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| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 1:41 am |
angsty.
I try, generally speaking, to avoid liberal guilt. I just can't deal with the whole sally struthers thing, and I'm not really sure it would be all that productive if I did. I give a little money to charity every year, but I try not to focus on the fact that I eat steak and icecream sometimes and a whole bunch of people can't eat anything at all. But man, sometimes... A whole bunch of the houses in my neighborhood have little garages with little doors attached to their big garages so that their golf carts will have a place to live. And I think about the fact that people suck. And that I'm one of them. | | Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | | 10:12 pm |
Irony.
So, as I passed the guard gate on my way into Lake Jovita this evening, I glanced to my right through the light rain at the topiary off to the side and noticed a sprinkler shooting little jets of water in a high arc onto a little sign. The water ran down in thick rivulets over the lettering, which read: "There is a drought. Please Conserve." | | Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | | 9:00 pm |
Grading papers as we speak. Or rather, I'm injudiciously procrastinating by finding any possible excuse NOT to grade papers. I'm theoretically cleaning out my inbox. Except, no. What I'm actually doing is NOT grading papers. I'm considering a bath. I don't take baths. I just twiddled my thumbs. Literal, honest-to-Jesus thumb twiddling I shit you not. Do it to Julia. | | Monday, October 26th, 2009 | | 4:37 pm |
Alexander Pope.
Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass, As heavy Mules are neither Horse nor Ass. | | Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | | 11:05 pm |
| | Monday, August 31st, 2009 | | 11:18 am |
"Hence poetry is the product either of a man of great natural ability or of a madman; the one is highly responsive, the other beside himself." --Aristotle, Poetics, 17.1455a | | 10:44 am |
"Whoever comes to the doors of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that he will be a good enough poet through skill (techne), is himself unfulfilled. And the sane man's poetry is eclipsed by that of the insane." --Plato, Phaedrus 245a | | Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | | 3:31 am |
| | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 12:14 am |
White trash bash.
We've decided that the food for the party will be all of the things in our freezer we don't want to take to Tampa with us. The menu will therefore include dogs and burgers, barbecued chicken, roast pork tenderloin, brunswick stew, a sausage of what I believe to be venison, a pound each of pork and turkey bacon and a half a ham. Pork chops were a little freezerburnt, sorry. We'll also be breaking out the new fryer, largely I believe for deserts. We've got a liquormelon, two good-sized jugs of Lynchburg Lemonade and a case of PBR. Yeehaw. Put on a rebel flag, color in a tooth, and come CONSUME. It would be un-American not to. | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 11:53 pm |
OK, I'm now going to make an admission that will paint me as a heartless psychopath. When I first heard about the 9-11 attacks, I wasn't really all that impressed. At that moment, with no idea of the Afghan piece of things, far less the Iraqi, I just didn't think it was that big a deal. Yes, I recognized that terrorism on home soil was now a reality, but I'd been prepared for that since Oklahoma City, which everyone assumed was pulled off by foreign terrorists until it turned out to be a homegrown redneck, and it was really only a matter of time anyway. And yes, the hijacked planes used as weapons thing was nefarious, but once again I'd been prepared by Tom Clancy for that one, and Tom had them taking out the whole of Congress. And besides that, the attack itself just wasn't that shock and awesome, y'know? I mean, apart from the psychological damage, which I acknowledge was profound, they blew up two and a half buildings and a corn field. In response, we razed two sovereign nations to the earth. I'm not trying to minimize the pain people obviously suffered. I say this for perspective, and in acknowledgement of the fact that I just do not have the pulse of America. I have no idea, from day to day, what it is we're going to decide to give a shit about. Michael fucking Jackson has been on my television ALL NIGHT LONG. I've been trying to watch the news, and it's all there is. Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow were ALL preempted for continuing coverage of Michael Jackson's death. CONTINUING COVERAGE. He's STILL FUCKING DEAD. Larry King had people going on and on about him, like he was John Lennon, Princess Di, and OJ Simpson all rolled into one. Which I guess, in a way, he kinda was. There's this little something something going on in Iran, I hear. Just saying. | | Monday, June 1st, 2009 | | 1:10 pm |
Ta'veren.
So Jess's Dad (who is, I should point out, not rich in any way, and who has lived in Kingsport all his life) has this friend, Bub. Bub used to own a trucking company, and now owns...um, like everything. So he and this other friend of her Dad's bought a house (which Bub's never even been inside of) as an investment property right before the bottom fell out of the housing market. It's a quarter million dollar house in a gated community on a golf course leading back to a lake, and by a staggering, reeling, even a dizzying coincidence, it happens to be about twenty minutes north of Tampa. Apparently, they're completely content to just let it sit there until the market goes back up, until which time they'd like us to live in it for them. "So, um, did you want us to pay, like, rent or anything?" "Well, there's a $250 homeowner fee for living in the community." "Okay, wow, $250 a month?" "No, a quarter." "Um. Ok. So do you want us to pay the property taxes or something?" "Nah, you probably couldn't afford them anyways." "So. Um. You want us to just live here for like eighty bucks a month?" "And keep the yard mowed." "Oh. Um. Ok." I applied to nine schools for my PhD and got into one. USF wasn't really my first choice. It's a bit farther from home than I thought would be ideal and it's the kind of school that has a really good program, but it's not the kind that'll get you a job just by having gone there. I'm starting to get pretty jazzed about it though. So what if I'm going to not-Harvard. Gift horses and long teeth. They're paying me to get the thing instead of me paying them. Plus which, it was apparently just a ridiculously tough year to be applying because so many people want to go back to school in the shitty economy (thanks W), and I was the only one from my Master's program who got in anywhere. And now there's this house thing. Plus, it's warm there. Current Mood:  giddyCurrent Music: "Every little ting, goin be a'right... | | Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | | 12:22 am |
A bit more living than once I was.
So I think I might be posting a bit from time to time again. Some of the reasons why I stopped sort of ... mitigated themselves after a while. Also, I need another place to keep track of my mental detritus. I'm pathologically incapable of just letting shit go and I'm giving it free rent in my head. And facebook kinda sucks. Some days it seems worthwhile and some days I have a kindof Holden Caulfield visceral reaction to the overconstructed image of it all. I don't want to construct; I want to martial. I've never been accused of being over-organized, but I do love office supplies. I find walking through a staples or something, or even just the aisle at the grocery store, oddly calming. It always seems to me that this is the place where I can buy "organized." I will purchase it, and with it record all the miscellaneous mes into some kind of manageable incarnation. Every time I start writing in a new journal, that sort of hope textures the first few entries. And then... Well, I'm not sure what happens then. I just sort of keep looking for places to put me. I miss my friends. There was a moment a couple of years ago when I needed to do something. Just...something. There were a lot of mes in me that didn't want that, that were happy...no, not happy...content...doing a whole bunch of things that weren't somethings, but that helped me anesthetize myself to the fact that the somethings I was doing weren't really anything. Weren't really ME things. Just things mes liked. And for a long time the thing I liked about days was that I was getting better at ending them. I think there was a good month, month-and-a-half there where I didn't actually feel anything at all. Ever seen brainscans of longterm alcoholics, or even syphilitics? Or pictures of the lungs of longterm smokers? There ought one day to be a way to flash a grainy picture of a soul, a black sheet film with flecks and streaks of art and kindness and color, with little yellow ulcers that eat it away, so that through the torn remnant your doctor can see, as you so clearly can, the way things might have been. And so I did a thing. Because I was dying. Kindof like Doc Holiday leaving Georgia. But I do miss my friends. Current Mood:  listless | | Friday, May 26th, 2006 | | 12:09 pm |
| | Thursday, May 4th, 2006 | | 12:12 am |
| | Sunday, April 30th, 2006 | | 4:23 pm |
At what point do magic cards start just being litter? I swear to god i find them everywhere. Under the bed, stuffed in old books, hell I found one this morning in my belly-button lint. I think they've learned to breed. Current Mood:  confused | | Friday, April 28th, 2006 | | 10:37 am |
Oh. My God.
Lightning kills 5 Mexican children in prayer Youths between 9 and 16 die praying at metal cross in central Mexico MEXICO CITY - Five Mexican children were killed when a large metal cross they were praying at was struck by lightning in central Mexico, local media reported Monday. Five children between 9 and 16 years old died and several others suffered burns when lightning struck a white-painted metal cross set on a hill in the town of Santa Maria del Rio early on Sunday, according to two newspaper reports. The lightning went straight into them and killed them instantly, local Red Cross chief Eduardo Suarez told the daily El Norte. Officials in the state of San Luis Potosi were not immediately available to confirm the report, also in the newspaper El Universal. A photo showed charring on the crosss turquoise-painted cement base, although the cross was still standing. Several families had been participating in a midnight ceremony as part of a local religious festival that centers around the cross. Santa Maria del Rio calls itself the cradle of the shawl for the traditional silk shawls that artisans have woven there since pre-Hispanic times. | | Friday, April 14th, 2006 | | 2:00 am |
Oh, I...Oh.
So, I'm driving along listening to NPR, and they start talking about this new film biography currently in the works depicting the life of Mother Theresa. The director's first choice to star in the film, as MOTHER THERESA, is...Paris Hilton. I swear on my life that's what they said. Apparently, they have similar bone structure. Current Mood: weeping | | Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 | | 1:06 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 | | 4:19 pm |
Eureka!
Jessica and I came up with an amazing idea for a reality game show. Guaranteed money-maker. "Puppy Punting." You get points based on distance, accuracy, and the volume and duration of the yelps. Theme music is a series of continuous yelps fading into the distance. You could get John Madden on to talk about equipment selection. Hard vs. soft spikes, dalmation vs. chihuahua. Larger breeds wouldn't go as far, but the larger lung capacity would provide for a higher-quality yelping experience. And if it does well, there is mad spin-off potential. Kitty Kicking- Coming this Christmas to a living room near you. Bunny Bashing- Summer 2007. Maybe something with orphans in the Asian markets. We could really be on to something here. Current Mood: productiveCurrent Music: The Star-Spangled Banner. | | 4:10 pm |
Interrogative!
So while I was writing a reply to His Flacctuousness the Pope, a good survey question occurred: If you could be a fictional character, who would you be? The rules: 1) List your top five, preferably sequentially, with a note on source and/or reasoning. 2) Can't be a character you made up. Too easy. 3) No claiming to be happy being you. Nobody believes that shit anyways. |
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