Back in the day, I ruled the Hibbing High School Speech Team with an iron fist. Speech was a tough commitment. You had to get up really early every Saturday in the winter and ride off to some mysterious Iron Range High School for competition. 
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Let's face it, sometimes it sucks Babe the Blue Ox balls to live in Northern Minnesota. The winters are cold, lutefisk is disgusting, and you're forever mocked by people whose only experience with the better state half involves films with class-action law suits and wood chippers.
2 Comments
 
 
Summer Job of Awesome is over for six days. Thank God. You know those commercials where the fat little green slimeballs of mucus are playing pool in someone's nose? Yeah, well, they've been in my head for the past week for some Brobdingnagian booger convention, where they enjoy bubbling up and down my sinus cavities every time I take that 2,341 foot journey into the Underground Lair and forcing me to give a tour with crappy hearing. You know how embarrassing it is to be 20 years old and having to ask people to repeat their questions four times before you can answer them? VERY. I'm starting to wish my parents had taught me sign language when I was a baby, "Meet the Fockers" style.

Everything, for the most part, is going well. Last week, I had a Physics Ph.Douche. He wanted to ask many questions, such as:

P.h.Douche: So is the neutrino interaction based on (Insert LONG and INTENSE and COMPLICATED scientific reasoning into this space that you can't hear because of the fact he speaks in a quiet voice and your eardrums are attempting to implode) ?

Me: Yes.

P.h.Douche: So then the (yet another collection of BIG SCIENTIFIC WORDS I DON'T KNOW) is caused by the (more words, every other which I can hear and every other other I actually know the definition of) ?

Me: Yes. Yes it is.

P.h.Douche: Excellent. I can clearly see you know exactly what you are talking about.

Actually, he was pretty cool. After the tour, some girls aged high school and middle school started asking me some surprisingly in-depth questions on anti-matter. Physics. P.h.Douche was nearby, and I took the chance to pull him into the conversation, which he seemed to really enjoy. We were an odd little group, talking about the mysteries of the universe in the tiny gift shop while other tourists awkwardly sidled around us, but it was, well, fun. There's something very cool about being able to talk in a group of wildly different people about a subject that no one fully understands; the kids kept pushing us, the old man and I kept bouncing off each other. Afterwards, he told me that I had done an exceptional job making the subject material relatable for visitors. At least I think that's what he said. My ears were still pretty effed up. 

It was incredibly, I don't know, satisfying. Kind of affirms what I'm hoping to do in life.

Physics joke of the day:

Your head is so thick a neutrino would have a 0.5 percent chance of hitting it today.

BURN.
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
A dated photo of my workplace, located a half-mile underground
(Facebook friend): OMG Matt Nelson! How are you??!! What are you doing this summer?? Lolololol

Me: Nice to hear from you! I'm actually working a half-mile underground in a cutting-edge physics lab located at the bottom of a century-old iron ore mine where I'm trying to teach bored tourists about a mysterious little particle called a neutrino as well as dark matter. What are you up to?

(Facebook friend): omfg whATT?!

I've had this conversation at least five times since the start of the summer, regarding Awesome Summer Job.

I had applied for Awesome Summer Job in April, but I never expected to get it. Then I got the phone call while I was literally on my way to take my Modern Physics final.

Future Boss: Congrats Matt! We want to hire you to work in the Soudan Underground Mine! We're going to pay you well, give you free housing, and incredibly flexible schedule and a chance to flex your physics teaching muscles while working with bonafide high school physics teachers.

Me: (trying to speak while drooling out my mouth and simultaneously jizzing in my pants) THAT'S SO #$@%!!#% AWESOME! But my final is in ten minutes canicallyoubackplz?!

The lateness of the summer job threw my summer plans completely out the window. I had been intending to take a morning class from the U in Duluth that I could no longer take. I had to drop out of that while at the same time begging and pleading professors back at Drake to let me into their equivalent classes in the fall.

My workplace sort of resembles the lair of a demented Bond villain. Located 2,341 feet underground, it can only be reached by taking a cage down a small mine shaft. On one side, mine tunnels extend a mile into the surrounding rock, which visitors can travel on a historic tour. On the other side is my occupational space, where a 6,000 contraption of steel and plastic carefully monitors a pivotal particle that humanity knows almost nothing about. Every time I walk in there, the little kid in me goes apeshit at the sight of miles of cords, blinking lights and terribly complicated monitoring boxes. I get giddy when I go in there.

 My job is chiefly physics outreach. The Soudan Underground Mine has been home to physics experiments for 30 years, but only the most recent one has been open to the public for tours. I bring visitors down the cage, into the lab and explain to them that they are being shot by millions of particles smaller than atoms every second by a beam from Fermilab in Illinois. Did your eyes glaze over when you read that? My tourists' eyes do too.

I'll also be doing some design/writing work hopefully soon — wait, what?! You mean I'm going to be combining physics and journalism, two of the areas I've had extensive training in? THAT'S EVEN POSSIBLE?

Starting to see what this Summer Job is full of Awesome?

It's harder work than you'd think. I haven't nailed it all down yet, and I live in terrible fear of of the Physics P.h. Douche from MIT who will inevitably appear on my tour and stump the hell out of me. Still, I'm teaching, I'm learning, I'm thinking about a subject I'm fascinated with. 

The only real concern I have is if the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out while I'm underground. You might think the seemingly inaccessible location of the mine would be a plus... but you're wrong. Assuming Z.A. occurred within a short span of time, it would be impossible to stock the caverns with enough canned food to last until the infestation was overcome. We would have to resort to either cannibalism or bats. Ugh.

Also, the only way in or out of the mine is the mine shaft, and if the hoistman is bitten or scratched by an enraged zombie tourist, we'd be stuck down there; the only way up is a ladder that goes up the entire 2,341 feet, hitting 50 or so other platforms as it does so. Zombies would almost CERTAINLY be attracted by our zesty human flesh and throw themselves down the shaft, meaning we would have to fight off a Scad of them at every platform. Unless we could use our physics skills to invent some kind of super Zombie Zapper, we'd never see the sun again.

...but other than that, it's great!
2 Comments
 
 
I had to spend about twenty minutes with a weed whacker on this blog before I could write to get rid of all those ugly dandelions that sprang up since the last time I posted. I mean day-um, it's been a while! Summer is in full swing, complete with mine pits, mosquitoes and killer tornados. I landed the Summer Job of Awesome and am taking an online course from Duluth that's supposed to be teaching me how not to be racist.

I could talk about all these things, but instead, I'm going to discuss love today (*cue the Isaac Hayes*). My parents recently celebrated their 34th homicide-free year of marriage.

I don't know how they're still together. My mom is an attorney and my dad is a lumberjack, for crying out loud. She's logical, practical and always earthbound. He's creative, emotional and an endless generator of bad puns. He teared up when I went to college and told me I was at the start of my greatest adventure; my mom shoved me out the door and threatened to drive down and rip me a new one if I hadn't vacuumed my bedroom floor so she could use it.

When they married, she was a non-practicing Baptist who I suspect was a lot more feminist than she now says she was. He was from a family of Catholics baptized almost as soon as they popped out of the womb.


They met on the first day of college and were married the day after, so it would be easier for their families to attend both ceremonies. That was in 1976. I once asked my mom why they waited until 1989 to have me, and she told me she didn't know if the marriage was going to last. My mom, a regular Nostradamus, that one.

My parents did some other things that don't make sense. They traveled to California shortly after they were married, intending to shirk the Minnesota winters forever. They got to the Golden Gate bridge and inexplicably turned around and came back, without ever really explaining why. Until I was 15, I thought they named me after St. Matthew; it turns out they really, really liked Gunsmoke. I'm not kidding.

Initially, they celebrated their anniversary with more expensive gifts, I imagine, but as the years went by that habit somehow faded to my dad picking up flowers from Walmart on his way home from work, or ordering a Choppy's pizza. This past week, my mom only gave my dad a card depicting a truck sitting in the top of a tree. Inside, she had only written, "Why?"

My dad planned on getting his normal Walmart flowers gift, but the flowers were wilted this year. Goddamn economy. He had to improvise, buying her a card with two frogs on it, with a message inside saying, "I'll love you till I croak." His other gift? A gigantic bucket of cheese balls. Yes, the cheeto-like, cholesterol inducing orange spheres.

My mom showed me the gift later that rather — rather, showed off the gift. Upon delivery, my dad apparently said, "I figured, 'What do you get the woman who has everything?' Cheese balls."

These cheese balls are off limits to me. I've already been accused once of pilfering from her stock. They frequently discuss the exact specifications of the cheese balls, such as how much cheesy dust would be left over if you ground it all down (I'm guessing half an inch, although the debate rages on) and how much random crap the plastic container will hold once the sweet supply has been swallowed. She enjoys sitting in the chair, he on the couch, while they both watch the Twins (not the World Cup; she's always hated soccer, she revealed to me this week. Only sport I ever played, thanks mom). 

Somehow, it's all good.

How? I have no idea.  I just hope that someday I find a love that's just as perfect as it is bizarre.

Mom and dad, happy anniversary.
Picture
Add Comment
 
 
I'm wiped. Exhausted. Why? It's called "moving out," and it sucks worse than the residence hall vacuum clear I spent 20 minutes trying to unclog with a mechanical pencil, terrified that the stringy chunk of grit was, in fact, the elongated tail of a dead cat.

I think my last joule of energy was used up when my roommate and I hauled Massive Stained Comfy Sofa down the steps. This had been immediately preceded by Miniature Stained Comfy Love Seat, so we were already a little tired. These things are awkward and smell funny, but they are wonderful for napping after a test or taking sexiling in stride (I should probably add here that all of the stains on them were present when we purchased them... don't give me all that 'Caveat Empor' crap right now). We managed to get both down the (descent to hell) three flights of stairs — at only one point did we become squished between two railings, which caused us to burst into laughter before briefly choking on our own blood. We finally got them into the lobby.

That's when I got the call. 

An on-campus charity group had posted signs describing some sort of on-campus garage sale through the Salvation Army. I'd been assured for the past week that they would OF COURSE take my furniture, including my beloved Massive Stained Comfy Sofa and Love Seat. The truck was to arrive exactly at 11:30, at which point I could lift these two pieces of furniture for the last time and never see them again.

At 11, the time when the napping apparatuses were being lowered into the lobby, my phone rang, and I learned that there had been some sort of miscommunication, and the truck was not coming. This left me high and dry in the lobby of Goodwin-Kirk Residence Hall with two lonely couches, stains and all.

I started panicking. I began to call agencies, Goodwill, the Disabled American Veterans — anyone. These couches HAD to go today, and they were too comfortable to throw away in the trashcan without kindling a significant amount of Catholic guilt, which I was unwilling to start out my summer.

I updated my Facebook. AND my Twitter. I considered updating this blog as well, but ultimately decided not to because I've had a low number of unique visitors lately, but a large number of page views (whoever is creeping, start leaving some comments!). No response.

I called my mom, the Attorney, who I suspect was in the middle of some sort of important legal procedure with several other people in the same room, because she kept responding with ambiguous Northern Minnesotan answers, such as, "Ya betcha," and "Well, I-da-no aboat that."


To make a long story short — I found buyers, thanks to my former Resident Assistant, who I call White-Trash Obsessed because of her fascination with tales of whiteness and trashiness. Less than an hour after I received the phone call from the campus charity, I had those couches sold, and my Catholic guilt was soothed.

Now my room is empty. The beds are stripped, the desk is wiped clean, the dresser is empty. I'm actually in here illegally; I checked out this morning, but decided to stay one last night after the Couches Ordeal put me behind schedule. I'm half-expecting White-Trash Obsessed to break into my room and order me to leave in that thick Mizzou accent she gets when she's angry.

It's a gone, a whole year of accumulated crap, piled in my car or in garbage cans down the hall. So many memories — the emptier a room gets, the more they stir in the mind.
1 Comment
 
 
When you're from Minnesota, you can't go apeshit like normal people can. It's called the "Minnesota Nice." If some short order cook creates a burger made of turds at a restaurant, you smile and eat it anyways and still leave a tip. If someone steps on the back of your flip flop three times in a row (and the cheap shoe breaks), you're always the one who says "Excuse me." And if someone brings an incredibly irritating distraction to a review session that you NEED to concentrate on in order to pass and not screw over your future, you sit in silence, fantasizing about ways in which you could exact your revenge, but still give him an extra pencil if he needs one. If he REALLY gets on your nerves, you furiously scribble a poem when he isn't watching.

Minnesota Not-So Nice
by Matt Nelson

Do you know how badly I want to smash your face in,
Annoying Chip-eating boy?
Or ram that cellophane package in a garbage can
shards of Martha's homestyle bakery chips
up your nose?
I'm waiting for you to choke, Annoying Chip-Eating Boy.
I would like nothing more than to call an ambulance
So you can gasp and wheeze while I
go Office Space on your noisy, Godless potato chip crap bag.
Annoying Chip-eating Boy, I want so badly
to interrupt this lecture and scream
SHUT THE FUCK UP
...
You put the chip bag down.
Are you done?Idon'tcare.
Go eat a burrito, and let me study modern physics in peace.
Add Comment
 
 
Enduring Readers of mine will know that I recently did pretty well in an on campus publication, Periphery, with a piece of fiction and a poem. I just got back from their launch party and man, do I feel great. After all, it's not very often that you get a chance to speak to an audience of people enthusiastic not only about the arts, but about things you've written. The event was held at Mars Cafe — a local legend of a coffeehouse (I recommend getting Earl Grey tea and Chips and Hummus — it's incredibly cheap and caffeinated) which was pretty packed.

I went in extremely nervous, and alone. YES I DO HAVE FRIENDS. It's just that I was embarrassed. When you read fiction, you put yourself out there. If I had it my way, I would have everyone read the nice little blurbs and ignore the actual story and poem. So I didn't tell anybody about the party, really, and didn't invite my friends.

I really regret that now. The Periphery staff started talking to me almost at once, making me feel welcome and comfortable. I was asked to read first — I accepted, because I wanted to get it out of the way. I was introduced, and given a prize for my award (NO, IT WASN'T A CHECK!) in the form of this beautiful moleskine notebook. I love notebooks, but I never buy anything other than 50 cent college ruled ones at Wal-mart. Having this is sort of like having a four course gourmet meal handed to you when you're used to burgers and fries — it's awesome!

The reading went from strange to intense in only a few seconds; my story, "The Wolfhound" is supposed to be suspenseful. I never realized how suspenseful it actually was, though, until I looked up at one of the most intense parts and realized the entire coffeehouse, including the Mars Cafe workers, had gone completely silent, and were giving me (ME! THE FAT PHYSICS MAJOR WITH A COWLICK!) their riveted attention. Man oh man, that was strange.

Afterwards, I was interviewed by my former employer and beloved student newspaper, the Times-Delphic. It made the event so — special, somehow. I'm always the interviewer, never the interviewee. I tried to give her good quotes, but I think I talked in circles a lot.

The Periphery staff did such a great job with this publication. The design, the layout — everything is just great. The other authors were great to listen to — their work is so outstanding, you've got to read it on peripheryjournal.com. (You can also view my stuff there.)

I thoroughly regret not inviting people that I knew to the event. There's a difference between being humble and keeping your talents hidden. Maybe I'm being a little egocentric with this post, but I know the attention won't last. A week from now, celebration of my work will be over, and I'll just be another body in the crowd. Got to live it up while you can, right?
Add Comment
 
 
So I haven't really blogged about this yet, but I recently kicked a whole lot of butt in my fiction writing endeavors. Two of my submissions for Drake University's "Periphery" journal were not only published, but THEY WON AWARDS TOO.

Huh? No... no I'm not getting a check... be quiet, okay?! This is the type of reward that comes with a warm, fuzzy feel and the knowledge that I can actually write worth crap. What I REALLY won were two very wonderful blurbs from people who actually know what they're talking about — I'm going to reproduce them here, and it's going to seem like my ego is similar to Tiger Woods' pre-Thanksgiving 2009, but I don't care. This is MY Web site. I can write all the nice stuff about me that I want, and if you don't like it, feel free to click out (although please, please don't leave me!)

The first blurb was from Johnathon Williams, a founding editor of Linebreak.org, a weekly magazine of original poetry, and an MFA candidate in the Creative Writing program at the University of Arkansas. He was writing about my poem, "Alive."

"Here I admire the poet's effort to tie the timeless to the temporary, the grand to the small. 'Now is the time of memories' is a bold, provocative opening line, the reach of which is made accessible by the many specifics that follow, such as the dandelions growing in the cracked sidewalk. Such juxtapositions are one of the many things that poetry does well, and here the technique is used with aplomb."

APLOMB! If I saw that word out of context, I would probably think it was a pokemon, but here it practically makes me jump off my feet and start fist pumping the air.

The other blurb was written about my short story, "The Wolfhound," by Andrew Porter, the author of the short story collection "The Theory of Light and Matter" as well as other awards I don't feel like typing out.

"From the opening paragraph of Matt Nelson's "The Wolfhound" I could tell I was in the hands of a natural storyteller. There's a certain confidence and honest in the narrative voice that immediately drew me in and made me care about his characters. Even more impressive, however, was the way Nelson subtly developed the conflict beneath the surface of the story, raising questions about the past, while at the same time keeping the reader firmly grounded in the present. A psychologically complex and emotionally powerful piece. If this story is any indication, I think Mr. Nelson has a very bright future ahead of him."

Not just any future, you notice. A very bright one. Not bad for a physics major, huh?

I shot off an e-mail to Mr. Porter and Mr. Williams, thanking them for their awards. Mr. Porter responded, and it turns out he's coming to Drake. TONIGHT. For a visit. And I get to meet him. In person. Better than Facebook.

I've been opening and closing doors all day, the most annoying nervous habit ever. I'm pretty sure the refrigerator has lost it's chill, and I'm probably driving my roommates crazy. The thing is, I've NEVER had someone other than a parent, school teacher or friend tell me my writing was any better than anyone else's. Any person who has ever read my work met me before they read it, never the other way around. That's why I was so pumped that he had such good things to say — there were no first impressions, no communication, nothing. It was just the writing he saw, and that's really what's most important.
2 Comments
 
 
I'm so glad this month is almost over. It's been a rough one, Enduring Readers. I had this funny idea that this semester couldn't possibly be as hectic or as time consuming as Fall 2009. In April alone, I created an 8-page section of the Drake Relays Edition Times-Delphic (Features A, you better check it out!), studied for and took a quantum physics test (I can summarize that awful experience in one Northern Minnesotan word: Uffda), developed what I hope is just a mild caffeine addiction and pretty much decided on the course of the rest of my life.

I'll begin with the latter. I am now enrolled in Drake University's School of Education program, going for an education degree plus endorsements in physics, journalism, general science and, believe it or not, possibly math. Also, I'm getting my BA in Physics — that elusive physics major, and, if it doesn't mean too many more classes, possibly a math minor.

Yes, this will mean a solid platform (I think) I can sell myself to employers on. No, it won't mean I can graduate in four years. That's okay. I've accepted that, for the most part. I wish I'd planned a little better earlier on, but hey, what can you do at this point? I'll sneak in a few summer classes wherever I can, but I'm not holding my breath.

I imagine that in the near future I'll feel the same way about my physics degree as I do about the Relays Edition of the Times-Delphic: intensely proud, but I still want to take it outside and burn it in a trash barrel.

Don't get me wrong. I've pushed myself to places I didn't know I could go to with physics and the Times-Delphic (like pulling two all-nighters in a row, for instance). But when I think about tearing up the Relays Edition, even jokingly, I feel this strange sort of catharthis, like I'm telling this thing that had so much of a monopoly over my time that it doesn't own me anymore. That I won. I beat it.

It's a pretty strange juxtaposition of ideas, I admit, but don't get worried; I'm not about to go Office Space any time soon. I haven't torn up the Relays Edition, and I'm definitely not going to torch my future physics degree. It's just my thought of the night, I guess.

Does anyone else have any idea what I'm talking about? Do you ever just want to tear up that paper you spent hours writing, because you suddenly have the power to? Or am I nuts?
Add Comment