December 2008
41 posts
Heated debate last night at the dinner table concerning my plans for next year. If I recall, when I left high school, there was no cause for concern about what I was doing. I was shipping off to college and it was there that I would “find my plan in life and figure it out.” I wasn’t even pressured to apply. Heck, I was encouraged to join the military because there was NO way...
I was there...
how would richard yates respond to this game’s byline?
….in line, on Christmas Eve, at the super Walmart. Endeavoring to find a book about loggerhead sea turtles for my mom, but ending up buying Twilight for her instead. I took notes on my cell phone via text message about the sights and sounds I witnessed:
Items in the cart of the man in front of me:
Remote controlled Dino...
david foster wallace's three "dreary camps" for...
1. Neiman Marcus Nihilism: Declaimed via six-figure Uppies and their salon-tanned, morally vacant offspring, none of whom seem to be able to make it from limo door to analyst’s couch without several grams of chemical encouragement.
2. Catatonic Realism, a.k.a Ultraminimalism, a.k.a Bad Carver: In which suburbs are wastelands, adults automata, and narrators blank perceptual engines, intoning...
Malcolm in the Middle: a post-modern Leave it to Beaver ?
New climate change scenarios quantify the idea that oil is only a small component of the total global warming problem — the real problem is coal.
If the world replaced all of its oil usage with carbon-neutral energy sources, ecologist Kenneth Caldeira of Stanford University calculated that it would only buy us about 10 years before coal emissions warmed the planet to what many scientists...
thesis complete
Finished my thesis on the current outbreak of Somali pirate attacks and the potential for private security contractors to help mitigate further hijackings. Conclusion: as much as I hate corporate armies, they may be the (only) solution to a short-term problem such as this one.
Hooray!
Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one...
Five minutes inside
A quick summary of the mental activity going on up there:
Think about reading essay entitled Political Economy of Post-Intervention Somalia.
Criticize the outdated information (1999).
Read three pages, underline, make notes in column.
Think about anarchy in Somalia.
Research anarchy on wikipedia.
Research libertarian socialism on wikipedia.
Read about noted libertarian socialist, Noam...
Two quick thoughts which I’ll get out of my system once and for all before I dwell on them so long that I lose my caffeinated-edge and I start hitting the keys furiously and begin stalking unacquainted peoples on the Facebook:
Obama’s inauguration will be akin, if I have any grasp on the future, to Woodstock circa 1969. My mother attended this one but I have not ascertained any...
tumbledore:
(via alexandraaa)
new fav. word
A locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locally grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since...
“Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and...”
– David Foster Wallace, on younger writers
I haven't done a god damn thing all day.
circa 196-
My mother has an addictive personality with tobacco, alcohol, and the ever-burdening stresses of her family, which collectively, take a heavy toll on her soul. Like a writer, she finds communicating to be meditative. “I have to babysit the grandkids tonight while Bill and Kristen go out to dinner.” “Your father’s picking on me.” The first two addictions,...
“There used to be only one way and now there are lots of different ways. There...”
– Nick Hornby
“Radiohead reportedly spent more than a year recording one song that it...”
– “Beyond the Pale” - New Yorker, words by Nick Hornby
“There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is...”
– Synecdoche, New York (via tylercoates)
“Adderall has no Kurt Cobain, no Snoop Dogg or Bret Easton Ellis. It not as...”
– Magic Molly
instead of IMing someone off my buddy list with...
So Nature printed a story on the ethical use of brain enhancing drugs, which, so far, is one of the few nonlethal drugs I’ve abstained from in my college career (although apparently 7% of all college students and 20% of all scientists uses). I have mixed thoughts.
I still transpose the whole steroid argument on the issue. If scientists can “enhance” their mental muscle,...
Well, just “fuck”. It will never cease to amaze me how much ease some people get when they emit swearwords as profusely as they do carbon dioxide. A steady stream of cuss. What is the psychological reaction when this word is emitted?
On a similar but unrelated note, what’s the correct usage of “vile”? Is it an emotion? Can you feel vile? Or is it just one of those...
fun with angsty, blurtyesque typography
Sweet baby, don’t cry. Your tears are only alibis. To prove you still feel - you only feel sorry for yourself.
Well, get on that cross. That’s all you’re good for.
WatchHendrik Hertzberg calls Newt Gengrich a bigot (rightfully so) after the senator addresses the growing problem of “gay and secular fascism” sprouting up in America. Papa O’Reilly, in response, unleashes the dogs on Hertzberg before the man’s had his morning coffee and asks Hertzberg to apologize. Hertzberg, mildly bewildered, says:
“No!”
“The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step...”
– William Ayers in today’s NY Times Op-Ed
My Computer Hates Me
Programs I Have Open:
iTunes
PDFView
6 PDFs
Microsoft Powerpoint
Firefox
10 tabs open
Preview
3 images
Adobe ImageReady CS
4 recently converted .pngs
Microsoft Word
3 documents
Microsoft Excel
Google Earth
295 threads. Ee..time for new ram?
“After years of boasting about the Mac’s near invincibility, Apple is now...”
– Slashdot
islands bring us good music
Some bands grab you and they never let you go and, no matter what they do, they can never let you down..
Steven Morissey in the ’70s, when he was articulating his passion for a glam rock band that spawned that whole punk thing that I caught the tail of back in the early ’90s, when I listened to my yellow walkman with my buddy Ricky. This was before Morissey but about the time that...