Fifth Sunday in Lent
"Two hundred channels and there's nothing on but cats." -Courtney, 03/03/2008
This appears to be a happy day! A birthday was celebrated at some hipster upscale restaurant. Also, some people are going to grad school. And I got a loan, so, at least in theory, I can also continue my education. I was pretty elated about this earlier, but then I listened to fast-pitched, jaded commentary on unrelated matters for over an hour, and now I'm back to my 'cheerfully bitter' factory settings. Hoo-ray. I want to note that the jaded commentary was also unrelated to the hipster eatery (but you could tell some people were holding back).
Now all I have to do is sit back and convince myself I have enough money to buy Magnetic Fields tickets for later this week. Well, that's not true. I am, as the astute who maintain other lines of communication with me may have noticed, actually doing class reading, instead of just ready Nietzsche, Melville, and Hawthorne for fun. I also started re-reading the Hitchiker trilogy, mostly because I was cleaning and had a perverse desire to read something that didn't have 'American Classic' embossed on the cover.
Aaaaand I somehow still found time to give myself a videogame blister and time-travel into the future accidentally. Well, the blister was an accident, too.
Fourth Sunday in Lent
I just got an e-mail titled "4th Year Gift", and found myself saying, "Bah! I gave to the Senior Class Gift last year!"
Yeah.
still Wednesday
So one of the things I had for breakfast was a sandwich. I used my new toaster to make it. But as I ate this sandwich, I realized that everything on it was a condiment. That was pretty jarring.
Please forgive the pun.
As I watched There Will Be Blood (spoiler: There wasn't. Not much, anyway.) last night, it occurred to me once again that I'd rather be blind than deaf. Usually I come to this conclusion because of my love of music and conversation, but this time a veritable benefit of blindness presented itself before my very, ah, eyes. I would never have to answer e-mail again. I hate receiving e-mail, almost without fail. I hate checking e-mail, I hate responding to e-mail, and generally don't care for writing e-mails in general. If I never got another e-mail in my life, the overall quality of my life would have improved.
Which is not to say I hate all individual e-mails. The scav ones are reliably fun, and anyone who's reading this is almost certainly welcome to send me one. I might take a week to reply, though. Nothing will change my hatred of checking my e-mail.
Wednesday
So last night I had a slightly-recurrent real-estate-horror dream, which segued into a romantic drama dream, which abruptly ended. And was replaced by a Saved by the Bell dream. I got such a solid sense of satisfaction out of watching Zach fill everyone's locker with chiclets. It would've been a really nice way to start the day, if the cat hadn't then woken me with a claw to the face.
I love my cat.
Tuesday, third week of Lent
Well, I've been tinkering around with the site again. Some may have noticed a certain rather crudely made icon was replaced by one that is perhaps too ornate. It is rather more unlikely that anyone noticed the other main addition: more of the archived posts have been converted to the current system. I can't speak for how standards-compliant they are as of yet; the script I wrote to import them isn't very fancy. I would guess that I've got somewhere between one eighth and one sixteenth of them in now. But when the formatting changed, I decided to call it a day and adjust the script later. So, if anyone wants to remember how whiny I was three years ago, go ahead.
Thursday, second week of Lent
Mmm, looks like someone is finally onto the vegans. If I had know all my casual hinting at slaughtering infants would ever have repercussions, I would've thought twice about letting the secrets out. Oh, woe.
Valentine's Day
"The teams are boys versus girls, and I'm androgynous." -Cora, 02/02/2008
So I've been reading this book lately called Against Love (a Polemic) by a woman named Laura Kipnis. The thesis is basically "Adultery: don't fight it". She makes some good arguments about certain subtheses, but the book contains much that is repetitive and a fair bit of "look at me, I'm saying something outrageous, wah, wah, don't look over there" as an attempt to hide holes in the logic. But, hey, it's a polemic, it doesn't have to cover multiple facets of an issue. It's been tolerably enjoyable reading.
Until today. I'm almost done with Kipnis's book, but I'm also reading Nietsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Now, usually there's no problem when I read more than one book at once, but usually I'm only ever reading one non-fictional, essay/diatribe/treatise-type at most amongst a number of novels or epics. This is probably my first time trying to digest two ethical texts at once, and I've come across a problem: Nietsche, in about five paragraphs, neatly argued what Kipnis has spent about two hundred pages on. Well, the more worthwhile parts, anyway. So what now? How do I finish the last chapter of this book when I know that even after suffering a translation to English, Nietsche has probably said anything worth attending to better and faster that Kipnis will?
How irritating. I only hope I don't come across the same problem with Klosterman, since I plan to resume Fargo Rock City as soon as I finish (or give up on) this book.
And finally, I wish to assure any concerned parties that this subject was not chosen with the date in mind; it's just that I happened to read that passage of Zarathustra this afternoon. The quote, I must confess, was selected with knowledge of both occasion and subject. Couldn't resist.
Feeds: