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Oct. 3rd, 2008 @ 09:22 am
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I'm reading the transcript of last night's vice presidential debate, which took place at the same time as seminar. It strikes me that I would really like to run for president just so I could make puns in debates.
On the other hand, I would be too inclined to respond to the actual questions.
Also: <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/10/02/2008-10-02_larry_flynt_is_hustling_up_an_alaskin_fl.html">this.</a> |
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I Like the Air
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Oct. 2nd, 2008 @ 10:38 am
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It is no longer summer. The about-face that the weather began on my last day of work has been completed and we are fully in autumn. It is consistently chilly enough to warrant a jacket, and the air smells so distinctly of early fall. The leaves haven't really begun changing yet, but it won't be much longer. Long weekend trip soon.
I'm in a mood to read a certain sort of book. That sort of book is not Hobbes' Leviathan. Fifth Business works well for this mood, but perhaps something a little more modern for the moment. This weather yields a strange sort of feeling that isn't quite nostalgia, but is experienced somewhat similarly. I want to blast Leonard Cohen (his really cheesy stuff from the 80's, not the earlier folksy stuff) while sitting on back campus watching the sky change colors.
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Postponing French homework
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Oct. 1st, 2008 @ 09:11 am
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Is it just me, or is everybody a lot less happy than they used to be?
I'm referring primarily to friends, and more specifically to friends here. To some extent, this may just be the bitterness that they say comes with progress through the Program. And of course the fact that we're all getting older and now instead of having problems we have Problems.
Rereading Fifth Business (aloud, with Cassandra) I'm amazed at all of the ways I understand Dunstan Ramsay. I'm sure many of these are universal elements, but it's also - perhaps the very fact of his being "fifth business", a necessary observer and catalyst without being the hero, lover, villain... Furthermore it is a world which makes sense to me: incredibly rich and somehow simultaneously dark and well-intentioned.
In contrast, I've been watching Mad Men, and finding that I really fear ending up like Don Draper. Not an irrational fear either - I can see my character flaws becoming his character flaws. (Although I don't think I'd be inclined to cheat on my wife... but then, given another twenty years, who can say? I can only hope that given another twenty years instead of gaining that flaw of his I'll have lost some of the others...)
I built another bucket bass over the weekend. Kate visited, her father gave the lecture; the lecture was excellent, and it was good to see her again. Cassandra has mono. I've been taking care of her a fair amount. I'm reading Flatland. I need to clean my room. Rachel's brought over a tenor banjo, which I'm having fun with. I've been cooking a lot, especially with Cassandra sick.Feeling...: indescribable Auditory Emanations:: banjo fingering exercise examples |
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Stolen from Ms Walling
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Sep. 24th, 2008 @ 09:48 am
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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 42 (or the closest one...in this case, anyway).
3. Find the first full sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
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The word "infinite," however, has philosophical and mathematical overtones which we hoped to avoid by using "indefinite" or "without limit," a course which also enabled us to avoid any problems arising from the special senses of "infinite" in mathematics.
In the discussion of book 1, prop. 1, Evans and Mani would have a body being "perpetually drawn off from the tangent" by a force which "will act incessantly." Percival Frost similarly avoids "infinitely," and he adopts "indefinitely." For him, however, the limiting force "will act continuously." The problem for the translator is well exemplified by this proposition, which contains Newton's polygonal model. In the discussions of book 1, prop. 1, there is apt to be agreement that the limit of the polygonal trajectory is a curve, and therefore "continuous," whereas - as we shall see below - there is considerable discussion concerning whether the force can similarly be taken to act in the limit in a "continuous" manner. Accordingly, we have generally chosen the adjective "continual" and the associated adverb "continually," in order to avoid the confusion that would arise because "continuous" and its adverb "continuously" have a special t4echnical sense in today's mathematics. We are, however, mindful of the warnings of such authors as Partridge and Fowler.
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Dammit, introduction to the Principia... why do you have to have such long sentences? My copy of The Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies, was the next book over in my backpack, why couldn't it have been that one? The sentences are so much shorter...
Feeling...:  tired |
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My icon has changed
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Sep. 22nd, 2008 @ 10:42 am
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This is the sort of work I can fully support. He's trying to grow all of these:
Sep. 19th, 2008 @ 09:36 am
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Life is pretty damn good right now.
Also:
http://vimeo.com/1612411?pg=embed&sec=1612411 (Portal ending done typographically)
http://www.publicdomainflicks.com/0244-nosferatu/ (the 1922 film "Nosferatu", for free onilne)
Sep. 17th, 2008 @ 09:23 am
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I'm saying that these forces are both inevitable and necessary, and that accidental, organic splendor blooms when the predations of capitalism, government, and art -- or at least, architecture -- are composted, day by day, by time and fate. This, too, does not change.
Sep. 12th, 2008 @ 10:43 am
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Generally, I'm fairly unaffected by seminar readings. I enjoy them perhaps, or find them boring, and enjoy the discussions that they engender, but I leave seminar feeling rather distant. Not last night.
Pascal fucked with me. He has so many observations that seem very astute and very right, but I refuse to believe that we are as wretched as he claims. I got angry about it.
I also figured out what I'm going to do with myself.
I'm going to build instruments, teach classes on basic acoustics and woodworking and music theory - nothing in depth, just trying to get people to do things. I'll get an arts grant from a city and establish an experimental orchestra. I'll sell pretty instruments in art galleries.
Sep. 12th, 2008 @ 09:26 am
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| » build me a better mousetrap |
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Hey mouse-in-my-kitchen? Do me a favor and leave it, or we'll have to kill you.
Oh yeah and also, was that you that shat on my counter? I know you don't know any better, but that's really gross.
Will, back me up here.
Sep. 11th, 2008 @ 10:49 am
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| » Man guys |
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German Longsword is awesome.
Sep. 7th, 2008 @ 02:15 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Guys.
Sep. 3rd, 2008 @ 09:08 am
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| » Awesome new idea for packing: |
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If the sock doesn't have a mate, don't pack it.
Seriously. I've done this twice before, and this never occurred to me.
In other news, it's been a good summer. A surprising amount of fun and personal growth and projects begun and completed and all that.
Aug. 26th, 2008 @ 01:36 am
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Sex in the Olympic Village.
In other news: Gotan Project is pretty awesome.
Aug. 22nd, 2008 @ 11:46 am
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Splitting wood is every bit as fun as I remember it being ten years ago when my father first showed me how.
Also, I built a Go board.
Aug. 20th, 2008 @ 10:24 pm
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| » Another Esquire link? |
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"Let it first be said that Curves ("Hollywood's Best-Kept Secret") are, pound for pound, the best bargain in this sector of the market. Two thickly opaque, hollowed-out prosthetic breasts, complete with nipples, they come in one of two colors, peach and mocha, and one of four sizes: demi, small, large, and extra large. They have their own little habitat, molded to contain them, which has an initial L in the left corner and an initial R in the right corner and looks sort of like the contact-lens container of the breast-faced man in that Magritte painting your acid-damaged roommate had in college."
Boobies.
The real question is who gets the special menu.
Aug. 18th, 2008 @ 11:21 am
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| » Dwarf Fortress! |
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Aug. 15th, 2008 @ 02:00 pm
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| » Meteor Camping |
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Drove down to Charlottesville with Zack, met Hunter down there, then Pete met us. We went camping at Loft Mountain, on Skyline Drive.
It was a lot of fun, although it was very much not the sort of camping to which I'm accustomed. We brought way too much stuff for the one night we were gone (it was going to be two, but Pete and Hunter needed to leave early, so Zack and I figured we might as well leave too and save the site-registration money).
So basically I want to go backpacking freals sometime soon, but this was still a lot of fun, and probably better given the group.
Aug. 13th, 2008 @ 11:17 am
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autophage's journal