| life in the desert |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|08:29 am] |
"""
"...and he hates me because I let Jill die."
"She let herself die. Speaking of that, that's what I do like about these kids: they're trying to kill it. Even if they kill themselves in the process."
"Kill what?"
"The softness. Sex, love; me, mine. They're doing it... They're burning it out with dope. They're going to make themselves hard clean through. Like, oh, cockroaches. That's the way to live in the desert. Be a cockroach. It's too late for you, and a little late for me, but once these kids get it together, there'll be no killing them. They'll live on poison."
"""
john updike ~ rabbit redux |
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| one two three |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|09:26 pm] |
"It's pretty safe to say that I am the only person in the history of Virginia to be elected to statewide office with a union card, two Purple Hearts, and three tattoos."
~ Jim Webb |
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| dreaming of a bed of one's own |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|09:23 am] |
they can tell me what to read.
they can tell me what to eat.
they can beat me and send me the bill,
but they tell me what to feel.
i might need you to kill.
the thermals ~ i might need you to kill
while i still have eyes,
wait for me, wait for me.
while i still have feet,
wait for me, wait for me.
while i still have faith,
if i ever had faith,
wait for me, wait for meeee.
the thermals ~ returning to the fold |
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| long-haired creatures in bed |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|09:51 am] |
Rabbit is the 36 year old father of the 13 year old Nelson. Last night Rabbit cheated on his separated wife and his son has just found something...
"""
"Dad, something moved in your bed!"
"My bed?"
"I looked in and saw it!"
Rabbit offers, "Maybe it was just the air-conditioner fan lifting the sheets."
"Dad." The child's pallor begins to recede as some flaw in the horror of this begins to dawn. "It had long hair, and I saw an arm. Aren't you going to call the police?"
"No, let's let the poor old police rest, it's Sunday. It's OK, Nelson, I know who it is."
"You do?" The boy's eyes sink upon themselves defensively as his brain assembles what information he has about long-haired creatures in bed. He is trying to relate this contraption of half-facts to the figure of his father looming, a huge riddle in an undershirt, before him. Rabbit offers, "It's a girl who's run away from home and I somehow got stuck with her last night."
"""
john updike ~ rabbit redux |
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| twitter |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|04:25 pm] |
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I forgot to mention this earlier but I am now also on twitter. Among other things, you'll find there some terse documentation of my current European trip. http://twitter.com/drnuk |
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| peter stillman |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|07:45 am] |
I've been enjoying Paul Auster and his pseudo-detective stories lately...
"""Quinn had never seen anyone move in such a manner, and he realized at once that this was the same person he had spoken to on the phone. The body acted almost exactly as the voice had: machine-like, fitful, alternating between slow and rapid gestures, rigid and yet expressive, as if the operation were out of control, not quite corresponding to the will that lay behind it. It seemed to Quinn that Stillman's body had not been used for a long time and tat all its functions had been relearned, so that motion had become a conscious process, each movement broken down into its component submovements, with the result that all flow and spontaneity had been lost. It was like watching a marionette trying to walk without strings.
Everything about Peter Stillman was white. White shirt, open at the neck; white pants, white socks. Against teh pallor of his skin, the flaxen thinness of his hair, the effect was almost transparent, as though one could see through to the blue veins behind the skin of his face. This blue was almost the same as the blue of his eyes: a milky blue that seemed to dissolve into a mixture of sky and clouds. Quinn could not imagine himself addressing a word to this person. It was as though Stillman's presence was a command to be silent."""
paul auster ~ city of glass |
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| flaneur |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|07:31 am] |
From the "I get creeped out when a random blog post is actually pretty accurate about me" files, I present this snippet from Confessions of an Introverted Traveler:
"""Introversion and extroversion are inborn traits, and the difference between them is not that one is gregarious and at ease in the world and the other shy and awkward. Rather, extroverts are outwardly motivated and gain energy from interaction with the outside world while introverts are more inwardly directed and drained by interaction with others. Introverts’ thinking tends to be deep and slow, we require copious time alone, we prefer probing conversation to shallow chitchat, and our social lives are geared more towards intimate one-on-one interactions than “more the merrier” free-for-alls."""
Also it contains some snark :-P
"""I once read about a B&B where the owner collected antique hats that guests were encouraged to wear to breakfast. Really? That sounds fun to people?"""
And the followup blog post is pretty good too.
"""As someone who can't even strike up a conversation with the cute girl in english class or approach someone at a show, I have been plagued with anxiety for traveling overseas.
...
I told this young man that first of all, approaching cute members of the opposite sex is doctoral-level extroversion. I’m not even sure I trust guys who can easily chat up that cute girl in English class. No, that kind of confidence is suspect to me. Give me the awkward blurter any day.""" |
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| my new favorite show |
[May. 29th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
"I'm sorry, what were you asking me? Oh, yes. That stupid plastic container I asked you to buy. You see hydrofluoric acid won't eat through plastic. It will however dissolve metal, rock, glass, ceramic. So there's that."
breaking bad ~ season 1, episode 2 |
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| how to be a badass |
[May. 23rd, 2009|09:02 pm] |
General Walter Bedell Smith is a badass. During WWII, he rose from humble beginnings and through the ranks from private to being Eisenhower's chief of staff and hatchet man. Notably, he personally accepted the Nazi surrender in the battered little red schoolhouse in Rheims, France. Here's a description of what then happened when President Truman later appointed Bedell Smith to lead the newly created CIA in 1950.
"""The general's task was to learn the secrets of the Kremlin, and he had a good idea of his chances. 'There are only two personalities that I know of who might do it,' he told the five senators who confirmed him at an August 24 hearing where he wore the newly acquired fourth star, a prize from the president. 'One is God, and the other is Stalin, and I do not know that even God can do it because I do not know whether he is close enough in touch with Uncle Joe to know what he is talking about.' As for what awaited him at the CIA, he said: 'I expect the worst, and I am sure I won't be disappointed.' Immediately upon taking office in October, he discovered that he had inherited an unholy mess. 'It's interesting to see all you fellows here,' he said as he looked around the table at his first staff meeting. 'It'll be even more interesting to see how many of you are here a few months from now.'"""
Tim Weiner ~ Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA
When I am appointed to be the head of the CIA, I'm going to follow Bedell Smith's lead :-) |
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| cultural activity |
[May. 11th, 2009|10:52 pm] |
Was just at The Vaselines concert. They're a Scottish band who were briefly on to something in the late nineties just before they broke up, and are probably most known for then being covered by Nirvana. It was their first time in San Francisco, and they were playing their 1989 album Dum-Dum. So, they're doing their thing, a mix of alternative and distortion laced with sexual and theological references. And, Frances McKee has a bit of a dirty mind (don't we all?), and in between songs is cracking jokes about muffs, prison, and things one should not do with a capo. And then, there was this wonderful moment, when Eugene Kelly asked Frances McKee (whom at this point was down to five guitar strings), "What is your beauty secret? How do you stay so young and pretty?". Not to disappoint, and not to beat around the bush, she replied:
I take semen from young boys and spread it all over my face. You don't need a face lift. It really works.
Wow, just wow. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 11th, 2009|11:54 am] |
"By the time we reached the top the music was blaring. The group ahead of us had melted into the doorway and disappeared into the kitchen. Yvonne was crouched at the stereo, her back to us. Most of the crowd was clustered in the airless kitchen: tall thin women with shining clavicles, men pushing back damp bangs. The women from the doorstep moved purposefully toward a table laid out with chips and salsa. One of them had a tiny ring in her belly button, showing just under her shirt; she dug a chip into the salsa and a loose glop of it fell onto the floor. She touched her friend's shoulder and pointed to it, and they both squealed with helpless laughter."
aoibheann sweeney ~ among other things, i've taken up smoking |
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| galatea |
[Apr. 1st, 2009|07:14 pm] |
"It seemed to me I had changed. I was Galatea, the statue turned to flesh in her creator's hands. I had come from my island in Maine in my foul-weather gear, typing and cleaning and drawing in my room, and Nate brought me gifts and made me warm to the touch, a girl in the city like any other. But then when I walked him to class at the university, and watched as he disappeared easily into the throng of students outside the buildings surrounding Washington Square, I would look at the girls with their books pressed to their chests, laughing, talking, walking in short skirts and long pants, high boots and little sandals -- and wonder why, in the end, I was still not like them."
aoibheann sweeney ~ among other things, i've taken up smoking |
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| getting into of montreal... |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|04:41 pm] |
the mousey girl screams violence violence
she gets hysterical
because we're both so mean
and it's my favorite scene
but the cruelty is so predictable
it makes you sad on the stage
but our love project has so much potential
it's like we weren't made for this world
i wouldn't really wanna meet someone who was
now do i have to scream in your face
i've been dodging lamps and vegetables
throw 'em all in my face
i don't care
i just wanna have some fun
let's tear the shit apart
let's tear the fuckin' house apart
let's tear our fuckin' bodies apart
anything just to have some fun again
of montreal ~ the past is a grotesque animal |
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| reboot, day 3 |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|10:39 am] |
things are going well. highlights include:
- bishop's peak.
- nice people.
- downtown slo.
- the sun.
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| reboot, day 1 |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|10:55 am] |
Burned out, and taking a long weekend in San Luis Obispo. Highlights thus far include:
- Hearing about whitehouse.gov/openforquestions on NPR's All Things Considered.
- Taking a run on a warm, sunny, uncrowded beach with packed sand.
- Country top-40 radio.
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|01:49 pm] |
"Statistical volatility is an abstract fact. Gosselin humanizes it by choosing as his basic indicator the chance that a person or family will experience a year-to-year drop in income of more than 50 percent. Sure enough, this probability almost doubled between the decades of the 1970s and the 2000s, from one in twenty to one in eleven. (The probability of a 50+ percent rise in income also increased from about one in nine to one in seven. Volatility works both ways, but it is the bad surprises that hurt.)
Then Gosselin does an interesting thing. What sorts of contingencies would lead to such a drastic and sudden reduction in a family's income? The obvious suspects are major unemployment, illness, retirement or disability, divorce or separation, death of a spouse, even birth of a child leading to one parent's withdrawal from a job. Adding all these together, Gosselin finds that their combined incidence was somewhat lower in the decade between 1994 and 2003 than it had been between 1974 and 1983. If one of them happens, however, the chance that it leads to a 50 percent drop in income was much higher in the later period than in the earlier one. So it is the financial risk that has jumped, not the generic hard luck. This sounds suspiciously like the tearing of a safety net. Welcome to the world of Individual Responsibility -- the approach to economic security that has been advocated by government and the private sector in recent years."
robert solow, reviewing peter gosselin's "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families" |
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| the tension of happiness |
[Feb. 21st, 2009|11:12 pm] |
"Then relatives arrived, and that blissful tumult began from which Levin did not escape till the day after his wedding. Levin felt constantly awkward, bored, but the tension of happiness went on, ever increasing. He kept feeling that much that he did not know was demanded of him, and he did everything he was told and it all made him happy. He thought that his engagement would have nothing in common with others, that the ordinary conditions of engagement would spoil his particular happiness; but it ended with him doing the same things as others, and his happiness was only increased by it and became more and more special, the like of which had never been known and never would be. ... The extraordinary thing was not only that everyone loved him, but that all formerly unsympathetic, cold, indifferent people admired him and obeyed him in all things, treated his feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was the happiest man in the world because his fiancee was the height of perfection. And Kitty felt the same..."
leo tolstoy ~ anna karenina |
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| gopher avec chocolat |
[Feb. 21st, 2009|04:44 pm] |
"Many French terms were picked up later by English colonists and slipped straight into English... Gofer (gopher) is a deformation of gauffre (waffle), which described the waffle-like holes that prairie dogs dug."
nadeau, barlow ~ the story of french |
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| he makes a good point... |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|10:59 pm] |
Coach: "Tyler! Tyler! What did I ask you to run? What's your name?"
Tyler: "Tyler..."
Coach: "What's your grandfather's name?"
Tyler: "Jim..."
Coach: "What's your mother's maiden name?"
Tyler: "Norman..."
Coach: "How the hell can you remember all that and not remember the route I asked you to run?"
friday night lights |
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| ev-en-ing |
[Feb. 5th, 2009|08:44 am] |
"When we did come home Sylvie would certainly be home, too, enjoying the evening, for so she described her habit of sitting in the dark. Evening was her special time of day. She gave the word three syllables, and indeed I think she liked it so well for its tendency to smooth, to soften. She seemed to dislike the disequilibrium of counterpoising a roomful of light against a worldful of darkness. Sylvie in a house was more or less like a mermaid in a ship's cabin. She preferred it sunk in the very element it was meant to exclude. We had crickets in the pantry, squirrels in the eaves, sparrows in the attic. Lucille and I stepped through the door from sheer night to sheer night."
marilynne robinson ~ housekeeping |
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