Mar 2011
- Mar 4
- how do you know we're not in a simulation?
I just came back from watching "The Adjustment Bureau" and was sufficiently entertained. It did have its slow parts, and the trailers did set me up to expect something subtly different, but I still liked it.
· Read more… - Mar 5
- why did don quixote cross the road?
The Western genre as treated by Hollywood is itself like a cultural palimpsest. Long before Hollywood was even a metonymic signifier for the entertainment industry, the westward expansion and the genocidal Indian Wars driven by Manifest Destiny were already the equivalent of America's Dark Ages, at the very least in the sense that mythology and legend could be easily inserted into that period without running too much afoul of history. (Like how Europe's Dark Ages are ornamented by King Arthur, and Roland and the paladins of Charlemagne, and the lost Ninth Roman Legion beyond Hadrian's Wall, to name a few that come easily to mind.)
· Read more… - Mar 5
- things i am not a fan of
being told that something that I know is good for me (or which I believe is good for people I care about) is actually evil and needs to be destroyed, especially when such a denunciation is devoid of any solid evidence, and most especially when I have spent a good amount of time pointing out counter-evidence, and that counter-evidence is completely ignored.
· Read more… - Mar 6
- if you don't have much soul left and you know it, you still got soul
A few weeks of headaches and listlessness, of palpitations and sleeplessness, of such unshakeable weariness
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the painkillers and the antibiotics, the receptor blockers and the immune modulators
make you a little less achy, and little less sore, and the nights aren't as fraught
with tossing and turning, and the fluttery, nervous twirling in the pit of your gut
and that basic fear of worrying whether you even know what you're doing anymore
if the next morning will bring some horrific disaster that everyone is counting on you to fix
and you'll just end up standing there uselessly, hands trembling and nerveless
and the roar of triumphant chaos finally sweeps you away from the sandy shores
drowning you in the dark depths of that trackless sea of despair - Mar 8
- do as i say, not as i do
I procrastinated on working on my absentee ballot, and ended up forgetting to do it before the mail-in deadline, so I ended up working on it tonight, and just dropping it off at the polling place. It was a short two block walk, but I am monstrously out of shape, and my allergies are terrible right now. The walk back involves climbing a hill, and by the time I reached the top of it, I was gasping and wheezing, in the throes of an asthma attack.
· Read more… - Mar 9
- scattered thoughts about corporal punishment
What being hit by the belt or smacked in the ass for misbehaving taught me was that the best way to deal with frustration is with violence. This lesson is now something I constantly struggle with to suppress.
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