Artist: Impactist

As I was snooping from blog to blog, I found a clever art collection simply and appropriately called "Paper" by Impactist.
It makes me want to go get construction paper and steal their idea.

I feel like every good idea I come across I want to steal.
Call me the idea burglar.


They should come up with other collections, similarly named. The name of each collection of artwork would simply be a statement as to the artistic medium it adopts. "Canvas", "Limestone", "Wood", "Body Parts", "Sound", etc.

Jacques Brel: le plat pays

Let me share a particular video with you, for which my close friends will probably jeer insensitively at me:



Jacques Brel is mesmerizing for me to watch. I became absorbed originally by videos of him (check out "ces gens la") without even understanding the lyrics.
However, after having looked up and translated them, I am even further enthralled than before.
"Le Plat Pays" ("The Flat Land") is an articulate love song about the Flemish Countryside. Brel was originally from Flanders.

Also, he is sort of freaky looking, which adds a kind of morbidity to my fascination with him as a performer.

Dropped Eaves.

I'm sitting here. Minding my own business. Drinking my decadent drink. Mmm.
When this happens:

Black Barista, Male: So what are you going to school for?
Attractive Customer, Female: Engineering.
Bearded Barista, Male: Weren't you listening? I was just talking to her about that!
Black Barista, Male: Oh, that's what you were talking about?
Bearded Barista, Male (thick sarcasm): No, I was trying to get her phone number--Of course we were talking about what's she taking classes for!

[pause]

Bearded Barista, Male (to Attractive Customer, Female): So, what's your number?

[awkward, evasive laughter]

Existentially re-orienting episode in the library one night last week.

Listening to V. Guaraldi's rendition of "Autumn Leaves" on an indefinite repeat, absorbed by Baron Corvo's Hadrian the Seventh, sitting near three pretty brunettes towards whom I bear a posture of unquestioning fraternal commitment and kind fraternal indifference, three dollar bills were tossed in my direction.

They had come home to papa. (The dollars, not the brunettes.)

I immediately picked them up (the dollars, not the brunettes) and began to canter off to the library's stairwell.

I was happy to have the dollars. Then I realized that I was happy to have them because I had a particular use for them in mind. I wanted to buy a soda with them.

So-Da. SooooooDa. So, Da. SoHoHoHoHODa.

So(da), I realized that the dollars weren't desirable (or, at most, that their desirability was derived so(da)lely from the desirability of some other thing and hence, if existent, was at least not inherent). What I really desired was the soda.

But then I realized that I wanted soda because I had a particular use for it in mind. I wanted a soda so as to experience certain oral and saporific sensations. Neither was the so(da)da, then, desirable in itself. I wanted certain feelings, and the soda was something I had to do to get them.

Then I thought, "Well, even if the dollars themselves aren't valuable to me, and even if the soda itself isn't valuable to me, and even if walking up these stairs (I was bouncing up the stairs, actually) isn't itself valuable to me, I still want to enjoy these things. Let's try to enjoy all the means employed to get at my manifold ends," I thought.

So I started attempting to take active enjoyment in the act of walking, in the feeling of the dollar bills between my fingers, in their color, their crackly scrunched-up-paper sound. I was going to enjoy these means, gosh darn it.

The ends justify the means, but they don't make 'em fun: that's my job.

But then. It hit me. I wasn't really enjoying the dollar bills, I wasn't really enjoying the walking; I was enjoying the tactile, visual, and auditory sensations the dollar bill gave me! I was enjoying the feelings bubbling up in me from walking and bouncing in certain ways up and down the stairs (there happened to be two girls having an emotional, hushed, pop-spiritual heart-to-heart discussion of some kind while sitting on the stairs--I consider my bouncing as a kind of cosmic retribution against them).

HOW COULD I ENJOY THE THINGS THEMSELVES? WAS THERE NO WAY? Never had such crisis taken place by a such skipping idiot amongst such semi-quiet students in such a library.

I actually forgot about it all once I got to the soda machine. I spent that dollar and chugged that soda. Suckers.

But now I look back. And I think. How can you do it? I am presently squinting in thought, my brain hunched forward. I try to think of those objects devoid of secondary qualities and removed beyond possible personal experience. I think of them as existent things--nothing more. And I try to be thankful for them. Appreciate them. I try to appreciate them as existing things--nothing more.

It's cool that they exist. Yeah.

Eh.....but not that cool. I'm over it. Sucks for them.

SODA. SOooOOoOOoOda.

Artist: Gene Davis

Have you heard of Gene Davis?????

Homeboy painted lines:


I like how my generation and its preceding generation are coming to handle art. We are gradually substituting questions like "is it art?" and "what does it mean?" for more sensible ones like "Is it cool to look at?"

A Moment.

One of the more touching and heartbreaking scenes I have experienced in my recent life is that which takes place in Episode 5 of Season 5 of The Office, "Employee Transfer" at 19:10-20:30, where Michael Scott and Darryl "sing the blues".

A Lion Enjoying a Ride in the Sidecar of a Antiquated Motor Vehicle as it Drives Along a Wall.

"Philosophy begins in wonder." - Socrates



While sauntering through different blogs, I found this picture.

In memorium, Laudatory Barista.

Horror of horrors, I frequent the same Starbucks, nightly.

That behind us, let me relate a sentimental anecdote indicative of manifold eccentricities and subtleties in both my thought-life and personal values.

A barista at the Starbucks I frequent is convivial and garrulous in excelsis.
She showers compliments onto customers. She has showered them onto me. Or, rather, onto my sweaters.
Twice has she complimented sweaters of mine, and more than twice have I heard her chattily laud the aspect and habit of other Starbucks patrons.

Note: when first my wardrobe was thusly complimented, I, too, felt truly complimented. I cannot speak as to how my sweaters felt. But I felt great. That routine surge of endorphins that nips at the heels of any given compliment duly nipped and surged, thereby making the world, for me, an infinitesimally better place for a few fleeting moments.
Nevertheless, once I detected that the mainspring of that original compliment was for this barista some running theme, some regular practice, some pattern that governed her behavior, I became disenchanted.
It was as if she had somehow undone her compliment, undone all her compliments.
I felt I was being played. I felt a tool.

That her compliments were simply so many well-tailored trappings amidst all the well-tailored trappings that composed her regulation Starbucks uniform, robbed them of whatever worthwhile qualities that were meant to manipulate me, the customer, in the first place. I could just imagine her getting tips from an assistant manager or "shift lead" about how better to fluff the amicable lacing adoring her already "stellar" "service". How fulsome and falsely unctuous it all struck me.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I am habitual complimenter, myself. When I behold Goodness, Truth, or Beauty of any sort, it takes great effort for me to swallow and withhold all colors of idiotic exclamations of acclimation. Pretermitting all censorship, I loudly blurt out my headlong approval: "That is a terrific dress! You have such a delightful voice! Your backhand is beautiful! You are the most attractive woman I have seen in the U.K.!"
You couldn't stop me if you tried.
But me: I mean them. I am earnest--grave, even. The part of my brain responsible for aesthetic judgment has actually taken a permanent vacation to a little nook inside my oral cavity, from which it personally shouts compliments to unsuspecting female passersby.

But this barista. I thought she was all show. A phony.

As a chronic complimenter, myself, I had vetted her for sincerity yet could only find artifice--a web of lies masquerading as "customer service".

But then today. Today today today.
Tonight.
I asked for the drink I always ask for.
I watched her carefully as I asked.
I saw her examine my sweater: a different sweater than before; a tattered, admittedly no-good sweater.
I waited for some cheery chitchattery, a compliment.

BUT
I. waited. in. vain. No sprightly palavering was forthcoming.
SHE DID NOT COMPLIMENT MY SWEATER.

I am glowing. The barista gave no credit where no credit was due! She snubbed this ratty old thing as she rightly should have! She would not--she refused to--whore out her praise!

Nothing could have validated her workaday plaudits more. Henceforth I will imbibe--hook, line, and sinker--each and every compliment she ever has to offer, and I will cherish each and every endorphin that consequently comes to nip and surge, snap, crackle, and pop.

You'll love this one.

For the last few minutes (MINUTES) I have been: 

* blowing the steam from my 50¢ coffee into my glasses.

* thinking about how black people look good in purple.

* admiring the name of the font "Trebuchet".

* deciding how to pronounce "Trebuchet".

* debating the best way to announce on my blog that I think that MGMT is OFF THE HOOK.

* but mostly just blowing the steam from my 50¢ coffee into my glasses.

Halloween Candy Code.

While blog-bumbling, I found this.

Ode to the West Wind

What follows is one of my favorite poems, and one of the few poems I ever took pains to memorize.  Despite my personal suspicions (partly stirred up by Louis, partly innate [take that Locke!]) about blogging poems (especially long poems) (especially poems written by other people), I submit this to your perusal.  If you frequent my blog out of some sort of fanatical obsession of me (God bless you), know that I have often emoted through this poem.  Read it or don't (when I encounter poems on other's blogs, I usually don't [do revel in that parenthetical comment! {or any of the form: "when I x, I usually don't"}]).

Ode to the West Wind

by

P.B. Shelley

I

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 

A pathetic outcry; Apathetic outcry.

Doom and I have an understanding.

It looms, thereby propelling me to finally begin and finish whatever project I have by whatever deadline the project needs finishing by. In exchange, upon its approach, I fix it within a cold stare through a steady, ineluctable smirk.
It just can't get enough of my smirks, and I never tire of its ability to prompt me to action; I cling to its unyielding gift of felt urgency and purpose.

Thus is our detente.


Recently, however, one or both of us has been slacking. Despite my schedule being fairly populated with Things To Be Done, Doom doesn't loom. My psychological ecosystem is reeling off balance from the absence of this key organism, Doom. Doom: that chilling terminus, that daunting "or else", that ominous ultimatum--the loving dagger at my back. A menacing dagger presupposes and connotes the value of the threatened object. And hence, in its own way, is loving.

But no.

Now, it feels like Doom just doesn't care. It doesn't bother to hover over my business, making me feel that I must. get. things. done.
I am left indolent, apathetic, pathetically self-pitying and childishly self-indulgent. I take exceptionally long naps. None of my projects carry the uncertain liabilities normally attendant on failure.
Failure is no longer that unthinkable territory of VERBOTEN--it's just some other place.

Doom, Doom, why have you gone so soon?

HHHHH2

Jenny,

As soon as you've finished with your children's book, Happy Halloween, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, I've got a sequel lined up:

Happy Hanukkah, Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

In this story our hero, Vice President (or Democratic Candidate; depends on what part of his life you pick to focus on) Humphrey learns insightful lessons during the holiday season after meeting a precocious young Jewish boy who teaches HHH the true meaning of Hanukkah, Christmas, and maybe New Years.
Kwanzaa is strictly off limits, however, since we'll cover that one in our more edgy children's book: Kwanzaa with the KKK.

With all the warmth my body-mass has to offer,
Jon

P.S. Happy Homecoming, Hubert Horatio Humphrey??

too good to be true.

Self-Representation:



Found this picture whilst blog-ambling, listening to "Kids" by MGMT on repeat.

Republicans given last chance to switch vote.

There are around 55 million people in this country who are a little down. A little disappointed. A little crestfallen, glum, and otherwise woebegone.

Their dude lost.

:*(

These people are feeling dejected, unsure, ill at ease. 46% of the voting public in this country walk today with a slightly slower step. They huff periodically. It is as if they woke up this morning on the wrong side of political spectrum.

But you know what? They are being given a unique opportunity for change.

Yes. That's right. You heard me.

CHANGE.

I have recently discovered that the United States government is modifying the political process this one time to give Republican voters an option to go back to their polling place of choice and change their vote, thereby switching it to the other major candidate, the guy who won.

Apparently they have until the end of January, when the next president will be inaugurated, to switch their votes over. Their change of vote is guaranteed by the United States government to be directly reflected in all quoted statistics regarding the 2008 presidential election.

Imagine. What a country we live in that cares so much for the emotional and psychological health of its citizens that it is willing to give them a second chance; it is willing to let everybody be a winner.

Imagine. What if 55 million more people in this country felt like winners? Felt part of something big? We could probably channel the glow from their beaming smiles and convert it into renewable energy thereby solving the global energy crisis. Or, at the very least it would probably make an incandescent light bulb flicker for a little. Or fry an egg or something.

Imagine. Not only could this election be historic for its putting the first Halfrican-American man into the Unites States' chief executive position, but it could be even more historic for putting him there by a unanimous vote. Let me ask you, country: do you want your generation to make the history books or not? After the ebb and flow of hundreds of years, it's going to be difficult to stand out. Tell me, do you know anything about Edward II, English Monarch from 700 years ago? ANYTHING? Hell, do you even know anything about Franklin Pierce, President of the USA 150 years ago? If you want to make a difference and guarantee that somebody whom you once heard give a speech in your lifetime gets his name bolded in an 8th grade history book in the year 2708, you need to step it up.

I mean, come on! Your republican vote is deadwood now! They're brass farthings! You can spare them! They aren't getting anybody any closer or farther from any oviform offices or achromatic houses! Monopoly money is to currency as your vote is to democratic influence!

But you can CHANGE! You can be on the winning team!

Oh! This just in:
Apparently for every hundred votes the republican constituency switches over, they get one democrat vote with which to do what they will. So, the government is proposing a kind of vote exchange rate. Apparently every republican vote is worth 1/100 of a democrat vote. But, I mean, come on. That's pretty generous when you think about it. What are you guys going to do with your 55 million votes? You're certainly not getting any mavericks elected.

THINK OF ALL THE CONGRESSMEN YOU COULD BUMP INTO OFFICE BY CASHING IN! Using a calculator I have calculated that 55 million republican votes would be worth five hundred and fifty thousand votes, or roughly 5.5 billion Chuck E'Cheese tickets. Think of it! The senators you could elect! Think of all those ring pops!

The choice is yours. I leave it to.
RE-DO 2008!

Note: for every vote for Bob Barr, libertarian presidential candidate, that is cashed in for a democrat vote, the libertarian party may destroy one square foot of government property of their choice.

Surprise.

Today I walked to my local voting place and cast a provisional ballot. I realized that I was registered in Orange County and hence able to fill out a provisional ballot, and so decided to make my civic duty into an excuse for taking a morning walk. Some highlights:

In the parking lot of the voting place, on my way in I passed a young woman with big sunglasses, a pretty face, nice hair, a leather jacket, and a form to rival Aphrodite's. As to be expected, I grinned like an idiot. She acknowledge me, smiled back, and then spoke to me, her voice a hybrid between bubbly giggle and sultry moan, "be sure to pick the right person!" Something primal seethed and crackled inside of me, desperately wanting to know who this right person was. I realize now I should have proposed some sort of deal or transaction. In exchange for her political insight I would give her a sponge bath. Or, whatever. We could work out the details over a candlelit dinner.
Instead, my senses of humor and decency overpowered my more forthright psychological/physical parts, and replied in a cool, studied voice, "I'll do my best." Thus she walked in and out of my life, forever.

I spoke to myself out loud in the voting booth. I laughed at a proposition or two, saying things like "No. no. Of course, no."

I saw three lizards on my walk home.

I have a "I voted" sticker and have found out that this will get me free coffee at Starbucks. I may or may not have known this before I voted, and this may or may not have played a causal role in my doing so.
Also, apparently it's illegal to give out stuff to voters for voting. (That's why BEN & JERRY'S is giving free scoops out to people indiscriminately.) This makes me want to go to Starbucks and collect even more.

I heard a guy say "vote early and vote often" which made me laugh.

Pukin Punkin.

A little late, but I found this while blog perusing and could not constrain myself.


And this one's for Lindsey: