I spoke with my uncle Jon by way of the telephone the other week. Jon is in remarkable shape these days and he gave the secret to his cardiovascular success. Jumping Rope. So in an attempt to whip myself into shape, I went out and purchased such a devise. I've been at it for a couple of weeks now and I'm glad to report that, as of right now, I am jumping rope with skills that rank somewhere between an amateur heavyweight boxer and a ten year old school girl. Luckily for our readers, I'm able to take you through one of my workouts using the miracle of time lapse photography. Check it out.



0:15 Into the Workout


0:30 Into the Workout


0:35 Into the Workout. Full Recovery!


0:45 Into the Workout


One Minute into the Workout


1:15 Into the Workout


Wrapping it up. Time for cooldown.

Just a quick posting to sate all of your voyeuristic appetites for information. I've been working at A New Leaf (to answer your question: no, they couldn't come up with a worse name). This company has three inpatient treatment centers that reeducate sex offenders. It's my job to be with our clients with two or three others staff like myself (which is to say bitter and with their minds elsewhere) after the clients finish school and until they go to bed. A New Leaf runs its own charter school since these boys aren't quite cut out for public school at the moment. However, they made an interesting move with the high school mascot. They went with an absraction for a mascot, much like the Mountain Pointe Pride. They are the A New Leaf Frottage. A bold move, but it speaks true.

Kaaryn, Salem, and I spent Christmas in Snowflake with her family. She is going to be there with Salem until New Years day. So, sorry, no new pictures to be clapperclawed by the blogging masses. I say that with the utmost affection. But I do have a video of Christmas dinner at the Brimhall house. I shot it on my cell phone, so it might be hard to recognize everyone. Enjoy.

I would like to begin this post by congratulating myself for graduating from ASU. I would like to continue at this point by thanking myself for my congratulations.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Matt,” you’re thinking, “is it really a big deal to graduate from the only university that won’t allow student to take finals if they’re wearing pants?” It’s better than you think. For that, good reader, is a half truth. I believe that Vassar has the same policy.

I thought that I would share a list of my favorite works I’ve read while studying literature at ASU as a recommendation to anyone looking for something good to read and as evidence to anyone who doesn’t believe I did any work. I’ll go with my five favorites in tidy genres. These aren’t necessarily my favorite works, just my favorites that I’ve studied in class. Also, I’ve no doubt forgot some stuff that belongs on the list, since I did this off the top of my head. Bonus: If you can name the mistake I made upwards of fifteen times in the following list, you become a blog superstar. FYI: most of this stuff can be found free online if you Google the title.

Poems:

5. “Luke Havergal” by EA Robinson
Much like Theodore Roosevelt, I love this poem and have little idea what it is actually about. It just sounds great.

4.“Dream song #1” by John Berryman
“Hard on the shore wears the strong sea/ And empty grows every bed” Beautiful poem, sad poem.

3. “The Bee Box” by Sylvia Plath
What does society do to the individual? What does the individual do with society?

2. “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
Wonderfully recounts the horrors of war with its attendant ideologies.

1. “The Waste Land” by TS Eliot
It’s not nonsense. I promise. Eliot communicates beyond words. Objective Correlative: he coined it, he mastered it.

Essays:

5. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation” by Richard Vatz
Vatz shows how knowledge about and the interpretation of an event determine its reality.

4. “Narrative on the Life of a Slave” by Frederick Douglass
How does one oppress effectively? Through distraction, groupthink, and ignorance, of course.

3. “On the Sublime” by Friedrich Schiller
The beginning of this essay is superb. “The morally educated man, and only this one, is entirely free.” Take your time, and read this one closely.

2. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” by Louis Althusser
Very astute commentary about how a society perpetuates itself.

1. “Politics” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think this is were Emerson comes together the best. This is a call for mutual trust and love and for everyone to perform their duty to their fellow beings without compulsion. Read it!

Short Stories:

5. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges
A genuinely hilarious story about a writer who “did not want to compose another Quixote --which is easy-- but the Quixote itself . Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes.”

4. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin
A philosophical tale about a fictional utopia. . .at a cost.

3. “The Lost Beautifulness” by Anzia Yezierska
A sad story of extortion and giving in to ugliness. Yezierska is an immigrant who looks at one giving up on the American dream.

2. “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville
What to do with people who refuse to function within the system? “Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!” I could have also picked “Billy Budd” or “Benito Cereno” both by Melville, both excellent.

1. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” Gabriel Garcia Marquez
How do people treat religion? A magically realistic investigation.

Plays:

5. “Oedipus King” by Sophocles
I didn’t say these were my favorites. Just my favorites from school.

4. “Troilus and Cressida” by William Shakespeare
Greed. Violence. Machismo. The more I think about this play, the more I like it. But it still gives me the creeps big time.

3. “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell
Don’t underestimate the ladies!

2. “Doctor Faustus” by Christopher Marlowe
The famous tale of a man who wanted to be more than mortal.

1. “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
Everything one needs to know about power and society. One of my absolute favorites.

Novels:

5. “All the Pretty Horses” by Cormac McCarthy
Well done. No quotation marks.

4. “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
I read this as an allegory about upward social mobility. Dickens at his best.

3. “Utopia” by Thomas Moore
This book coined the word Utopia. Absolutely brilliant work from 1516 that reads like it could have been written last year. Perhaps the most insightful look into the underpinnings of civilization I’ve ever read.

2. “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad
English was Conrad’s third language. He wrote some of the most beautiful English prose ever. This book focuses on the ideology necessary to convince people to do great harm to other people. As applicable today as it was when it was written. Another of my all-time favorites.

1. “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville
Every citizen of a free nation needs to read and understand this novel. If you think Melville is being boring at any time, you’ve failed to pick up the symbolism, or shouldn‘t be allowed to vote. This is not a book about a whale. This is not a book about a boat. This is a book about the death of a nation. You could read this fifty times and come up with something new each time. First one to read this book gets a shiny new doubloon!

I originally planned to write a paragraph for each work explaining why I think it’s great, but at this point that just seems way too long. If you would like to hear any particulars, just shoot me a comment and I’ll reply.

For those of you who saw that this was a long post and skipped ahead to see of there are any new pictures, this is your lucky day.

I make it a principal not to be persuaded by mob action. However, since this all occurs online and I am unable to punch the noisiest one of our readers, (which, I have been made to understand, is the way to go about breaking up a mob or a peewee soccer game) I will submit myself to the cry of the people and update everyone on Salem.

For those of you unaware, on November 20th I became the father of more than civil malcontent. As of now, Salem is 15 days old. We’ve been able to get to know her a bit by now. The consensus is that she looks like me. I couldn’t tell. I just thought that she looked like Robert Redford in the 1970s, so I guess that makes everybody correct. There are other ways to tell that she turned out just like her old man. The most clear evidence is that we have all of the same favorite things: sleeping, eating, and Kaaryn. Salem is quite partial to Kaaryn. I get to hold her for about five minutes before she starts crying and fussing and calling me what I’m sure are all sorts of mean and nasty things and asking me to let go so she can hold Salem. Salem, on the other hand, gives me about 10 minutes before she cries.

Salem has been sleeping pretty well at night. At least, that’s what I’ve heard; I’ve been sleeping great! Kaaryn has been a real trooper as I finish the semester and have been unable to pull my share of the parenting load. But don’t judge me, it’s temporary.
There’s not much to say about Salem at this point. We have, however, made some keen observations as to the nature of her fussing. What we’ve discovered is that there are several types of crankiness that accompany her infantile fits. They follow:

First, there’s Blanky Cranky: Blanky Cranky occurs when Salem is not wrapped tightly enough or when she is in any way unsatisfied with her dress or accouterment. Blanky Cranky is visible when she becomes restless and begins kicking at her blanket and crying. There is minimal redness in the facial area, and screaming is kept to rolling murmur.

Then, there is Stanky Cranky: Stanky Cranky is rather self-explanatory. This kind of cranky usually follows a moment of silence, wherein Salem goes cross-eyed and clenches both fists tight enough crack walnuts. The silence is then broken by crying and other accompanying noises. The crying reaches its peak during the necessary changing of the diaper, but is usually drowned out by the crying of her father.

The next kind of cranky is the most frequent: that is, of course, Dranky Cranky. Dranky Cranky happens about every two to three hours when Salem is hungry. Dranky Cranky is accompanied by extreme fidgeting, redness of the face from screaming, and an oral motion that is best described as a wet spaghetti noodle bent into an O and held out of a car window on the freeway.

The final form of crankiness we’ve noticed is none other than Rank Cranky: Rank Cranky occurs when anyone other than Kaaryn has been holding Salem for more than 5 minutes. This can be identified when Salem opens her eyes, yells, holds out her tiny middle finger and inquires about the whereabouts of her mother. There is only one known cure.

I hope any future parents find this information useful. Enjoy the pictures.

Sorry for the quick post. Salem was born today at 6:45 PM. I came home to grab some stuff and wanted to post so everyone could see. She was 5 pounds 13 ounces, 19 inches long, and slimey indeed. Here is a picture and a video of the birth (don't worry, Hoss, it's watchable). Stay tuned, I'll post more when I can.

I’m not sure if all are aware, but there are several entrepreneurs in the family these days. I recently learned that Yelena started a business that sells pain relief technology. And I’ll tell you what, nobody has tapped the ancient wisdom of the Chinese this well since Quentin Tarantino. Nolan and Missy started a business offering various gift card and business card-like products. (They both have websites. I’ll give links, if anyone wants to see.) Along these lines, it hasn’t been too long since Tanya Palmer earned her license in gemology. With that in mind, Tanya, you’re no longer allowed to look at Kaaryn’s wedding ring.

I’ve always admired entrepreneurs, so this got me thinking. Spencer and Ann’s blog had this thing that tells one what celebrities they look like. So I says to myself, “Self, why should we stop there?” Inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit, (J.D. Rockefeller, to be exact), I spent my lunchbreak writing some groundbreaking software that will revolutionize the world of celebrity look-alike conjecture. My software will tell you, not who you already look like, but who your children will look like when they are fully grown. To make this happen, I take your child’s photo and run it against a database of over ten billion celebrities. From there, it’s a secret. All I can tell you is that my software uses the most cutting edge algorithms, logarithms, mysticisms, and funkyrhythms. To prove that it works, I’ve posted a video showing the results for the tests on Kaaryn’s siblings and my siblings. I’m still trying to get some of the kinks worked out. But, if you ask me, I’d say it looks pretty accurate. Check it out.

http://highlandmarketingsolutions.com/ Nolan and Missy

http://naturalpainreliefpads.com/ Yelena

Good news. I’ve confirmed that this blog now has at least 5 readers. This may sound paltry to some, but put into terms of television audience, I would rate somewhat below the WNBA finals, and significantly higher than Katie Couric. All I do now is wait for the corporate fat-cats to call with a sack of money.

Anyhow, I have been told that this blog has committed a most serious family-blog faux pas. No pictures. And so to rectify this gravest of errors, I offer some photos of the fam as it is.

Here we are at Dodger Stadium this August. (Jon, Kaaryn, and Matt Palmer not pictured)

Here we are at Disneyland, same trip.

(If you look really hard, you can see Walt Disney's ghost hassling a vacationing Jewish family)

This is me, just after midterms.

This is Athos, the best cat there ever was.

I hope this entry will sate the appetite for pictures for now. Stay tuned.

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural posting of our family blog.

So, as to give credit in such a manner as to be consistent with the old proverb, I was inspired by Raysha’s new family blog to start this one. I begin this with very little idea about what to write. So, if there is anything I don’t mention any of you would like to know, just ask.

The biggest news right now is, of course, Kaaryn. She is currently 8 ½ months pregnant, and 9 ¾ months testy. She is due November 22nd, Thanksgiving day, or as it’s known to most, the day USC plays ASU. Hopefully the baby comes a day or two early or late, because I have bigger fish to fry that Thursday (a public Scum Devil flogging by the Trojans to be precise). If any don’t know yet, the baby is a girl. We’ve chosen the name Salem for various reasons and have been the recipients of a moderate amount of lip since. All of it has fallen on deaf ears (We‘re looking your way, Penny). When Salem comes, I’ll be sure to post pictures and whatnot. In the meantime, we’re all waiting.

I will graduate from ASU in December with a BA in English with an emphasis in Literature. Unknown to most, to simply major in English is impossible. Typically, students must choose an emphasis. Most colleges have emphasis in Literature, Linguistics, and Creative Writing. I will explain. The Creative Writing folk seem to be overly nostalgic about their high school days. This can be seen in two ways: first, they chose to spend an additional four years in school learning nothing and will graduate with roughly the amount of skills necessary to wait tables or burglarize pawnshops; second, judging by the quality of their writing, they still assume that other people care about them, when it is clearly not the case. The Linguistics people are the nerds of the department. I know that the pot and the kettle are considered equally black, but you’ll have to trust me on this. Linguists spend most of their time inventing new rules for grammar, just so they have something to correct in others’ speech, and cataloging the evolution of the way swear words are scratched into bathroom stalls. Thus Literature Studies becomes the least ugly girl at the dance, not attractive by her own merits, only by the juxtaposition with lesser beings. Literature Studies may seem superfluous at first glance, but I assure you that there is great worth in writing lengthy articles that no one will read about the myriad ways Shakespeare mentioned syphilis in his plays (there actually is a field of scholarship devoted to this, seriously). Literature students graduate and set out to change the world. Mostly by lobbying for the legalization of hemp for all of its many uses, not the least of which is rope-making. And after they’ve given up on social reform, they usually end up in grad school. Which brings me to my next item.

I am currently applying to grad schools. However, I am not applying to Literature schools. I am applying to study Rhetoric and Composition. This is another appendage of English departments, but is not listed above because an undergraduate degree in RhetComp is typically not offered. Rhetoric and Composition focuses on the creation and dissemination of meaning. It’s really fun stuff. I want to get a PhD. That takes about six years, depending on the program. I am applying to the following schools in order of my desire to attend: Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), Texas Christian (Fort Worth), Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh), Arizona (Tucson), Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Milwaukee), Purdue (West Lafayette, Indiana), and Illinois (Champaign). I have no idea where I’ll get accepted, or if. Admission is competitive, so we just have to wait and see. I already took the GRE and did tolerably well, so I hope that doesn’t get in the way. Applications are due in December, for the most part. The programs say that they answer applicants by March or April. So until then, I won’t know anything.

If you’re as tired of reading at this point as I am of writing, then I’d say this is a good place to stop for now. Stay tuned. I have plenty more about which to blog.