Via captain_brad

Original: craschworks - comments

Tags: atheism, humor, jesus, religion, ta-dah!

"The settler and pioneer have at bottom justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages....

"All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership.

"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him...."

--Theodore Roosevelt, white supremacist and 26th president of the United States of America

Tags: quotations
Location: office
Mood: okay
Music: Blue Scholars

So the Pittsburgh 250 fireworks show coincides with my birthday- and my brother's, and my nephew's. We'd really like to find a special place to celebrate our birthdays and watch the fireworks. Here are my ideas so far:

On a boat (weather might not cooperate)
Restaurant
Hotel room (I lucked into a hotel room downtown for the 4th of July one year, and the view was spectacular)

Any other ideas/recommendations/your own experiences?

majuscule - adj., uppercase.


Or more generally, a large letter, such as a drop-cap letter at the start of a section. And a style of early medieval writing. From Latin majusculus, rather large, diminutive of major, greater.

---L.

So, and this is embarrassing, I tried to write a novel once. Of course it wasn't a novel; it was essentially me writing down what had happened to me in 1993 (see previous posts), because I couldn't get my mind around it. The problem with reading novelists like Kundera and Roth is that they appear to give you license to simply mine your love life for Literature. And I've always found the desire to read and the desire to write inseparable in my mind. I don't know why, but I can't read a novel without thinking about how I would write one.

But reading The Counterlife (and you should all read this if you want to know exactly what I'm talking about right now) brings back to the surface another old sensation that comes from reading more than writing: whatever you want to say has been said before, by someone else, with a lot more style than you think you could ever manage on your own. So you end up with a bricoleur mindset in which you take a page here and a page there from all these different sources to try to prove a point. But when you try to create art out of that, you just end up with an extended argument with sockpuppets for your own amusement.

So this was why my attempt at a novel was so horrific. I kind of knew even as I was writing it that it should be burned as soon as I finished it because I just needed to get these preoccupations out of my head before I found something else to do. And at some point it did actually start getting to where I could see a pretty good structure begin to emerge, where maybe I could make situations and people that were independent of me, as it were. But in the meantime I was also putting away the feeling-deeply furniture in the name of being an Adult, and a dissertation started to seem so much more relevant, and I put all the novel papers in a box. (I do still have the box.)

Another related point is what kind of satisfaction that writing actually brings you. Certainly you try to create as a way to salve whatever it is within yourself that needs to feel accomplished or take pride in a craft, but the thing is that I did write the dissertation, but I don't feel like I actually accomplished anything meaningful to me with it. It's funny to talk to a couple of my writerly friends over the past day or so, who each have more than one published book to their name. Right now I think to myself that I would kill to be a published writer, but each of them spoke of not it not really meaning that much right now in making them feel a sense of self-worth. (Don Marquis's little parable of Pete the Parrot comes to mind; I had the fun of reading it to Sara at 12:30 in the morning last night.)

The idea of squeezing art out of misery, though, is sometimes all that makes the misery bearable. And as you may have noticed, I'm writing here again, which only means one thing So I'm back to having all kinds of ideas in my mind about what to do with all the emotional furniture now that it's out here. Worse than ideas, little experimental scenarios are starting to be born. So, poor reader, fair warning and all that.

Mood: tristan waiting at carhaix
Music: sufjan stevens, "seven swans" (the song)

Found on steelers_fans posted by jjrrutger and copied over here.

I spent several hours last night and the better part of today in and around the spa at the JCC. The doctor -- a good one, apparently -- told me that my best chance of avoiding further complications with my leg, aside from taking my antibiotics like clockwork, was to keep it moist and hot. Maybe that was my mistake with the injury in May. No one told me that it's counter-productive to use ice after the first few days. Cold keeps the effects of the injury localized. With an infection like this, however, the goal is not to let the bacteria establish a critical mass, meaning that spreading them around, which heat accomplishes, is the desired outcome. At least, that's what the doctor said.

From what I can tell, she was right. The redness is shrinking. And that terrible sense of deep unease that started to befall me on Monday's drive up to Phoenix has given way to frustration. For one thing, all the time I have spent simmering myself has convinced me that hot tubs, steam rooms and saunas may be relaxing, but they are not conducive to the sort of thinking I want and need to be doing. Perhaps it's the heat. All I could do was focus on the moment, registering the effect when I would shift position and pondering how long I could stay in before passing out.

By contrast, when I jog, bicycle or spend time in a regular pool, I get some of my best thinking done. I guess my spa experience approximates the way I feel when I'm body surfing in the ocean, as I was over the weekend. But the ocean is so much more stimulating that the absence of a sense of time is not a problem. I could spend hours in the ocean, empty of thought, without regretting a second. Today, though, I would get annoyed, upon leaving the spa to cool down, as I periodically needed to do, that I couldn't sustain the productive train of thought that I'd been following this morning after dropping Skylar at school and having a good cup of coffee.

Then again, it might just be the antibiotics. Another reason why I'm convinced that I'm getting better, however slowly, is that my body is starting to punish me for taking them. When I'm really at risk, the pills don't register anywhere other than their intended target. Once they've started to do their job, though, I am troubled by an upset stomach, anxiety and a feeling that my brain keeps slipping gears. I'm not complaining. Clearly, I needed the medicine. It's better to face those side effects than be admitted to the hospital, where MRSA and other maladies lurk. That said, I still wish I could get back in this morning's flow. It was the first sustained one I've had in some time, aside from airplane travel.

Tags: analysis, everyday, health
Location: 85704

and this one is relatively safer:

So, happydog, your LiveJournal reveals...

You are... 10% unique (blame, for example, your interest in swedish psychedelic rock) and 5% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy sex). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 42

(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 85% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

I keep going back and forth looking at that meme and thinking, I'm too old for that. And yet it intrigues me...

Original: craschworks - comments

Tags: feist, music

Found a whole stack of pictures left in a photo album tossed out for the trash in Crosby, Texas. It looks like it was taken at the Houston Zoo in the late 70s or early 80s. I can't shake the feeling that I know the couple or their children or something.




  
Written on the back: Mike and Terry, zoo day with Lee.

Tags: couples, texas

 The 1st kind of sex is called: Smurf Sex.

* This kind of sex happens when you first meet someone, and you have sex
until you are both blue in the face.

The 2nd kind of sex is called: Kitchen Sex.

* This is when you have been with your partner for a short time, and you are
so needy you will have sex anywhere, even in the kitchen.

The 3rd kind of sex is called: Bedroom Sex.

* This is when you have been with your partner for a long time. Your sex
has gotten routine, and you usually have sex only in your bedroom.

The 4th kind of sex is called: Hallway Sex.

* This is when you have been with your partner for too long. When you pass
each other in the hallway you both say 'screw you.'

The 5th kind of sex is called: Religious Sex.

* Which means you get Nun in the morning, Nun in the afternoon and Nun at
night. (Very Popular).

The 6th kind is called Courtroom Sex.

* This is when you cannot stand your wife/husband any more. She/he takes
you to court and screws you in front of everyone.

And last, but not least,

the 7th kind of sex is called: Social Security Sex.

* You get a little each month. But not enough to enjoy yourself.