This is one of my favorite quotes, courtesy of Edith Wharton:

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time."

I think by most people's standards, I'm actually pretty hard-working.
I have a fancy college degree, a nice programming job, and biking
across America under my belt. But I have no ambition to accrue lots of
wealth, or become a respected leader of a field, or to radically
innovate, or otherwise leave my mark. I don't even want to travel to
gain new perspectives or become a true citizen of the globe or what
the hell ever. It all sounds so tiring and uncertain, and slavish to
other people's notions of "good." Too much trying to be somebody
impossible, rather than doing the things that are possible for me.

If you've ever read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy,
you'll recall that some of the characters have a supernatural animal
companion, called a daemon, that represents their soul's true nature.
For example, people with bird daemons are free and independent, and
dog daemons signify a loyal and social personality. My daemon would
probably be a cow, ambling about and eating grass wherever he found
it. That cow is content.

There once was a magnificent wombat,
Who was both fierce, and peerless in combat,
He dueled George Byron
With a sharp piece of iron,
But the wombat now lies in pace requiescat.

Go ahead and lie. Lie to your mother about when you're going to visit.
Lie to your boss about how long this new project is going to take. Lie
with your purchases about how much you really have in your bank
account. Go ahead--lie to the whole damn world.

But leave one person out of those lies--yourself. Don't believe your
own lies. If you aren't visiting your mother because you hate her,
admit it to yourself--don't blame it on being busy. If you told your
boss that report would take twice as long as it actually would, don't
justify it by thinking of how you've been overworked recently. Just
admit it--you're being vindictive. And when you're blowing money on a
pricey vacation, face yourself in the mirror and say, "I'm doing it to
keep up with the Joneses, not because I've really dreamed of going to
Bali all my life."

Never lie to yourself. The first cause and first solution to every
problem in your life is you. And if you never have the courage to
admit to yourself when you are lying, you'll be getting in your own
way for the rest of your life.

And no matter how old you are, "the rest of your life" is a very long time.

Before I turn 25, I would like to be able to do:

1. A cartwheel.
2. A handstand.
3. A backflip.
4. If I'm really ambitious, a forward flip.

10 minutes per sketch, charcoal.

I think at this point in my life, I'm actually better at drawing than
programming. The difference being that finally, I feel like I know
what I'm doing when I'm drawing a person--not 100%, but enough,
and I still don't quite know when I'm programming. 

Some people think Burning Man is magical. Not just good, excellent
fun, but life-altering magic. I met one woman who said she felt like
it was the one time every year she got to be her true self. The vast
majority of the thirty or so folks I met were repeat offenders, with
some having a history of debauchery lasting over a decade. And of
those few first-timers I did find, they all wanted to come back next
year, except me. I was worried for a while that my inner child was
finally dead.

But I don't think it's true that my inner child is dead. I think the
reason Burning Man doesn't impress me as some kind of mecca of
tolerance and awesome is because it is really easy to be nice and
friendly when the likelihood of long-term conflict is low, and when
everyone has enough stuff. It's easy to be open and relaxed around
someone who isn't going to be around in a week. If you knew they were
going to be a part of your life for the next five years, you'd have to
be much more on guard about not saying anything offensive, and
carefully managing their perception of what might offend you. Think of
how when you're meeting a boyfriend or girlfriend's parents--if you
have any hope that your relationship will last, you will be on your
best behavior, and very, very careful around those potential in-laws.

That it's easy to be kind when you have enough stuff to live
comfortably, is a point so obvious it should go without my needing to
provide an example.

So. Believing, as I do, that the wildness of expression and unusual friendliness
of burners is due to the luxuries of transience and abundance--well, it's like I just
unraveled the rainbow.

So rock on, Burning Man. You are a wild, wild party, but magic--you are not.

I was using a lot of bandages, thanks to a freak allergic reaction to
a golden retriever. I would like to take this opportunity to endorse
the finest bandages I have found so far. I don't know who the
manufacturer is, but more people should imitate them.

You'd think it's simple, right? A simple square of gauze stuck onto a
piece of tape. How could one bandage be better than another?

They certainly can. The inferior bandages have tape exposed around all
edges of the bandage. If you have a wound that is a little bit longer
than the piece of gauze, you'll have tape sticking to your raw,
painful scab.

The best bandages only expose gauze on two sides--the sides you
actually need to tape down the gauze.

Clearly, these excellent bandages were devised by some poor fellow who
gets a lot of papercuts.

I was shocked, shocked the other night! One of my friends, a very nice 

Chinese girl, was cold, so one of our white friends offered her a 

jacket. She asked him if it was washed and in a plastic bag. He said 

no. She and I recoiled in horror, and he responded merely with 

confusion. This incident finally showed me that a very wide cultural 

gulf exists between Asia and the United States. For the sake of racial 

harmony, I have taken it upon myself to describe The Rules of Asian 

Hygiene. Here they are: 

 

1. Dirt is invisible. It could be germs, it could be carcinogenic 

chemicals, or merely particles of yick that are too small to see. Just 

because it looks clean, doesn't mean it is. 

 

2. There is no three second rule. If it hits the floor, it is dirty. 

You must rinse it or throw it away, as appropriate. 

 

3. Plastic grocery bags are considered clean, if harvested directly 

from a grocery store, and stored inside a grocery bag whose interior 

has also been determined to be clean. 

 

4. Rinsing with water is sufficient to purify most items. Lysol and 

rubbing alcohol should also be employed as necessary in more extreme 

circumstances. However, dirt magically accumulates as a function of 

time if the item has been exposed to air, so you must either seal your 

things with a plastic bag, or periodically wash them. 

 

5. Your own stuff is usually clean for your own consumption, but you 

cannot use other people's things unless they have been thoroughly 

purified. 

 

6. Food must be as clean as possible, but it counts as dirt if it 

touches something that isn't your mouth. For example, dropping a piece 

of watermelon sullies both the watermelon with the dirt from the 

floor, and the floor with watermelon juice. 

 

Now that you are familiar with the ground rules, you have the context 

to understand certain Asian customs. 

 

1. Shoes off before you enter a house. Don't track dirt inside! Who 

cares if it wasn't muddy? Remember: dirt is invisible! Truly hardcore 

Asian families will tear up the carpet and replace them with hardwood 

floors so it's easier to clean and see dirt. 

 

2. Shower at night, not in the morning. You'll be sleeping in your own dirt. 

 

Still having trouble understanding? See if you can spot the error in 

the following scenario: 

 

Belinda's white friend Leonard offers her an orange. It has been 

unpeeled. He didn't wash his hands before offering it to her, and, 

instead of handing it to her, he puts it on the table for her to pick 

up. What rules of Asian hygiene were broken? 

 

Answer: Since he didn't wash his hands, and 

hands constantly accumulate dirt as described in rule 4, he contaminated the

range, thus breaking rule 6. By not throwing away the orange, Leonard also 

broke rule 2. The juice of the orange has also 

contaminated the table, again by rule 6, thus forcing Belinda to go through 

the extra trouble of finding a damp rag to clean the table off with. What an

inconsiderate boy! 

 

Now that you have read The Rules and seen a real-world example, it 

should be easy for you to identify what went so horribly wrong with 

our white friend's well-intentioned proffering of his jacket. It was a 

tragic trampling of rules 4 and 5; a particularly egregious example. 

You really can't make this shit up. 

 

And with this modest contribution to cross-cultural understanding and 

harmony between the East and the West, I am going to bed.

 

"Here, Jane. This is proof that you're not a bastard!"

I jogged into the park, comforted by the sight of all the blue
armbands. 8:19. I'm 11 minutes early. A promising start, and I hadn't
even seen any chasers on the way--just huge clumps of blue runners.

Standing across from the gleaming stainless steel statue of Saint
Sandwich Day, were a woman in a white lab coat and a hippie with
dreadlocks--could this get any more classically San
Francisco?--surrounded by blue runners. So that was the place to get
stamped.

I waited in line, and when it was my turn, I patiently held out my
map. The hippie turned a stone face to me, and said, "So. What have
you done?"

Done? I'd already jogged more in ten minutes than I had in the whole
past year; wasn't that enough for him? "What do I have to do?"

He nodded towards the woman in the lab coat. "For her. It's her
birthday, you know."

Black-framed, square glasses, curly hair, something that looked like
tie-dye underneath the coat, and a big friendly smile. Fashionably
unfashionable, probably had friends who went to Burning Man even if
she didn't go herself. Handling this one would require great irony.

"Well," I said. "I'm so sorry I didn't bring you a present, but I just
wanted to let you know what a huge honor it is getting a stamp from
you. It's a very generous and giving gesture of you to be giving out
stamps instead of getting presents on your birthday, but I could tell
by looking at you what a giver you are. It would be so nice to get a
stamp from a generous lady like you."

She giggled. "You're good at this!" I got my stamp. It was very nicely
aligned within the box it was supposed to go.

Success! Even if I got tagged before the next checkpoint, I was going
to squeeze fun from this game, every way I could.