amount of team strategy and skill.  For example, depending on how the sweepers sweep, the stone can actually curl around other stones, traveling in a non-linear path.

But what makes it truly entertaining is that the network has microphoned the players. This little stunt is what has really made me a fan. Who would have known how much yelling goes on in curling? It's fantastic! It is a riot hearing them yell instructions at each other and get so worked up over it. Hearing the curlers yell definitely places the spectator into a different perspective, one in which the sport becomes active and engaging.

So the lesson learned: never judge a book by its cover. But if judgement has been passed, just make sure there is not significant yelling involved, otherwise you'll feel stupid and goofy for it.

The Lacuna

The following was written the day prior to my trip to Atlanta for the Foreign Service exam. I left it unfinished and unpublished because I found it diffucult to focus.

Every morning around 11 o'clock I get a text. It's a text from dictionary.com - "The word of the day." I signed up for the word of the day texts to increase my vocabulary so I sound enlightened and erudite. However, more often than not I recieve a word that is either completely arcane and colloquial, or it is simply a word that has NEVER been in the standard vocabulary of ANYBODY. For instance, the word plenipotentiary (adjective, invested with full power). Come on, even history's most repressive autocrats have never refered to themselves as plenipotentiary. Even the Lord, He who is in fact plenipotentiary, never says that.

Similarly, the word lacuna (a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument) seems entirely obsolete from all language...

And that was all I wrote. I was too pre-occupied by thoughts of the impending exam that I simply could not focus on writing this inane blog entry. But then, the very next day as I was sitting on the outbound flight, something caught my eye. It was a book sitting on the lap of a fellow passenger. As I looked closer I read the title: The Lacuna. I couldn't believe it: here I had just mocked the word lacuna and labeled it as obsolete.

It left me feeling a little dull-witted. It seems there was a lacuna in my vocabulary.

The Three Branches of Government

The division of government, or rather the provision for checks and balances IN government, is integral to a free and fairly run democracy. Our founding fathers were well aware of the need to separate governing powers so as to prevent any form of tyrannical mishap. But the fastidious student will realize that not only does the separation of powers create a political environment in which no single entity has superflous control over its constituency, but it provides a systemic mechanism in which good ideas are passed around and tweaked by one branch of government to the other, while bad ideas are given stiff halts and dropped cold turkey.

In my own scholarly quests, I have realized that the three branches of government not only applies to democratic government but is a viable means of arriving at and deciding upon one of life's greatest decisions: who to date and mate. You see, each human being is endowed with their own three branches of government, each of which must agree upon whom we are to wed and bed.

Our brain serves as the Legislative Branch, and just like Congress, it makes decisions, sometimes logically, sometimes illogically. Our brain must decide if the person we like stacks up in our favor. Do we have fun together? Do we miss each other when separated? Do we share common interests and goals? Does he/she smell nice? ect, ect. These are questions our brain asks us to decide if a person is the right fit for us.

Then there's the Judicial Branch; this is our heart. Just as the judicial branch interprets what is right and what is wrong, our heart tells us whether our brain's logic is right or wrong. There's a feeling we get when someone is different and special to us. Once our brain has concluded that a person is the right fit for us, we must feel, in our heart, that we love him/her.

And finally, we have the Executive Branch; that singular branch that seems to be acquiring greater power with each successive executive. The Executive Branch is ultimately the one that calls the shots. Yes, it is ultimatly the "drive" (you know what I'm talking about) that decides if we want to be with a person or not. My mother aptly describes this as "burning loins." Those loins just have to burn for us to really want to willingly surrender our life over to someone.

Just as the three branches of government must arrive at the same conclusions for U.S. law to be written and passed, so it is for us to pass someone off as suitable. It is imperative that all three "branches" agree with one another. Sometimes it seems logical that we should be with someone but we don't feel that it's "right." Sometimes we feel that we love someone but it is completely illogical to be with that person. And sometimes, just sometimes, people only listen to the executive branch with a "wham, bam, thank-you-ma'am" attitude and end up screwing themselves over! In order for a relationship to really work, all three branches-the brain, the heart, and the love-makers have to line up.

Sometimes (or most the time) when I tell people this they laugh; and rightly so - I'm hilarious. But there's some serious truth to it, if only you put your mind, and heart, and junk to it.