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step into your wake with your blood on my shirt
Many years ago, Bobby and I were playing Axis and Allies on one warm afternoon. We started joking about Germany's terrible chances. Inspired by the board game in front of us, I commented, "Wouldn't it be terrible if some Germany game company made a 'Concentration Camp Management' game while the Reich was in power? Like Puerto Rico or one of those other city-builders, only you have to manage an extermination camp?" Bobby shook his head, chuckling. "You'd have to make sure your railroad depot wasn't too far from the gas showers or you'd lose turnaround time." We both agreed that that would be uniformly twisted. Flash forward about five years. (Read more)
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Bill O'Reilly Flips Out - Dance Remix
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Recap
How am I expected to sleep at a proper hour if there's a two hour Frontline documentary about Everest in 1996? Do I know all this shit already? Of course! I read Krakauer's book, Weathers' book, Boukreev's book... Yet, I cannot resist watching it. This is where it begin, the obsession with the impossible stories. Plus, I never like to miss a chance to stare at Beck Weathers' nose and try to decide if it looks like it was chopped off and reconstructed. I am back in Oakland in the future digs with Nick and Bob. I spent a few days in Eighty-four, because I went up to Meadville on Sunday and saw JOE GRADUATE. Yes, it was oddly entertaining. It's just my brother, wearing a funny outfit, but mom and I searched the crowd and it was very important when we saw him. I found all the pomp and circumstance oddly endearing (dad was of course horrified), much moreso than wedding traditions. Mom and I entertained ourselves finding the best names in the program. The speaker was a funny guy, he mentioned having to give a speech at the last minute once because the speaker never showed up (beat) "nor was he ever heard from again." I cracked up -- mom and I both, but I louder -- and seemingly nobody else in the auditorium laughed. It was awkward and hilarious. When Joe came up on stage, mom and I hooted and hollered. It was fun, and I had the weird feeling (laaaaaame) that I wanted to wear a stupid hat and walk across a stage and get my massively expensive piece of paper. Madness, right? But it was worse after the academic fuck up that was this semester. Life keeps getting better and worse. My two Grandfathers died in the same week recently. Grandpa Harry I didn't really know. Grandpa Bill got me -- so many memories of him and his absurdity. He used to make me listen to jazz -- his jazz became my jazz. He insulted my clothes and told me about WWII. Certain cranky and funny quotes of his were family legend for years. Rest in piece, old cranky bastard. The day he they said he wouldn't last the morning (and he lasted several more days -- perhaps to be contrary) I bought a Maxine Sullivan record and listened to it. I had a cigarette-like desperate urge to find the cinnamon gum he used to chew, and was so relieved when I found it. I didn't say goodbye in person, but I said it, I think. Country music also helps. Last Friday I went out to the fence at CMU for the traditional Benjamin plays raucous punk music on the guitar. It was sweet, and was even more sweet when two girls showed up with fiddle and banjo. The friend of Benjamin started playing "Wagon Wheel" and since I knew the lyrics well, the fiddle girl asked me about Old Crow Medicine Show. I told her I was so down with them for the past several months. She and her friend are all about the old time and bluegrass bands, and were delighted that I was excited about them. She said that it is music for old people and sometimes young men and that is all. So I have now discovered the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Mississipi Sheiks, the former being fairly OCMS-ish and the latter being an ancient string band. I read about both in Legacy Magazine, which also had a sweet article about women big band leaders. This reminded me of American Heritage magazine and how it exists and how I should TOTALLY write for it. i love magazines. Magazines are such a part of my life, and always have been. Dad bringing home magazines for the week was such a notable part of many years of youth. I know I can write magazine stories. Speaking of magazines, it is quite surprising to discover that you can actually get a subscription to Outside Magazine just by filling out crappy online surveys. Also, my father gave me a sweet gift today -- a copy of the New Republic with a Stephen Glass article on the cover. Sadly it's an article about DARE being creepy, which is probably true but cannot be trusted. There are even Dad's 1997 pencil marks because he used the article for one of his articles. Regardless, I think it's a very cool item to have. The best would be the one about the hacker that got Glass busted, though. Sleepy, poorly written rambles here. The end.
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im not saying im "better than you"...
...but i did manage to get a cool review on a website: http://www.degeneratepress.com/vault/moa ( Read more... ) |
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And within only hours of creation, it is up for deletion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:A |
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I have it
I have it, finally. A name for my blog. The one thing that I had to have before it could begin. And I'm so stupid, it's been staring me in the face.
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American Idle:Top 3
I think all three of them did the best they could do under the circumstances they were under. Some of them got bad songs considering the style of music they usually do. It seems like people think that Syesha is going to lose. I think she has gotten better as the competition has gone along but I'm surprised that she made it to the top 3. I thought she'd be top 7 or 8. I'm all for David Cook now. I was afraid he would get voted off after his bad performance of that Our Lady Peace song, but I'm glad they kept him. He's going to sell a lot of CDs. _EDIT_ Its David Cook vs David Archuleta. |
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Father jailed after daughter fails to get diploma
So, literally punishing someone for something they didn't do. Of course, in this case, it's also something that they are unable to do. Unless they've changed the rules and will give out a GED to anyone. But, it's for the children, so I guess it's all good. Even the daughter says he shouldn't be blamed, but maybe they're still under the impression that children are to be seen and not heard. |
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As is being reported all through the lulzosphere, there is a wikipedia article on ED now. Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encycloped Those of you who are wikipedia users, please comment with your thoughts. I am interested to know them. |
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Nigel Bingsley, Gentleman, Explorer
Whilst searching the hard drive I found this piece of majesty. I believe Benjy IS Nigel Bingsley. Yes children, I have discovered the majesty of posting pointless things on youtube at last.
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I think I've had too much caffeine because I'm feeling really on edge and melancholy this afternoon for no reason in particular. The Zyrtec-D probably isn't helping. Stupid allergies. |
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Decentralized Energy
So, I wrote an essay which was, in part, on the decentralization of the current energy structure for my class in Environmental Economics and I thought some of you might be interested, and it's not a topic that gets discussed around here too often, so I thought I would give it up to you folks for review. I got a decent grade on it (a B) and I am going to be using it as a starting off point for a policy I am going to write a report for my university on the advantages of switching over to producing our own energy as opposed to getting it from the grid. We already do this in part, as well as produce some of our own biofuels for campus vehicles. We also have a small gray water system set up for the university specifically, and the whole towns water treatment is done through gray water methods.
( So, here it is )
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Economic Causes of War
There are no economic causes for armed aggression within a world of free trade and free enterprise. In such a world, no individual citizen can possibly derive any advantage from the conquest of a province or a colony.... The wars of the 20th century have been, to be sure, economic wars. But they have not been caused by capitalism, as the socialists would have us believe. They are wars caused by governments aiming at complete political and economic omnipotence, and have been supported by the misguided masses of these countries. |
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god loves ugly
A quick one to start us off: my favorite workout at the gym - to observe, not to perform - is the desultory chin-up. That's when a guy walks up to the bar and does one chin-up, maybe two, before remembering how hard they were. Then he drops to the mat and walks off like he has something else in mind. Now to talk about how much reading sucks: I'm glad that the fantasy story trope of "your wish comes true, but it's twisted" gets less play these days. You know the one I mean: I wish for a million dollars, but it comes in the form of a life insurance payment when my wife dies. Or I wish for time to read in peace and quiet, but I only get it after a nuclear bomb wipes out civilization. Also known as the "monkey's paw" conceit, after the 1902 short story which spawned it, this slapdash shortcut has been worn into a faceless grit through overuse. Holy hell, it's annoying. For one thing: if horror is really just a form of Gothic moralizing (the prince who taunts the Red Death plague gets infected; the girls who sleep around get their throats slashed; etc), then what lesson should the reader learn from this story? "If you get the chance to make a wish, phrase it very carefully"? Great lesson; I'm sure it'll stick with me in the wish-filled future I anticipate. "Getting what you want without hard work will curse you with sorrow"? I can see that - kind of the Protestant work ethic with slick urban styling - but maybe there's a better way to phrase it. Really, I see nothing but downsides to telling generations of impressionable children that "getting what you want will ruin your life." For another: note that the magical malefactor always picks a particularly ironic way to fulfill the wish. Irony requires intelligence - recognizing a pattern that matches in some ways but differs in others - so we have to presume that the monkey's paw has, I dunno, some evil genie watching it and waiting to screw over the life of whoever holds it. Because if I had to grant evil wishes, and I felt particularly lazy, I wouldn't be very creative about it: Rube: I wish my boss hadn't fired me.And so forth.
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So many songs about rainbows
My abdominal muscles (specifically, both sets of obliques) are super-sore--they hurt when I laugh, when I stretch, and when I bend in certain ways--and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I did a whole bunch of interesting things this weekend, but none of them involved sit-ups, and that's exactly what it feels like I did: about four hundred sit-ups. Ow. One of the interesting things I did do this weekend (well OK it was yesterday, but the semester's over so it still felt like the weekend) was go to a Cuddle Party. I've always thought Cuddle Parties--at least, the official, structured kind that you pay to get into and cuddle with strangers--sounded sort of silly and sort of creepy, but I recently met one of the founders of Cuddle Parties through SFSI, and she piqued my curiosity. Some of my friends were curious, too, and wanted to go check it out, so I decided to take the opportunity to try to suspend my judgments and push my boundaries and see what a Cuddle Party is actually like. So, Cuddle Party in a nutshell: you show up, sign in, change into your PJs, and sit in a circle on top of a pile of fluffy cushions and blankets. The facilitators explain the point of cuddle parties--to provide a safe space for adults to explore boundaries, communication, and non-sexual touch--and the rules (which pretty much boil down to keeping your PJs on, not engaging in sexual activity, and being required to get a verbal "Yes" from someone before touching them), and then there are introductions and communication exercises, and then you pretend to be a cow in a magical field (I am not even kidding), and then people make with the cuddling. Or not, as the case may be, because you don't have to cuddle if you don't want to. And thank goodness for that, because one of the things I discovered last night is that I am utterly disinterested in cuddling with total strangers. I sort of already knew this. In fact, when my friend first told me he was thinking about checking out the cuddle party, I said, "I don't know, the thought of cuddling total strangers doesn't really appeal to me." But I didn't expect it to be as uncomfortable as it was; faced with a roomful of strangers ripe for the cuddlin', I wanted to run and hide in the kitchen. I tried it anyway, though, since part of the reason I was there was to push my boundaries a little. I cuddled for a bit with one of the people I came with but didn't know very well, and I accepted lots of hugs from (and even offered a couple to) people I'd never met, and I said yes to a couple requests to touch my arm or hold my hand. And I found it strange and boring and uncomfortable, so I extricated myself from the action and sat by myself for a bit, watching and processing. It wasn't all strangeness and discomfort, though. I did get to cuddle with my amazing friends later on in the evening, which was a much more pleasant, comforting, and oxytocin-releasing experience. And it was kind of liberating to be at a social event and be able to just chill in my PJs and not feel like I had to be pretty or otherwise impress anyone. And the reminder from the rules that "Maybe" is just an invitation to ask again later was a timely one for me, because lately I've been guilty of telling people "Maybe" when I really mean "No." So I'm definitely glad I went to check it out, it was certainly a learning experience, but I'm not sure if I'll ever go to another one. I have some weirdness about feeling so uncomfortable at the Cuddle Party. I feel a little strange about not being into it, if that makes any sense, especially since I'm generally a very affectionate, touch-oriented, and pro-cuddling person. The more I think about it, the more I realize that part of the issue is that I'm actually okay with not wanting to cuddle strangers, but for some reason I feel like it's something I should be trying to get over; and part of it is my long-standing issue with feeling guilty about being picky, about needing to choose between and prioritize people. But I'm too damn tired to write any more about it tonight. :)
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The cops took her in that woman didn't need no bail she wiggled one time for the judge the judge threw the cops in jail From "You've got to love her with a feeling"-by Freddie King I would say Freddie King is my favorite pure blues musician. He was a large man with a large voice who could really play a mean guitar. He played great songs too. Some of my favorites by him are the one mentioned above, "Palace of the king", "Sometime after while", "I'm tore down", "Further on up the road", "I love the woman", "The stumble", and especially "Have you ever loved a woman". Eric Clapton covered "Have you ever loved a woman" for his Layla album, and it's been a concert staple for him ever since then. I hear Clapton and his band have been playing lots of stuff in their concerts from the Layla album. It's a great collection of songs. Clapton plays a lot of songs about being alone, which are kind of my favorite kind of songs since I can really relate to them. The Unplugged album had lots of those kinds of songs like "Running on faith", "Lonely stranger", "Layla", "Old Love", and "Nobody knows you when you're down and out", which I think says as much as any song just in the title. Then there's the song from the From the Cradle album called "Driftin'", which is a cover of an old blues song and a song which could be the theme song of my life. |
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A Song I Wrote For You...
All I need is an itty bitty KISS KISS Gimme a moan that says LET'S FUCK SHIT! Your best message is an arm around my neck Throw me a bone when I'm already dead I stand suddenly still with a bottle of gin A criminal class smokes crank by the river All I need is a little bit of I stand suddenly still with a bottle of gin A criminal class smokes crank by the river So gimme a moan So gimme a moan |
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sleepy
amused
introspective