So, I'm playing D&D (ya gotta problem with that?). My character is a sorcerer whose primary focus at the moment is to turn into mythical beasts and do nasty things of a physical nature when necessary. The truth is, however, our fighters are really quite good and he rarely gets to really get physical like I dream he will.
But the other day we were fighting a hydra--no, a PYROhydra--
which one shouldn't stand too close to, and so I got a chance to turn into this:
That's a manticore and the spikes on his tail have a nasty ranged attack that my sorcerer can augment by about 350%. So there I am -- raaaarrr -- and one of the other players looks down gleefully and says "I love it when you turn into an A-10 warthog".
Couldn't have said it better myself. Between me and Ohbejuan's equally geeky munchkin character the hydra just evaporated.
There are so many great reasons to play D&D that have to do with collaborative storytelling, creativity, companionship. But sometimes you just want to break out the can of whupa** and be the baddest mofo on the block.
|
So, recently I've been concerned about my spate of "spreadsheet dreams", which are basically about the most boring parts of work. Generally the best way to deal with this is to stop thinking about work so much and try to settle my mind before I sleep.
But apparently for me there's another way: Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. This very strange comic from the late 80's is typical of Morrison's work, which is as psychedelic as the DC and Marvel folks of that time could tolerate. He has a lot of recurring symbols of his own, like shapely redheads without real faces, stuff like that. Mostly though his stuff is weird and the symbols apparently are so loosely associated that my subconcious was using them for raw material to start having some really, really interesting dreams.
So, when it doubt, go with Morrison. Psychotherapists worldwide can contact me for consulting.
|
Wedding Registry fun...
Laundry...
Occasional cat cuddles...
Homemade Stuffed Grape leaves. Y'all cross your fingers now...
NY Times Sunday Magazine (sucked this week)...
An episode from Season 1 of the Muppet Show...(Lena Horne)...
And it's not even 1 pm yet.
I love weekends where I don't have anything pressing to do. Hope things are well for everyone else as well. |
Angie was down home visiting her family this weekend, so I did something that I haven't done in maybe five years: I got together with some friends and played a boardgame all night long.
In this case, the new version of Axis and Allies. I really liked everyone playing, and the game was very exciting and close.
So, rolling home at 6 am (7 am, I guess, because of daylight savings time) a few things came to me. First, Axis and Allies really is a gem of a game, especially after the update a couple of years back. Even after the update, though, the allies have to be very unlucky to lose with any regularity.
Second, the whole experience felt like some forbidden trip to the seedy side of town. Used to be that all night sessions were pretty much par for the course for me, but I'm getting way to old to stay up all night eating junk food and playing board games. It's not the geeky gaming per se; I do that on a pretty regular basis with a D&D group, and I love it. It was the all night getting so tired at 5 am that you can't remember how many armies are on the board moments that I don't really miss. Or the detachment from everything else because you sleep until 2 pm the next day.
Was a time when that was how I did things almost every weekend, but I guess I'm cashing out, boys.
I was really happy to see Angie return.
|
| » Twelve Thoughtful Men. And Women. |
|---|
You know what gets my patriotic fervor up? You know what I consider to be the most beautiful expression of democracy? You know how to make me get kinda weepy?
Send me a jury report like the one from a juror who was on the Scooter Libby Jury. Hell yeah.
My favorite moment in the report was when the jurors basically agreed to completely ignore the opening and closing statements of both lawyers as hand-waving and not, in any way, "real evidence". In other words they got down to what was real in the case and discarded the rest.
I love stories of thoughtful, free people sitting in a room together doing the best they can to disentagle the complexities of a court case, whether they be supreme court justices or a jury of twelve citizens.
<peanut gallery: rumble rumble grumble segregation era South OJ glove rumble grumble>
Yeah yeah yeah. Okay, quick rejoinders:
1) Segregation South juries were not juries of free people because they did not represent the entire population, just the entrenched white males.
2) The prosecution for the OJ trial was incompetent beyond measure and THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE. I mean, there might have been evidence, if the LA police hadn't screwed up the lab report. The amazing thing about jury reports from that trial was that the jurors felt incredibly guilty about acquitting OJ, because they figured the guy was a lying rat bastard, but there was nothing in the trial that could give them the push they needed beyond reasonable doubt. And that's exactly how it should be.
God love a jury. They are the greatest creative force in a democratic society.
Damn all those to hell who would try to use institutional or legislative powers to try to control, intimidate, or limit them.
Mar. 8th, 2007 @ 08:27 am
|
| » The Ballad of Robbie and Christy |
|---|
A consumer class action lawsuit is the new ambulance chasing. It's just brutal. Here's the proposition:
a) A corporation does something stupid and/or venal
b) Somebody notices and gets mad. They don't get a good answer from the corporation, so
c) They sue or are urged to sue
d) The case is settled.
That's how most of us think it should go, right? Justice should be served.
But here's the crazy part about consumer class action lawsuits: in order to give them teeth lawyers in the case claim to represent anyone who has used the service that created the lawsuit, thus increasing the size of the claim until the corporation takes notice. That means when the claim is settled, all of us poor saps gots to get paid for the perceived loss in value described in the lawsuit.
So you get a check for twenty bucks, right? No. In a remarkable use of loopholes companies can legally recompensate all claimants through substitution of services that they already provide. Here's the list of all the stuff I got in the last two years:
-- Two free weeks on a dating service website. Of course, by then I was engaged to be married
-- A free month membership from Netflix. Of course, I was already a member
-- A twenty dollar credit towards a cell phone calling plan that I had to commit to a year to use. Nah.
-- A free credit score (that was the one that came today and initiated this rant)
It's the lawsuit rebate scam! This is still okay, and fairly funny. Corporations will change their behavior, some people get some free stuff, fine. But this is the last paragraph of the lawsuit description that I got today from the firm managing the suit:
Counsel for the Settlement Class have pursued the Litigation on a contingent basis and have paid all the costs of the Litigation. These lawyers have not yet been paid or recovered any of their expenses. As part of the Settlement, Class Counsel will seek up to $4.0 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses. The Court will determine a reasonable fee and expense award at the Fairness Hearing based on Class Counsel’s Fee and Expense Application and responses thereto. Defendants will not oppose Class Counsel’s Fee and Expense Application. Class Counsel will also ask the Court to approve a $7,500 Incentive Award to each of the Plaintiffs (Robbie Hillis and Christy Slack).
So here's how this plays out:
1) Equifax pays $4 million in cash to the lawyers
2) People like me get limited vouchers for products and services from a company
3) Robbie Hillis and Christy Slack -- the original plaintiffs -- get $7,500 each. AND THAT'S ALL THEY GET.
The law firm representing the plaintiffs is using all us to drum up a lawsuit so that they can take home half of the projected winnings, leaving the original plaintiffs with table scraps and the rest of the "plaintiffs" -- us -- with a bunch of essentially irredeemable coupons.
You know, I'm really bullish on lawsuits to keep corporations in line. But that sucks SO much.
Mar. 6th, 2007 @ 07:18 am
|
| » Friday Night Lights, Battlestar Galactica |
|---|
Disclaimer: The opinions in this post have nothing to do with either my love of Texas or Football. Or Starbuck.
Or Adama.
Anyway, here's the essence of it: if you like Battlestar Galactica for its amazing character driven drama you should watch Friday Night Lights. In fact you should download this entire season from whatever source you feel morally appropriate and watch them all.
Lemme fill this in a little bit. The characters on the show are focused on what might seem to be the essence of the show, which is football in Dillon, Texas. As it turns out football doesn't happen much on Friday Night Lights; usually an average of about five minutes a show, and always in the context of whatever character-driven issues are going on. Mostly the show is about people in a Texas town dealing with the things people everywhere deal with. The show is shot with such intelligence and compassion that you believe all of it, and understand it. The cast is amazing, consistently made up of excellent actors who do things that real people do (Javi's wonderful post about Colonel Tigh pretty much sums up what I like about FNL, and what I like about BSG).
The last two episodes in particular were just spectactular. The episode aired February 14th involved a story line where an integrationist era coach is misunderstood--or perhaps perfectly understood--when he makes some comparisons of black and white athletes. At the beginning of the episode the black players on the team have basically gone on "strike" four days before the first game of the playoffs.
What happens in the next hour is the most delicate, masterful balancing act I've ever seen on television. I'm not even going to try to describe it. It should just be seen.
In the February 21st episode the coach's daughter decides she wants to have sex with her boyfriend in the fifteen year old "let's get it over with" kind of way. How that is handled and resolved is a work of narrative and acting mastery.
These aren't new ideas, but as they say, it's the singer, not the song. This show is more real in how it describes the way that people react to situations than any other thing on network television that I've watched this year.
Finally, FNL doesn't have the millstone around its neck that Galactica has. Ultimately the narrative arc of BSG comes from the conflict between humans and Cylons. It's the elephant in the room of every episode. FNL has football. And while football is life in Dillon, it's life that happens once a week for about four hours. The repurcussions of that time, and how the characters deal with it, mean that football is just another flavor in their experience of the day to day. This gives FNL a lot of narrative freedom that Galactica doesn't have (i.e., no posts in the blogs wondering when the hell the Cylons are going to come back).
Hey, if you aren't convinced, just think about this: what on the planet earth is closer to a science fiction setting than a small Texas town?
Feb. 25th, 2007 @ 08:39 am
|
| » European Comics |
|---|
Jeepers my life is busy right now. Also something about my setup means that I cannot use apostrophes in this blog entry so it will be short, sweet, and formal.
So, I just got a graphic novel called BlackSad, which was written by a couple of French comic book authors. It's really fantastic (hey look at that! my apostrophes work again! '''''''''''' yay) artistically. The story is pretty straightforward "noir" but with wonderful anthromorphizations. And the colors in this book...wow. It has a deep rich warmth and depth that remind me of pencil or graphite sketches and watercolors. Beautiful stuff.
Led me to ponder other European comic book art. There's a certain tendency, I think, to emphasize the impact and value of Manga here in the states, but I find European comics to be really superior, at least artistically. They have a way of using color and lines that is very resonant for me. I often find Manga confusing and messy. Some favorites that I just loved as a kid were Tintin and the wonderful, wonderful Asterix the Gaul.
I've found myself growing increasingly ambivalent about comics as a serious art form of late. I'm not sure why. I feel as if there's something missing in a lot of current American "serious" efforts. but there's something about the depth and character of these three European comics that suggest where it might be able to go, where it has gone.
Maybe I've just been reading the wrong stuff.
Maybe Americans overall kinda suck at making good comics.
Thoughts? Ohbejuan, you just got forty years of X-Men for your birthday. What do you think?
Feb. 22nd, 2007 @ 03:39 pm
|
| » Walt Whitman (yay!), Robert Frost (boo!) |
|---|
Angie and I went to see a modern dance performance this weekend that had original compositions by Rufus Wainwright set to the lyrics of Walt Whitman.
Yes yes yes that sounds like a pile of pretentious dogshit but it totally rocked and I don't care who knows. ANYWAY, this is about Walt Whitman, and not about all the beautiful gay men in the modern dance troupe.
Oh, wait.
Actually Whitman's homosexuality is the least interesting thing about him. People make the tragic mistake of confusing Whitman's celebration of the sensual and spiritual through the description of forms--male and female--as some narrow view about Whitman's own sexual preferences. Boring. He was far too interested in the universal and the celebration of the connectedness of life in general. Sex barely came into it.
The man never had a formal education, and he wrote a slowly expanding collection of poetry that is so innovative, unusual, and dynamic that it gained worldwide acclaim before the start of the Civil War. Whitman is one of those talents who seems to come to us from somewhere else, fully formed and without precedent. And his poetry...first of all it's inexplicablly modern. In 1855 Whitman took rhyme scheme and traditional meter and reworked it completely, creating a confident, rhythmic poetry that is more reminiscent of the street rhythms and cadence of a modern slam poem. Real, striking, compelling words. There is no denying the structure but it must have been wildly unusual at the time. Consider the poem that got me thinking about this the other night:
O n e 's S e l f I S i n g
One's-self I sing - a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse - I say
the Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful - for freest action form'd, under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
I can still remember when I casually picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass after I had graduated from college and started reading song of myself. It was like my body had been plugged into an electric socket. Every line, every stanza was like a layered glimpse of the universe, shimmering on the page. I could hardly believe that somehow I'd missed this man in college, but maybe it's just as well that I explored him when I had more time to do it right.
Then there's that fucker Robert Frost.
Feb. 20th, 2007 @ 06:58 am
|
| » Drifting on the sea O' Games |
|---|
So I'm going to ask a question for everyone: why do you play computer games?
(spouses: it's not "to annoy our family members")
The reason I ask is because I've realized lately that I may not be doing it for the same reason other people do it. I have been playing this great game called Galcon almost an hour a day. The thing is that I still have the unregistrered version, which means that it's one scenario on max difficulty with the same basic layout (one fun part of the game is that the "board" is randomly reorganized every game, but as I'll point out in a minute that's not really important).
The thing about this game is that I've basically mastered this level. In fact I mastered it over a week ago. But I keep playing it. This is not an unusual thing for me; there was another game with limited parameters that I used to play called Pax Galaxia where I had a similar experience.
This might seem like a weird thing, sitting in front of a machine doing basically the same thing repeatedly. What's interesting is that I'm aware of the fact that I'm putting a big part of my brain on "idle" when I play these games, and I think I do it intentionally. When I get to a point of mastery on a largely spatial game like this, I find that I sort of fall back into myself. Often at these times I start to think about or remember things that rarely come to mind. Last night, for example, I started to remember conversations in grammar school with a girl who I haven't thought about in twenty years. Why or where this came up is a mystery to me, but often when playing games I enter this dream-like state, where my body handles the gaming and my mind drifts away. Often if I play music at this time it seems to add to this feeling.
Two thoughts on this. First, I'm not sure it's really the best way to remember. There was a time in my life when I was gaming and it seemed like the only moments where I allowed myself reflection. I never did anything about it, however. Meditation seems to create a similar kind of openess, but it comes with a different quality that is closer to well-being or actualization.
Second, I noticed the moment it happened this time. Galcon is a ton of fun and for a while there it was totally engaging. The number of tactics and possibilities are very broad and there's a lot to learn. One day, though, I started drifting off while I was playing the game, but I kept winning. I realized that i had made the transition into the drift, where I would use the game more as a raft to explore a different ocean, and less a way to measure my skills or abilities.
Anyone else have this experience?
Feb. 13th, 2007 @ 07:02 am
|
| » Dude, it's your dark SIDE, not your dark, uh, BOTH SIDES |
|---|
So I'm watching season five of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night with Angie and as usual I'm laughing my head off. The finale of the season is Larry dying after reluctantly donating a kidney to his friend Lewis who has been begging him to do so for about two seasons (it took a relative emerging from a coma, Larry's failure to impersonate an Orthodox Jew, and a case of mistaken adoption identity, but what kidney transplant doesn't?). So Larry is dying and as he leaves his body his closest friends and relatives are bickering about $5,000 owed on a used car sale and whether or not it's too soon to see his will.
Larry kinda shrugs at this; he's dying, he has better things to do. But it chilled me to the bone, and I realized that the last time I had felt like this was during the Seinfeld finale. In that finale Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine are sitting in a jail cell somewhere away from their beloved New York, isolated from the rest of humanity in order to protect us from their venality, greed, selfishness, and callous disregard for ANYTHING. They didn't get it, or they didn't care, and man o man were you glad they were all in there and not out here with us.
Feb. 8th, 2007 @ 06:33 am
|
| » Three Kinds of Dreams and Dreaming |
|---|
My limited undestanding of dreams comes from talks with my mother and with my fiance, both of whom remember and even write down their dreams. I almost never remember my dreams. There have been periods in my life, however, either of deep manifested stress or quiet lucidity, where I remembered my dreams almost daily.
I'm not sure how the symbols and interpretation industry gets the stuff it gets; it seems to me that dreaming is a deeply personal event and that the symbology depends almost entirely on whatever the inner mythology and metaphor the individual draws from. For example, I think that most agricultural metaphors in dreams are bunk for the vast majority of Americans; we don't understand how things grow or change on a farm, so how could we know that a certain kind of flower blooms once a month, symbolizing menstruation? Yeah, I really read that in a book.
Symbols aside, the dreams I've had have seem to be of three specific sorts. The first are what I call "spreadsheet dreams", dreams where I mechanically recreate the most left-brain parts of whatever I was doing the previous day. These dreams almost feel like a balloon letting out air and deflating to some proper pressure, or a wind-up toy spinning in a well-established rut. I find them annoying, chaotic, and shallow. I'm sure they have some purpose or meaning to my thought processes but I have never gained any insight from them.
The second kind of dream is what most people seem to think of as a dream -- deeply metaphorical and symbolic narratives that move through places and locations, involve other characters, and seem to be generated from some novel place in my thoughts. I don't have the kind of amazing puns in my dreams that some of my friends have; in fact a lot of these dreams seem to have a distinctive science fiction flavor to them, which should probably come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. Two things are noteworthy about them, though.
First, they almost always bring a state of peace or relaxation to me that I keep with me after I wake up.
Second, the dreams used to be in black and white until I started meditating, at which point they became richly suffused with color. I know that men often describe their dreams as black and white, but I've never heard of anyone CHANGING OVER. That experience blew my mind.
There is a third kind of dream for me, one that is hard to separate from the second one. That dream feels like one of those deep narrative dreams, but It feels like it is coming from outside of me. The most important thing about them is that I feel as if I get some nugget of information, some kind of nugget, which I often don't understand or grasp until much later, sometimes even years later. I'll post a poem later this week that came from one of those dreams.
I'm a pretty spiritual guy in a lot of ways, but I never pretend to have any answers about divine messages or insight. Whether this third kind of dream comes from inside me or beyond me isn't really a relevant question. They are wonderful gifts, and that's good enough for me. Also, of late I've been having a lot of them, which means I have started to enter a new phase in my life, one where I'm open and ready to listen. For a while there I was only having spreadsheet dreams. Gawd they are SO BORING!
Feb. 5th, 2007 @ 07:04 am
|
| » Courage and Kindness |
|---|
Molly Ivins died this week.
Hard to add to that for me; I cannot think of a woman who inspired me more than Ann Richards (another brave, funny, witty Texan who also passed recently), and more importantly I fear that nobody will step up and show the courage, humanity, and compassion that she did in everything she wrote.
Molly's writing clearly exasperated all the right people. The New York Times wrote an oddly toned obituary that spent used a lot of terms like "deride" and "mock". Ironically much of the obituary epitomizes everything that Ivins wrote to confront or name. When the times asserts that "She was rowdy and profane, but she could filet her opponents with droll precision," the Times is basically putting Molly in her place. She remains to them the little gal from Texas who didn't "talk right" but somehow managed to infuriate countless cadres of pompous assholes like the editor who went over the obit before it was printed.
All I can say is that Molly turned down a good paying job and a handsome career at the New York Times and went back to write for peanuts in Texas because the Old Gray Lady didn't have the courage to let her tell the truth.
A better obit is Joe Conason's tribute in Salon, which captures the feeling of the woman and her writing. I think, though, that nobody has quite nailed it, because the only person who could have written an obituary for Molly was Ivins herself. She wrote gracious, funny, wonderful tributes to many Texas politicians and leaders who died -- many of whom she didn't write kindly about when they were alive -- that always seemed to capture the essential humanity and best sense of that person. I don't know anyone else who could have done it (see for example, what she wrote of her long-time friend Ann Richards).
All I have to contribute is my thought on her and how her writing, the essence of her, was overlooked by all the thin-skinned politicos she was calling on the carpet. If only they'd listened...it was not Molly's wit or humor alone that made her special, but her courage, her fundamental kindness and decency, and, most importantly, her belief in people. Those were the qualities that made her a true hero of journalism.
Boy will I miss her. Without her weekly columns to remind me all I can do is try to remember what she always implicitly asked everyone to do: to speak the truth, to laugh, and to try always, always, ALWAYS to create the most honest conversation possible at every moment of the day.
Feb. 2nd, 2007 @ 07:17 am
|
| » Informed Comment O' DA WEEK |
|---|
Hard for me to talk about what's going on in the Middle East right now without frothing at the mouth (in fact Angie and I have agreed that I should keep my discussions about the whole thing down to about twice a decade). Other folks are saying it better anyway. The best commentator on this topic and, indeed, most other major topics on the mideast is Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor in Mideast studies.
Best indication of this guy's effectiveness is that he just drives the wingnutosphere to total distraction. They've been reduced to splitting hairs on translation of thirteenth century Persian commentary of the Koran to catch him on anything.
But his reporting on the recent invasion of Lebanon has just been exemplary. Sometimes it feels like he's the only guy not trying to believe nine impossible things before breakfast. Short version: war crimes are being committed by both sides. But the Israelis have far more weapons on hand, and a ruthless willingness to use them. They're up on the count. His ability to strip away the issues like this is his greatest strength.
Here's the link: http://juancole.com/
Also see his amazing analysis in Salon (I think you need a subscription) suggesting that Israel's current invasion plan could be a precursor to driving the entire Lebanes population out of a ten-mile deep swath in southern Lebanon, creating a Korean-style DMZ. Chilling in its logic.
I'm off to vacation, where I will not think of this. But it breaks my heart. May the Cedars of Lebanon grow again.
UPDATE: Okay, I'm not on vacation yet, so I'll add one more comment. Conservative blogs are bandying about the phrase "human shield" to justify the deaths in Qana. I was genuinely curious about this, so I went to the "authoritative" sources that had "authoritiative" evidence of rocket attacks from buildings in that city before the attack and "authoritative" use of human shields. Okay. That video was...unconvincing.
So I dug deeper. What else did they have? Grainy aerial photography of trucks entering buildings (which the Israelis consequently blew up) and rocket attacks from places where you could also see a building in the picture.
It's amazing to watch the viral nature of ideas propogating through an ideological group. Someone makes the assertion that human shields were used by Hizbollah based on the fact that they hide in, and fire missiles within visual range of, well, buildings, and suddenly everyone who died in Qana was a willing martyr for the Hizbollah cause.
To me making a case for human shields based on this evidence is like watching the Rodney King video and arguing that the cops acted in self-defense. You COULD find a way to believe it, if you squinted reeealy reeealy hard...
Jul. 30th, 2006 @ 09:19 pm
|
| » Ming Killed the Long Tail |
|---|
Why why WHY doesn't netflix have Flash Gordon? I can get digital recordings of Austrian shepherds interpreting heavy metal music but I can't get Flash Gordon?
Brutal. I'm distraught. I'd better go read some Vern...
Jul. 23rd, 2006 @ 08:37 pm
|
| » We Luv U Vern |
|---|
Having kind of a blah day? A blah week? Pondering the dark corners of the universe that seem to be settling into the Beirut Suburbs? Feeling, well, kinda gassy?
You might need some Vern, the man who has made the celebration of Die Hard, Steven Seagal, and action movies in general a respectable and surprisingly philosophical profession. Warning: this is one of those reviews that has lots of four-letter words.
If you liked that, you might like Vern's take on Torque and its place in "The American Furious Movement".
And really it's not a complete trip to Vern's site unless you read a review of a film where nothing blows up. (Okay, okay, I know this starts on "Scarface", but Vern is just kidding. Do a search for "Sideways" on the same page).
Long Days and pleasant nights, folks.
Jul. 23rd, 2006 @ 07:59 pm
|
| » Amazon, you crushed my snobby dreams |
|---|
So, I was about to make a top five list, right? This list was the list of "the best music artists you've never heard of". Knowing that this list, which used to be the badge of honor for music snobs, has become increasingly difficult to compile since da internets made the latest hippitude a word search away, I first used Google and emusic.com to test their visibility.
Barely a blip. Usually only a person's home page came up, if that. EXcellent. I will make all the other music snobs cry, thought I.
After making the list, though, I thought it would be nice if people could actually buy the albums I listed. So on a whim I entered in the first band on the list in Amazon. You know, the one that everybody in Africa -- but nobody outside it --has ever heard of.
Hit. DUDE.
Jul. 14th, 2006 @ 08:23 am
|
| » Far Enough to Fall |
|---|
I've discovered that the people I'm most inclined to spend my time with these days are not the folks who are not just getting older, but the ones who are also growing up. I define "growing up" as at least admitting that while life is a terrifying ride, it's worth enough to take your best shot anyway. Angie and I spent some time on the third of July with some friends who match those criteria. They have three small children; we sat at in the courtyard of a local deli, watched the kids be kids, and watched their parents watch them, and love them. They love them fiercely, so much so that they aren't afraid of being the bad guys, so much so that they are terrified that when they grow up they won't love them back. But they do what they have to anyway. It's a sight.
Jul. 9th, 2006 @ 09:14 pm
|
| » Blogger's block report |
|---|
An implicit "rule" of this blog is that I won't waste your time describing my own navel-gazing. Don't get me wrong; navel-gazing is a fine activity and a critical part of self-discovery. I just don't feel comfortable sharing these things on a public blog. I am going to protect my privacy and my actual identity for as long as possible. It's really important to me, although I couldn't tell you exactly why.
At this moment in my life I am unusually focused on deeply personal things. I don't have much interest in talking about anything else. So there will be a silence here, or at least a lessening. You can just imagine that for a while there will be a sign up that says "Men at work" while these things turn inside me.
This personal stuff is all very exciting, by the way. In fact most of it is just unbelievably wonderful. But it all takes up a lot of mental space. I'm sure things will come around again. When it does I have this little essay about Occam's razor that I've just been itching to write...
Jun. 29th, 2006 @ 07:02 am
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
schlomoseamus's journal