Human and Dancer Aren't Mutually Exclusive

According to a 2008 Rolling Stone interview, in The Killers' hit dance single "Human," the first lyric in the chorus is actually "Are we human or are we dancer?" It wasn't "denser" or "dancers," despite what the great internet debate was arguing.

The lyric itself was apparently inspired by the Hunter S. Thompson claiming that America was raising "a generation of dancers." While Thompson's quote was grammatically correct, Brandon Flowers "took it and ran" and made it less "correct" because grammar is irrelevant.

The important thing about the use of "dancer" versus the grammatically correct "dancers" or "denser" is that it makes "dancer" and "human" both adjectives. With the addition of the "s" to "dancer", the last word in the lyric becomes a noun. You lose the parallelism. When you use "denser," the song can completely change meaning. But when "dancer" is used an adjective, it becomes a state of being and the lyric states a supposed truth: one can't be human and also be "dancer."

But what even is "dancer"?

When I still lived in Wisconsin about a decade ago, I was enrolled at the The Backstage Studio in Ripon, Wisconsin  to learn how to dance. Most of it was fairly simple: shovels, ball-and-chains that resembled the "Charlie Brown" from the Cha-Cha Slide, twirling and being cute. I was a good dancer for a chubby eight-year-old. However, I stopped dancing when I moved to Kentucky because my parents claimed that there wasn't any local dance studios in Winchester, but I've always kind of missed it.

Today, an old friend of mine from the dance studio posted some pictures from this year's dance recital, ten years since my last recital. The same teacher was there and everything. It was sort of weird thinking that since I've moved past the Mason-Dixon line, this little dance studio with a small and, in retrospect, kind of sketchy waiting room and a shiny wooden floor, stayed alive with a lot of the same people. It stayed alive.

In that moment, I knew I was still "dancer." I was no longer a dancer, but I was still "dancer." While I could never, and still can't, do a cartwheel and I've always been pretty clumsy, I still had the spirit of "dancer." I still liked to leap onto my wing and spin around. I still twisted in place when I was waiting for something. I still felt music pump through my veins more than blood sometimes.

But was that what Flowers or Thompson had in mind?

Maybe "dancer" meant a carefree young person who didn't listen to the words but swayed to a beat because understanding causes problems and ignorance is bliss. Maybe "dancer" meant somebody who took on the world and made it their oyster after leaving everything behind. Maybe "dancer" meant a lover, not a fighter. But what does that make somebody who's "human"? Is that somebody who is calculating and cautious and weighed down with problems? Is it somebody who thinks? Is it somebody who is fighter?

And why are they mutually exclusive?

That's the thing, I don't think they are. Even when I don't even really know what Thompson or Flowers had in mind, I don't think anybody is 100% human or 100% dancer. It's just one of those things.

The second lyric in the chorus is "my signs are vital; my hands are cold." Is being "alive" and feeling "alive"
the same thing? Maybe that's what Flowers is getting at. Maybe humans just exist while dancers feel "alive."

But what a better time to feel alive?

Why I Love Prom (And Why It's Okay If You Don't)

Director Dr. Tim Gott gets down at the Gatton Academy Prom.

This past weekend was the rite of passage for many upperclassmen at the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science in Kentucky: prom.

According to the whiteboard on the front desk, we were to leave for the Alumni Center, where our prom was taking place, at 6:45 pm since apparently snacks were starting at 7:00 pm, but prom didn't really start at 7:00 pm on April 14th, 2014. It actually started a lot earlier.

It started with a young girl watching a slew of Disney Channel Original Movies dealing with school dances, playing ridiculous amounts of online dress up games, and asking her seventh grade best friend if in the event they didn't have dates to prom five years from then, they would go together as friends. Before, that young girl had superficial ideas of what prom would be like.

But while that younger me had the wrong ideas, I still love prom, but it's not just because of the dress, the hours you spend on your hair and makeup, the flowers you may or may not get, having a date, taking a God awful number of pictures, or any of that.

It's because it's a school-sanctioned last hoorah with your closest friends before you move on with the rest of your life. It's about dancing (poorly or not) to the line dances you knew in elementary school. It's about singing to "Livin' On A Prayer" while you wait for your nails to dry with your best girl friends. It's about watching two juniors play ping pong in their gown and tux before going to take pictures. It's about the cheesy selfies. It's about singin'/screamin' at the top of your lungs to whatever songs they are playing at that moment. It's the moment you walk outside and see all your classmates and you think to yourself "Wow, I never knew how beautiful/handsome everybody was." It's about swaying side to side in a giant circle with a group of people who became your second family. It just has everything to do with the people there with you.

While your back may be sore, your feet may be bruised from not keeping your heels on, and your "waterproof" mascara formed circles around your eyes, it felt like it was worth it to me. As I am on the last leg of my senior year--as well as recovering from all the pizza I ate and washing all the hairspray out--I can't help but love it all. I had fun. I was always told that prom was about preparing and to be let down when it actually happens. But for me, it was different. Maybe the little girl in me would've been disappointed because it wasn't magical, but it was fun. It was what it's supposed to be. And it was great.

However, I realized before this past Saturday that prom wasn't for everybody and I understood that. I still understand that. Big rooms with small dance floors and close bodies aren't for everybody. Some people don't like dressing up. Some people just aren't comfortable with it. But you know what? That's okay. Because there's nothing wrong with that. You are no better or worse a person for hating/loving prom. I just love that you've been along for the ride, even if you weren't there for the flashing lights.

Why Trouble is a Just a Friend and Other Reasons Why "Trouble" is the Way It Is

Do not read this post if you have not read my story Trouble is a Friend. It has tons of spoilers and probably won't make much sense to you.

I wrote the story "Trouble is a Friend" the summer after my freshman year, approximately July of 2011. Since then it has a small local fanbase even though I've barely edited it. However, some people always questions why the story went the way it did despite where it was supposedly was going. Partially for my own rationalization, here are the top five questions people have about what happens in "Trouble is a Friend."

Why didn't Olivianne and Will get together?

The first few people who read "Trouble" asked me the same thing and the answer is simple: Olivianne needed a friend, not a boyfriend. This was also a result of me growing up as a person figuring out that you don't need a romantic partner to feel okay. Also, if Will and Olivianne got together, it wouldn't be healthy since Olivianne wasn't a whole person, especially by the end of the story. 

Also, especially with the theory that Olivianne only existed in Will's head, it wouldn't have been realistic.

What Made Charlotte Henderson So Great?

Charlotte first represented this perfect girl object that Will, like many of his "middle class" peers was attracted to. However, what makes Charlotte different was that she sort of represented what society wanted her to be: this quiet but beautiful entity you can look at. It was only until she talked to you and that you talked back to her that you realized that she was actually a person. While she doesn't get much "screentime" in the story, she is still a decently realistic character. She isn't actually perfect, but she's real. She's Will's less blunt reality check, because if it wasn't for Olivianne's constant advice, she probably would have disappeared.

What was the purpose of Jake?

Jake, who never got a last name in the short story, was evidence that Olivianne existed outside of Will. He, unlike Will, fought Olivianne, which basically gave evidence  to Olivianne trying to support her own advice, even if it was just about Dexter vs Mickey. I didn't want Will to be a "savior" of Olivianne, so she needed another friend in her background. She needed another friend that caused her trouble. In a way, all of the characters serve as foils to one another in some way.

What was the stuff at the bottom of the cupboard?

I remember wanting to bring that up in the story later, but other conflicts, like Olivianne's mental disorder and alcoholism, kind of overshadowed it. If I had to guess what past me thought was at the bottom of the cupboard, I would say it was a bundle of news clippings of Olivianne's mom.

What happened after Olivianne and Will walked into the bakery?

I did write a short piece from Olivianne's point of view about what happened after they walked into the bakery, which described how Olivianne met Charlotte, but to be honest, I don't think it mattered what happened when Livy and Will walked into the bakery. Will's story was mostly done: he got control of his life and got the girl by actually talking to her. Olivianne refound one of her best friends and was hopefully on her way to recovery. We don't know where they were going to go from there, but we know that they were friends again. And really, that's all that mattered.

In Less Lunar-Related News

Here's a cute doodle I did after helping some people with CPS:

A Heart That Beats "Under The Moon"

I will swear up and down, left and right, and along the z-axis that I am not a hipster.

But I really like this one musical act called Mike Golden and Friends. I promise they aren't that obscure and apparently Patrick Stump follows them on Twitter, so they must be cool. Also, you can get all of their songs in the past three years here for free!

Anyway, they have this song from their album Groceries called "Under the Moon." This song has become the beat of my heart, the stuff going through my veins, and the pictures underneath my eyelids before I finally drift to sleep.  It's the voice of the Midwestern guy that one day I'm supposed to fall in love that listened to Sinatra as a kid because his parents didn't believe in the new stuff they played on the radio but instead of becoming an astronaut and flying to the moon he settled for a liberal arts college education and minored in philosophy and serenading hopeless romantic girls with a guitar. It's the voice crooning in my ear as I dance with a shadow in an empty public bathroom waiting for the date that may or may not come. It's the abrupt ending that causes somebody to drop me in the final lift so I black out from the shock.

I don't know why this song affects me so much. I can always feel my heart become heavy, not because the song is sad, but because it forces me to think. There are always these imaginary arms that wrap themselves around my waist and let me lean my head against its chest and listen to it breathe. And while it may fight with me, it doesn't matter because we are two moonlit crazy teenagers who may not want to grow up even though we think we're ready for the freedom it gives us.

It's my falling in love song. It's not my ideal one, but it's mine. It's my "crying my eyes out because he didn't call me back only to forget all that when I see him again" soundtrack. But the thing is, it's a reminiscing song, and that's how my falling in love works. It starts out beautiful and familiar, and eerily similar to Hazel and Augustus's love in The Fault In Our Stars: "slowly, then all at once." It was ragged at times and sometimes you don't want to be stuck in this free-fall because it hurts and it definitely isn't perfect. Eventually, it would end.

And I'm so scared. What type of heart beats a song like that?


To learn more about Mike Golden, go to http://www.mikegoldenandfriends.com/ or follow their frontman Mike Golden on Twitter @MikeGoldenDaily. 

In Defense of Eavesdropping, WKU, and Caps Lock

Lemme tell you about the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science.

First, we live in this here building:

It's a niiiiiice building. It's also a bit of a monstrosity too, but that's okay. It has to contain like 126 crazy teenagers and the Center for Gifted Studies. You can't have it all.

Anyway, it's situated at Western Kentucky University, which is in Bowling Green, KY. Bowling Green itself is known for a couple of things:

• Corvette Museum
• Home of John Carpenter, director of the Halloween franchise (or at least according to my film professor)
• Not being in Ohio.
• Possibly accelerated car world (#AndrewPhysics)

However, there are some not so good about WKU in my opinion.

• Unaccredited computer science program
• It's on a hill.

A lot of other people, however, think that WKU is this humdrum of a school that'll take anybody and everybody who may or may not "deserve" post-secondary education. It's this blip on the map in comparison to the University of Kentucky in Lexington and the University of Louisville in, well, Louisville. When you throw in sports, it's just a school that people race to fill out the application so they can get a diploma. 

All in all, it's not worth all that much.

That's bullshit*. 

Today I was sitting at Garrett, which is probably the best place to eat during the work week, and I was by myself. And while a victim of plugged in culture, which is my term for the generation that spends most of its time with headphones in or eyes down on a small screen, I didn't stay plugged in during lunch. 

So I eavesdropped.

A couple of tables over I heard some guy talking about the effect of caps lock, er, I mean, CAPS LOCK, and why, at least in casual settings, the guy on the other end shouldn't be offended by it. 

When I lived in Wisconsin, I spent part of my summers at what would be more like educational summer camp than the negatively connotative "summer school." Naturally, in this information age, we had to learn about the internet. And to make sure they didn't unleash a generation of even ruder kids upon the digital world, they taught us internet etiquette.

After a Google search, apparently the tool they used was "Surf Swell Island." It was this game created by Disney that was based on this jungle island to make sure kids weren't jerks on the web. It was sort of Reader Rabbit in a way.

Surf Swell Island asked the real questions.

Aside from ridiculous cheesiness, this game actually brought up some valid points that you need to teach your impressionable kids, which is probably most evident in the map used to navigate the island.

Temple of Tact might be my favorite.

Obviously you're teaching your kids to keep their mouths shut, to not download sketchy stuff, and to be like Hufflepuffs and use tact/be decent human beings. However, in the Temple of Tact, the game says that Caps Lock will probably offend whomever you're talking to. It doesn't really matter how EXCITED AND WELL-INTENTIONED YOU ARE! 

But this guy had a good point. Professionally, we probably shouldn't use all caps because of grammatical reasons, but is all caps always bad? Is context required to figure out the intentions of the caps lock? 

After that I heard bits of conversation about muscle memory and personal philosophy from other tables. If WKU was just this poser university, then why do people think like this? Maybe it doesn't matter the institution but the people in it. And maybe we all just want to be listened to, to maybe be taken seriously or just to give somebody a good laugh. It doesn't matter where we are, but what we do.

I never expected to get so existential while eating cheap chicken tenders.

*Excuse my language. This happens more often than I admit to people that I'm not immediately friends with.

A Semester on Infinite Loop

My name is DJ and I have a coding problem.

While everyone else would watch hours of Netflix, play guitar, or do some kind of sport thing, I find my face lit up by the bluish tint of a computer screen while I not-so-mindlessly hammer in code that really has no real purpose other than to waste time.

As I sit back down as everybody else is Procrastinating Coders Anonymous mumble "Hi DJ," I should probably give you some background.

I'm almost locked into my dream school. I spend a decent chunk of my afternoons helping juniors troubleshoot their Mathematica and another chunk of that looking for my Differential Equations book.

And I have the worst case of senioritis ever and it sucks.

How do I deal with an increasing workload coming from Cherry Hall (English 300) and an increasingly terrifying game of Russian Roulette at Snell (Physics 256)? I code. I make prototypic character (literary not the primitive type) in C++ and rosaries for Catholic friends in Mathematica. I would cry, but at this rate it might end up being in binary. 

All of this combined, it feels like I'm stuck in my own loop:

while(haveSenioritis){

 semesterEnd = false;

} 

And it doesn't look like haveSenioritis is going to become false anytime soon.

At the beginning of the semester, Tim, the director of the Academy, told us that we were going to blink and suddenly this semester would be over. Beth, the residential life head honcho, told as that the days were long but the weeks and months were short. Right now, I don't really believe them. I feel myself trudging along and while there are some highlights, it feels like the days never end, Saturday is eons away, and there are amounts of work that I need to do that are in that limbo of "pressing" and "non-pressing." I'm stuck in this infinite loop until the universe realizes that time standing still is a bad idea and gets its act together.

I know that I'm not the only one and the world doesn't revolve around me. I know that the semester will end and I will probably get ridiculously nostalgic and wonder where it all went. Until then, I reserve the right to angst. Because angst is a part of growing up, and while I'm legally a "grown-up," I'm not done yet.

So, my fellow Procrastinating Coders, I do have a problem, but maybe coding isn't so bad. It's just the sheer quantity of it. I can't code myself into having a glorious GPA or a good time. Maybe at one point I'll realize that I might be a high school senior, but I'm only just that. I'm still a sophomore in college. I'm still not legal to drink. I've never paid taxes. Coding is just a coping mechanism, like eating Nutella with a spoon or aggressively cutting paper. While it may not have the physical health risks, this isn't healthy. I should probably stop at one point.

But I'm still stuck in this loop and until some external method gets sucked into the loop with me and breaks it, I'll be stuck waiting for the BSOD at the end.