Get out your camera!

It's fall. Time to take a step back and appreciate something that has probably become purely mundane to you, the seasoned Pittsburgh resident. There's something in your everyday life this time of year that, if you can take your eyes off the back of the Buick keeping you 10 miles per hour below the speed limit for long enough, is purely stunning to behold.

Sometimes, when I'm on my couch with my Powerbook slowly cooking my thighs while I refresh Facebook for the thousandth futile time, I feel like I live in one of the most boring parts of the country. My friends are busy, I've got nothing to do for free and as a student no money to do anything else, and using Facebook is doing its job as the greatest demotivating factor in my life. In these situations, usually I just rot on my couch for a while, but if my restlessness grows strong enough, during the Fall I've got another option.

Because even though it may feel like this is one of the most boring places in the country (and if you really think that you've never been to Upper-Peninsula Michigan [and neither have I, but come on, what happens there?]) this is also one of the most beautiful places in the country. It's true! Don't believe me? Look:
We live in the "Perfect Storm" for autumn beauty. Pittsburgh has expansive rural areas within a short distance of town, hilly terrain that affords occasional breathtaking views (including proximity to a major mountain range), almost exclusively deciduous forests, and fall weather that is tolerable enough to actually go out and enjoy it.

If you're bored one day, take a drive out to the Laurel Highlands. As you're going out Route 22 or 30 to the east of the city, you'll notice the ridge in the distance. Once you get there (it's farther away than you think, because it's pretty big,) just get off the highway and get lost in the windy mountain roads. While you're there you're sure to happen upon some gorgeous places. Go to any of the tons of parks that are part of the Laurel Highlands area. Some of them afford incredible views of absolutely groovy scenery. Load up your digital camera and come back unable to decide which of the images you want to put on your Desktop.

If you want to stay closer to home, there are some areas inside Pittsburgh that also afford these opportunities. A local favorite is Allegheny Cemetery. An oasis of calm and trees right next to Lawrenceville, the Cemetery offers tons of photography opportunities. Some of the areas in Oakland around the Cathedral of Learning aren't bad either. And there's also Schenley Park.

So I guess my point is if you're bored on one of these chilly Fall days, don't let the weather get you down. Grab your coat and your camera and possibly a friend, and go have an adventure.

URGENT BULLETIN: PITTSBURGH IS STILL IN THE NORTH

And 1865 was 144 years ago.

Confused? What I'm trying to say is that this:is racist.

A problem not generally associated with "Pittsburgh: the City of," the Confederate Flag thing is spreading in the lower-middle-class suburbs like AIDS in a room full of Catholic nymphomaniac heroin addicts. The people of rural and suburban SWPA (Southwestern Pennsylvania) are just eating it up! That's why I think it's important to post here a little review of some basic facts.

• Pennsylvania is north of the Mason-Dixon line. This means that we were a Union state back in the Civil War. If you live here, you're a "northerner."
• The last time the Confederate Flag was relevant to any existing political body (aside from some state governments) was 1865. That year, a surrender was signed at Appomattox Courthouse and the Confederate States of America was dissolved.
  
• The Civil Rights movement already happened. Our president (like him or not) is half-black. Racial equality isn't here yet, unfortunately, but racism itself is generally accepted by society as one of the most loathsome qualities a citizen of our fair country can have. That is to say, it doesn't make you look so good.

There is no clear, compelling reason that publicly celebrating institutionalized racism should be even remotely acceptable. Of course, some would have you think that they display the "rebel flag" because they support states' rights and decentralized government. Sadly, Johnny Reb, this also hasn't been relevant to the United States government for over 100 years. It's not a debate anymore. Hamilton and the Federalists won, albeit many years after their deaths, and the end result is that the federal government has the power to override just about anything the states do. And have you seen most state governments anyway? Especially our very own. The corruption is simply astronomical. If you want a strong nation (especially militarily, which seems to be important to you redneck types), then you want power to be more centralized than it might be under the Confederate ideal.

This idea of "The South will rise again!" is purely, simply, bullshit. That is, feces that come from a big ol' cow. There is no sense to it, it's got no relevance whatsoever to today's world, and the sentiment should be punishable by a hard smack to the back of the head. We are one nation, and to wish anything else is as counterproductive an un-American as you can get. If you really "support the troops" and if you really are as patriotic as you think you are, then you should probably not advocate the destruction of your own country. Duh.

And how do you think it feels to be a black person and see people proudly and prominently displaying the symbol of your own oppression? I don't roll around with a big "I'd like to enslave everyone who's been to a truck pull!" flag on my Civic. Why? Because it's asinine and I'm sure truck pulls are actually pretty entertaining.

Put them away. If you're reading this and you have a Confederate Flag on display somewhere, really, truly think about why you have it there and what its impact might be. Sure, it's your right, but I'd like to think that most people are good and most people who do that just aren't thinking about what the actual implications are. If you're really from the South, I'm sure there are better ways of expressing your pride in it. If you're actually from Pittsburgh then how about a big ol' Stillers flag? There's no harm in that.

Gee... twenty?

It says "G20 Leaders: Think of the Bears."

No, it doesn't have anything to do with Mattresses.

Last post, for those of you who were paying attention, I mentioned the Mattress Factory.

When I'm on the road, staring at the back of a Buick whose elderly driver in a fit of senile dementia forgot how to press down with her right foot, and I'm cursing my unwilling status as a citizen of this region, I just think about the Mattress Factory and I realize it's not all that bad. And a large elderly population is a problem that solves itself anyway. (Too mean? I'm sorry. I love my grandparents dearly and they're local, but seriously, we need to give away some old people or something.)

Every time I ask someone if they want to go with me to the Mattress Factory their first question is "Why would I ever care about how they make mattresses?" Then I dig my grave even deeper by saying "Oh, it's nothing to do with mattresses at all. It's a modern art installation museum."

Lame! That's what you're thinking. You just pictured a collection of pretentious, beret-sporting hipsters talking about their avant-garde use of the rectangle and the color orange. And they don't even know how to name their museum! Maybe we should just go to the Warhol instead.

Don't you dare. Warhol's massively overrated (My piano teacher was in his graduating class. She said he was an asshole.) and the Mattress Factory could easily be one of the coolest places in Pittsburgh.

Have you ever been at the mall, trying on something a little fancier than what you normally wear, and looked into one of those mirrors that shows your body from different angles? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in a room that has walls and ceilings consisting only of mirrors, watching reflections extend into infinity in all directions? Well, for a student rate of $7, you can experience this along with a bunch of other exhibits that offer experiences you'll never find at any other museum. It will leave you, even as someone who couldn't name a contemporary artist if you tried, with the sensation that you're having a great time.

Another great thing about the MF is that is has great value as a place to which you can return over and over. Only one out of five floors has exhibits that remain the same year-round. Every few months, the rest of the exhibits change. It's because the Mattress Factory is actually an organization that gives residencies to some of the best up-and-coming artists in the country (sometimes world) and allows them to create their projects and display them for a while, before cycling in a new group. Even the permanent exhibits are great to return to with Mattress Factory virgins, because it's hilarious to watch them try to figure out exactly what's going on (like one piece, which appears to be a purple square projected onto the wall, but turns out to be an open hole into another room when you get closer to it.)

So go there. Do it this weekend. It's on the Northside... you can google the directions from the address they provide on their site. You were just going to go get drunk on the Southside again anyway, and you can just do this beforehand. Unless you're an absolutely uninspired lump of sod, you'll enjoy it. And you're not. Nobody is.

What do we make here?

Fellow Pittsburghers, crisis has been averted. The large glowing orb in the sky that threatened us with good spirits and the capacity to enjoy some time outside has again returned behind the much more familiar shroud of grey clouds. We were at risk of having what some might call "nice weather" but fortunately the rain has returned. I'm sure you almost forgot where you were. I almost did, too.

A friend of mine who lives out in Robinson Township found this a while ago. It's some 54-year-old Pittsburgher's rant about everything he hates about the Pittsburgh area. It may be one of the most negative things I've ever read, and I personally disagree with some aspects of it, but there are other parts of it that make me want to say "H'ayyyyyyymen, brothah! Go an' tell it from the mountain-ah!" Like my favorite line from the whole rant, a rare gem because this fellow doesn't really have much expertise in terms of composition, where he says "Downright mind-numbing DEPRESSION is the only product manufactured [here.]"

And it's true, of course. We're second only to Seattle for rainfall. We fall just behind Buffalo for cloudy days. If you're the kind of person who thrives on sunny days, this is not a great place to be. In fact, this is a mind-numbingly depressing place to be in that regard. But what I really love about this statement is the way it combines this truth with the other shameful truth of the area. Once we were a powerhouse of economic production, but now we're just another shamed rust-belt relic, our population deflated and our factories closed. Pittsburgh is not depressing just because of the weather, but because it's a poignant reminder that our best days are currently behind us, as far as we know. It's a reminder that we live in a country that doesn't make much of anything anymore. It is a monument to the absolute unsustainability of American society. While the mainstream media tells us to be "self-reliant" (after all, anything else is Socialism, don't'cha know?) we live in a country that is the exact opposite of self-reliant. But I digress. (That's right, I used a cliché. Can you handle that?)

I sort of take issue with the author of this rant, though, when he says in effect that the art scene in Pittsburgh is weak at best. It's simply not true... for the scale of our city, we have an unusual profusion of arts organizations. The Mattress Factory for example... There are also tons of theatre organizations, and the Pittsburgh music scene has produced a lot of bands that have gone on to be famous.

I guess what this guy proves in the end is that it's very easy to get and hold a negative impression of our fair city. At first blush it does appear purely terrible. The weather is awful, and if you don't already have friends here, good luck finding something to do. The idea of transportation here is staring at the back of a Buick that's never seen top gear under the able command of someone who should have had his license revoked 10 years ago when he turned 80 and cursing the day you were born. And if you don't have a car, good luck getting anywhere. Like the Pirate's code was to Captain Barbossa, the Port Authority's schedule is more like "guidelines" and you can easily find yourself stranded in a place where you can't walk anywhere you might be able to stay.

But if you dig a bit, there are little pockets of groovitude all around. Especially if you like to eat... And no, I'm not talking about the culinary abomination that is Primanti's... I'm talking about places like Tram's Kitchen (awesome and inexpensive Vietnamese food) or the Silk Elephant or Max's Allegheny Tavern or any of the little Pita carts that hang around Oakland. There are some awesome museums, bike and walking trails everywhere, and the surrounding area has some of the most beautiful scenery in the United States, if I do say so myself, especially in Fall. Look in the City Paper or the Post Gazette (Don't read the Trib... it pollutes your mind. I think it's part of our area's problem, actually.) and you'll find pages of events and activities and things to do.

So that's where I'll leave you now, because that's the sort of thing I'll be talking about in the future. Until next time.

(Oh, yeah, that guy who's the devil, that's Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune Review. If you see him, say something nasty to him for me.)

"I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names..."

It's what my blog is saying to you right now... If you leave a comment, it'll remember, but otherwise I'm afraid this blog will forget your name. Don't be too offended. Google's servers will have logged your IP address, so there will be some token of having met you still there, but names just don't stick the same way.

You've happened upon a blog which I intend to use for a few purposes. Probably the most important of those purposes is the one that gets me a nice pretty "A" on my transcripts to make this final semester look good enough that anyone who's looking at said transcripts doesn't flip back into the dark days of yore where "D"s, withdrawals, and potentially dragons reside.

But there are other purposes. After all, to do a good enough job to make that shiny "A" appear, I'd have to care at least a little bit about what I was doing. I'm going to try to care more than a little bit, even. I've been doing this internet-writing thing for a while now, which means I probably enjoy it, so I'd like to continue doing so here and now.

But I've never needed a topic before. It used to be, all I had to do was make something funny. Go to Clunkline.com. It's not all mine, but it's funny, and some of it is mine. It's also often horridly offensive. By nature of my personality, this blog will probably end up being that way whether or not I intended it to. Especially given the topic I've chosen.

"Dave, I'm very impressed by how much you like to talk about yourself, but what's the topic you've chosen?" Is that what you were thinking? Probably not. But for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume you were asking that question.

This blog aspires to be a catalog of the musings, experiences, and discoveries of a young person trying to keep his head above the sea of elderly folk so he can breathe without choking on Ben Gay, Pall Mall smoke, and conservatism. It's not going to be all about old people, though, that's just one distinguishing feature of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Greater Pittsburgh, if you will).

The point is, I was born in Monroeville. I grew up in the shadow of the USX tower, but I've also lived in Wuhan, China, and Jersey (the new one, not the island in the English Channel), which gives me some perspective on the area but still makes me, both proudly and tragically, a Pittsburgher. And that's exactly it: I need a catharsis for this horrid ambivalence I've got toward my hometown. And I'm going to try to do it in a way that helps other young people here try to ignore that feeling being surrounded by dying people and a dying economy and get a new lease on this place we call "home."

So, you two have been introduced. I'm not sure why I've written this introductory post, because it'll just end up buried under a mountain of posts the same way Khrushchev said the Soviet Union would bury our amber waves of grain, purple mountains' majesty, etc., but here it stands, a monument to inutility and an excuse to write a post without needing any real content.

Five Things （五个东西）

 So... it was difficult for me to think of five things that I really truly like.  I'm one of those people who has a terrible habit of thinking too much about things he doesn't like.  Regardless, here's a list, followed by a few pros and cons for each one.

China: Mentioned this in my last post.  Pros: I really truly do like it and I spend a lot of time thinking about it and doing things that are related to it.  My girlfriend is even Chinese (though she's obviously in the states right now).  Cons: I spend a lot of time talking about it already, people are probably sick of hearing about it from me, and I don't even know what I'd write about given that topic.

Curry: I love to cook, and almost any cuisine that can be defined as a curry is something I find incredibly delicious, to the point where sometimes it gives me a mild euphoria.  Pros: I absolutely and unequivocally love curry, and it's even something about which I'd like to learn more.  Cons: Seems like it'd be a boring topic, analyzing different mixtures of spices and recipes.  Not very reader-friendly, too much of a niche topic that can't be easily adapted to inspire interest in others.

Tea: I've been drinking various good loose teas and sampling different kinds of tea for more than 5 years.  A lot of people say "I'm into tea" and it means they've bought a box of teabags that doesn't say "Red Rose" on it.  When I say "I'm into tea" it means I've tried many different varieties from many different places and can describe to you the characteristics of most of them.  I'm still not an expert, but I'm more serious about it than the people who just do it because it's trendy.  Pros: It's a comfort drink, people love hearing about things like that, and it can be tied into life in a lot of ways to keep the subject matter interesting.  Cons: There are almost as many blogs about tea online as there are pictures of people's cats.  Not original.  

Driving: Some people view driving as a chore, a necessary evil to get where they're going.  I see driving as a place for me to gain the benefits of solitude, freedom, and on rare occasions adrenaline.  I've put almost 50,000 miles on my car since November 2007, and taken it such places as Ottawa, Charleston, SC, Montréal, the Outer Banks, and Boston.  I also have very strong opinions about how other people drive, and what they drive.  And I will not drive a car with less than three pedals unless I must.  Pros: I do it every day, it's a big part of my life, almost anyone can identify with it.  I also have a lot of opinions about it.  Cons: I think a lot of the things I'd say would either offend people or be considered really trivial.  

Having a love-hate relationship with Western Pennsylvania: I've lived here all but two years and two months of my life, and being a young person here presents a lot of challenges.  It makes it a pretty terrible place to be, in a lot of ways.  Even so, the Pittsburgh area also has a lot of hidden pockets of greatness that makes me horridly ambivalent about the whole area.  Pros: There's a lot of material for this, because our region is such an idiosyncratic one.  I also think about it a lot, and talk about it a lot, so I'd develop ideas for it well.  Cons: There's a lot of potential for the blog to be a big ball of negativity on the internet.  Even though I call it a "love-hate" relationship, my main impetus is to get the hell out of here, and that could easily shine through in my writing to the point where it wouldn't be fun to read anymore.

All about who?

It's difficult for someone like me to answer such a broad question as "Think of something you absolutely love." I always have trouble unequivocally declaring my love for just about anything: There are always good sides and bad sides to any thing or concept. It's the reason I will never get a tattoo. There is nothing in this world that I love so much that I would get it permanently inked into my body... I'm always changing my mind about things and I'd be a sure candidate for tattoo regret. Even the few things I am pretty serious about liking are things that aren't easily defined and would generally make terrible blog topics. For instance, I strongly believe in trimming unnecessary complexity out of any system. This demonstrates itself in a few ways (I refuse to own a car with an automatic transmission or power windows, for instance), none of which lend themselves to any sort of reading that anybody but myself would enjoy. Who wants to hear about the inefficiency of the torque converter when most people would just rather be able to talk on the phone while they drive? It's the kind of thing you only mention to someone when asked.

Even so, about this time last year something crept into my life that has changed almost everything about that life since I first started paying any attention to it. I can't promise it will be the topic of my blog in the end (in fact, it almost certainly will not), but it is definitely a large part of my life nonetheless.  

It started sometime in Spring semester of 2008. I was putting together my schedule for the next Fall, happily avoiding Algebra and Public Speaking and all of those classes that I had been avoiding for the past three years but knew would inevitably become my bane during my last semester (which, incidentally, is what they are now doing). Instead of getting one of those requirements out of the way, my eye was struck by one of the options in the "new classes" section of the catalog. For the first time ever, UPG was offering Chinese. Given my easily-obtained fluency in French, I figured Chinese would be a great grade booster and a path to 5 credits of easy As for me. So, I chose to enroll in the class more or less entirely on a whim.  

The beginning of the Fall semester rolled around after a dull summer which included (in no particular order) a pretty serious breakup, an introduction to generalized anxiety disorder, and a lot of work.  

Needless to say, the beginning of the school year and the return of all my college friends to Greensburg, my reluctantly-accepted home year-round was very, very welcome when it came.  

The beginning of Chinese class itself was not especially thrilling, but as I grew more familiar with the basics of the language, the learning process was captivating and enjoyable. Despite the relatively early hour of the class, I found myself driven to show up to it.  Sometime during the next semester, a lady came and gave us a presentation on some study abroad program. The idea of traveling interested me a lot, but it was difficult for me to find the opportunity to do so because of my living situation. Still, her presentation got me into the idea of figuring out how to actually go about doing so. I got really excited about the program she was offering (which just proves that she was a good salesperson), but upon further research I discovered that that particular program was absurdly expensive. Undaunted, I looked into other options and eventually settled on the Pitt in China program through our fair university.What I then found out almost killed my ambitions immediately. Evidently, the application deadline was over a month ago. Still, though I considered it a long shot, I called the study abroad office to see if I could squeeze myself in.  As it turns out, earlier the exact same day that I called, someone had dropped from the program. If I believed in fate, fortune, or anything like that, this would have confirmed my belief.  After a lot of e-mails and paperwork, I finally got to travel. I'm going to truncate things a bit here because I'm really running out of steam on the whole thing. Suffice to say that the two months during which I lived in Wuhan were, despite a violent and confusing breakup (with the same girl as the summer before [fool me once...]) and constant diarrhea, two of the best months of my life. It was an absolutely unparalleled experience that really solidified a lot of plans that were prior to that ephemeral dreams in my head. The bustle of progress surrounding me gave me the undeniable sense that I had to return to that place. While I was there, I began to research exactly how I could do that, and the results of that research govern my plans for the future to this day.  Despite all of this, though the subject may creep into other things about which I blog, China will almost definitely not be the topic of my blog for this class. I don't know what I'd write about it and I still don't have enough authority on it to really write something useful about it.