Sopio

To My youngers,

I have been remiss. A whole week without posting! My apologies, what with the election and working and... well to be honest- a full day of getting caught up on Gossip Girl, I had little time left for the aforementioned blogging... but now I am returned. or have returned. whatever.

In my absence I have also been occupied playing card games. or more correctly one specific card game. (Also I have been doing a remarkably excellent job at converting everyone else who plays this game into massive fanboys/girls). That game. Is Sopio.

It is super lame. And super simple. In fact it is so lame and so simple that it is both confusing and astoundingly awesome at the exact same time, in the exact same amounts. Until you understand how to play it. then its all awesome and zero confusing. Sorry sentence structure, its late, I am tired, and I have to get up in five hours to help my friend paint his house. Deal.

So Sopio is this card game invented by favourite youtuber Alex Day and his cousin Danny (who I'm sure has a last name, which may or may not be Day, but sorry Danny, you may have invented my new favourite card game, but you still have yet to make me wish you would read the bible... sorry again, that was way to confusing to anyone who is not me or K. Or my cell phone, if my cell phone were a person. cuz then it would remember receiving a text which read only (in all caps) "OMG ALEX IS READING THE BIBLE!!!!!!!!!") aaaanyways they invented this game in concept only then spent so much energy trying to convince people that it was a real game that they decided to actually make it into a real game. and it is only the best. game. ever.

I'm not sure if I could properly explain it- well I could, its quite simple really, but it would just sound lame and un-fun and that is the exact opposite of what it is is. Instead I will steal a quote from one of my convert friends (who literally went home after playing and bought his own pack online mere minutes later...) so in the words of Jeff Winter "Its like Magic the Gathering, only with funnier cards, and fewer rules, and its easier to play, and you would actually be able to get girls to play it with you!" So in other words, like Magic the Gathering, in so much as it is a card game, but unlike Magic the Gathering insomuch as it is, well, incredibly fun. and awesome. and won't make you unavoidably single for the rest of your life.

Google it or check it out on youtube, or if you live near me and want to play, just ask. I totally carry it with me in my bag at all times. Because I actually do wish someone would just come up to me and ask if I would play Sopio with them. No seriously though, if someone did that, I might fall over from shock. or pee myself laughing. either way, I guarantee you would be entertained.

-E

Its OK to Not Like Things

To My Youngers,

I recently (aka like an hour ago) stumbled upon a very short and very silly song that perfectly sums up something I struggled with for a loooong time. No, not anything so serious as depression or anorexia or something, I'm talking about not-liking-things.

Listen to 'Its OK to not like things!' Though I should warn you, its terribly addictive...

This may sound like a weird problem to have, but throughout my childhood I felt compelled to at least sorta like pretty much everything I came across. From music to movies to people. Doesn't sound so bad, but the problem is that when you like everything its hard to tell what you actually like... what you love, whats really important to you. And that's kinda, well, important!

I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point during high school I started to be ok with disliking things, and a whole new world opened up to me. No longer did I have to force myself to like chemistry class (all other sciences are so much better!) or be friends with the annoying guy from drama (just because other friends are friends with him... whatever, he was annoying!) or to enjoy the first half of Catcher in the Rye (I liked the second half, but man, first half Holden is an arsehole!!!)! I started to have opinions more often, I started to get into friendly arguments with people who disagreed with me, and best of all I developed a few arch nemesises (nemesi?)- and yes they do exist in real life and they are just as entertaining as in comics ;o)

Its not even just the disliking that makes things more fun/better/awesomer its loving disliking them- like  The Empire Strikes Back, green peppers, and Vin Diesel (to name a few)! It gives me the opportunity to argue with people without hurting anyone's feelings or making them actually upset! Arguing sans consequence. Mostly anyways. the trick is to stay away from hating things, and only let yourself go so far as to have a strong strong dislike. That way you don't let the evil in, only the fun!

See for yourself how much fun it can be and not-like something today!

-E

Decisions, Decisions, Whims and Whimsy

To my elders,

Alex Day, aka Nerimon, posted a video earlier today about Brain Crack. What John Green of the vlogbrothers calls those ideas that you can't quite sort out just yet, so you think about them and think about them and think about them until they basically just become crack for your brain. Other people call this "obsession." But, you know, a rose by any other name and all that dead-white-guy-Shakespeare-stuff. John Green's solution is that if you put it out into the world.... I don't know, you'll obsess less? I've never seen any of the vlogbrothers brain crack videos, so I'm just trusting Alex Day on this one.

It got me thinking though, of what brain crack I have, as well as how I make decisions. Because my brain crack is, at times, about something concrete, but is more often about ideas and philosophies that come to dominate and inform my entire life and my entire view of the world. I know you know what I'm talking about E.

I am a fairly logical person. I fully acknowledge my complete irrationalities when they do come up, but I generally don't get that worked up about things that apparently upset most people. This has lead A, on more than one occassion (thanks sis!), to call me a robot as a result. I kind of take pride in it. And yet, I have never actually made a decision based on a pro-con list. Don't get me wrong, I have made pro-con lists, but one option can be 4 times longer than the other on the pro side and I still may go with the other option. I make my best decisions on gut feeling whims. I suspect because it allows me to brush off a lot of self doubt with the idea that I did not, in fact, think something through very thoroughly, but it also, as my 5th grade teacher said, "[didn't] let [my] brain get in the way of [my] thinking." And I'm cool with that.

So while I made decisions like where to do my undergrad very dramatically, like fake television drama style, sitting on my bed at 11pm the night before my offer acceptance had to be sent off, both letters signed sitting there going "Ummmmmmm..... I think I'll go to that one. Just for fun." And then signed the letter and mailed it. And yet, I plan haircuts out months in advance. Not that I have done a strand test when dying my hair since I was 15 (it will be the colour it is, and there's no use cutting off a piece of your hair to find out 30 minutes sooner. You can always dye over it. Though this once led me to having pink hair... not that the outrageous colour was an issue, but I've never been a big pink fan...). I make a lot of arbitrary, unfounded, uninformed decisions. And I'm always pretty happy about them. Heck, I moved to a French speaking province for a change of scenery. It worked out. Thinking is stressful. O.o

But Brain Crack. Obsessing. Minor obsessing, not OCD obsessing. I am cracked (Yes, I have turned crack into a non-drug use verb. English is cool that way. You can make up words. Great lesson Shakespeare! You've been a big help today) about authenticity. Mostly a combination of Catcher in the Rye and Holden's obsession with phoniness and Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation preoccupation with, well, authenticity and honesty. Beat is about truth (small 't') and non-censorship. And I love that about 1950s outsider fiction. But I also love it about the 1950s post war Americana in general. I may have decided to read The Feminine Mystique because of the reference to it in 10 Things I Hate About You, but it became complete brain crack once I got about half way through. And started my being cracked about sociology type non-fiction books, too.

I am cracked about organic development of conversations, friendships, life, and don't believe in "forcing it" because of a line from a Green Day song ("You can't go forcing something if its just not right" from When I Come Around off Dookie). Which also makes me love archiving all the more, because the entire theoretical basis of archival arrangement is the organic development of records (more on this in my next post). But organic development also makes me a bit awkward at times, because even though I am analyzing everything that happens to me, I don't necessarily want to talk about it. I want to see where it goes, and maybe talk about it after the fact, but not necessarily.

I am cracked about maps and drawings of landscapes and floor plans and skylines. Probably because I have a very spatial memory and probably learned to read a map before I could, like, read English. Which makes it sound like I could read maps at age 4, but in reality I just couldn't read read until 3rd grade.

I am cracked about believing what I sing. Which sounds stupid. Story: in 9th grade I was in choir at my high school. There was this girl I was not particularly fond of in choir with me. We had to sing some super religious, biblically based song about some river in The Holy Land. Now, I'm fairly sure, looking back on it, that she was actually just too lazy to learn songs she didn't already know. But I am also fairly sure that her rational for not wanting to sing the bible river song has shaped far too much about how I view the world. She asked me why I would sing a song I didn't believe. As in, why would I sing along with a song that I didn't agree with, who's lyrics I did not buy, who's lyrics did not reflect my own world view? So did I seek out only songs that reflected my world view? No. Being the person I am, I unintentionally, and sometimes intentionally, decided I must agree with the lyrics I liked the most. As if I couldn't enjoy them or sing them as whole-heartedly if I did not agree with them. So I started agreeing. Which I think explains a lot of my posts regarding music. But it also means there are great lines in great songs I will never love, because I can't agree with them. Sam Roberts' "Stay true to your friends, 'cause they'll save you in the end..." is a completely great line that I just can't believe, so I can never love that song as much as someone who does believe it. Believing in organic development of friendships also means accepting that friendships come and go and are not constant. You can effectively replace your family with friends, but where does that really leave you?

But back to Brain Crack. Tattoos are an interesting release for Brain Crack. Each of my tattoos (and E's too) was once a subject of Brain Crack. Not just the idea of getting a tattoo, but the content / subject of said tattoos. Each of mine were things I could simply not escape. I would buy things because they contained these images (mostly owls. Going into Urban Outfitters was like a battle between my bank account and my brain crack). I drew them on everything, all the time. I would doodle them on scrap paper, notebooks, my skin... I would actually Google image search pictures of them. Just for fun. And after I had them tattooed on me, after they were permanent, it was like I didn't have to anymore. They weren't going anywhere. I wouldn't forget about them only to go crazy feeling like I'd lost something if I stopped thinking about them for a day. So while I may have once spent a summer telling my friend "T-shirts, not Tattoos!" tattooing brain crack, getting it out into the world, marking it with permanency, really does help cure the Brain Crack. Maybe John Green should get a tattoo.

-K