30 Days

Yesterday I made some interesting decisions that of course resulted in interesting consequences today, according to one of the more stringent laws of the universe. The yesterday me decided to take Steve Pavlina's advice and do some interesting 30-day trials. The idea is that you commit to giving up or acquiring some habit just for 30 days. It's interesting because it's actually doable; 30 days is nothing special, and you have a much greater chance for success than when you make more dramatic commitments like "I will never eat Komodo dragon or any other kind of dragon meat for as long as I live" or my little sister's favorite: "I will stop drinking cognac in the morning." These belong in the impossible-to-sustain-so-don't-even-bother-trying category.

Naturally, I couldn't let myself suffer alone, so I dragged every person that had the misfortune of being on my buddy list into this experiment. Luckily I regularly purge my buddy list of stale friends, so I only had to bother a few. Some of them needed extra motivation, so I agreed to do their 30-day trials as well. Currently I am signed up for the following:

No drinks other than water.
No cursing in any of the 18 languages I know or the 57 I'm learning. This is not as easy as it sounds. Innocent words in one language are X-rated in another.
50 situps/crunches a day for one friend.
50 situps/crunches a day for another friend.
Being vegetarian (this is actually part of another experiment, but I might as well take credit for it)

Some of these come with clauses. For example, should I have temporary amnesia and regain consciousness to find myself holding a half-consumed non-100%-water beverage, I must call my partner in crunches "master" for an entire day, and vice versa should she do 0-49 situps/crunches instead of the requisite 50. Initially we decided the punishment was a kick to the head in high-heel shoes, but plane tickets from/to China are back over a dollar these days, rendering such a scheme financially impractical. Humiliation was chosen as a close second.

Other people are signed up for situps/crunches, writing poetry, running in the morning, learning French for half-an-hour a day, writing in their journals for 15 minutes a day, and...I think that's it. Good luck to all of you (suckers)! That'll teach you to be my friends.

Recently I've been reviewing French in an effort to lower my overinflated self-esteem (I have no doubt that I totally rule). Chinese helps in that department, but I figure the more the better. So I've met some French girls from Paris on Palabea - a language learning site, and started reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, in French of course. In between, I read vocabulary lists and study verb conjugations.

All this is much more fun that it sounds (and this is only half-meant to trick you into doing it). I realized I forgot how cool the French language is; when I last heard it, it was being so uninspiredly taught that I lost my appetite for it for 5 years. Well now we're back, and without teachers standing in the way of my education, success is inevitable. Vive la France et la langue francaise!

Oh yea, lastly, some excellent poetry inspired by sitting on the edge of a bed all day:

I am sitting with bad posture
now I'm sitting with good posture
I sure am good about my posture
and we're back to crappy posture

Remember what I said about "rhyming a word with itself" being the domain of the incurably brave badasses? K, just thought I'd remind you.