Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Iain and his forays into the realm of leadership

Being a blog christened after its author's attempts at captaincy, its author feels obligated to update. Also, the fact that a tournament, a location change and the return to the college lifestyle have all occurred way heavy on its author's shoulders. Unfortunately this post is about none of these.

UNIPUC's first practice occurred back on Sunday. We had some decent turnout, a lot of people that have played back in high school, a few people that "played some disc back in gym class and thought it was fun," and one or two tournament goers. Also present - an inconceivable amount of wind and rain. The latter was not well received by the team.

Due to those conditions we weren't able to get as much done on Sunday as I had hoped, the usual introductions were performed, a few basic explanations about the stack and force, nothing too fancy. I did discover though, that I'm really bad at explaining things. Really really bad. Abominable even. This isn't all that desirable of a trait for a captain to have.

Sunday practice also had very few of our old team present. We were missing our three main players at Cooler playing with the PaB team, while the rain probably drove off any of the other slightly less dedicated members. Two of the three members at Cooler were also former presidents, which somewhat left me at a loss for what to do. I worked with what I could.

Afterwards (with the addition of the three Cooler-ites) our first team meeting was held. It proceeded exquisitely. Chili red and marina blue are now our two jersey colors, although no input was given for a name change or a new insignia for that matter, mostly because I didn't have any of the drawings on my person.

Another no-ultimate Monday came and passed and then Tuesday practice arrived, hooray! This time around my explanations were much less of the abominable sort, quite the opposite in fact. With an official practice under my belt I was feeling confident, so my stack and force demonstrations flowed much more smoothly. Even with my peerless demonstrations though, the team still has a lot to work on. Unlike ISUC we don't have as solid of a core of veterans, so not only do we have to teach the newbies, but we have to reteach some of the team members as well. The newbies don't have that competitive ultimate atmosphere to learn in yet, I'd like to try to cultivate that, but I don't know how.

It's hard for the new players to learn how to play correctly when a lot of the older members don't quite know when to make a continue or how to make a proper cut. It also worries me that none of the older players really understood the necessity of the stack moving upfield when the disc moves upfield. Whenever the disc is caught a lot of people just panic and sprint wildly away from the stack in these dazzling circular continue cuts, which although I'm sure look absolutely scintillating on paper, lose something in translation to the field.

I should probably stress a bit more the necessity of the stack moving as a group, but I'm still trying to feel out when exactly it's proper to give advice, and when it's not. People tend to misinterpret what I say into something a lot more harsh than I intended, so I'm somewhat hesitant to tell people what to do. With this being only our second practice as well, I don't want to put people off by having them think they're doing absolutely everything wrong, but I also don't want them to build bad tendencies that we'll have to overcome later in the year. I'm sure the happy medium is what I should aim for, but those happy mediums tend to have a lot in common with sublime circular continue cuts.

The basics are what the team needs though and the basics are what I'm going to have to focus upon for the next few days. Whether or not the team understands the main nuances of the stack will make or break our play this year, it's what kept us from really playing all that well last year.

This brings in another issue though, our practices starting at 3:30, when about five or so people have classes until 4:45. If those five people miss out on Tuesday/Thursday explanations and drills, then they're going to be leagues behind the rest of the team in terms of understanding. I'd like to move practice times up to 5 or so, but then we'd start to encounter the problem of not eating dinner until 7:30. With the dining centers closing at 7:45, that probably wouldn't go over very well with the team.

This all sounds like these last few practices have been fruitless, but for the first two practices they've gone quite well. We converted a track athlete permanently to our heathen ways, as well as picking up a few other pretty athletic people. The older players seem almost excited, if not more excited about this year than I am. Additionally the intensity of our last practice was a pleasant surprise from what UNIPUC is usually like. I'm hoping to try to help foster this intensity by raising my intensity as well. Hopefully it will trickle down to the other players so they can try to learn from my example, as well as to help minimize any loss of skills that I might have (this I'm very worried about).

Getting used to teaching players that are completely unfamiliar with the game is new to me, although nothing I can't adapt to. It'll take time and I'm sure a lot of frustration, but when all these drills and explanations finally pay off and the team starts to click; it'll be worth the effort a thousand times over.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Iain and his birth as an internationally renowned critic

Picked up a Newsweek the other day and read this little treat. It instilled within me a sort of illogical disdain that I carried with me throughout the rest of the day. Being as I am the sort of person to share to others his normal, every-day illogical disdainery, I will now endeavor to do so.

Although before I write any further, let me say that any cliches to be found in this entry are there unknowingly. I'm not trying for some pedantic attempts at witticisms here, as it seems I have the entirety of the article's comments section to do that for me already.

Oh yeah, I went there comments section. You thought I was just going to talk about the article and leave you by the wayside didn't you. Not so. Burn.

At the beginning of the article the guy has a good point; cliches are the crutches that lazy writers rely on. About when he gets to "mass exodus" and his laughable exposition against the medicinal industry though, he loses me. Clearly it's a case of a good idea gone awry in the pursuit of a more entertaining article, but still, he just blatantly carries on.

Just take a long look at the article once you're done reading it, it consists entirely of alarmingly bad examples of colloquialisms in normal speech. Forgetting for the moment that a colloquialism, i.e. cliche, is a happenstance that occurs solely in informal conversations, and therefore both the part of my previous sentence "colloquialisms in normal speech" is redundant, as well as over three fourths of that article. What's the point of filling up an entire article with such terrible examples? I've mentioned this before to Ali, but when you're trying to be critical of someone, it is imperative that in the process you don't expose yourself for being the pompous moron you really are.

Here's a great example of it (no, not this entry, that article I linked to you earlier in the post). A stirring rallying cry, railing against the inadequacies of our nation's writing abilities, that in its single-minded zealotry, manages to transform an otherwise reasonable argument and possibly well written article into a meaningless piece of chest beating. A tirade devoid of meaning; merely a crotchety old professor airing his grievances, repeatedly and without end.

There. Illogical disdain complete.Then again, I'm probably missing the point of the article and magazine entirely, but hey, they don't call it illogical for nothin'.

While I'm still going though, I think I might just hit another topic. This subject reminds me of a logical fallacy-laden argument once given to me. That of, if you aren't capable enough to do something well, than you have no foundation with which to stand on in order to criticize. In response I always thought to myself, "Wow, how novel. You just single-handedly denied legitimacy to the thousands of people that hold job as reviewers, commentators, critics. Way to go. Douche." Now if only I could have thought of that when I was actually in that conversation.

The sheer amount of irony contained in this one post is overwhelming. I think I'll stop now.

Edit: While making this post I wrote "meaningless piece of drivel" only to replace it with "chest beating" to try to stick the drivel theme, but still to stay true to my pompous and decidedly not moronic tendencies. A quick Google search gives back the headline, "Is Chest Beating as Good for People as it is for Primates?" Touché God, touché.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Remember what I said in blog entry #2? Yeah. Me either.

Been listening to a lot of George Winston lately; that and the old timey stylings of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. Apparently my musical tastes have shifted once again, although this time I'm unsure of where exactly they've gone to. Usually when this happens I tend to resume my love affair with trance or techno, but I think this time I'll stay one step ahead of myself and jump right into some nice acid jazz. Take that self!

Continuing on with the music theme, my last girlfriend got me into the whole indie scene, although not like the lame indie scene that shares a great deal with the lame emo scene, but more of the kinda cool, not really all that indie, but still indie enough to know this band from that, indie scene. For about a year or so I've bummed around that part of the music industry, the Arcade Fire, Rilo Kiley (although I heard a Rilo Kiley song on 105.1 the other day, how weird), the Shins, etc, but it's quickly starting to get old. Other than maybe the above musings though, I'm uncertain of what else to look in regards to music. A few of my old indie friends got into some underground rap, maybe I should follow suit? I can't really see myself listening to much of that, although boy it'd do wonders for my street cred.

Ultimate lately has been pretty good. We've had a lot of turnout for these last few practices as well, a surprisingly large turnout actually, 20+ people this last practice. Other than our ill-fated scrimmage against CLX + a few other of those ISUC chumps, our team has been looking pretty solid (partly due to the aforementioned turnout and last minute additions to the team). We're still making a lot of mistakes and trying to get into the groove of our ho-stack, but I think we'll be able to get it together in time for Madison. We have a lot of talent on the team through Greg, Dunlay, Tai and J-Mis among a few others, so it's not that we don't have the ability, we just for some reason haven't quite clicked yet. Hopefully some of the players from this last scrimmage have some tips for things we need to work on, I'll leave it to them to give any further opinions.

Only a few more days left of this summer though; I'm starting to feel those first few pricks of wanderlust. Not only will I be able to start packing up and getting ready to move into my new dorm room, but Ali's coming back on the 14th! I'm all kinds of excited. Visiting her out in Maine was the highlight of my summer; her coming back will probably complete it. FYI for my friends and relations, from the 14th to the 17th I will be incommunicado, I hope that won't cause any problems.

This is quickly turning into an eclectic post (randoms even?!), but negotiations were furthered today in regards to UNI ultimate. Terp was at the scrimmage today, we talked a bit afterward about some of the problems that I'll likely encounter during my captaincy. A loss of interest due to lack of commitment, how to try to combat that, etc. I wish UNI were a bigger university, it'd be much easier to go about cultivating an ultimate program with a slightly larger student base.

I mostly included that last sentence so I could use the subjunctive tense properly in a sentence. Excuse me for a moment while I bask in my own greatness.

Yeap. Later in the night I ended up going to Stomping Grounds to work a bit on my plans for UNI. They've been progressing well, although I'm getting to the point where I can't really plan much more out. A lot of the major decisions will depend on the team and the amount of enthusiasm they show. I should probably stop thinking about it and let it play out.

Terp took me aside late during the game. Making conversation I asked him what he thought about ISUC practice, his reply? "Man. Iain, I've been enlightened."

Saturday, August 4, 2007

What I was really pulling for was more of a dark mauve actually

I was listening to NPR on the drive back from Cedar Falls the other day. It was during a short interlude bridging the gap from the soft jazz of the 1900s to a modern piano concerto that a thought occurred to me. The feeling that as long as those soft-spoken, slightly graying voices just kept on narrating, kept on carefully enunciating the names of countless foreign composers and their masterpieces; all would be right with the world.

It was the perfect capstone to an otherwise slightly aggravating journey. You see, I was freshly off of having tried to convince the rest of UNIPUC of the plethora of changes needed for the upcoming year. Feelings of serenity and peace were in short supply that night.

The change of insignia and name were accepted fairly quickly, but for some reason they firmly resisted any sort of change in the color scheme of our jerseys. Apparently purple is such a magical and awe-inspiring color that, given the choice, it will trump every single other color devised of by man, save a more brilliant form of it.

Luckily, after about 2-3 hours of discussion, light blue and dark red were finally accepted for our separate jersey colors, although not without the requisite wailing and gnashing of teeth. My only fear now is that I will soon have to do it all over again, during the actual team meeting. Curse purple and the sway it holds over my teammates!

Really all that was accomplished on my trip, other than the very fine dining given to us by our local Hu Hot, was the realization that I'm going to have to make every single decision on this team. From those minor jersey color decisions, to the choice of our offense, I'm really the only person on the team with enough experience to choose. It occurs to me that this is much more of a daunting task than I originally anticipated.

And I haven't even started the paperwork yet.

Edit: Although naturally all of my decisions/ideas would be given to the team for approval beforehand. What, you think I'm some sort of despot or somethin'?!

Mid-college crisis: major dilemmas

In middle school one of my teachers once posed the question "What is history?" He was asking the wrong question. Why history?

Why study what occurred at the Battle of Hastings in 1066? Why does it matter who was present, who won? What does that information give you? Do we owe those of the past some small pittance for the things they witnessed, the events they helped found?

Does history have a purpose?

Clearly it's not to prevent us from past mistakes, otherwise humanity would have achieved perfection a long time ago. So what then, should history be relegated to the demesne of scholars and intellectuals? Is history just another exercise in mental fellatio over the less knowledgeable man?

What would life be without history?

Details. History brings us details, colors to the world. History gives us hope. The knowledge that somewhere, somehow in our existence there has been progress toward the betterment of mankind.

So what then does it make me? The lone keeper of secrets that tends to the knowledge of the past? The gnarled ancient figure that steps out from the shadows when all seems lost, only to teach the protagonist the secret and solitary weakness of his arch-villain?

Perhaps I should change my major to something that'll work out a bit better in the short term.