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| Friday, November 21st, 2008 | |
harpers
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4:08p |
WYATT MASON—Weekend Read: “The work that gave me trouble inspires a kind of grudge in me” http://harpers.org/archive/2008/11/hbc-90003901 This week, I’ve been reading essays by French Writer Henry de Montherlant. I admit to a comprehensive ignorance of his body of work, but find the collection into which I’ve dipped–an out-of-print Pléiade edition of his Essais–compelling: conversational, clear, rich in reference and wit. I’ll try to translate a little piece of what I liked in the coming weeks, because there’s pretty much nothing of his available in English online, with the exception of a largely unexceptional (though exceptionally self-regarding) essay on Henri Matisse. . . . |
san_diego
[ lizetta ]
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4:40p |
Live sketch comedy show! Looking for something fun to do this Saturday night? Join me in watching some very funny people do what they do best! ( Info )Or check out their MySpace The House |
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theonionfeed
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bbcnewsworld
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bbcnewsworld
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bbcnewsworld
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bbcnewsworld
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9:29p |
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bbcnewsworld
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10:28p |
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patrissimo
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3:43p |
Republicans Seek Bailout WASHINGTON—In the wake of their party's devastating losses in the last election, a delegation of Republican leaders has come to Capitol Hill requesting a rescue package of $25 billion. "We're seeing a potential meltdown in the conservative movement," party chair Mike Duncan told lawmakers Thursday morning, "with consequences that could impact directly upon millions of middle-class Americans and cause further devastation to our economy. I support the free market, but the Republican Party is too big to fail."
"There's tons of jobs that depend on the Grand Old Party," agrees Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "I don't just mean the employees of the GOP itself. I mean all our partners and suppliers, everyone from Bechtel to the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. There's the field tech at Fox News, the secretary at the Heritage Foundation, the guy who keeps the shredding machine humming at Halliburton. Yes, Sean Hannity can always go back to pitching steakhouses. But not everyone has a valuable skill to fall back on. What about Frank Luntz? What do you say to him?" (Reason Magazine) |
patrissimo
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3:39p |
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kirinqueen
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3:32p |
but which do I cull? I am so behind on Livejournal. I think I need to cull some of my feeds here and in Bloglines. I can't keep up anymore. (How the hell do you do it, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hober?) |
nebyoolae
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3:21p |
Heeeeeeeey-Ohhhhh, I Got Yo Taaaaaahoooooooe THAHOENESTRobyn and I are leaving for Lake Tahoe to attend her friend Rebecca's wedding this weekend. I've never been; she went once when she was younger. The lows for the weekend sit on the low end of the 20s, while the highs are in the still-cold low 50s. A bit of a wrap-up of recent observations before we go is in order. FALLOUT 3It rules my life. Thankfully, there is an end to it, and no multiplayer beyond talking to Charles about it the next day, so it won't rule my life forever, and I can go back to playing Rock Band. GYMRacquetball experience is safely in the years category, while rock climbing continues to sit for the moment at months. The former is still fun, even though I feel my skill level has been topped off for a while now. I don't think it helps me lose weight at all, but maybe it maintains it. I dunno. The latter is a completely different challenge, and one that can vacillate quite a bit. One week I will be totally without confidence, trembling at the sight of routes up the wall I've done before and unable to reach the apex of any of them, and the next I'll be scampering up fairly merrily, the Fear abated for now. I just don't trust the rope. The rope is a facade, and if I let go I'm going to die. This is the irrationality that plagues me. SCRAPSNo real reason to announce this, mainly because none of them are worth much of a damn beyond getting them out of my Working folder (where some of them have been for an eternity) and into my Finished folder, but if proclivities of yours veer toward the aural, check out my new "album" Scraps. My constraint this time was to allow no idea to go on for more than 2 minutes, which means either 1) I cut some really repetitive stuff from way back in the day down like whoa or 2) the 20-second ideas got no longer. The treatment of just about every single one of them is either 4-piece rock band or "interesting riff+Apple drum loop," so your interest will definitely not be piqued unless you already love everything I do, because this is nothing new (most of it is old with a new gloss of Logic). The collection isn't called "Scraps" for nothing. FOR THE ROADHaving your paid LJ account expire to the dawn of every link on the site having a little info widgereedoo that pops up a preview of where the link goes to is ASS. Too bad I'm too lazy to renew. |
patrissimo
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3:04p |
The Last Viridian Note Via pmb, The Last Viridian Note: My personal relations to goods and services – especially goods – have been revolutionized since 1999. Let me try your patience by describing this change in some detail, because it really is a different mode of being in the world.
...
The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.
It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.
Do not "economize." Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It's melting the North Pole. So "economization" is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.
The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It's in your time most, it's in your space most. It is "where it is at," and it is "what is going on."
It takes a while to get this through your head, because it's the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed – (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You're spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it. I totally agree with this! Being anti-materialism does not mean being un-libertarian or anti-capitalist. I like capitalism. I like stuff. I like that stuff is cheap. But because stuff is so cheap in explicit price, yet so expensive in the implicit cost of maintenance, storage, and time, we buy too much of it for our own happiness (at least, I do). So I totally agree with this. The amount of time I spend in my car, bed, and chair/desk/computer dwarf the amount of time I spend doing anything else with any other objects I own. It matters how nice and how usable they are. Most of the rest is worthless crap. He also gets in a good rant about the importance of carrying a Leatherman equivalent. Awesome. |
patrissimo
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2:54p |
Obama continues the racist war on drugs Appointing an enthusiastic drug warrior for Attorney General. (No surprise, given Biden as VP). I thought about putting the troll tag on here, but decided that these assertions are objective. It is well documented that its costs fall disproportionately on poor and minorities. The "war on drugs" is, largely, a war on poor, urban, African-Americans. Our jails are full of poor African-Americans. As I've posted before, this creates spillover effects where the deficit of African-American men leads to a breakdown in the traditional social order, specifically less marriage, more single-parent families / kids born out of wedlock, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Obama, who is a clear demonstration that occasional drug use does not ruin a person, could have struck a blow for change by moving, even in small incremental steps, towards drug reform. Instead, he is supporting the hard liners. This is awful, and (unlike many of the other things I complain about), impossible to justify on practical grounds. There is not even the shred of a case that Prohibition II does net good. The empirical evidence is massive - drug use remains high while criminalization has tons of huge negative effects. This is not a supportable policy. It is simply evil. I might feel bad for the janitors, but if someone blew up a DEA building, I would cheer. It's that bad. Note that there are few if any other parts of government I feel that way about (BATF? Maybe the IRS?) - it's the combination of immorality and horribly net negative consequences (so neither a moral nor consequential defense), enforced by violence & murder, that makes me see red. The other violent parts of the government (say, police and the military) have a mix of good and bad, moral and immoral, positive and negative consequence behavior. I might not like the net result, I might question the career choice, but I don't think they deserve to die. But the DEA murders and jails people to enforce unjust laws that make the world a worse place. If that's not evil, I don't know what is. ok, now this deserves a troll tag :). |
intrepia
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5:39p |
I Am Not A Bird: An Anecdotal Discourse On Revision & Truth In Poetry Some poets insist on truth in poetry, and for them, truth means a faithfulness to the facts that inspired a poem. To tell the truth, I'm a little disdainful of these people. I subscribe to Plato's idea that "Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history." To me, the truth of a poem is not in its factual accuracy but in the heft and weight of its emotional cadences. In my mind, it doesn't matter if your poem was inspired by John riding his shiny new red bike down Main Street in the mid-afternoon - if it makes your poem stronger, then change his name to Pedro, and have him ride a rusted blue bike by the pier at dusk. A professor of mine once explained this difference between truth and history in a way I found very compelling, using as an example the difference between a soldier's daily logs and a wartime memoir. Memoirs, said my professor, are always partially fictional, although they are based in fact; the author of a memoir adds in imagined details - perhaps a certain gathering of the clouds in the sky, or the crease of a well-loved photographed glinting in the fading sunlight - to create a more cohesive narrative or a more potent scene. The logs and diaries are more factual, but the memoir is more true - it has the ability to evoke more of the real feeling of wartime, more of the emotional ambiance of life in the trenches, than the actual history of day-to-day events. Most of the time, when I write a poem, my first intention is not to express, but to communicate - not simply to give vent to my own feelings and experiences, but to dissect them, to make sense of them, and to convey my understanding of them to others, in language whose brevity forces me to weigh my words carefully, to be exacting. Once in a while, though, I write a poem purely for myself - because I know no other way to say what I need to say, because the structure of poetry gives me the allowance, the freedom to be cryptic and metaphorical and open. That's how this poem (  ) was born: Loneliness is like a tree
in the tundra. How do you tell
a friend that another friend is
somewhere close to crazy? Tonight
I learned twice. In the morning
I am seeing a doctor. She
is giving me magic pills. They will
make me thinner, more energetic,
happier. I am afraid that nothing
will be real. I don't remember,
I can't conceive of what love
feels like, only a litmus test
of what I would miss. Only loss.
Flying causes onions, he says. I
am the one who taught him. I am not
a butterfly. Onions are a sign
of life. Cackling in the pot. Rouge
down your face. Did I do this?
Did you want this? My mother is growing
romaine lettuce. Her garden
is suffering from a romaine lettuce
infestation, but her friends can't
manage to keep it alive. I wish
my eyes were greener than romaine lettuce,
greener than the pond my bus passed
this afternoon, greener than Christmas.
If I bathe long enough, maybe I will
smell so good that it will be okay that
I don't remember how to feel. Everything in this poem is factual; everything in this poem is true. It was a real, genuine, stream-of-conscious account of my frame of mind during a really terrible time in my life. I was about to start taking antidepressants. One of my closest friends had just been hospitalized for a psychotic breakdown, and I had to break the news to our mutual friends. I was hung up on a breakup already half a year old, a breakup that I was convinced I had perpetuated by encouraging every early friendly overture between my ex and his new girl. So I wrote this, a poem not really intended to be a poem at all and certainly never intended for a general audience. But time changes everything. A year and a half later, I'm working on putting together my portfolio to apply to graduate schools for creative writing, and raw material is raw material, no matter from what depth it was pulled. As I was trawling through years of my writing, some of the lines in this poem caught my eye - so I gave it a title, added in some stanza breaks, made some minor revisions, and brought it to my workshop: Without Birds
Loneliness is a tree
in the tundra. How do you tell
a friend that another friend is
somewhere close to crazy? Tonight
I learned twice. In the morning
I am seeing a doctor. She
is giving me magic pills. They will
make me thinner, more energetic,
happier. I am afraid
that nothing will be real.
I don't remember, I can't
conceive of what love
feels like. Only a litmus test
of what I would miss. Only loss.
Flying causes onions, he says. I
am the one who taught him. I am not
a bird. Onions are a sign
of life. Cackling in the pot. Rouge
down your face. Did I do this?
Did you want this? My mother is growing
romaine lettuce. Her garden
is suffering from a romaine lettuce
infestation, but her friends can't
manage to keep it alive. I wish
my eyes were greener than romaine lettuce,
greener than Christmas, greener
than the pond where
there are no birds. I've seen hundreds of poems go through the workshop process, and I know how it works. A poem has to stand on its own - the poet cannot bolster it with explanations and lengthy prefaces. Once I give a poem to an audience, it isn't only mine anymore. I know this. And yet I was unprepared for how my class responded to this poem. Most of them openly admitted that they just didn't "get it" - they loved "flying causes onions," they loved how crazy it sounded, but they had no idea what it meant. The professor concocted a narrative for the poem; in his version of events, I'm recounting the madness of someone I love, and the language of the poem is the language of crazy people, a complicated representational language that can even make sense to the crazy person and those close to him, but which is nonsensical to everyone else. Everything in this poem was true, but I couldn't explain - I was not prepared to explain - to my class that a tree in the tundra was the image for depression that I created with my therapist. I couldn't explain that "flying causes onions" was something that my ex had actually said to me, months after our breakup, that I had in some metaphorical sense taught him how to "fly," and that like the bird you are supposed to let go of because you love it enough, he flew away without returning. I couldn't explain that "onions" represented the tears of that separation, that green eyes were an impossible ideal I had always wanted for myself. I couldn't explain that the nonsense they liked didn't come from some other delusional mind, but from my own - and that I wasn't really delusional, only lost in the shadow of a reality I can't even describe anymore. I couldn't explain that the revisions they suggested - getting rid of the third party, making the man in the poem be the crazy one, telling him that I am not a bird - were not true. I was completely unprepared for my helplessness in the face of this revision process. I was unprepared for the sadness and loss that overtook me as I tried to work on this poem, for the sense that somehow I really was mad - mad to have written it, mad to have tried to workshop it. I had thought that a year and a half would be enough distance to revise this poem with the levity and ruthlessness that good art deserves, and I was unprepared for how near those experiences still felt. That breakup was two years ago ( ) to the day that I brought "Without Birds" into my poetry workshop. I came home and felt ridiculous for still keeping track of this, except that, in all earnestness, I have a more tenacious grasp on who I am now than I ever did then - and I think I could be better at this whole business of living and loving now than I was capable of two years ago. And in the face of my scars and callouses, I'm still a poet. So I'm still revising - one day, one word, one line break, and one stanza change at a time. Without Birds
Flying causes onions, he says.
I am the one who tells him
that this is not madness. I am not
a bird. In the morning
I am seeing a doctor. She is giving
me magic pills. I am afraid
that nothing will be real.
I don't remember, I can't
conceive of what love
felt like. Only a litmus test
of what I would miss. Only loss.
Onions are a sign
of life. Cackling in the pot. Rouge
down his face. Did I do this?
Did you want this? My mother is growing
romaine lettuce. In the tundra
there is a tree
that is not green. I wish
my eyes were greener than romaine lettuce,
greener than Christmas, greener
than the pond where
there are no birds.
This entry is my submission for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) therealljidol Season 5, Week 9: Unprepared. Constructive criticism of the poem in this piece is welcome and appreciated. |
webdesign
[ durandel ]
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4:57p |
rendering question SolvedThanks guys. You're quick :D ---- Original question: Link to the site in question: here. If you view it in Firefox (or Gecko browsers), the images on the right side become nested in the text layer. If you view it in IE, it looks the way I want it to (the pictures and the text somewhat separated). I do not know why this is happening. I checked the markup on W3C - the only errors I'm getting are that I don't have any alt tags in my images. Is this a Firefox thing? I know Firefox is standards compliant. Any input will be appreciated :D |
patrissimo
|
1:59p |
SF Circus Center Open House
It's Saturday, Dec 13th. Dunno what time, no additional info is on their website. I am tentatively planning to go. Any of you other swingin', flippin', tumblin' folk want to come?
Current Music: Sacrament of wilderness - Nightwish |
boffo
|
1:40p |
Movie News Round Up Josh Schwartz to write next X-Men movieJosh Schwartz is the creator of Chuck, which is the best show currently airing on TV. (Judging by currently airing episodes. If you consider past history, there are some better shows overall, such as South Park. But if you're going to do that, why not just call The Simpsons the best show on TV even though it's been unwatchable for years?) So this is certainly something interesting to look at. As the actors from the franchise get older/more expensive, they're looking to reboot it with some new younger characters. Fortunately the X-Men premise lends itself to doing that. Controversy after show lauding terrorists resorts to blatant fraudWhale Wars is a blatant rip-off of shows like Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers, only instead of being about people who do difficult and dangerous jobs, it's about terrorists trying to attack the people doing difficult and dangerous jobs. In one episode, the terrorists and camera crew conspired to make it look like the head terrorist was shot, even though that simply never happened. And flacks from Animal Planet have the balls to claim, "No, we're not actually supporting the terrorists or expressing approval. We're just producing an entire television show lauding them and assisting them in defrauding the public and falsely accusing people they don't like of attempted murder." Gearhead"Story revolves around a young woman who leaves the drag strip to team up with a group of rebels to fight the corrupt superheroes who govern the U.S." This is the kind of story I should like, but that sounds even less coherent than, say, Tank Girl. I usually approve of this recent trend of Hollywood adapting comic books and graphic novels. Those have stories, so they're a much better source of adaptations than board games, paintings, and breakfast cereals. But it seems like they aren't putting much thought into whether the comics they're buying would actually make *good* stories. Also, check out the image from the comic they pulled for the article:  Can anyone think of a situation where it would make the slightest bit of sense to simultaneously wear a welding mask and low-rider pants that expose the crotch? Other than producing fetish porn? I'm stumped. The Days Before"Story centers on aliens invading Earth by traveling backwards through time and wiping out humanity -- yesterday by yesterday -- while one man stays a yesterday ahead of them, trying to convince the world that the end is coming again." That's an interesting take on time travel and aliens I've never seen before. I'm intrigued enough by this new idea to give it the benefit of the doubt, even though it could easily go horribly awry. The Host: The RemakeRemaking the 2006 Korean film about an evil mutant squid. I don't understand how that can be scary. But the original did huge business, so either they found a way or Koreans are strange. (Or both.) The remake is being written by some dude whose only credit is pretentious, so that's not a good sign. Captain America movie to be written by Chronicles of Narnia writersI'm not sure how I feel about that. The first Chronicles of Narnia movie was crap, but at least it was better than the hideously overrated book. (I didn't see or read the second one.) Yet another anti-Iraq war movieThe war is over, and they've already ground that ax so much that there's nothing left. Hollywood has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars on propaganda movies nobody bothered to see. When will they give it a rest? (And before anyone argues there's nothing in the article that indicates it will be anti-Iraq war, I'll point out that it's a movie being produced in Hollywood. I'd call that pretty compelling evidence just by itself.) Steven Speilberg and Will Smith to make Oldboy remakeAnother remake of a recent Korean hit. This is about a dude who "is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing why or who is holding him captive. He is suddenly released, given money, clothes and a cellphone and is sent on journey for revenge." I didn't see the original, but I predict that the American version will center around an incredibly stupid and nonsensical conspiracy theory. (I don't know if that's true or not about the Korean version.) The Bourne ContinuationUniversal just paid a bunch of money to Robert Ludlum's estate for the rights to keep making Bourne movies. I've only read the first book, but my understanding is that the only connection the later movies have to the later books is that they have a character named Jason Bourne in them. So really they're only paying for the name. Also, as part of the deal, Robert Ludlum's accountant will be a producer on any future Bourne movies. Seriously. Arrested Development: The MovieEvery couple of months, rumors of an AD movie pop up. I haven't talked about them because their ultimate sources generally have been something like "CreepyObsessiveFans.com got an e-mail from an anonymous source who overheard Jeffrey Tambor talking in a restaurant about how he has some exciting projects in development, so clearly this means the Arrested Development movie will be in theaters next month." But now Hollywood Reporter, a real source, is reporting that Mitch Hurwitz and Ron Howard have closed real deals to write and direct a real movie. So that's exciting. It doesn't guarantee the movie will get made. They still don't have a greenlight or even commitments from the cast. But at least something's happening. |
geekchick
|
3:37p |
Ask the f-list: Virginia vehicle donations?
The HOA is planning on towing my old Protege on Sunday unless it's inspected and the tags are renewed by then; seeing as how the car doesn't actually start at the moment, I don't think that's going to happen. Sadly, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the best approach is either to donate it or scrap it because the cost of a storage unit plus whatever it's going to cost to get it repaired is going to be more than the car is worth at this point. Does anyone have experience donating a non-running car? Would you recommend any particular organization? I don't need the write-off since I don't itemize, but it was my first car of my own and I'd prefer it go to someone who could use the money from parting it out or whatever. *sniff* For that matter, if any of y'all think you want a 1996 Protege for parts or a project (it needs serious engine work at a minimum), let me know and you're welcome to it. |
patrissimo
|
12:35p |
Sperm storage Tim Ferriss just had a post on banking your sperm (just in case), which I found very timely, since I may be getting a vasectomy soon (as part of the whole India surrogacy thing). Naturally I'd like to bank some sperm as insurance. It seems unlikely that: a) I would want more kids, b) frozen embryos in India would not suffice, c) my vasectomy would be irreversible, but still, it would give me some piece of mind before getting snipped. Google's top search result for "sperm bank 94040" is amusingly low quality. This looks like the right local place. Moderately expensive, sadly - looks like $400 + $200 for each additional deposit, and Tim's post suggested 6 per kid, so that would be like $1200 / potential future kid, plus about $300/yr in storage costs. Maybe I could just do it in India too? |
san_diego
[ mslucesitagomez ]
|
12:24p |
First Date At Horton Plaza
Yesterday I was going home on the bus and right next to me one of my friends from high school started talking to me. It's been a long time since I've seen him, but he's seen me on the bus at times but never talked to me. Anyway, he called me up last night and we have a date set for tomorrow at Horton Plaza. He actually planned it out nicely, from 10AM till 3:30PM.
Thing is, I'm 25 years old and this is my very first date. I've seen all those love movies, but I really don't know what to expect.
Can anyone tell me how they experienced their first date? Just so I can get some ideas. Should I bring money? How much should I bring? I have so many questions.
Thanks. |
patrissimo
|
12:13p |
vegas, baby, maybe
might go to vegas thu 12/4 -> sun 12/7. probably stay at bellagio. anyone else gonna be in town? i'm a degenerate, so 80% of my time will be spent playing poker, but the other 20% is open for fancy dinners, climbing, video games, etc. |
san_diego
[ alwaysroving ]
|
12:06p |
See's Candy Mira Mesa
A holiday See's Candy shop had opened few weeks ago in the Mira Mesa Mall (next to the California Coast Bank); if all sales go well; Mira Mesa will be a new location for them & will offer the full chocolate bar set up..
So locals shop here for your candy needs & spread the word! |
madcaptenor
|
3:01p |
Dear Internet users,
"listserv" is not a generic term for "mailing list", even if you want it to be.
<3,
me |
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