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like a whispering in dark streets
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[03 Oct 2008|07:21pm] |
Possibly a controversial question, but this has been bugging me for a while now:
Why isn't "soccer mom" read as "white bourgeoisie" in political discussions?
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| last VP debate post, I promise |
[03 Oct 2008|02:26pm] |
At least some of the media appears to have changed its mind regarding that "tie" thing I was so infuriated about last night. The best that I've seen so far is this Time article, which echoes my own sentiments pretty closely:
The fact that Palin made it through the debate without running off the stage shouting, "I can't do this!" should not obscure the fact that there was only one person tonight whom anyone with any sense—even John McCain, I imagine—would trust as President.
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(5 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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| VP debate |
[03 Oct 2008|12:23am] |
I wasn't going to really say anything about this, but goddamn it people, I cannot believe that the media seems to be calling the VP debate some kind of tie. Maybe they will change their minds by tomorrow? I thought Biden mopped the floor with Palin. I thought Palin was not just wrong about things but straight up incoherent half the time. I thought she was just sort of saying stuff out of thin air, and Biden was at the very least actually participating in the actual debate. This was true from the get-go, even -- Biden responded to the first question by giving a sort of sketch of an actual policy stance, whereas Palin said, basically, "ZOMG SOCCER MOM." The whole rest of the debate was like that. Biden said relevant things that included actual references to actual policy, while Palin went on random rants about Alaska, or bizarre repetitions of short "key" phrases that would've caused me to worry about her mental health if I weren't so sure she had been coached to do so. Her rants were obviously choreographed, but incoherent and irrelevant nonetheless. The transcript is here, see for yourself.
I mean, I know this whole thing of politics is not really the rational, informed process that we're supposed to think it is in high school civics courses, but anyone who says that Biden and Palin were on even remotely even footing in terms of what they actually said needs to get their head checked. I don't care whether you agree with either of their political stances or not, it's just simply clear that Biden was the only one even really participating in the debate, let alone winning.
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(10 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[01 Oct 2008|08:28pm] |
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Life is not always tiramisu and tea and Heidegger on a rainy autumn evening, but oh, sometimes it is.
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(2 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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| GRE woes |
[24 Sep 2008|08:00pm] |
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Took a reasonably short practice GRE today. Somewhere in the past seven years or so, I apparently completely lost my patience with multiple-choice exams. (30 second internet quizzes, I blame you), such that I barely squeaked by with a 600 on sections where I should've been getting 7-somethings. All of the mistakes I made on the verbal section were of the "oops, should've read that closer" variety, and about 2/3 of the mistakes I made on the quant were that way too. The other 1/3 sort of scares me though, because it turns out (predictably, I guess) that I totally don't remember junior-year-of-high-school math at all. I can get by for the most part by being generally able to figure stuff out, but some of these "It takes x many people y many hours to make z many widgets -- how long will it take to make q many widgets if n many people start at m, except at time t a few more people show up, and then they all go on break, but then some of them come back and some of them play hooky and see a movie" questions really, just... I feel like I could figure them out if I could just focus, but there's some kind of ALERT: STUPID QUESTION, DO NOT CONSIDER override that happens somewhere in my brain. Aaaugh.
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(5 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[17 Sep 2008|10:45pm] |
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I had a sort of bizarre and cool experience this afternoon in the Kant class I'm auditing. The long and short of it is: Over the course of 2 hours of lecture and discussion in a serious, graduate-level class at a school where it's a fair bet that almost everyone's work depends on Kant in some way or another, 95% of what was said was not even remotely new to me. This isn't to denigrate the course at all -- they covered a whole lot of difficult territory during this class, and I can't imagine how impenetrable a lot of it would've sounded to a Kant novice. But, apparently, I actually figured shit out this past spring to a pretty serious degree. Weirdly, if I had managed to actually get into this thing for credit, I think this would probably be the easiest class for me (where "easiest" = most natural, not requiring any forced effort) out of everything I'm doing. This is probably a very, very good sign.
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(2 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[13 Sep 2008|08:06pm] |
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I'm finally learning to play pool, and I'm not doing too badly for someone who is a total novice. Went to a bar last night with a friend who is a grad student in philosophy here, who apparently also is a New York native who spent a fair amount of his 20s being a pool-playing barfly, and watched him beat the guy who had been winning against everyone for probably a couple of hours. I am really, really all about philosophers kicking ass at pool. And at the very least, it did make for a pretty fantastic study break.
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[10 Sep 2008|02:44pm] |
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Immediately after making that last entry, I got a mysterious IM that asked, "Are you an Oneirologist?" Turns out it's a relay bot, which is actually kind of disappointing.
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| thrust unexpectedly into the good life |
[10 Sep 2008|02:37pm] |
Guys, I just have to tell you -- I just cooked pancakes (mmm, really good pancakes which I am currently eating) in my small but very cute little kitchen 10 stories above one of the most interesting neighborhoods in America. Yesterday I was extremely productive and, by evening, exhausted, so I slept in until noon, took a nice long shower, and then made this lovely breakfast for myself (including brewing some CC's coffee). In a couple of hours I am off to class via lazy bike ride on a nice late-summer day, where I will get to discuss (probably) Brentano's influence on Husserl and later phenomenology (the loveliness of this might be less accessible than the previous parts of this narrative, but hey). Then I will probably go sit outside at a nice little corner cafe with excellent food and study for classes tomorrow.
If things keep going this way, I might never want to leave.
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(14 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[02 Sep 2008|07:54pm] |
First day of class.
Ups: biking to class in the morning breeze + Einstein class will probably be awesome + made a potential new friend who knows about St. John's + at least one prof very entertaining + love the little "quad" space between the Lang and General Studies buildings + ran into girl from class in bookstore & had good conversation + NYC still awesome generally
Downs: another prof is confusing and appears to be a grad student even though the class schedule said the actual prof would be teaching + condescending people at the bookstore who think anything Greek would be in the "mythology" section + girl in class stumbles over pronounciation of the word "Iliad" + an actual assigned textbook (ew) that costs over $100 (eeew) + upper level phil classes scheduled at the same time thus limiting my options (this has been true the whole time though) + $10 for a really not good sandwich and coffee at the school cafe + cars/pedestrians in the bike lane (this might change into an amusing "up" if I get an air horn).
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(join the revolution!)
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| also. |
[31 Aug 2008|12:54am] |
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You know how when you go bowling, and your bowling ball is going in a direction you don't want it to, you do that thing where you yell at it and desperately wave your arms as if the waving will move it by telekenesis? That is what I am doing to Hurricane Gustav, right now.
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[31 Aug 2008|12:47am] |
I was having an IM conversation with someone about a bit of gossip, but I thought this might be worth stating in general:
Me: I was thinking about it the other day, trying to capture what I was really disgusted by, because it's not exactly the sheer fact of sleeping around --
Me: it's this:
Me: There is something seriously wrong with the way you're doing things if you don't have "happy customers" as it were
Me: especially if you have SO many UNHAPPY customers
Me: UR DOIN IT WRONG
Her: omg, lol
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| holy identity politics batman |
[29 Aug 2008|05:03pm] |
Re: the McCain VP pick: goddamn it. I know nothing about her yet and I don't have to know a damn thing about her to say that this race just got way more difficult and complicated for Obama than any of us would probably like to admit.
[Edit]: Aside from the obvious attempt to poach former Clintonites (which I'd like to think won't work...), what is with this recent language of female politicians being characterized as "fighters"? It seems sort of like "feisty," but more ominous. "Oh, she's such a fighter! [nervous laughter]... No, really."
[further Edit]: Oh! Durr. I figured it out. The problem here is not that female voters are so ditzy as to vote for McCain just because he has a female VP, the problem is going to be the outspoken (and influential) male voters who are overjoyed about this because now they get to prove thier "moderate," woman-sympathetic cred ("I'm not a misogynist! I voted for a woman VP!") without having to actually compromise any of their policy positions such that they would actually be more woman-friendly. Awesome.
[Even further edit}: I am so depressed that I have seen more women than really I think ever on the news tonight being asked about their opinion. This is going to be such an incredibly frustrating, stupid clusterfuck. God. I wanted to get into this election cycle, be interested and pay attention and debate with people and stuff, but I'm pretty sure the kinds of debates that are going to emerge from this are going to make me want to punch things. Aaaugh.
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[27 Aug 2008|03:11am] |
Okay, so I was sort of making fun of myself earlier with all the I <3 NY stuff, but I have to tell you -- earlier tonight I was on my way home, and the union square station happened to be the nearest one. Little did I know, union square is hopping around dusk and after dark. Seriously, people everywhere, and they're all every possible kind of person all talking and genuinely enjoying themselves -- and the street musicians, oh I can't tell you enough, there was this one guy, probably about my age with longish curly hair, skinny, playing the violin, and it was the most lovely violin playing I have ever heard in my life. I don't know enough about the technical end of this sort of thing, but I can't imagine that he isn't some kind of professional and that that wasn't some kind of ancient and legendary violin itself. I have never heard such warmth and resonance come out of a violin like that. When I tore myself away to go catch the L train, there was this woman inside the subway station who was the best gospel singer I had ever heard in my life, and this huge crowd gathered singing along and whooping it up and she was obviously having such a fantastic time and everyone there was totally shameless about what a great time they were having because of it. The hair on my arms stood up for probably at least 20 minutes straight throughout all this. I have not been here long enough to call it love, but I am definitely infatuated with this town.
Before the violin guy, I walked by the obligatory scruffy dude with the acoustic guitar. Was he playing some kind of terrible Bob Dylan ripoff? No. He was playing -- I am not making this up -- f'ing Lovecats. It was great.
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(6 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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| <3ing NYC |
[26 Aug 2008|06:01pm] |
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Day 3 (2.5 really) of being in NYC, and it is still awesome. Guys, I gotta tell you... New Yorkers are some of the friendliest people I have ever met, at least in the areas between, say, 22nd St and maybe Houston. Seriously, super duper friendly. If you're standing in a store and you and some stranger are perusing the same area, sometimes they actually make friendly banter with you. It's even better if you're in a pet store and a certain hamster suddenly does something silly -- it's totally acceptable and encouraged for everyone to laugh and remark upon the event to each other, even though they're all total strangers. I don't think I've ever been anywhere where something like that has been nearly as natural and purely friendly as here. I suppose this place might seem a little more harsh if you're the sort of delicate flower who can't handle a little urban grime around and blushes at someone calling their open wireless network "not a greedy bastard." Maybe I'll start to see more of the downsides, the local neuroses, as I become more familiar with the place. But for now, I'm honestly kind of shocked by how much I like this place, how simply comfortable it is. Awesome.
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(14 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[25 Aug 2008|04:32pm] |
I am in New York City. It is kind of crazy. I have been here for about 24 hours, and so far I like it a lot more than I thought I would. Not that I didn't think I'd like it -- I just thought it would have a much colder or more sort of hostile atmosphere than I imagined (maybe it feels friendly because I've been mostly in the village?) People do tend to talk with each other like they're arguing when they aren't, which has always sort of pissed me off, but that's about it. Weirdly, this is the first time in my life when I've suspected that I might have a slight southern-ish accent -- vowels just sort of feel a little twangier and consonants feel a little drawlier than it seems like they should be here. As for the city itself -- it feels not entirely different from places I've been before, except that everything is way taller, stores are much more specific, and there's still a billion people driving and walking around like they're going somewhere important at 1 in the morning, which is sort of a trip. I met with my advisor at the New School today, and it was really excellent. He reminds me a little bit of my Phenomenology prof at Berkeley -- a similar sort of quiet but enthusiastic friendliness, a vaguely eastern european accent to his english. He seems to really want me to stick around here for grad school -- I don't know if I will do it, but if my interactions with him were indicative of what the department is like, it might not be so bad of an idea. I don't have any friends here at the moment, but bizarrely enough, I feel like the social atmosphere here is much more condusive to friend-making than it was at Berkeley. Maybe the fact that so many people are coming in and out of NYC all the time puts things in a sort of social flux that makes for a good meeting-new-people atmosphere.
Anyway, that's all for now, will update as situation progresses.
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(16 guerillas | join the revolution!)
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[24 Aug 2008|12:07am] |
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Today, I got hip new glasses (pictures of them actually on me forthcoming). Tomorrow at 7:20 AM, a train leaves Charlottesville for NYC. I, and a whole pile of luggage, will be on that train. Oh, excitement and adventure.
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