Quantum Quinn's Quandaries

It’s not easy being Quinn. A lot of people think it’s parties all the time, and there is a lot of being awesome. But there’s also a lot of hard work and wondering about where your life is going. 

As inevitable as it seems now, naming me Quinn was by no means a certain thing. It really squeaked in at the last second. My Mom, you see, wanted to name me after some member of her family. My Dad, on the other hand, was more preferential to names that were featured on the Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island. Negotiations were heated and didn’t actually go anywhere. They’re indecisiveness was so far reaching that I was born nameless. While I was lying there wailing, my family eventually decided that they absolutely had to come up with a name for me. Fortunately, at that exact moment an old 60s song (and frankly not that good of one) entitled “The Mighty Quinn” came on the radio. That was all the signal my parents needed, and thus I am Quinn.

Of course, the really funny thing about this story is that it’s not true. I was actually quite reasonably named after members of my Mom’s family. I’ve told the story so many times that I often forget that I just made it up one day because I wanted a good story about my name. 

And I make up stuff all the time when coming up with good stories to tell. I’ve never been one to let small details like reality get in the way of a good story. Of course, I like to tell myself that I don’t ever lie on anything that it really matters to be honest at. Every now and then in one of my bouts of self reflective honesty I’ll tell myself that I’m not going to tell the fake story about my name again. But the next time that the possibility comes up I immediately launch into the story. 

What does this say about me? Is my life really so pathetic that I have to come up with all my best stories on my own? Why don’t I just actually live this awesomely? More importantly, if I can fairly easily fool myself into thinking I’m an honest person  what other personality traits have I tricked myself into thinking I have? Intelligence? Humor? A good blag?

Bill Watterson, author of the amazing amazing Calvin and Hobbes, when writing about the cardboard box duplicator said  ”I think it would be terrifying to meet yourself and find out all the annoying characteristics about yourself that everyone else knows.” While that’s always true, I’m really feeling the truth of it right now.

Doctor Who serves as one of the major inspirations on my life philosophy. This should probably disturb me. 

But I have a max of one existential challenge per day. So we’re not going to deal with that right now.

In one hidden gem of the show, Amy (a cosmic sidekick of the Doctor for those of you who have not yet succumbed) comes to the Doctor with a big existential crisis about her life and the Doctor’s answer after a lot of typical timey wimeyness “Cheer Up. Have some Ice cream.”

Unfortunately, I don’t have any ice cream on me at the moment.  I always consider getting an extra thing of peppermint ice cream during the winter and keep it in the back of my freezer with a label In Case of Existential Crisis. I suspect, however, knowing my love for peppermint ice cream, that would be the easiest way to have an existential crisis every day until the ice cream is gone. So I decide to just skip the existential crisis bit and head straight to the ice cream. So I don’t have any ice cream. But I do have some Jolly Ranchers and Goldfish.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have some Goldfish to eat.

When John English sat down to invent the study of English, he was probably under the impression that history would look upon the event favorably. At the very least, he probably thought he could pull off making the whole thing seem like a benign accident, like penicillin or the discovery in that one old commercial my Dad still talks about that chocolate goes really well with peanut butter. Unfortunately for John English, even the most conservative estimates rate this moment as one of the most tragic and ultimately avoidable accidents ever, like walking into the clearly labeled haunted/abandoned house, or assuming nothing could go wrong with your theme park based on genetically reengineering dinosaurs. One University of Alabama in Huntsville undergraduate majoring in physics has even gone so far as to label the event as quote: “disastrous, both for John English himself, and the rest of society too.” I won’t tell you who the undergraduate is, but I will give you the hint that his first name starts with a Q. And his middle name is Bruce Lee. True Story.

The main problem with English is that it’s subjective. John English was clearly one of those free wheeling liberal types who had switched from a real major like science or engineering to business and found himself attracted to the idea that anything could be right, provided you could make it sound good enough. Earlier in life John English had also been attracted to sweatervests and music so underground that you can’t google it. Unfortunately, John didn’t seem to learn from these mistakes and proceeded with his plan.

It’s not really classic books that I have a problem with. It’s the no holes barred approach to literary analysis that really bothers me. Recently, one of my English class compatriots came to the conclusion that imagination is a drug from reading Don Quixote. This still amazes me. The analysis is most laughable when done on some satire author like Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain. I have no doubt that Mark Twain is rolling over in his grave, mercilessly making fun of english teachers who spend any amount of time discussing whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is racist.

Also at some point they decided that authors could be completely abstract in their meanings and still not be completely ostracized by all humanity.  Full disclosure: I have to admit to being personally hurt by this over-abstracting. I mean honestly, how was I supposed to know that the girl walking through a field of flowers represented her grandmother dying? 

I ask you, is this sort of vague anything goes doctrine that’s vaguely reminiscent of the communists playing Calvinball any way to build a legitimate academic discipline?

No. It’s not. I will continue to love my math and science from here on out. Rant concluded.

The other day one of my more observant acquaintances asked if I wore anything besides NASA shirts. I proudly responded that I would never stoop to such inane levels of demagoguery. My friend replied with the well worn quote that “variety is the spice of life.”

This set me to thinking. I had a revelation. It occurred to me that some people might actually believe this pithy nonsense. Until that moment, I had always assumed that “variety is the spice of life” was one of those phrases discontented people used to justify wearing a sweatervest. Of course, no overused witticism, tanning booth disaster, or death threat justifies the wearing of a sweatervest (see the Geneva Convention, Article 7) but the point is moot. 

I am a creature of habit. Saying as I particularly enjoy my life at the moment, this is good for me. Once I find a food at a restaurant that I like, I will never change. Some people are under the impression this would somehow get old. For example, if I had the same meal every monday through thursday night for an entire semester. But it really doesn’t. I enjoy the meal every single time. Similarly, out of principle, I never listen to any song that involves the word safety, the phrase “sexy back”, or has a wombat warrior in the music video, no matter how catchy they are.

So. This monday was an eventful monday for the Huntsville region. Mark almost got ran over by a car and I had to buy a new red flannel outer shirt because my old one got a hole in it. Don’t worry. I’m OK. Thankfully, Target had the exact same red flannel shirt in stock so I was able to go through the shock with a minimum of new stressing factors involved. Unfortunately, Kaylan II is having a hard time remembering all the cool experiences I had with her predecessor. I suppose asking for transmittable memory in flannel shirts is a bit much but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? To make monday worse, I placed both my desk eraser and my pocket eraser in my pocket, and somebody took the dryer I normally use. It was a painful day all around. (And for those of you who like to worry about such trivialities, Mark is all right. Just shaken up mostly. He has asked for any sympathy flowers to be sent to me for my loss.)

Fortuitously for me, politicians have come up with a word to describe exactly this sort of intransigence and make it sound like a positive attribute: consistency. So if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my traditional Wednesday night mostly silent interpretive dance.

The other day I experimentally measured the speed of light with a microwave and a chocolate bar. I wish I could claim credit for the idea on my own but I can’t. The idea came from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WXW2bBWBEg&feature=share . There are a few possible reactions you might have to this statement which I helpfully illuminate for you in italics below.

That sounds awesome. I’m not going to finish this article because I need to go try this out now!

Congratulations!  You are a physics nerd! You can be my best friend. Seriously. Facebook me. Now. After you perform the chocolate experiment. Friendship comes after science.

That’s the most ridiculously nerdy way I’ve heard of to dispose of chocolate.

Congratulations! You are not a physics nerd! Don’t worry about it too much. You’re pretty much with the vast majority of everyone. And I appreciate the fact that you’re honest about your not nerdiness. We’ll try to keep our interactions to a minimum in the future.

It’s like I’m in the Big Bang Theory or something.

Instant judgement is now being heaped upon you. You’re not a physics nerd and probably take great pleasure in the activities of the somewhat smart hoi polloi, like arguing over whether everyone really does see the same color of pink, wondering whether Cosmopolitan really does any research for their articles, or wearing sweatervest. You like to tell people you’re a nerd whenever you say something that uses a modicum of brainpower but when you see real nerdiness you’re horrified. But you feel the need to be nice to me at the moment since you are talking to me and the best that you can come up with is “It’s like the Big Bang Theory or something.” Honestly. The least you could do is be creative about how you say I’m a nerdy white dude and you find it a little bit offputting. But I’ll forgive you your absurd lack of creativity. What I will not forgive is you comparing my nerdiness to the Big Bang Theory. I and anyone involved with me in this experiment, is scientifically proven to be 9001 times cooler than the Big Bang Theory.

But Quinn, you might be asking yourself, why do you dislike the Big Bang Theory so much? And I don’t dislike the show too much. What I really dislike is people who think that the Big Bang Theory is truly nerdy. It shows that their experience with true nerdiness is basically nonexistent. But the show does have some disturbing moments.

I remember one episode when the “dumb” guy thought that the cover of a magazine was the solar system. Leonard corrected him, to mass taped audience hysteria, that it was in fact an atom. Of course, since the picture featured electrons in the shape of spheres orbiting a spherical nucleus, neither of them were right. In fact, the “dumb” guy had a closer guess. A lot of people tell me that this doesn’t really matter. But it does. Picture a tv show where the main characters are supposed to be super into animals. The “dumb” character perambulates on in and says the magazine cover, which features a lion, depicts none other than a tiger. To mass taped audience hysteria, the main character informs the imbecile that the picture is actually a platypus. 

I ask you, can this show really be considered a good example of nerdom? In case you didn’t catch the implication of that rhetorical question, I’ll make it explicit. NO. It can’t. 

So for all of you thinking it out there: No. It’s not. It’s cooler than the big bang theory, thank you very much. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some chocolate to consume.

I’m not in a relationship. I suppose that since I’m in my second semester of college this is something that popular culture tells me I should be embarrassed about. I’m not really all that bothered. But there are some days that are easier than others. Every year on the fourteenth of February, the entire mass of Hallmark’s marketing division and overzealous dance planners go out on a mission to make me, and everyone for that matter, feel extremely self conscious about their facebook relationship status. 

In the years past, I always tried the duck-and-cover method of Valentine’s day survival. Namely, act as normal as possible and ignore anyone or anything who gives you the slightest suggestion of Valentine’s day. Cupid, anatomically incorrect hearts, Santa Claus, people in sweatervests. Anything. It works but it is, in a single word, distasteful. 

Well this year I’m not giving in. I refuse to be bullied by marketing executives who don’t even know me. But I’m not going to be one of those “counterculture,” angsty, whiny teenagers who will insist on calling it single’s awareness day. That particular designation reveals a level of high school desperation and emotional instability that was never all that attractive in high school. 

It occurred to me that the only way to make all this Valentine’s day fervor go away was to create an entirely new holiday. It’s one of those laws like how good dystopian works of art can only take place in Britain; the only way to supplant one holiday in the public’s mind is to create a brand new more awesome one. It is therefore with only the slightest of ado that I am pleased to announce (if I could automatically create a drum roll when you read this section, I would; you’ll have to create your own) NASA shirt awareness day!!

NASA shirt awareness day serves society in many, many different ways. First off, we all know that an increase in NASA shirts worn by society would lead to a reduction of crime equivalent to not stopping to pick up creepy looking hitchhikers. Since the last option is clearly not possible, spreading the word about the crime reducing as well as medicinal benefits of NASA shirts is the only clear path. Oh yeah. Did I not mention the medicinal benefits? NASA shirts can cure diabetes. And the common cold. And most importantly the plague of sweatervests. True story. It was discovered by a researcher using NASA shirts. Only the most reliable source for the most reliable story.

For those of you who feel that you still need to at least somewhat acknowledge the past behind what was formerly known as Valentine’s day, it’s all good. There are romantic reasons to wear a NASA shirt as well! According to a poll released from my facebook page the other day, 10 out of 18 respondents responded that a NASA tshirt was: “The most attractive feature of anyone. Ever.” The lowest level of attractiveness any respondent responded was that NASA shirts were “mildly attractive.” 1 of the respondents was even female. So yeah. It’s pretty official that NASA shirts are the key to your romantic future.

So. Spread the word. Tomorrow, the fourteenth of February is NASA shirt awareness day. Wear your own NASA shirt. Harass all your friends who don’t. Send cards to your beloved congratulating them on being the type of person who wears a NASA shirt. It’s going to be the best secular holiday since Labor day.

Happy NASA shirt awareness day everyone!

I only own two shirts that don’t say NASA somewhere on them. Frankly, wearing them outside of my room embarrasses me slightly. Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to work for NASA in some shape or form. Somewhere in middle school, this took concrete shape as an aerospace engineer. I told everyone that was my plan. I never hesitated when somebody asked me what I wanted to do. Never even looked up other job opportunities. When it came time to choose what college I wanted to go to, I almost automatically picked the University of Alabama in Huntsville just because of its stellar aerospace engineering department. I didn’t even apply to any other school. Aerospace engineering at NASA was the way for me. So, tonight (or whatever time you’re reading this really) I’m going to inform you on why I am now a physics major.

I have to admit that I’ve always been the type of person who looks down at people who change their major. My nose would lift a little bit higher in the air as I’d pass by those people who were so wishy washy as to really not know what they wanted to do by time they started college. After all, since at least junior year of high school people have been telling you to get your act together. 2 years is more than enough time to decide these sorts of issues, I should think.

It’s obvious that I did not have access to the preceding paragraph a year ago As anyone who read that last paragraph with a sense of dramatic irony will attest to, with an attitude like that I was almost predestined to change my major in exchange for my cockiness. I actually changed a few weeks ago. But I just got around to writing about it now because it takes a while to synthesize the change in my mind.

There were a lot of reasons for my switch but what set me off was attending an engineering group meeting where it became evident that engineering was not the life for me. I enjoyed learning how and why things worked, not making the things. It was a discovery that was definitely better made now than when my job was solely making things. So I can’t complain too much. But I do want to take the time to answer some frequently asked questions.

So what about the whole NASA tshirts thing? Are you going to have to throw all those out?

And wear what? Sweatervests? No thank you. In fact, I am more firmly devoted than ever to NASA tshirts. They are the fashion of the future. (I would go into more detail on this but my best advice is to check back in some time around February 14. I’ll have more to say about the NASA wardrobe then).

So what are your plans for the future now?

To stop making plans that’ll get inevitably changed. That being said, I would like to get my doctorate somewhere and do active research somewhere and let all the cool kids call me Dr. Quinn. It has a nice ring to it.

Have you changed your minor?

No. I’m still the type of jerk who says that I’m minoring in awesome.

I believe that should cover pretty much everyone’s questions.

So, for those of you who haven’t changed your major, I have a message for you. Hopefully you really like what you’re majoring in and it will be a satisfying career for you. If so, I by no means advocate changing. But I do want you to be open to the possibility of not looking down on me too much for being the wishy washy sentimental major changing fool that I am. After all, at least I didn’t change to business or something ridiculous like that.

I was a fairly naive little kid.  I suspect that a major source of my ignorance was the lack of television watching in my early years. My parents were the type of people who limited me to an hour of television a day. And that hour had better be a nature documentary or something educational that depended on drawn out fund raisers like that. To be fair, if I had the choice at the time, I probably would have chosen the documentaries anyway. I’ve always found documentaries fascinating. It greatly disappoints me that the History Channel has become the Ice Trucker/Logger channel. But I still like to blame my parents for the lack of worldy knowledge. Later on, when they had that giant fuss over the switch over to digital television, my parents decided just to screw it all so I haven’t had actual tv in years. That’s the type of people they are. 

You know that song that goes something like: “if you like pina coladas?” When I asked about what pina caladas were when I was a small child, my parents informed me that I had really just misheard the song. It actually goes “if you like cheese enchiladas?” It took me years to realize they were just messing with me.

It should not really be that big surprise, therefore, to the intelligent reader that I did not know any cuss words by the second grade. My friends at the time, future sweatervest wearers if I’ve ever seen any, were, in retrospect, slightly merciless in exploiting my lack of knowledge.

I was, and still am, the type of kid that loved an intellectual challenge. Any sort of problem where the solution had to be logiced out was my forte. I would twist any sort of problem into a logic problem if I could. When my friends asked me “Hey, Quinn. What does s-h-i-t spell?”, I naturally automatically took this problem solving approach. The word hit was in the word so the possibility of the mysterious word being pronounced ssss-hit (like a snake hissing and then hit, as in hitting a field goal or something like that) came to mind. Of course, as an english word that really doesn’t sound all that likely. I discarded the possibility. I moved on to the more likely option. Pronouncing the word like ship just with a t instead of a p at the end. 

Proud of what could only be considered my ridiculously massive intellect, I proceeded to shout my brilliant deduction for the entire room to admire. At first, I thought that the sudden silence that swept over the classroom was the result of a pause to stop and properly admire incredible cleverness, the kind of momentary silence and awe anyone with any math feelings at all feels when they hear that e^i(pi)=-1 for the first time. Gradually, however, it became clear to me that the silence was not, in fact, the awe inspired kind but the fear-for-your-life kind. As I was about to find out, our particular elementary school teacher had a zero tolerance policy when it came to curse words. All my friends suddenly gave me a wide berth, frantically indicating to the approaching teacher that I was the miscreant in question.

Suffice to say that I was then subjected to such un-eighth-amendment-protected punishment that even the Count of Monte Cristo would wince. I’ve since repressed the memory and I don’t think that even Freud could pull it out. What I do remember is that after the miserable day I went home, prepared for even more punishment. It was great trepidation that I gloomily informed my parents of my undoubtedly monumental lapse of moral judgement. When I finished, my Dad chuckled and responded in a way that, in retrospect was quite characteristic.

“Don’t worry about it too much, Quinn. Shit happens.”

We all have that one friend. The person who seems to spend all of his or her time dedicated to coming up with the most random possible statements and actions to completely baffle all onlookers. 

My current college friend who most fits the quick vignette that I just sketched up with my dazzling picture of exactly 30 words is named Kyle. He’s a fairly cool dude, but horribly random. He really likes Chipotle. Seriously. I cannot emphasize enough how much he loves Chipotle. That’s his most reliable feature. He once made a big fuss about how he needed, absolutely needed, some gummy bears. At the bookstore, he was about to purchase his gummy bears when the lady at the cash register glumly reported that the machine was having one of those pesky malfunctions and wasn’t accepting cards. Kyle disappointedly walked away, then with great gusto turned around and cried “WAIT! I have a backup! Cash.” With the gummy bears securely in his possession he proceeded to give the bag of gummy bears to the first person we met in the UC, insisting that they really looked like they needed some gummy bears. Frankly, I thought like I really looked like I needed some gummy bears too. Kyle, apparently, did not share my belief.

I will now do my best to quote verbatim my next example of his randomness: “Or El Jaber to do my best at pronouncing algebra in it’s original spanish. That’s right. The Spanish invented algebra. In the 1980s, actually, in an long term, complex, and ultimately successful ploy to end the cold war.” I have absolutely no idea how that paragraph can flow so smoothly off anyone’s tongue.

I have to wonder whether the randomness comes naturally to him or whether he actually sits in his room counting rice with chopsticks while trying to ponder up what his next unexpected action will be. It seems like such spontaneous actions could not really be planned in advance or else they would lose their spontaneous flavor. Planning spontaneous actions is one of those ideas that always ends up backfiring and leading people to suspect that you’re a secret communist agent, like wearing camouflage in the middle of the city or discreetly trying to rock a sweatervest. No one can rock a sweatervest, regardless of discreetness. But his actions seem so consistently random that it’s hard to believe there’s not some sore of secret conspiracy towards chaos in his comments. My hypothesis of the moment is that he comes up with his randomness on the spot but does aim for the incongruous.

This stands in opposition to my random friend from high school, Sameer. Sameer never seemed to be trying for random. Sameer, like Kyle, was and is a genius. With this geniushood seemed to come a complete disregard for the normal flow of life around him. This is a man who managed to fall asleep on the New York subway and have his glasses stolen. Not his wallet. His glasses. And when he reported this back to us as one of the highlights of his spring break it really didn’t sound like anything that unusual for him.

Of course, the quintessential example of Sameer’s obliviously random style came when he decided it was time for his body to take care of some natural processes. “I have to go to the restroom” he declared loudly in the middle of a precal lecture. No hand up to warn the teacher a comment was forthcoming. No sign at all that he’d been even the slightest bit interested in doing anything but napping until that moment. But now he wanted to go the restroom. And he was letting everyone know. Our teacher halted her lecture on sines and cosines. She was a fairly laid back teacher and it wasn’t like she would deny people the need to relieve themselves. Of course, Sameer didn’t wait for any affirmation that his need could, in fact, be fulfilled. Approximately two tenths of a second after his proclamation, Sameer launched himself out of his seat and headed with surprisingly impressive speed and dexterity for the door.  The teacher came close to grips with what was happening at about the moment Sameer stepped out of the classroom into the hallway. “Wait! He needs a restroom pass!” was all she could manage to say. But it was too late. Sameer was gone. At least so we thought. About a minute later he showed up at the door. “So. Where exactly is the restroom?” The teacher, still in a bit of a daze, pointed him in the right direction and furnished him with the highly valued restroom pass. Needless to say, any potential learning that could’ve happened that day ceased. 

All I can say is that whatever my future holds, it better involve at least one random person. To all the random people who have made my life more interesting, I would like to offer multiple thanks and a happy holidays to all.

Life must be hard as a genius.

People tell me this all the time. After a few encounters with the statement, I have deemed it to be meant sarcastically. The person usually states it after I voice a minor disappointment in myself with only getting a mid-level A on the latest test. They seem to be under the impression that if my mid-level A was bestowed upon them, then suddenly their life would rise above the congealed mass of melodramatic, overly abbreviated texting that has, up until the genius lottery graciously smiled on them, consumed their existences. But these people don’t understand.

It is hard to be a genius.

Imagine, if you can, the following scenario. You walk into an Apple Store because you have time to kill in a mall and the Apple store seems much more interesting to you than all the clothing stores that seem to dominate most malls. Clothing stores have a bad habit of selling unsightly fashion items like sweatervests and ignoring such basic fashion staples as NASA tshirts. While perusing the rows of shiny white i[fill in gadget name heres] you note a poster advertising how you, yes you, can see a certified Apple Genius in the back. This is exciting. It’s rare and quite refreshing for a genius to find such openly advertised camaraderie. Now imagine you talk to an Apple “Genius.” Rather than discussing the more interesting intellectual issues of the day, the smartest statement you manage to cajole from the unwilling interviewee is that they’re really choked up about Steve Jobs dying. Like really choked up. Seriously. You should’ve seen this guy. He was acting like Steve Jobs was his father or some Star Wars crap like that.

How would this make you feel?

The answer, if you’re truly a genius, should be obvious: pretty annoyed. You’ve just wasted your valuable conversation time on some ridiculously fortunate store clerk who couldn’t even appreciate the caliber of luck they just experienced. The least they could do is ask for an autograph because it’ll be worth something later. Even the slowest of waitresses usually get that idea after I pay with my debit card. 

Still not convinced that it’s difficult to be a genius? Consider the following:

You want to ironically use the word esoteric in a sentence. But apparently the word esoteric is too much for your audience’s twitter-based, #hashtag mangled vocabulary. First, you have to explain what the word means. Then you have to explain why you meant it in an ironic fashion. Then you have to explain that knowing a word like esoteric does not make you a hipster. Or a dweeb, depending on the level of audience you’re presenting to. By time all this is done, the humor of the highly clever irony you pieced together is lost on the audience and you have to spend a whole three seconds crafting another insanely clever wordplay.

Or people expect you to be google. Seriously. There’s someone out there who doesn’t know what esoteric means and is increasingly impatiently waiting for me to explain. Well I’ll do it for you this one time. But seriously. http://bit.ly/v8tEGj

I just want people to know that when they tell me, or any of their local geniuses, “it must be hard to be a genius” they’re not making a hilarious joke. They’re making a sadly accurate statement on society. Think about it. As much as your non-genius level brain can muster.

Ok. That’s all. You can go back to your texting and scones and stuff.