Anyway...

My favorite definition for "art" is "that which was created with the intention of inspiring an emotion". Now, art rarely works on me, unless I want it to. Having said this, some of my favorite moments are those where I succomb to art. Honestly, most of the time I encourage myself to react emotionally, I react in awe. So, I occasionally, you may find me gazing wide-eyed at a picture of a fractal or pausing mid-sentence until the end of certain line of a song.

These song lines include the following: the line "sweet emotion" from "Sweet Emotion", the second occurance of "burning through the sky" from "Don't Stop Me Now", and the entire part of the guitar solo where in the guitar is the only instrument playing from "Aerodynamic".

I do give in to other elicited emotions, but less often. For instance, I am at least somber, if not distraught whenever I listen to "Miserere" by The Cat Empire or "Be Human" by Yoko Kanno. I guess the rest of the time, my behavior is severely dominated by both comedy and analysis (not to mention the analysis of comedy and the comedy of analysis).

Now, I will explain to you how I would act in a certain situation, and you can use that, in conjunction with how you personally know me, to get a better idea of my personality. This situation yeilds a response out of me so odd that I considered it interesting enough to mention though, so don't think that I am this odd typically.

Say that I am walking along the sidewalk and somebody jumps into my vision, points a gun at me, and says, "Give me all that you have." Now, my first reaction is uncertain because I will have been startled. However, once I get the picture of what is going on, I will stand my ground. One way to look at this situation is that this person is offering a trade with me: my life for my possessions. However, I look at it like this: my death is the only bargaining chip here, assuming (correctly) that I do not have the physical ability to take out the average armed robber. One way of looking at choices is that the only thing in your life that you can decide is the circumstance of your death. A lot of people pick the circumstance that is the latest in time, while others try to choose the one that is the least painful. Many famous people decide to die in a way that has the greatest impact on other people's lives (deaths). But with this philosophy, there is no way that I am going to let someone else decide for me.

With all that said (I can't think at the moment how it applies to my answer exactly), I would say the following (or as much of it as possible), "No. I won't give you anything, except for maybe a dollar if you ask for it. If you want any more than that, you should probably look elsewhere." I think about this a lot when I walk home at night.

Right. So yesterday, out of nowhere, I remember this anomaly that I have encountered at least twice. When I carry so many stacked items that I cannot control the top two, except by tilting them back so that they rest on my chest as I carry them, the second item from the top does this weird thing where it moves away from me. Sometimes, though less often, it moves to the side. I can't be certain of why this happens, but I have my theory.

It has something to do with my stride. For some reason, whenever I slow down, I must also be reducing the friction between items A and B (Fig. 1) relative to the friction between items B and C, as though the B-C kinetic friction is greater than the A-B kinetic friction. So, items B and C move away from me, but the only way that I can try to compensate for this is to lean back. This, unfortunately, results only in item C moving back towards me, as though the B-C static friction is less than the A-B static friction.

This would be a logical conclusion if it didn't happen every time. I suppose that it is back to the drawing board for me. Until next time!