| So Give Me Something To Sing About |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|05:49 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  break down | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Don Henley - "Heart of the Matter" | ] |
It's been a very long time.
Last summer, Kaitlynn gave me a stuffed angel wolf puppy she picked up at a Ren Faire. Around its neck, she had tied a message, which read, in part, "Just want you to know what you mean to me." I named it Bluster.
Events of the last three months have shown me exactly that. I have been insulted, disrespected, and shut out of the life of someone I loved deeply before I had even a chance to react, let alone the thought. She has shown me, through her words and deeds, that she thinks me to be no better than the boy who nearly threw her down a flight of stairs. I can't even look at Bluster any more, or anything she's ever given me, without feeling sick.
And she's left me alone. Everyone here in Indiana was gone or busy for the summer. My friends elsewhere I barely have contact with any more. She was my best friend, and she took that away as well. I've had nothing to do but sit in my own juices and stew for three months, making halves of stormy arguments that never came in my head, replaying everything I'd ever done and checking for that one fatal mistake.
I'm a very strong man. But I'm starting to break. I'm nearly out of faith, and I've been running on willpower for so long that all I want to do is curl up and shut out the world for a long time. I won't let myself -- I know that would be counterproductive and masturbatory -- but it hurts to go out and be alive.
Kaitlynn, I don't know if you'll ever read this. In some ways, it doesn't matter. But if you really hated me, you should have just said so. The lie that you would want to be friends someday rips me apart; even though I get so angry at you that it poisons my body and mind, I can't stop loving you, either, and I hate myself for it. I want desperately to believe that you're as hurt by this as I am, that the guilt, not a distaste of me, gnaws away at you and keeps you silent. And I wish things hadn't ended so suddenly and with so many mixed signals. I can't take your words at face value anymore, not after how you've treated me.
Part of me knows that you don't really hate me. The guiding truth in my relationship was that I loved you very much. Sometimes you assumed that I felt a certain way, and sometimes you remembered what someone else in your past had done to you under the guise of love. Sometimes I made mistakes or sacrifices. But I never acted out of malice or a desire for power over you. I did nothing to deserve or earn your ire.
But that doesn't make it feel better.
You once told me that you feared being remembered badly by the people in your life. I do too, and it burns me up inside to think that you could have been my friend for three years and still think so little of me when the time came to part. And, if you want me to remember you well -- if you don't want to be "The Kaitlynn" in my stories from now on -- the only way that can happen is by engaging me again, owning up to the insults you made against me, and giving me a reason to trust you again. Otherwise, the only way I can forgive you is by thinking you capable of no better -- in short, lumping you in with every other damaged girl who ever used me and discarded me.
I've spent three months giving you time and space, slowly convincing myself that you were an awful excuse for a human being. Please, please prove me wrong. |
|
|
| The Doink Doink |
[Feb. 15th, 2006|06:22 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  relieved | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Kajiura Yuki - "mélodie" | ] |
For the medically inclined, the terms are pulmonary edema and an enlarged heart. For the practically inclined, Alexander became very skinny very quickly, began breathing painfully, and nearly died, or at least turned so far south that euthanasia was the only option. He's still skinny, he won't take his pills unless they're wrapped in cheese, and the bounce is gone from his steps on cold mornings, but, barring further illness or injury, he will comfortably live to see the spring, at least.
I'm very tired of losing family. |
|
|
| Dyslexic Nietzsche |
[Feb. 3rd, 2006|02:22 am] |
| [ | felt |
| |  depressed | ] |
There are a few things you can say to a grad student to keep him from cramming for midterms. "Make love to me, big boy" is one classic. "I'm at the vet and we're killing your dog" also works rather well, I've recently found.
Those who want to take this as an example of a morbid sense of humor should go retake Psych 101 and then bite me, in that order. |
|
|
| It's just an object. It doesn't mean what you think. |
[Jan. 29th, 2006|01:34 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  drained | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Joss Whedon - "Ballad of Serenity" | ] |
I had an interesting and vaguely canonical dream last night.
I was someplace from my past, probably middle school, although everyone knows that dream topography is fluid at best. There was a girl, with whom I was very close, and drama obviously ensued. There was a boy who was involved with another girl, a deception, a stormy breakup, an angry revelation, a heartfelt conversation, a decision to try. I make sure that everyone ends up with the people they deserved.
As I was waking up, she came to thank me and felt sorry that I had left myself out. I knew I was dreaming, but not in such a way that it invalidated the reality of the dream. I very distinctly remember explaining that, if I was back where I thought I was, it was a time when I was miserable anyway. I told her to give me a hug and a kiss and go back to her love, because I knew I was about to wake into a world where I had a love of my own.
I smiled contentedly all morning.
Closure. |
|
|
| The Land Is Burning And Dry Under Southwestern Skies |
[Jan. 17th, 2006|10:42 am] |
| [ | felt |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Tom Smith - "Desert Storm" | ] |
Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics, glosses over the definition of cartooning as a form of "amplification through simplification." The basic concept is that, by stripping an idea down to its most important aspects, you can underscore those aspects with a kind of gripping power that a more detailed view might lack. The principle should be familiar to anyone who has gone through a structured education -- given the same number of sentences, you can talk about one thing in real depth or about everything in very rough outlines, and usually an educational path will lay down the latter as a foundation for further, more detailed study with the former. Dismissing this property of cartooning, however, I believe is an injustice both to the technique and to those who are hoodwinked by it.
Back in the day we all used to watch Wile E. Coyote try to catch the Road Runner and fail in spectacular and horribly injurious fashion. This was a simple, cartoonish universe for us to believe in; Wile E. Coyote was the aggressor, and thus the bad guy. Setting aside my feelings at the "brilliant but evil tactical genius versus innocent and doltish protagonist" motif, the setup was reasonably easy to swallow. He'd fail, try again, fail even harder, wind up blackened with gunpowder somehow and we'd all have a good laugh before going back to our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
My trouble is that I very early on developed a desire for subtlety. When I was supposed to be laughing, I was asking myself, "Why should I root for the Road Runner?" The cartoon itself, in one of the very few episodes with words (lyrics, specifically) admit that Wile E. is merely a "poor coyote, dreaming of his breakfast." He's never caught the Road Runner; assuming that road runners are the only reasonably prey for coyotes in this universe (and that's fairly reasonable, given the nigh-complete lack of other wildlife available) he has to be fucking starving by now. He's just trying to do what predators are supposed to do, hunt for food and survival. It's the course of nature. On top of that, the Road Runner is a little prick about it, with his taunting signs and occasional disregard for physics. Wile E. seems in exceptional physical condition, considering his resistance to injury, and is almost certainly the smartest of his breed (He may not invent things particularly well, but the other coyotes don't invent things at all, and, in the land of the blind...) and so one would expect him to do, if not objectively well for himself, then at least better than the other coyotes. I imagine a final episode in which he waits patiently until the Road Runner accidentally trips over something at 300mph and runs into a rock face, cooking himself instantly with the heat released by the impact, whereupon Wile E. devours him, rejoins his pack, takes his proper place as alpha, mates with his choice of female and lives like a king right up until he gets stomach cancer from having eaten radioactive roadrunner meat.
This subtlety grew into a full-fledged automatic propaganda detector over the years. Given two choices, I'll try to think of three more before deciding. Talk to me in terms of "us" and "them," I'll immediately try to understand "their" side, because I don't like being asked to assume that "we" are right. Hint at some important or salacious news, and my first reaction is to not care about it, because I don't want to be manipulated into being interested until I know what I'm talking about. Friends, allies, lovers, leaders, teachers, bosses, politicians and soldiers all like to cartoon things to draw favor towards their ends, and the only way to defeat that is through self-examination.
If you thought I couldn't bring this discussion around to naked women, you sorely underestimate me.
While I admit to a limited and somewhat unwilling social exposure, locker room conversations, television, plastic surgery, and pornography all seems to hold as common knowledge that, since breasts and asses are attractive, then larger, emphasized ones are more attractive. It's cartooning of the human body, and, for those who have some more experience and can appreciate the difference, and the link, between parts and people, it desexualizes and categorizes what might normally be attractive.
What is supposed to be intensely arousing, then, just makes me resentful. I don't like giant breasts because I resent not being given the choice not to look at them. They're just rude. It's the physiological version of caps lock. Yes, breasts are attractive, and I'll look at them when I want to, but give me the freedom to admire and enjoy hands, legs, shoulders, backs, labia, penises, chest hair, chins, ears, and anything else the situation and partner warrant.
So there's a textbook for my math class that everyone else has from last semester. Next semester the whole department is switching to the new edition, which affects nobody who already has the textbook, but does apply to me, since I'm taking the two classes in a staggered fashion. My office partner is in my class and lets me borrow the book, so long as it stays in the office. It would be hard to find a copy of the old edition now, and I'd only have to buy the new one next semester anyway, but this setup is chafing with my preferred study method. So here's the immortal question; How much am I willing to pay to be able to do my homework without putting on pants? |
|
|
| Hard Work Doing All That Nothing |
[Jan. 15th, 2006|01:27 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  rested | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Sarah McLachlan - "Song For A Winter's Night" | ] |
It turns out that I have a place.
This was unexpected, although I have spent several months making it my place. But what most interests me is that I did not really appreciate it as such until I had to share it with her for a week.
I didn't realize that my place had rules until I had to worry about them getting in the way of a smooth stay. I didn't think about the number of things I leave the bathroom door open for until I started shutting it regularly. I held little respect for simple meals until she gave them critical acclaim. I don't question my disciplined sleep schedule until I stay up all night and cuddle the morning away as I'd prefer.
And yet, it's almost the things that we didn't do that I really look back on fondly. To the untrained eye, we did a hell of a lot of nothing during that week. While we certainly weren't having Pepsi Commercial Fun, it was something. I think we both enjoyed the capacity to leave each other to our own devices, to be adoring or aloof as our whims take us, the freedom to take each other for granted. Most of the loneliness I feel here comes from moments, usually random, that I want to share and can't.
It still felt comfortable as ever. She laughs, she sings. She burns fiercely at night. It hasn't escaped notice that she keeps giving me things that wind up on my bed. Trifles here and there get left behind.
This is my place. At some point, I think I'd like my place to be her place too. |
|
|
| I Win. |
[Nov. 28th, 2005|10:47 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  victorious | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Queen - "We Are The Champions" | ] |
|
|
|
| And Cabbages And Kings |
[Oct. 31st, 2005|02:42 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| | depressed | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Tom Smith - "Saxophone" | ] |
There are things happening. Things of news and note, of malice and whimsy, of emotional impact. Things I should vent about before I fall over the brink. The problem is that, while I'm fairly comfortable with critical emotional analysis, visceral emotional analysis takes a lot out of me, and I'll need all of it for my writing that I can get.
So, for the month of November, while I am participating in NaNoWriMo, I will be placing this journal on hiatus. I'll be as faithful about being online as ever, but be warned that any attempts to message me will probably result in your being deluged with ranting about how my book is coming along.
Wish me luck, everyone. And, if you're interested in joining this mad crusade, remember that signups continue until November 25th. Hope springs eternal. |
|
|
| Bite My Lip, Close My Eyes, Take Me Away To Paradise |
[Oct. 24th, 2005|03:42 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Alan Parsons Project - "In The Real World" | ] |
One doesn't usually turn on NPR and expect to hear a jazz song about female masturbation, but there you go.
Made the first trip south in the dead of night. I don't think I'll be doing it again. It was fortuitous, in that I managed to catch the signal from Chicago (which was one of the few stations not yet in Pledge Mode) in time for this week's Wait Wait. However, a 5:30 am rise, thirteen-hour day, and four-hour highway venture through rain and dark is not easy to stay awake through. I know I have to take care of myself, because, if I don't, who would be there to argue with her over whose fault it was?
The trip is lonely, too, excluding bored, flirtatious fast food workers. I imagine someday a cloud of loved ones, like my road trips of youth, where every destination had a family member or old friend settled down halfway there who could use a spot of company in exchange for a couch for the night. At this point, even just a line of waystations would suffice, although I'd be unnerved if they didn't sell increasingly powerful versions of all my equipment as I approached the end of the journey. The journey named Bernie.
We're developing our own language, and this was expected. What I didn't except was how nonverbal it would be, and not in the "I know that face" sense. It's like American Sign Language for the culturally depraved. We can't communicate anything of a complete sentence nature, but the rare moments when one of our words has contextual meaning make it all worth the while.
One week to go, and the rehashing begins. As pleasant as confined spaces can sometimes be, freedom is always exhilarating. |
|
|
| The Right-Hander That Looks Like A Fridge |
[Oct. 24th, 2005|12:04 am] |
| [ | felt |
| |  sad | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Captain Jack - "Captain Jack (Grandale Remix)" | ] |
I'm sure this news has already floated through the DDR crowd, but here goes;
On October 21, 2005, Francisco Alejandro Gutierrez, known on stage as Franky Gee and best misidentified as "Captain Jack," passed away. His music was one of the surefire ways of turning a round of Dance Dance Revolution into a Karaoke bar.
Party on, Frank. |
|
|
| The Ritual |
[Oct. 17th, 2005|02:39 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  hopeful | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Rie Fu - "Life Is Like A Boat" | ] |
Things are going well enough. We've avoided unpleasant comparisons of similarity to previous offenders for the time being. An oddly orthogonal phenomenon is still present, though, splitting the declarations between "I love you" and "I love that you're not this other person." I'd like the latter to continue to decrease -- despite, or perhaps because, of how pleased we are with each other to date, we are cautious, certainly overly so, about dropping shoes.
What is necessary is an exorcism by fire, cutting away unpleasant, desperate compensations born of guilty conscience. They were never thoughtful apologies for thoughtless behaviours, and next week they shall be consigned to dust and ash.
As for the one who still sits in a position of honor in my memory -- I have a plan for that too.
And if you flip them really quickly, it almost looks like a movie... |
|
|
| Captured Kiss, And Other Pornography |
[Oct. 15th, 2005|10:30 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  filled with soda | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Shoujo Kakumei Utena OST - "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" | ] |
It's a little exciting, very frightening, and vaguely mystifying how much two people can take as read without falling into a great conceptual split. From the start we encouraged each other and discouraged ourselves, disbelieving. Reality has returned, triumphantly/abundantly, and the time is set. It's tough to remember July when living hand outstretched toward Now.
So it seems you have to get up pretty early in the morning to get a baguette from Meijer's. For the power to bring the breadstore revolution!
Homecoming week has fallen, driving me indoors, at the same time that Pledge Week rises, driving me out. For someone without a niche yet, this can be a stressful position. Communication helps, even though my brake pads inhibit too much personal contact. There should be a word which is to love what horny is to sex. And yet I hope to write a novel two weeks hence. |
|
|
| This Week Needs More Cowbell |
[Oct. 15th, 2005|01:13 am] |
| [ | felt |
| |  filled with hate | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Songs To Wear Pants To - "Yes, We're Still Dating" | ] |
Seriously, what a fucking awful week, and it was only three days long. I was so jazzed about last weekend until all this crap happened. I could have been there just in time tonight, too.
If nothing else, she certainly doesn't make it easy to stay away. |
|
|
| A Farewell To Robert Fraser |
[Oct. 5th, 2005|12:39 am] |
| [ | felt |
| | tearful | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Stan Rogers - "Northwest Passage" | ] |
*sniff* Oh, but I love that show.
Sigh -- if it's this hard for me to find time to put things in a journal, what does that bode for November? |
|
|
| Movie Night at the Wabash |
[Sep. 23rd, 2005|03:45 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  excited | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Spitz - "Timetraveler" | ] |
It's Movie Night!
Tonight's Double Feature:
Final Fantasy VII - Last Order
Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children
Special Pre-Movie Comedy Short:
Jon Stewart on Crossfire
Red-Eye Feature:
Sports Night (Season 1)
Informal reception in the foyer after the features for cookies, discussion, and hanky-panky. |
|
|
| Speaking Of Humor |
[Sep. 21st, 2005|07:48 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  apathetic | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | DJ Orange - "Turks In Pursuit OC Remix" | ] |
Funniest thing I'd heard in a while on NPR, on Marketplace Sunday:
Expert: "Well, the Department of Agriculture has compiled the average costs of raising a child from birth through high school, and..."
Host: "Wait, and why does the Agriculture Department have this data?"
Expert: "Well... because you have to FEED children."
Host: "Oh yeah, that's important." |
|
|
| Some Little Thoughts |
[Sep. 19th, 2005|05:28 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  headachy | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Songs To Wear Pants To - "Your Mom (Worst Grammar Remix)" | ] |
If this is a flash flood sweeping through my county, where are all the naked people in trench coats?
How can there be a Monday Night Football Bowling Club here? Aren't footballs hard to roll straight?
Why would you mock someone for marking an arcade machine as malfunctioning? Do you LIKE wasting fifty cents?
Why doesn't Chicago Public Radio play TAL or Wait Wait more often? They're taped there! They don't have to buy the airing rights!
Why compare the volumetric cost of perfume to that of gasoline? If you use enough perfume to make that a valid comparison, you have bigger problems than the price of gasoline.
Why is the National Weather Service bulletin playing "Tainted Love" underneath the local advisories?
Addendum: What abortion of good taste is responsible for so many people kneeling down to suck Everybody Loves Raymond's metaphorical dick? IT'S TELEVISION FOR OLD PEOPLE. Finding any of the "jokes" funny requires a level of cynicism and resignation that many of the anarchist nihilists I know can't attain, and then you still have to be Alzheimered enough to forget that you've heard them all a billion times. Is it so hard to create situational humor without having every single character resent every other single character? |
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|
| Um... It Looks Like A Pretty Big Horse |
[Sep. 18th, 2005|09:13 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  peaceful | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Alan Parsons Project - "The Eagle Will Rise Again" | ] |
I think I need to listen to some different music -- it's getting more and more difficult to think of a song for my journals.
I'm not sure what a Taoist would say on the issue of hope, but I imagine that it would be unabashedly unapologetic and excruciatingly nuanced. It's hard enough for me to put my thoughts on the subject into a pointed thesis these days, especially with a blunt sentiment.
I suppose that, for me, the most depressing thing about the hopeful is the time-displacement that tends to accompany their hopes. Expectations about some point in the future are pulled backwards in time to the present, where they are fluffed and sat upon and used as living room furniture. This mystifies me. I can look ahead, although I don't like to do so for long periods at a time, and I can think of myself in that ahead time in as many scenarios, fantastical and mundane, as I like, but I can no more experience these possible futures viscerally than I can slip backwards to middle school and let loose all those perfect comebacks I've created over the years in my self-sustaining causality-undermining infinite loop of a mind. You can ask a child what she wants to be when she grows up, but the question is really what she will be wanting to do when she grows up, and that's a much cloudier and deceptive question to answer. I always seemed to know that I never could, and so, from the outside, it looks like I lucked into an educational and career path particularly suited to me throughout the various stages of my maturation process, but this is just the inevitable result of a keen eye for opportunity, an incessant self-awareness, and an understanding that past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
This seems to have set me tangential to a number of people around me, who have a relationship with their ideals with which I can't really identify. To hear them speak about the future is to see that they are treating it as reality, as current, living in it actively even at the expense of the world around them. Their ideas are correct; it's the Universe that's screwed up. The shadows on the wall of the cave are still real, but now they have hilariously bad translations from Japanese.
I've been paying attention so long that I don't think I'm capable of ignoring these things anymore, and it makes me ill when I try, my mind and my body fight it and punish me for seeking such ill-gotten refuge. I live in a reference frame of uncertainty, and I handle the future best when I remember that the future is best related to when I treat it as the future -- unwritten, amorphous, and best dealt with when its time comes, not before. And perhaps that's the fourth dimension of the Uncarved Block.
But I will say, it is much lonelier without someone to go grocery shopping with. |
|
|
| Copernicus Loses Again |
[Sep. 9th, 2005|05:30 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Alan Parsons Project - "Prime Time" | ] |
A real gem, a real character. In all my life, I have never met a more trusting sort. None of my professors so far would even dream of giving me a ride in their station wagons, let alone toss me the keys to drive off for twenty minutes to grab a bite to eat while she finishes a meeting in a soundproofed lab. It's a wonderfully refreshing trust, a joy of all things including the quality of her graduate students. If she's this happy to be alive and around all the time, no wonder she doesn't have public speaking skills.
Thinking about the nature of tragedy and compassion lately, I would have to say that the majority of the world's preventable problems stem from selfishness. Wars, murders, theft, denial, hatred, sabotage, strip away enough layers and it all comes down to the belief that the world was hewn for oneself alone, to do with as one pleases.
It's what causes corrupt business leaders to make short-sighted decisions that trade the future health of the company (and the environment and its supply of natural resources) for immediate financial gain. It's what makes political leaders prioritize the propaganda that convinces the public that they are doing a good job over actually doing that job, to deny mistakes rather than correct them. It's what drives the currently-well-off to support such corruption and vanity in the higher echelons of power. It's what convinces the small-minded that their prejudices are truth, and their insults are actually insulting, rather than simple facts, taking the enemies that yowl in their heads and projecting their hideous, creaking forms into the otherwise pleasant world around them. It's what boils the blood of a driver of a Hummer as she screams full-throated profanities at the pedestrian who dared to delay her by crossing the street at an explicitly defined crosswalk with the lights in his favor and the little iconic walking man silhouette indicating his right-of-way. (Feel free to draw conclusions about the eerie specificity of some of these.)
It even seems to condition the way that we reward overcoming this behaviour. Often people will compliment my humility, which I do not know quite how to take, partly because my first instinct is often to think, "Why yes, I am quite humble." Halfway out of my mind the thought is stopped by introspection, and I remind myself that my first instinct is not a humble one, and I only act that way because I stop myself through introspection and humble myself. I am not a humble person, I simply think too much and speak too slow to come off as a braggart under most fleeting circumstances -- once I begin to talk about myself, it is hard to rein that in. I'm no better than anyone else except better behaved.
Then again, there is still an external factor at work in that certain people at certain times choose to interpret talking about one's good fortune as a personal attack on their own life. In this case the terminology tends to obscure matters -- fortune, indeed, is difficult for me to celebrate as it highlights nothing special about someone besides statistics. Things done, however, are not just factual but representative of one's interests and skills, shows deviation and specialization. It is awkward that one's talents must be special in the context of all the people who do not possess them, but, then again, if everyone was exactly alike, there would be no reason to socialize. In any case, the heady rush of accomplishment is a grand feeling on the basic level of shared human emotion, and to be unable to interpret it as anything but hubris is almost to be other than human.
Anything can be rationalized under the rules of self-interest, and much has been, to the effect that I must propose that there are simply too many people to be living on such a small planet with how well we get along. I can't shake the feeling that not nearly so many people would have to die if we could just get over ourselves and get organized.
I think Texas is a large part of the problem, not in that it is a cause, but it is a great concentration of those afflicted with the symptoms -- perhaps not Typhoid Mary herself, but certainly a quarantine. It is difficult to think of another state of the United States that has more trouble getting along with others. Have you ever seen a bumper sticker that says, "Don't Mess With Wyoming?" Heard someone say, "Everything's bigger in Vermont?"
And yet I have a strange sort of admiration for the vigilante, and the mythos it seems to occupy in the cultural consciousness. The difference between vigilantism and psychopathy seems to be that the former has the power of some broken rule behind him, some way in which he was cheated and seeks revenge. We seem to like to see people get what's coming to them, as long as they are not us (the problem, of course, being that we don't want other people to be the ones to judge what's coming to us, partly because their judgment would be self-centered, partly because ours already is).
This leads me into the realm of Retroactive Legality, a fledgling subdivision of situational ethics. The philosophy is simple, but firm; "One may take illegal ends to reach legal means that could otherwise have been reached legally had the rest of the world been playing by the rules, at the sole expense of those who broke the rules." Of course, the power of this authority depends much on the rules themselves being fairly laid out, but the themes of the acceptable rules are generally constant and easily recognizable -- equality, consent, all those things that, when seen together from a distance, form a slightly blurry portrait of the ideals of social functioning. Being strong, smart, or wealthy does not earn more inherent worth than any other person; money may buy privilege, but not rights.
In summary, Batman ownz.
There's a bad gene in me somewhere that makes me want to treat unpleasant older women like the Marx Brothers treated Margaret Dumont. This is why I couldn't have a career in the service industry. |
|
|
| Nothing Brings A Feeling Of Failure Like Two-Dozen-Odd Laughing Gnomes |
[Sep. 7th, 2005|05:08 pm] |
| [ | felt |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | heard |
| | Trace Kyshad - "ThoseChosenByTheMedley OC Remix" | ] |
Don't get me wrong; I like my professor for Rocket Propulsion. It's just that listening to her give a lecture make me want to take deep breaths and calm down.
Things are finally starting to fall into proper places. I don't have a desk yet, but I do have a serviceable folding table. One paycheck came in just in time to pay my rent and utilities, with enough left over for fresh broccoli. The first homework has been returned, and the score is encouraging. Eventually my attention can swivel back where it belongs -- doing nice things for people I like.
A brief aside; occasionally I feel awkward worrying or complaining about my own situation given recent disastrous events, but the advice of a wise man reminds me that, "one must make space in one's life for the immediate." That being said, I did really like New Orleans. There's a reason, well-deserved, that they ended up the fattest city in the country. Good food, good spices, good music... home of the best steak I've ever had, even though my arm was broken at the time. So where some can reach for their wallets to write a donation check, and others take up their holy text of choice and pray, I take up the skillet and make cajun-marinated catfish and dirty rice. That's my honoring ritual.
I feel strangely transformed lately. I used to think I wanted to write, but I'm coming to the sense that what I really wanted to do was obsess about writing. Now I've mostly put that in its place. I've prepared to challenge myself; NaNoWriMo is coming up soon enough, and I'll have the company I need. Until then, it turns out that I'm reading. This is something I'd been doing less, and I'm not sure when I decided to do something about that, although I have a hunch as to why.
At the moment I'm walking around campus carrying "Tender at the Bone," by Ruth Reichl (the work of hers I've already finished, "Garlic and Sapphires," is highly recommended) and "A Year At The Movies," by Kevin Murphy. The Definitive Hitchhiker's Guide is warming the stand next to my bed, being meticulously reread. These three books aren't going to hold me for more than a week, however. NPR seems to have opened my desires to quirky, intelligent non-fiction, in the personal vein of This American Life. I'd like to find some more reading material of this nature to tide me over while my professor for Numerical Methods derives in detail everything I used in Computational Fluid Dynamics last year. Any suggestions? |
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geophexihskiven's journal