Brazenly Cognizant

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The coolest thing we did that day was attend our first Kresge Core Course lecture. Our Provost, Juan, is quite the Charismatic Chilean (that’s probably his username). Yes, he is from Santiago, and man, can he put together a lecture. A real mind-trip. He basically deconstructed language, what with signifiers (words) and the signified (ideas) and everything inbetween. We talked about the concept that language is the power to communicate ideas, and in the 21st Century, where ideas and information have become a commodity, those who produce language produce wealth. So in effect, he was telling us that to master language was the key to financial success. In realistic terms, it doesn’t mean too much, but I think there is something to be learned there. Who knows, I’m just a freshman, eh?

The high-point of his lecture, in my opinion, was when he showed the audience a picture of South America turned upside down on the map of the world. It meant a lot more, you know? Just because it was above everything, it gave it a certain kind of… ‘importance’. Language does shape culture. Interesting.

Thursday

Ate breakfast quickly and hurried over to our discussion class for the Kresge Core Course. We played a name-game, ate cookies, looked over the syllabus with the professor’s aid, Kristina, and then discussed Juan’s lecture of the day before. Like I said, I love living with intellectuals, and there are a lot of them here… but some of them can be a bit much. Endless debates on one sentence in the lecutre… Other than that, it was great, other than the fact we were all burdened with 60 pages to read and a two-page essay due on Tuesday. *cough* I’m still not done with the reading.

The rest of that day was filled with my Gender and Technology class, where we watched Michael Jackson’s Scream music video and Scorpio Rising. Watch it on YouTube and tell me what you think. The professor is cool, though.

Friday

My first lecture in Astrobiology: Life in the Universe. This is going to be a blast. I love exoplanets, even though its just because I love science fiction, which the professor does not. We watched Donny Darko. Yeah, its a classic studenty film, but its interesting. Gotta love that psychological fragility you feel when the credits roll and no one wants to be the first to break the silence and turn on the lights… you’re stuck in that wormhole still, you just don’t realize it until you see it again.

There we go, I’ve caught up. I feel proud to be a good steward of my memories. Let’s see what tomorrow holds.

This weekend will be easy to summarize. Saturday, I finished The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, and didn’t get anywhere on my homework. Ate lunch down at the Town Hall, watched a documentary on the Space Race (was John Glenn awesome or what? That guy is a hero, man… we need more John Glenn in the 21st century). Connor and I rode our bikes down a huge hill! Nothing beats a nice asphalt slope through the trees, wind in your face, no helmet, seeing who can hold out their arms the longest… I’m pretty sure people are killed that way, but its an awesome feeling. Still talking about Saturday: we went down to Santa Cruz downtown to buy groceries. Waited for a bus for an hour. Three packed buses went passed our stop… my theory is that, being the first weekend, a lot of freshman wanted to come down to check out the scene at night. Only bad part about that is we were trying to get back up to campus. At night my brother and I played through Castle Crashers to the very end. Fun video game.

Today, Sunday, we woke up at 1 PM, tried to do homework, watched Seinfeld, ate toast periodically. Waste of a day. We should have made it to Church… I just got done cleaning my room finally, once motivated by the classic Eye of the Tiger. Now I’m on a frantic search for similiar motivational music to electro-shock me back into activity… and I discovered Pandora.com is facing a new law about to be discussed in the Senate that might ban video streaming! Help build Web 2.0! Call your Senator!

I can’t wait to get done with catch-up over the last few days. Believe it or not, I want to talk about a lot of things that are unrelated to the recording of mundane events at my University. *sigh* Okay, back to the grind.

- Need to incorporate recent dreams, which were interesting: miniature elephant dream, RV-zombie dream, cliff-jumping dream. For some reason I can dream really well here. I keep on waking up and typing them down.

- My views on Communism, and reaction to this video (which was passed along to me by the campus communist group).

- My reaction to the book Understanding Society which I just picked up: specifically, on masculinity, low-skilled worker realities, the minimum wage idea, and universal healthcare.

- Need to incorporate more religious thought, I would think.

Good night! Classes tomorrow.

Did I mention the fact that on Monday we watched Contact by Robert Zemeckis? That was brilliant, haven’t seen it since I was five. I love the reversal to pro-faith, pro-spirituality in the end. The special effects were excellent for the 1990s, I couldn’t believe it! Thoroughly interesting and scientifically realistic throughout, though I did find it extremely implausible that a religious fanatic could make his way through security and blow up the first ‘gateway’. Think about that terrorist, when he said, "Not now, but someday the events that are about to take place will be understood." Wait a minute. Didn’t he blow up that imposter, Tom Skerrit (as Dr. Drumlin)? The guy cheated his way to become the first inter-dimensional voyager… at first denying the fact that SETI was worth anything, then hijacking all of Ellie’s findings for his own gain. His final words to her was that, "The world isn’t fair, and the spoils go to the victor." At least Jodie Foster’s character was moral! Thus, the terrorist might have been divinely inspired to re-align the cosmic order of things and give Ellie that chance to meet the aliens (or were they spiritual beings?), which was clearly pre-destined throughout the film.

Seen the movie, still believe they were just an advanced extra-terrestrial civilization? Taste these quotes: "We didn’t build these wormholes… they were left here by a much older civilization, they were gone when we arrived." "This is how its been done for a billion years." Doesn’t that fit into Mormon, if not Christian cosmology at least a little bit? I liked at the end how Ellie was teaching kids about SETI… I think it is implied that the reason of the whole Contact Event was to build interest in the beyond, for the next generation to capitalize on.

ANYWAY.

Today is Tuesday, now. We wake up at 11:00 again!!!! Can’t find food, can’t find food… pilfer food from dorm-mates. We leave for the OPERS Fall Festival, showcasing all the Leagues, Associations, Clubs, and Groups on Campus. Its out in a huge sunlit field overlooking the entire bay with its verdant blue waters… There are thousands of people, a huge mob, and yet it is very quiet… a lot of strangers, you know? Not too many people laughing or talking obnoxiously or loudly like in high school. I like it. There are ‘green’ trashcans everywhere where you separate recyclables from compost-materials and aluminum. Its clean. I like it. There is a barbecue area where they serve typical cafeteria barbecue and Mountain Dew (which was awesome).

Let me go through a few of these clubs and my reactions:

UCSC Students Against War (www.saw.revolt.org)

Brendon: So you guys are against ‘the War’, right? What sets you apart from everyone else, I mean, isn’t everyone here unanimous that we should get out of Iraq?

UCSCSAW Spokeswoman: Actually, we’re against all war and especially the UC system supporting nuclear armageddon.

Brendon: (That came way out from left field) What?! How in the world does UC Santa Cruz support armageddon. *wonders how in the world anyone could protest against Santa Cruz of all the institutions*

UCSCSAW: The UC System hosts nuclear arms laboratories…

Okay. Fine. So the UC System helps design nuclear arms. Their literature uses emotional appeals to fight against this: 1) The US Government un-ethically mines Uranium in Navajo lands. Wait, isn’t it part of the United States? If not, shouldn’t it start being our territory? I mean, give self-autonomy to the natives, by all means, we did do horrible things to them, but restrict us from utilizing natural resources of vital strategic importance? Keep the Federal government from building a mine and some infrastructure in a desert? Come on. I’m sure they pay the Native Americans for the use of the land. 2) And I quote: ".. nuclear weapons were tested in the Pacific Ocean! From 1946-1958 the US conducted hundreds of tests on the Marshall Islands… thousands of islanders were poisoned and displaced, their ancient homelands destroyed by radioactive fallout." Well, here is the reasoning for that. We were in the Cold War. The Soviet Union under Stalin was repressing civil rights everywhere it could reach through Eastern Europe, allies that we had promised democracy, but Stalin had other motives. They were building nuclear weapons (stolen from our scientific programs by spies and traitors). They were making aggressive gestures. We thought the next war could begin any minute and that the USSR could spread its dictatorship across all of the Old World. So we tested a lot of nukes in order to show the Soviets we would fight back. And you know what? It worked. World War Three never happened. One problem: during that early phase, we didn’t know much about nuclear radioactivity and fallout. Most of those that died were killed by the military’s actions, but people die in wars. Its extremely unfortunate, but they did the best they could, with an interest to preserve freedom and liberty in the entire world and avert a global war that would make World War II into a prelude. I’m not saying what we did was right… but shouldn’t we thank our government for keeping tens of millions alive by doing what they did?

Quantum Jujitsu - Actual performers. These guys were awesome.

Breakdancing - Again, performers and a line for contestants. Cool.

Democrats for Obama - No Republican table. No McCain table. Just an area filled with Obama supporters. If another group was given a voice, I’d be fine with it all, its just that these guys have a political monopoly.

No on Prop 8 - Don’t get me started. So many activists… against who? Where is the opponent? How can you be a revolutionary when you’re surrounded in a society filled with like-minded people? I’ll tell you, you can’t. I’m the revolutionary. And again, where is the Yes on Prop 8 tent? Or the Yes on Prop 8 sticker?

Student Film-makers Association - Awesome. These guys were really fun to talk to. They had a nice camera there… $5000 they said.

The Network - An LGBT club. I was such a gringo, man, I was entranced by their cool logo and just started talking to them. They seemed angry/hurt when I wasn’t interested. Come on! I’m a straight guy! Give me a break, you really think I’m going to be interested in supporting an LGBT club? A straight guy can’t get passionate about that! Same reason why the Womens’ Self-Protection Group ignored me when they were passing out flyers, or when the Latino Club did the same. I can’t get into a club if I’m helping empower a group that doesn’t represent me and my interests. But the Indian Club… that’s different. Those guys are tight, I’d get into that. Festivals, dancing and good food? See, they’ve got something I’m interested in.

The other clubs are hard to remember. Lots of frats, sororities, ethnic clubs, women’s clubs, fringe sport clubs (ultimate frisbee, fencing, archery), socialist parties, etc. etc. Eh.

Funny Story

We met Andrea Sanchez today, and her room-mate. I missed her presence a lot. She has this way of being comedic that I don’t think anyone detects, except for me. Not even she knows she is doing it, I don’t think. Anyway, Connor left his cellphone on the grass. I pick it up. We get separated. I forget that I still had it in my pocket, along with my cellphone. I can’t find or call Connor, so I head for ‘home’. When I get back to the apartment, Connor had apparently gotten there before me (on a bus! I shoulda thought of that) and had biked down to search for his phone. He was gone for a while, poor guy. Then he came back, and asked me to call his phone so someone would pick it up. Of course his cell’s volume is down so I have to stall for half an hour to secretly turn it up. I call his phone once more… and it rings right there in the living room! He was relieved in a big way. We had a good laugh about it.

We watched Training Day that night with our dorm-mates and neighbours. Awesome movie. Those guys deserve Oscars, and America deserves a narcotics agency that actually works. Who Watches the Watchmen, eh?

This last Monday we got up at 11:00 AM. What is going on?!?! Alarm clocks need to be more persistent, less vulnerable. Its all these late-night movies, man! Instead of getting breakfast we hopped in line to the 12th Annual Great Junk Give Away just down from our dorm. We waited in line for an hour in the afternoon sun as conversation got awkward with the strangers around us, minutes stretching on and on… there were some people that had waited for hours longer than us, apparently its a big deal. Basically, the line led to a series of tables that were overwhelmed with garbage. Four shiny television sets, stupidly abandoned by their owners, were at the very back. Everyone wanted them, and that’s why a few juniors and seniors from outside our college had basically camped out here since the crack of dawn to get in on the loot. Think about it… all this junk comes from Kresge dorms and Kresge students, and yet any yahoo who knows about the event can come in and take whatever they want! Blast. I guess they did earn it by spending more time, but, man, seeing some older guy heft a large HD television set across the nearby foot-bridge and off into the distance…

Connor and I ate breakfast at College Eight. They have a better cafeteria, with a kind of techno-grunge style reminiscent of Chipotle, and also more food selections. We talked to some girls that we’ll never see again and swapped tales with another yuppie who had an Italy trip. A Senior guy with his shirt off introduced himself and said that he was an identical twin. Oh, yeah, and this hot chick that had grabbed the same exotic-looking sandwich as I did was sitting alone, so I struck up a conversation with her concerning the said sandwich and she actually liked my sense of humor! Then again, why wouldn’t she, she was sitting alone… but then she was gorgeous. Not that by her being gorgeous she wouldn’t like my sense of humor, those two traits are unrelated to each other, but, you know, I think its very likely that older, prettier chicks (out of my league? That’s debatable) will just pretend to not like my sense of humor in order to keep the sense of heirarchy. My reaction to my knowledge is to simply fight against this heirarchy at all times: don’t believe it exists, and if your first joke sucks, don’t give up! Stick to the conversation and try again. Its not that your weaponry isn’t effective, its just that castle walls take a while to eliminate. And, remember, as Joshua took down Jericho with his seven trumpets, so too you must always pretend that you are on a girls’ same level… she might believe it!

This is all moot to teach anyone this or to explain my own way of thinking, as I’m not looking for a relationship with my imminent mission, but give up an opportunity to practice conversation skills? No way! It turned out really well in that cafeteria, though the girl was somewhat confused when I realized that I was at the height of my act and simply excused myself and left.

We biked to the McHenry Library, the huge Gothic labyrinth of endless knowledge. Did I tell you it seems like something out of that scene in Ghostbusters? There were times when I was the only one on the entire floor! Really cool.

Got ‘home’. Read a bit of Mosiah. I wish I could go more in depth to that, but I have to admit that King Benjamin’s speech has so much cool information its hard to summarize. Played Castle Crashers with our neighbours below, Vinton and Rohan. Rohan is from Kenya, though he is of Indian ethnicity, taught in an English school but still has an accent. Very cool guys. That was fun!

I am reading four volumes currently, at the same time, ranked by importance to me currently: the LDS Quad by various authors and one inspiration, The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism by Oliver H. Radkey, Red Wheelbarrow by various authors, and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis. All are for my own persnal enjoyment and improvement.

College life is fast-paced, but the days are long. It’s really wonderful for time to last so long every day. I go to bed feeling I have lived each day to its fullest. So far. Who knows how long this feeling will last?

Day  One - Friday, September 19, 2008

A long drive with my family. I slept a little. We talked. It was nice. The same thought kept on going through my head: I’ve spent so much of my time with these wonderful people, and soon that frequency of interaction will drop to a mere fraction of what it was. I really love them. We moved all of our clothes and stuff into our apartment and then went down to the Wharf and ate some great seafood. I ate some crab cakes. I love my sisters especially… they are my best friends, my proteges, my treasures. If only I could do more for them. My brother Connor and I bid them farewell amidst the redwood trees. And then we were off. There was a strange mixture of sadness and excitement.

When we got back we got situated and then left for a meeting for all new residents in which we met the adults in Kresge College, I can’t remember what acronym they use for a title… they are basically there to help us out and monitor our activities. It was really fun. We met Jason (from orientation) and he told us about his trip to the Arctic Ocean, out with his family in some souped-up vehicle. Particularily there were two stories I liked the best: A) They picked up two guys out in the Canadian wilderness that had been stranded out there, starving, for four days and B) They hit tons of caribou… Jason described them as just being everywhere, and eventually you just kept the gas on and mowed over them when they appeared… in fact his vehicle had a grill that was virtually made for it. Jason said his family stopped when they saw a trucker hit a huge bear that had come out onto the road. The guy got out of his car, plugged the bear with a shotgun blast, and then went on his way. Weird! And with this kind of animal carnage the Democrats want to prevent us drilling in Alaska because of environmental damage? They were out for a month, a week longer than scheduled, and the Arctic Sea was described as ‘weird’, with visible glaciers floating out in the sea. went out to eat.

We ate dinner afterwards. I can’t remember what happened… nothing too important. Some of our neighbours, Julia and Veronica, came into our apartment and introduced themselves, and we decided to all go and meet the next set of neighbours. They warmed up to the idea and they joined in. We entered every single apartment in our building and the one across from us and saw some interesting people, awesome-looking rooms, and heard a lot of names. It was really fun. That night we watched Lost Boys which was filmed and inspired by Santa Cruz and it was much better than I remember it being. Vampires…

Day Two - Saturday, September 20, 2008

Continental breakfast wasn’t that great, but we were the first ones there. The shower here is nice. Its not that hard getting ready for the morning with female dorm-mates… you get over it pretty fast when you’re groggy and hurrying to go out and eat. Connor and I crashed when we got back to the apartment… We set up the internet and X-Box Live. Ate Dinner. Road our bikes around the campus and found the library, extremely cool place. Hung out with people. There was a night hike… we were given colored glow-strands that you could tie into loops. I got a green and orange one and banded them together so they looked cool. The entire Kresge student body (a hundred? More?) went down a trail to a clearing with huge steel drums. When we returned the dance had been set up and despite our best efforts it wasn’t very fun. Poor choice of music, though we tried to suggest some better tunes. Can’t have everything I guess. So instead we watched Crash with our dorm-mates and others and it was fantastic, once again. We had to watch it anyway, I learned later, for our Kresge core course. Crash definitely deserved that Oscar… and it was awesome that we watched it with such a multi-ethnic group! Ricardo, Marisela and Jennifer are Hispanic. Audrey and our friend Steven are East Asian (Audrey is Vietnamese… I can’t recall where Steven’s family is). Dale is a quarter Korean. It was great.

Day Three - Sunday, September 21, 2008

Did we skip breakfast? Yes, yes, we did, because we were fasting for our Granddad’s operation. I hope he is doing alright, now that I think of it… I should e-mail my Mom about it. Met the Provosts at a meeting and got some tips about our first quarter at Kresge. Great people, interesting people, useful information. We slept through Lunch… so much sleeping. We ate dinner at College Eight, which has a much better cafeteria and food, at 4:30 PM. Audrey, Connor, Ricardo, and I ate at a table near the windows where we talked about our ancestry and then on to the subject of Mexican history which was fascinating. I really like to talk to Ricardo about that… he had this Zapata shirt and we talked about the Mexican Civil War. I really like Audrey, she’s a very nice, easy-going person. I instigated an argument with a Communist group that was advertising their publication at the lunch-line… apparently a Trotskyite coalition had invaded the campus and had stationed people everywhere. The argument over Stalinist and Maoist regimes and the death toll of millions was blown out of the water by the line, "Well, the bureaucrats deformed the workers’ revolution." The sales-lady tried so hard to get me to subscribe to the $10-dollar newspaper but I kept offering a dollar, time and time again. A sales-lady… for the Communist Party! Hah! She really did have a pitch and everything. What a bunch of crap. Every experiment with communism has failed. You can’t blame the problems of your ideology on continuous happenstance throughout history! A good ideology needs to be practical enough that there is a decent possibility of it surviving when it gains support. Otherwise, you shall know things by their fruits, right?

I tried to goad some raccoons with pasta leftover to let me take a picture of them. There are five of them… four really small like kittens, one big mother. Miles, our neighbour, tried to catch one with a box, a stick and a string (you get the picture). Got in trouble with a C.A. We had a fun set of conversations which ended with all of us watching Rushmore instead of going to the Porter dance. A fantastic movie. Wes Anderson deserves respect as an artistic comedic director.

Day Four? It just happened, but consider the title of this entry and tell me whether you expected to read about it here.

Goodnight,

Brendon Carpenter

I have my own apartment, and I share it with my identical twin brother. I have a desk with three drawers and two shelves. There is a window above my bed which has a blue comforter. It is just barely bigger than my body and it’s comfortable. I have been able to remember every single one of my dreams every morning. I live on the second floor. I walk up the stairs multiple times daily. The shower is awesome (perfect temperature, perfect pressure). I have a lot of clothes. I have an X-Box 360 with Halo 3 and half of the seasons of Seinfeld. I live in a dorm with six other awesome people. The food is great. There are redwood trees outside of my window (which is above my bed and has a wire screen that I open up during the day). Five raccoons live somewhere near and we found one trapped in a plastic trashcan tonight. The people here are fantastic, really. Pandora.com is fantastic as well. Very different Music emanating from every room is awesome. Lots of friends already (and some of them are great at playing Halo). I am using more Facebook in a day than I used to in a week. I have sparred with middle-aged communists and recited the death tolls of various Maoist-Stalinist regimes, and I have expressed enjoyment that someone else has read Ayn Rand. I’ve watched two awesome movies with people that get them. Let me tell you, I am having one heckuva blast at U.C.S.C. … That is, the University of California Santa Cruz.

! I am happy!

Thank you, everyone who has gotten me here. I couldn’t have done it without a large cast of supporting characters (of which there are probably many spin-off series). Finally, I realize that while I’ve had many chapters in this book of my life, I have finally moved on to Act II… after thinking all this time that Brendon Carpenter was a short story! … This act is titled: Finding Independence, and Doing What You Have Been Taught To Do, But Loving That You’ve Taught It: Brendon Carpenter’s Story of Remembering His Family and Background with His Every Step, But Trespassing Into an Era of Wonder and Future Possibilities.

Half my years ago, to a younger soul - "It will be worth it."

Brendon Elliott Carpenter