February 26, 2003
lie-buying and lie-selling
Overheard an English teacher at the coffee shop today grading papers. She read off one of those passages that are extracted at gunpoint in English courses, the kind which typically go something like "gee i never thought of the fact that other people have different viewpoints and experiences and that we can learn a lot from them and gosh isn't it great now that i truly appreciate them..."
And she was so happy about this little falsified piece of junk, it was such things that made teaching English worth it for her, so she said. She seemed to be under the impression that this student was being sincere. Then I thought about it, and realized that she didn't think that at all--she was simply happy that she had managed to extract this token appreciation at gunpoint. She knew it for what it was. But of course she couldn't just say that either. So she had to lie about believing the student's lie. Lies on both ends is what this evil little game is all about.
Where are the thinkers, the revolutionaries, the free spirits in English departments these days? Didn't they used to be filled with war protesters and crazies and heads and nutcases? Why is everyone in the lie-buying and lie-selling business? Does anyone have anything new to say, or must we constantly revisit this tired, tired subject of diversity?
Diversity--a carcass left over by the tides that receded, now picked clean. A skeleton bleaching in the sun.
February 24, 2003
a matter of opinion
In Friday's USA Today: a statistics box gives the percentage of "Americans who think President Bush is respected by leaders of other countries."
Thank you USA Today. Now I can change my opinion based on other American's opinion of what international leaders' opinions are of my president.
Or I could just think for myself.
February 19, 2003
a stickup
deep-fat fried jellyfish bones
in no-fly zones
degenerate marks in central parks
that keep you tight
with fear of fright
and no alimoney baloney
just a charm of powerful smarm
drink jesus juice and pray
that it won't be today
or any way
molly may
forget it all
let your engines stall
like divers divin'
or preachers high-fivin'
who get down to the beat
like pieces of meat
like pancake batter
made of anti-matter
or original sin
in the lion's den
under rugs of fire
and chokey spires
hey
stop wailin' and start sailin'
loosen ties with dirty white lies
and sport your shorts
and write short reports
because (hiccup)
this is a stickup.
February 17, 2003
February 13, 2003
correction
Thanks to chunkylover57@aol.com for pointing out that the circuit highly touted in Every Home Should Have One actually contained a backwards multiplexer. The problem has been corrected. In no way should readers allow this unfortunate mistake to undermine the credibility of this web site in their minds; we here at "the world has turned and left me here" make it our sole purpose to deliver content that is factual, unbiased, and correct to the best of our knowledge. The person responsible for the mistake has been sacked, as well as the person responsible for the sacking, so we feel confident in stating that such mistakes will not occur again in the future.
February 12, 2003
indian shaving
Got a weird phone call today from Prashanth. He's like "Hey dude you got about five minutes?" "Yeah," I say. "Uhh I just shaved my head and I can't get the back. Do you think you could come down and help me out?" So I go down there and find my freshly bald Indian friend with shaving cream blobs still all over his head, the aftermath you know, and shave the poor little guy.
February 09, 2003
keep their heads ringin'
Went to Club Energy in downtown Lincoln last night with Autumn. It was a techno thing. Pretty fun, though my head is still ringing a bit this morning because they did their utmost to cause hearing loss. I've decided techno is definitely not worth giving up my sense of hearing for.
February 08, 2003
the buckle
Went to the mall with Drew and Kim. We had probably the most fun anyone has ever had inside The Buckle, with Drew and I at one point sharing the same tiny dressing room and shouting innuendos over the door. Elsewhere...
...Drew finds himself a "surprise."
February 07, 2003
every home should have one
My roomie Mark built this. As you can see, it is simply a circuit which computes 6 * n or 6 + n for any 4 bit input n.
February 06, 2003
egyptian king: party hard
King Amasis of Egypt (570 - 526 B.C.) in answer to criticism that he partied too much: "People with bows string them when they need to use them and unstring them when they've finished with them. If they kept them strung all the time, the bows would break, and then they wouldn't be able to use them when they needed them. It is no different with people's temperaments. Anyone who is serious all the time and never allows himself a fair measure of relaxation will imperceptibly slide into madness or at least have a stroke. I am well aware of this, and that's why I divide my time between the two."
According to Herodotus, that is. Decided on a whim a while back that I would read Herodotus' histories and it has proved to be fascinating, and--at times--titillating. I highly recommend them so far.
February 05, 2003
retribution
Wahooo!
It is 4:30 in the morning and I am still going strong. One of those weird occasions when I just never feel the need to sleep, except that I really should because I have a class at 8:30, and, energetic and wack as I am right now, I fear the retribution of the all-nighter.
February 04, 2003
glowing effigies
Saturday I was running around playing ultimate in 60 degree weather. Today a veritable blizzard set in. Didn't get enough sleep last night, but woke up at the perfect point in my sleep cycle and so had tons of energy, and was my old happy-go-lucky self again.
Had a recurring dream, only the second one I can ever remember having. Political correctness was out of control in my Organizational Behavior class--the one that several semesters back persuaded me to drop my business minor like a bad habit. Well the recurring part was at the end, when a small effigy of a person was placed into a dark container until it began to glow red, and then exploded. There were whoops of glee when this occurred; it was somehow the grand finale of a lot of cackling kill-whitey-ism. Don't know where this stuff was coming from...the actual class was loathesome to me for much different reasons, namely that it was devoid of any content, useful or otherwise. But that's what I dreamt anyway.
The previous night I had a dream I was in an elevator in a tall building, going down. At the back of the elevator was a wooden odometer that gave a readout of the floor, and it had like five digits and was spinning so fast I couldn't read the numbers. This one I can pin down clearly: the elevators in Kauffman are of the hydraulic persuasion, and are so slow you can walk up and down the stairs twice practically before it reaches ground floor, something which I've been annoyed with recently.
February 01, 2003
The Pianist
Just got back from seeing Roman Polanski's "The Pianist." It made me hungry because the guy was starving for like two hours straight. And it made me want to play piano. Aside from that, I couldn't really tell you what the message was. It was a Holocaust thing, based on the autobiography of the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who lost his family and was forced to hide out in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. Maybe it did depict the Holocaust more realistically than any film to date, but the film really had very little to say beyond the facts; it was just Szpilman's character being passively thrown into situation after situation and never driving the action himself. I hope the Anti-Defamation League doesn't hunt me down for saying it, but just because a movie is about the Holocaust doesn't make it a good movie; it's got to say something as well. "The Pianist" didn't. I have a piano bias and that still doesn't make it good.