August 2011
32 posts
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“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”
—Ellen Goodman
“Teach me how to see.”
I’ve had a few dreams about Singapore this week. Is it wanderlust? Oh, I wish it were cheaper to get to that side of the world from here, but it costs one billion dollars.
“I’m having that teenage boy urge to be awesome and die by 30 … at the age of 32.”
Someone just asked me why I have this Sylvia Plath quote:
““I catch up: each night, now, I must capture one taste, one touch, one vision from the ruck of the day’s garbage. How all this life would vanish, evaporate, if I didn’t clutch at it, cling to it, while I still remember some twinge or glory.”
featured on the front page of my tumblr when you visit it.
I replied:
The Plath...
I read the New Yorker article on French poet Arthur Rimbaud tonight (It’s at this link). I’m a bit envious of his relationship with Verlaine. I think it has to do with wanting to be untame and sharpened by someone as iron sharpens iron.
I’m working too much. Should I treat myself to: A trip? An iPad? Dental care? A few hundred dollars worth of pillows? Of cake? New York earthquake “relief”?
“She was researching ways to write in the sixth person. I told her I’d pray for her.”
“You have to change.”
– George Harrison
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I’m depressed today that I can’t reproduce on my own, that I need a woman to take part and then I need to keep her around for nine months before I see the results. If I were a woman I could just pick up and go. Seems lucky!
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“You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history will never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.”
—Douglas...
You know you’ve been cooped up in the house and single for too long when, at 1 AM in your kitchen, you start to sing Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and it comes out, “I’m just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl.”
Or you’ve got a mild case of dissociative identity disorder.
swellshark says in response to my last post:
I’m okay with having a lover standard of living than my parents. It’s a nice place to visit for awhile, but there’s just far too much consumption and waste for me to want to live this way permanently anymore. All I know is I want to draw more and use less and see more music.
All I can say is, Amen. The biggest problem I see is the infrastructure...
whitehotcenter asked: Feeling better since your crash?
Some quotes from Generation F*cked by Maria Hampton
“Everyone looks for meaning in their lives – but all they find is shopping.”
“Today’s iPod generation is stunted: trapped halfway between childhood and adulthood. It now takes them until 34, on average, before they can afford a house, let alone have a family of their own. Little surprise that they are such a woeful models of...
I’m happy that there’s a woman being seriously considered for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. I’m very unhappy that she’s extremely anti-gay and anti-reproductive rights. What are we to do?
“Humans are hardwired to imitate other humans.”
– Dean Buonomano, Brain Bugs
“Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution...
“Everything’s hell. I just want to sell shit I make. And maybe accumulate property afterwards and then rent it.” —Me in an email just now.
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So this Bugs in the Brain book I mentioned in my last post has answered a question I didn’t even know that I had:
What’s up with all the skunk odor/dead skunks on the road?
They’re genetically hardwired “to hold their ground, perform a 180-degree maneuver, lift their tails, and spray the oncoming automobile” instead of running away when “faced with a rapidly...
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Every time I read a book about the brain (like this one I just bought), I wonder if my brain knows that I’m reading about it. It feels a bit sometimes like reading someone’s diary, perhaps. “I know what’s on your agenda, Brain!” I pronounce. “And I don’t like it one bit!”
Relatedly, the best documentary about the brain is on YouTube at this link.
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“Hi, you’ve reached New York. New York can’t answer right now but it’s NOT because New York is sleeping, because New York never sleeps. New York is too busy living life as it should be lived. New York is sitting in a zooming yellow taxi and watching Manhattan glow in the sunrise. New York is floating in the air after having fired off a perfect jumpshot on the basketball...
Writing a story about a car crash right before having a car crash wouldn’t be the first time I predicted my faith while story writing. There was the one I wrote about a white guy with an Illinois background left heart-broken by his younger Asian girlfriend. Or when I wrote about stealing someone’s panties before I ended up doing so. Or the time I went out on a wanton night, sang...
The funny thing about being in a car crash last week is that I had been thinking about writing a story/beginning of a novel about a car crash victim.
Go fig.
Something good you can do right now
(All trial accounts have been claimed—links removed! Kiva is still a worthy organization and if you’d like to check it out, go to http://www.kiva.org )
There’s a company called Kiva which specializes in micro-loans to people in need in impoverished countries. It’s important because people in those countries usually cannot find banks to...