Saraah!

Finally I got to see what’s inside the RCBC complex building in Makati last night. All this time I thought it was this huge factory house filled to the brim with nothing but money, bank notes and serious people. I was wrong. It is in fact a building of a lot of things including theater arts and culture. Surprisingly.

Several of us from the block went to watch Zsa-Zsa Zathurna there right after our 4-6 Consti class. I told myself to use my free time to read up on the articles I skipped this week, but Russ was too persuasive to refuse. I wasn’t able to turn him down on his invitation to watch Eula Valdez as Zsa-Zsa Zathurna. It was real fun anyway. Props to Jeric, Anna, Jen, Nikki, George and of course, Russ.

Maybe I can work on the backlog this weekend. I’m still not sure if I’m going to the interbatch party tonight. I really need to catch up on the readings I missed. There’s a pile-up from the previous week and I’m mired in waist deep. If my calculations are correct, I’m a week behind with my assignments. Sacre bleu!

But I heard two of our profs are coming to mingle and to party which is good. The cool thing here is, both are from our block so we don’t have to worry about saying silly things to them when everybody’s a bit tipsy or even totally drunk. I bet they had their wild moments as Block B students before. And, they’re not that old. One is in his late 20’s and the other one, only in her mid-twenties. Sacre bleu.

On a side bar, this sort of reminds me of Mcgonagall, Dumbledore et al of the Hogwarts school of magic in Harry Potter. They favored the Gryffindor over the rest of the houses not because Mr. Potter needed special attention, but because they too were once and still are Gryffindors. I wish for the same leniency and tolerance from our cool profs to our block under their classes. This is not praying for special treatment but just that extra inch of consideration for the block whenever we’re on one of our crappier days. For tradition’s sake, block b?

And since we’re reading Martial Law cases next week and the fifth HP movie is just around the corner, I’d like to say that Marcos is to the college and to the legal profession as Voldemort is to Hogwarts and to magic. That’s right. 

I keep thinking about the possibility that erstwhile Philippine president Marcos might have hidden a treasure trove of notes and books somewhere in the library. Finding them for my perusal could make my life a fat lot easier in school. I wish. While I’m dreaming, I want a puffer fish and a bag of meteor rocks.

But really, who knows what powerful secrets are waiting to be rediscovered in the building. I guess the only way to find out is for me to read every book in the libe with diligence and peel my eyes open for clues as to where the lex holy grail is. I got to be more attentive to things that are out of place too, especially in the foreign serials sections. Well, that’s not such a hard thing to do if I could understand latin. Still there’s no harm in trying.

Meanwhile, it looks like a great Saturday day ahead. Time for some fun.

Distinguishing between items, thoughts or matters marked only by hairline differences can be tough. Questions arise whether or not the two or more concepts in comparison can be conveniently separated into distinct spheres that are one clearly apart the other.  For example, colors of almost the same gradient often leave us wondering where, say, dark blue ends and navy blue begins. At best the distinctions are hazy, vague and uncomfortably sketchy or the worst case, such a distinction can not be made at all as one looks just as blue as the other and vice versa.

For some the task of drawing the line is hardly a problem, but people in general fail to actually perceive divisions. With regards to the example used above, most of us will tend to call either color the same name of plain blue. But to give up easily on a seemingly pointless chore of knowing which is which, is to deny yourself the joy of being precise.

We all have to make distinctions and choices. Once in a while comes a really difficult set of imperatives that compels us to decide whether to pick A or B, and appreciate what makes A different from B. This is the time when the lazy people, who shied away from the habit of being precise, make costly mistakes, and the diligent people, who opted to  attune themselves to the practice, make smart decisions. There’s a big, bold line splitting the former and the latter, it is up to you to choose where you belong.

Anyway, I spent the afternoon in SM North to buy me some shirts. I planned on getting two new ones, but that one trip to the music store changed my mind. I said I’d buy one really good shirt and set aside the rest of the money for my own pair of practice drumsticks and a decent acoustic guitar. hmmmmmmmmmm.

The problem is, now that I have to single out one shirt from a rummage of apparel, how am I supposed to ascertain the best among a host of good choices?  There are huge considerations to  take into account. I mean, life and death considerations. I need not belabor the point as we all are brethren to this blasted situation.

Eventually, I managed to come up with two candidates or, for lack of a better term, two finalists after wasting an hour in the wrong stalls. It’s funny how we always find what we’re looking for at the very place you’d check out and visit last.

So yeah, both t-shirts screamed, in equal loudness, my private sentiment that I want to be ignored. In a nutshell, the first shirt says, "don’t bother me" and the second, "bother someone else". Talk about real dilemma. In the end, I picked one, paid the counter and went home proud to have made a very smart choice.

Okay. Pause. So how was I able to determine which shirt suited my preferences best? Corollary: what’s the deal with the confidence that I have indeed judged wisely?

As to the corollary, there is no way I can convince you that I exacted perfect discretion.  Persons are  prone to commit error, me not excluded. But the fact that both shirts were to me felt right choices, I don’t think I could go wrong from that point onwards. It is rather a ping-pong debate as to which one is more right and not which one is less wrong.

However, as to the question how I was able to determine which shirt suited my preferences best and how I came up with my decision without regretting it, the answer is simple. Instead of putting one shirt vis-a-vis the other side by side, I placed one on top the other and vice versa until things made sense.

My theory is, once you put your choices right next to each other then you create a whole spectrum or a line. Thus when you try to look at your choices from afar, you’d only see one substance from where two things lay previously. The minute detail of the split easily disappears which will cause you of lot of problems. You no longer are confident which one is which.

On the other hand, if you put your choices on top of the other, you can arrange them in such a way that the order will make sense to you, and from there make the right choice. There is an assumption that, all things being unequal, one is more superior than the other. Our brains are wired to think this way. That is why hierarchy  are  drawn vertical and never horizontal.  That is why  the king can never be under a slave in the social order of things, much less be situated on the same linear category. It doesn’t make sense to put the slave on top the king unless for expressed stipulations of indirect and reverse proportions. The same applies to choices.

Our judgment of things always treads a horizontal path, left to right and right to left. The only way to break the line is to physically impose one on top of the other, not behind, but on top. It is only a matter of correctly fitting the pieces together and making sense of the arrangement before you can judge rightly. Remember, the king is never under the slave.

Gladwell (see "the Tipping Point") alludes to  a social experiment on how physical contexts affect the way we think. College students were told that they were to test a new kind of headphones. One group were asked to nod their heads and the other group to shake their heads continuously while they listen to a series of audio recording e.g. music, static and a brief radio infomercial clip about the proposal of increasing tuition for next term. After this, both groups were asked about the quality of the new "headphones". Is it good? Would you buy it? and so on as dud questions. Inserted in the questionnaire were the important questions about whether or not they agree to the proposal of increasing the tuition.

Curiously enough, the group who were asked to nod, agreed to the proposal despite the fact that some of them can not afford the hike. The group who were asked to shake their heads summarily and completely rejected the proposal even though some of them had the means to afford the new rate. Interesting huh?

[So are we never to make proposals to a person who just finished watching a long game of tennis? Uh, well. Theoretically. It's better you don't. Better be safe. I guess.]   

But what does that information have to do with making tough choices? Apart from the fact that we are largely influenced by our context when we think and act, the nodding and shaking of our heads somehow assist us in making choices or at least in convincing ourselves we are making the right ones. Like when you go left to right with your decisions, you’d probably doubt and feel less confident about your conclusions. Conversely, going up and down, you’d probably find yourself agreeing with your conclusion with a high degree of certainty and confidence.

This is also something to think about when we argue a point with someone. Instead of putting your left and right hands on your side when placing emphasis to your opinions, why not enumerate your arguments from top to bottom with your hands? It makes sense to do so. Aesthetically awkward, but I’ll try out this theory in class next week.

So anyway, this original idea deserves patent. If, for instance, I see someone choosing between shirts and employs my method, then I’ll say, she must have read this. Or if someone recites and argues in the way and manner this entry suggests, then I’ll feel good. Haha. Asa.

An Illustration:

A question of choice of school

A)

• others
• UP                  <—- doesn’t make any sense,

• UP
• others.           < —— Perfect.

B)

UP         /      others     <—- vague

others    /      UP          <—- very vague

Call it beginner’s luck but to reach such levels of proficiency in less than a month is proof of real native ability. Ahaha. Overall, weekend was productive. Now it’s time to do extreme shuffles.

Ang saya-saya ko ngayon. Wheee.

Prologue

Dear friends,

I removed all restrictions in my prenster account for the sole purpose of allowing everyone to send me a message, leave a note, write a comment and view this web log in response to this very important entry. Everyone, including the newly elect senators who have used prenster as means to reach out to the "debit" masses, is encouraged to share some opinion. While a large portion of this entry is meant to address our great senators of this country, the bigger idea here is to remind everyone just how respectable and honorable the upper-house of our congress has become.

All things considered, there’s no attempt at sarcasm here. Anyone who still thinks that hurling insults at our good government is just another blasphemous way of being funny is blinded by too much optimism. What with the big joke we turned our motherland into, the rock-bottom depths that we have managed to plunge ourselves into, and the fiction-worthy tragedy we permit ourselves to take leading roles in, it’s time that we modify our opinions about the Philippines.

I do not wish to disabuse you of your love for our country. On the contrary, I love the Philippines so much myself, I would not only offer my life for the cause of my motherland in a heartbeat, but also on that day this country turns into a circus, I would be among the first to volunteer as a flying trapeze clown without question.

The truth is I just did. I am the first of 80+ million Filipinos and now a proud new member of the institution of those who deliberately became clowns. Incidentally, these people of the esteemed institution are the very pioneers of it all to whom this friendly message is written for, with sincerity. We will all become clowns eventually, so we might as well learn our stunts and antics this early. Who knows, if we do our act well enough we just might become one of the twenty plus stuntmakers of this country someday.

Let’s be guided by the great latin maxim "Podex perfectus est", which means if you can’t beat clowns, be one.

Introduction

First off, my heartfelt congratulations! You made it to magic 12! The whole ordeal of going out of your way to appear someone who you are not for 60 days, forging allegiances with people who you will not normally come into contact with just so you can milk from them financial and electoral support, singing and dancing infront an eager audience to show them just how talented you are, committing to memory the Lord’s prayer in a desperate hurry the night before you had to attend that small prayer rally of 2 million followers and everything else for your campaign are not something to scoff at or take lightly. That, obviously, entailed great talent and character. Even more so on the day of the elections and those weeks afterwards when you had anxiously awaited the results not of the elections but of how well your grand magical show was received in far-flung provinces all over the country. You asked yourself constantly whether anyone would notice something strange in the way the resounding applause sounded too much like a recording. Magically, no one did, and apparently, you just pulled the greatest trick in our legal electoral system.

Now that you have claimed victory, it’s time you leave all those bad memories behind, forget what means was employed to get you where you want to be, destroy any incriminating evidence and drop the whole act and be yourself once again. You are no longer a magician, you are not a puppet nor a mime anymore because now you are a clown. The sooner you realize this the better for you and everyone you will work with in the business.

Choosing the profession of clowning is not a joke. Nothing in your previous life experiences would be sufficient to prepare you for three years of sheer labor to earn that extra buck. Perhaps you are wondering, more like worrying, how you can amass billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned money in such a short time. Although there is no general magical formula this time to help you out of tight situations, or whatever mire you find yourself in, this handbook will hopefully aid you into learning new tips and tricks, quite different from your previous discipline, that have been handed down since the first congress to the latest.

It may seem that these congress assemblies show no competence and mastery over virtually anything but you can bet your life (just like you trusted your magical assistants and quasi-math geniuses, during your electoral magical show, not to bring down the real axe in your guillotine act) that if they were skilled at anything at all in this world, clowning would be it.

There’s no need to panic just yet! Like all those that have been in your place, going nuts and banana, albeit an indispensable skill to master and which would be discussed later in Chapter III "If Things go Awry, Act Crazy", would be the last thing that you should do. With the in-depth battle plan for your term as a clown adumbrated for you here in this handbook, written in the clowning parlance, and with any luck, you will get back the millions you spent to buy your seat in senate, and with more luck, even triple your investments.

Chapter I
Sending a Clear Message

Whatever your first notions about your new profession is not likely to be that different from the responsibilities that are required of you to fulfill. In other words, there is nothing clandestine and esoteric about the whole clowning thing. In fact, the only secrets that you should know are the ones that you yourself will keep. Just keep in mind that you are innocent until proven guilty, and even proven guilty you can also invoke your right to a fair trial and due process that can stretch on for a century. By that time, the out-dated 1987 Philippine Constitution will be revised, amended and overhauled to suit all your clowning agenda.

Of course you have a deadline to meet. Going to senate hearings, rotting in those special chamber committees and subjecting yourself to a trial you don’t really understand will not only be boring but will surely eat up precious time of your three-year stint. It is good advice to be careful. Learn to keep your mouth shut. Similar to a great performer, you should learn how to enter, execute your act and exit leaving the audience in awe. There is no time for useful prattle, fix your eyes on the prize.

One of the important tactics to achieve your goals is to be charismatic and at the same time, look blameless and faultless. Looking dumb and clueless is not advisable. Not only will you look terrible during your ambush interviews but you will be targeted as the weakest link in your group. You and your colleagues are all in this together so you don’t want to be hounded first by the public for everyone’s dirt.

You need to look both sweet and smart to constantly keep your defenses impervious to attacks from your foes and detractors. The only way to do this is to look abnormally happy and deceptively pensive. Smile like you never smiled before. It is impossible to hide that shameless cheerfulness knowing that you have keys to the candy shop and you can raid it anytime you want. Be inspired by your next work-leave to Europe, the Hawaiian islands, Singapore, Zanzibar and all the exotic places in the face of the planet earth. Show just how much you are enjoying your well-deserved position. Don’t be too humble and frown as if you just lost your winning lottery ticket, you are not fooling anyone.

On another note, when you see that your colleagues start discussing something and their faces look a bit serious, try to get the drift of the latest gossip. In all probability it will not interest you as it will not be anything showbiz, however, keep up with the moot. Nod as if you understand and would like something to add, and shake your head profusely as if you just made a blunder in a serious game of checkers.

There’s a big difference between miming and puppetteering it and clowning it. Puppets and mimes are forced to act according to a superior’s demands in order to get something in return. The clown, on the other hand, is the man or woman of the hour. He or she does things in his or her own terms. He or she is at full liberty to act on anything that will be financially beneficial in the end. Smiling, nodding and shaking in disagreement are not to be done reminiscent to your old profession. You are now doing this on your own free will and for your own good.

We have already gone through the three of the many important skills and attributes to disguise yourself while at work. The rest, you can learn, discover and make-up along the way. It’s not that hard. Thinking out of the box and being creative are your best buddies. At this point, you need to know how to live and act outside in the real world. If you had to exaggerate positive behavior in your senate sessions, this time you have to exaggerate a bit more. The basic principle is to think big, act big, and be pig (sic).

Ordinary citizens usually have high respects to people who are way up in the highest tier of the social pyramid. They will automatically become your prey and you, their predator once you overwhelm them with your extravagance. Viewed in a different angle, once they see you rich and successful, they immediately will let their guard down and will feel more amiable towards you instead of treating you with hostility.

But before you buy that sleek new gas-guzzling, custom-made, limited edition, high-end cadillac limousine from the profits you earn in your first week, you have to consider whether your colleagues drive this type of a car already. You have to keep your own identity intact, and if things go bad, you don’t want to be associated with them because you all drive uniform luxury vehicles.

The country is about to enter a different world order. It’s high time you tailor your image to suit the changing times. Instead of driving expensive cars, this handbook suggests that you parade the streets and travel around riding a real live elephant escorted by your personal guards on a convoy of endangered African Zebras. Not only will this save you money for gas, enchant the pedestrians and cause terrible traffic jams thereby asserting your supremacy, but it will be a strong statement to the international community of your advocacies about global warming and policies on climate change as well.

To extend the metaphor further, by doing this you are hitting two birds with one stone with these brute animals-of-burden as your means of transportation. This is a sure fire way to win the approval of just about everyone who love the earth and environment like the PETA and the SPCA, and most importantly, you separate yourself from the mediocre.

If anyone stops you and asks something critical and intelligent about your choice and style of transportation, just remember you are the clown, and clowns merely smile, nod and shake their heads. They don’t have to prepare a witty and ready retort to anything, not even utter a word in reply. So keep that mouth shut!

more to follow…

tee hee

Tonight I begin my stroll into the gates of hell. I stand at the point of no return. Recall Dante’s Inferno’s entrance inscriptions: "Abandon All Hope Mortal". The same is true for where I am and what labyrinths and stages I am about to go through. Either I make it all the way to the end or go bust in the middle of nowhere. The last is not an option. Nobody who had come before me and stood where I stand had the luxury of options. It’s always been the one or the other. It’s not my place to decide my own fate just like the rest of us feebol mertals. No matter how much effort I put into making sure I should succeed there is no real assurance of reaching the end. Right now I can tell this is going to be quite messy.

Tonight I pan the horizon for signs of hope and encouragement but my view is blocked by piles of photoxerox materials, columns of voluminous books and a troop of the worst collection of characters you can imagine. I expect an assortment of battles will take place in and out of the classrooms; within and without the halls that echo the tradition of both greatness and the terrible in the last hundred years since the school was established. I know this time I have to take the good along with the bad, and I understand that these are two sides of the same bastard of a golden coin. That’s some fair trade albeit a gamble in all sense of the word. Yet I shall put everything on the line and risk all in a one time, big time bet without having second thoughts whatsoever notwithstanding the possibility the dice will roll against my favor.

But aaah, tonight I drink to life and to success! The libation I pour into my cup is a mixture of anxiety, worry, nervousness and fear diluted with a lot of pride, giddy excitement and, above all, a heavy dose of intoxicating madness!

Madness? This…is…Spaaaartaaaaa!!! Awu Awu Awu!

Heaven must be filled with tons of helium gas. After listening to a Bee Gees’ classic, this "Too Much Heaven" song, I wondered what inspired them to sing it entirely in falsetto (see: The New Groove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980).

It’s not funny. Well, not totally. You may ask what on earth were they thinking, but the more important question to ask is what were they high on when they decided to sing the song that way.    

Chorus:
Nobody gets too much heaven no more
Its much harder to come by
Im waiting in line
Nobody gets too much love anymore
Its as high as a mountain
And harder to climb

Oh you and me girl
Got a lot of love in store
And it flows through you
And it flows through me
And I love you so much more
Then my life..i can see beyond forever
Evrything we are will never die
Lovings such a beautiful thing
Oh you make my world.. a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away

Chorus..

You and me girl got a highway to the sky
We can turn away from the night and day
And the tears we had to pay(u hade to cry)
Youre my life..
I can see a new tomorrow
Evrything we are will never die
Lovings such a beautiful thing
When you are to me, the light above
Made for all to see our precious love

Chorus..

Love is such a beautiful thing
You make my world a summer day
Are you just a dream to fade away

Chorus..

Nobody gets too much love anymore
Its as wide as a river and harder to cross

Chorus..(repeat and fade)

We can divine a good guess upon close and careful analysis of the song’s lyrics. As far as the words in it go, Barry Gibb and his crew drew inspiration from a certain love that is so pure and rare it reaches, nay, becomes a place in heaven itself. The Bee Gees seem to know a lot about this type of love. Hmm. A song this beautiful must be real. Anyone who can write a song this real and beautiful must have been a personal witness to a love that is much like and is too much heaven.

Given the foolproof arguments, it becomes an inescapable truth that the Bee Gee’s are angels and they sing the way angels do. Moreover, since they sing in voices quite natural to angels, there must be something in heaven that turns a low-pitch voice into a high-pitch voice automatically. The singular and natural explanation to this is that in heaven angels breathe helium. We all know how the Chipmunk voices are made…voice actors inhale helium when they talk. Mm hmm. Ergo, the air in heaven is helium gas. It’s true! Not only does this explain why only balloons filled with helium can fly straight to heaven but this fact explain the falsetto voice.

Don’t believe me?  Check this out:

Chipmunk evidence A-1 

and then compare it to this:

Helium induced Angel voices

You draw your own conclusions. Hmm, but also, notice how Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibbs = Alvin, Simon, Theodore. Oh no.

Jaimar, my roommate of 5 years and counting, has been kind enough to give me drum lessons for free. I figured I’d put my free time to good use to learn, unlearn, relearn techniques, rudiments and styles with the drums.

I don’t have my own drum stuff at the moment. I couldn’t buy any yet as I have still to invest all my money on building up my own legal library. I can’t scrimp on law books and readings because these will be the essential foundation to a life-long vocation. Each piece, each addition and each material will cost me a sum but I know that for every piso I spend the returns would be a hundredfold in the future. The rewards I mean are not restricted to money. They’re more on that feeling of satisfaction of meeting the demands of a noble scholarly and legal career. You know, stuff like that.

The good news is I don’t have to worry about buying my drum kit now. I was given the green light to use Jai’s custom maple yamaha drum set and his motley of drumsticks, pads and pedals. I can play and use them when he’s not around or after he is finished with his own rudiments. This all goes without saying that I’ll have both a professional master tutor and a top of the line drum set for free! Isn’t that amazing?

It took Jaimar 3 years to become a level-7 or so professional drummer. I remember those days back in Kalai when he had to pore into drum books for dummies, change styles every month, research, even had broken a number of his own drumsticks in frustration and so on during the entire time he studied drums as a beginner–in our room no less! Imagine having to sleep within earshot to his unpolished grooves as a beginner. Man, the first month was a torture! Gradually though he became better, more proficient and very creative.

In the months that followed, he started turning his bed and his half of the room into one monster drumset. Anything within the reach of his sticks became a part of his 100-piece set. Really. Sometimes I had to be extra careful not to lean forward too much to his side lest he mistake my head for a gong. And, yes, I had to be super extra careful especially when he is into one of his live performance moods.

He is the very phenomena of being truly possessed. No exorcist can drive away the spirit of true rock and roll in him. Yeba. Not even the weekly complaints from our next door neighbors nor the loud sush from irate girls all the way to the farthest female wing can make him stop. In fact, that only became our convenient excuse to soundproof our room with posters and pages from the philippine collegian glued an inch thick to both our walls and ceiling. Ooh yeah! \m/ \m/

I digress. Suffice it to say he had to learn everything on his own. Of course, with the exception of that time he enrolled in an extramural class in the university college of music to break in a few techniques. Well, at any rate, and hopefully, I don’t have to go through the million drumming obstacles because he will be there to make sure I avoid whatever mistakes he made in the past and share his expert advice. He’s like a real teacher sans the tuition to be in his one-student class.

So that’s it. I’m grateful. Thanks dude.

This week, I have to learn the shuffle. It’s a fast and up-beat groove that is so cool to play I just have to learn it or perish! Aaah.

At 200 beats per minute (bpm) those that you can normally distinguish in real time become blurry. Paradiddles drummed at less than 120 bpm, for example, sound like a wild marching band dancing to different individual tunes. One can easily pick out which tap went down first and last. But if one increased the tempo thereby adding speed to one’s paradiddles, the awkward, syncopated, rowdy taps disappear, and are then replaced with a more soulful uniform whir especially at 200bpm or better.

The same principle is true in quantum physics. In theory, the small things (what an understatement) that make up the atom, which makes up everything solid, liquid, gas and plasma in the universe, are vibrating violently at a rate a thousand times faster than anything imaginable. The tempo is so fast that it eventually creates a hum of a thing that we can hold on to and have something to hold it with too. Like say, an apple in the hand. Consequently, we, our immediate surroundings and everything else are built by movements. This is not hard to imagine. In fact, we really don’t have to go far down into infinitesimal levels to grasp the idea.

Today’s a fairly hot day. Forecasts for the following months predict a slight improvement in the weather. We are likely to feel a let up on this insufferable heat when the rainy season starts. Yet it has been more than a month since the announcement was made and I don’t feel any changes at all.

Sadly, I still rely on my electric fan more than PAGASA when it comes to predicting the weather. Silly as it may seem, if I press the # 1 button I can predict with a hundred percent accuracy that I will have a gush of cool breeze in the next ten minutes (Dear, I need to have my e-fan fixed!). Likewise, pressing buttons #2 and #3, I can readily prepare for incoming climactic gusts of doom blowing at 20-30 miles per hour without emergency notice from our national weather bureau.

Obviously enamored with my fan, I decided to create several scientific experiments with it and eventually (didn’t take too long) came up with conclusive results. Well, did you know for instance that when your fan is turned off you can freely poke your fingers in and out the spaces between its blades? And did you know that when you turn the # 1 button on and made such an attempt again, that very same finger will no longer be able to make any fresh trial with either buttons # 2 and #3 afterwards? Funny no?

But let’s suppose there were buttons #50 and/or #100 installed in our fan that could increase its spin velocity exponentially. Can a two-dimensional being touch the super-rotating blades without getting hurt in his two-dimensional world?

Why of course not! That poor 2-D guy will be blown to smithereens! However, reducing the blades’ collision model to the size of an atom and somehow gluing it together with a million other similarly constructed fans by means of magic, Mr. 2-D can not only touch it without cutting himself but also eat it like an apple.

You might be wondering where this all leads to or what life-changing point I’m trying to cut across, but I tell you now with all honesty that I have no idea. I mean, really, I haven’t had the pleasure of personally meeting a 2-D dude in my life yet. Once I do I might introduce him to everyone or whatever. Right now, it’s just me with a pair of drumsticks and double-paradiddles in my free time. Goal is to break the 130 bpm limit and reach 200 before mid-terms, hmm, even with a sore finger.