I Won't Be Your Mirror
I have difficulty disliking any woman taller than 5'10. It's a "shared experience" kind of thing. That's my explaination why Supermodels are Lonelier than You Think is in my bookmarks, and Nico holds a special place in my heart. I spent much of the snowstorm listening to Chelsea Girl. The music is catchy, the lyrics are as sad and stange as she was. Her first single "I'm Not Saying" is my favorite. The chorus is, "I'm not saying that I'll love you, but I'll try" and then she goes and lists the ways she'll hurt her admirer's feelings: standing him up, cheating on him, making him cry, and only pretending to care. The Velvet Underground song she sings, "Femme Fatale" has similar sentiments. "These Days," used prominently in the Royal Tenenbaums, is the classic though. "I don't do too much talking these days ..." in that frigid German-accented, off-key voice. From what I've read, Nico never loved anyone. Her isolation is uncomparable to any other public figure. Someone said in a biography without the drugs, she might have never let anyone touch her. And when she was intimate with another, she just laid there disinterested. No wonder Andy Warhol adored her so.
Friday, February 21, 2003 03:21 p.m.
Bad Czechs
Everyone's linking to Wired's story on a Nigerian shot by a 419 scam victim in Prague. If I can offer a little background sketch: for years (even before the fall) there has been a large Nigerian expat population in Easern Europe. They've got their own mafia going, so tension between them and the locals has always been high.
Even more curious are the Vietnamese expats in Eastern European. There are about 10,000 of them in and around Prague. I'm unsure of how exactly they got there -- some deal between the two Communist countries -- but the funny thing is they never assimilated, even after CR became "free." They don't learn Czech besides a few phrases and do not interact with non-Vietnamese. They run little corner-stores that sell imitation Levis, vodka, and cigarettes
Friday, February 21, 2003 02:36 p.m.
Missed Connections The Black Table, sprung from the ashes of Ironminds, tracks Craig's List weekly. They found this gem. It reminds me of The Corrections in a very good way. Best line, "I think you're just blustering."
Friday, February 21, 2003 09:00 a.m.
Der Klone Komisar
Germany voted yesterday to do its best to ban human cloning as it is not compatible with "universal" human dignity. This motion suggests the country should work "within the framework of the United Nations" toward a ban on both reproductive human cloning and therapeutic cloning.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 11:22 p.m. Diligent vs. Dilettante
The other evening, Zoe and I were talking about our vastly different methods of acquiring knowledge. Zoe's streamlined her interests to a niche, starting at first with the umbrella topic "politics" and ending up with an esoteric subset of political theory. The books she reads all pertain in some way to this pursuit
My interests have broadened as I've grown older. It bothers me that there are things I don't know -- like chemistry or anthropology -- or can't explain, like an itch on your back you can't reach to scratch. It is severe curiosity that drives me to do what I do, and read what I read. Almost all travellers have it too. The problem with it is I can never be an "expert." I can relay interesting anecdotes at cocktail parties, but can't really put any of my knowledge to good use.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:50 p.m.
I Stress, Therefore I Am
Everyone knows "reality tv" programming is moronic, but notice that the target audience is the critics. Shows are made purposefully bad to give the viewers cheap intellectual gratification.
Sure there are those -- and god help them -- maybe five percent of the audience that actually take this drivel seriously. The rest are there in "irony." I imagine the average viewer's thought-process is something like this: "Gee, I'm much smarter than that guy and he's on television. If he's on television he must be special. If I'm smarter than he is, I must be extra special!"
People use "stress" to justify their viewing selections. After a busy day you don't want to unwind with "War and Peace." Still, stupid is stupid no matter which way you slice it. Evan Marriott's existance is so pointless that I can't look at a picture of him with out wincing. Does it make me feel special that I'm so much smarter than he is? Well, I'm also cleverer than a stack of bricks, but this comparison is so obvious it need not even be made.
Admittedly, as an unemployed slacker independent scholar, I've got little stress. Just let me count the blank pages in my Filofax for you. But even when I held two jobs and went to school full-time, I enjoyed an evening watching the Real World almost half as much as a gynechological examination.
We take pride in our stress, like we do our emotional turmoil. Maybe I am much less complex and developed an individual because I've never been raped, but I certainly do not wish to undergo such a situation in order to intensate my depth. Similarly, I doubt the stress that would have inevitably come from the 60 hour/week job I turned down last week would have made me a better person. More likely I'd turn into just another Washingtonian asshole that dicks you over in traffic and is huffy with the cashiers at the dry cleaners.
There's no harm in back-patting every once in a while, but I still see reality tv viewing as larval cruelty. We shouldn't ever find joy in the (conscious or unconscious) humiliation of another individual. You know how diet books tell you to imagine your body the shape of a donut or whatever your vice? Why don't you visualize your brain sopping up Marriott's dumb mug, before you reach for the remote
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 12:52 p.m.
Anti-Klaus Havel's replacement may be another brilliant scholar. Jan Sokol is a philosophy professor, mathmatician, and software developer. He was a high profile dissident; one of the first to sign Charter 77
On the 28th he faces former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus in election for the presidency. Klaus, although lauded by Cato scholars, is a hypocrite loathed by most Czechs. He's sullied libertarianism in the country, by citing Mises one moment and legislating rent-controls the next.
Still, the presidential office is mostly ceremonial. Larger duties are assigned to the prime minister. One political analyst interviewed says Sokol is "[wasting] his abilities" if he takes the position.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 12:08 p.m.
Enemy Street
According to an Al Queda expert for IHT, the organization is growing. "For every Al Qaeda and Taliban member captured or killed in Afghanistan, the group has been able to recruit another one or two members." They are still not in cahoots with Iraq
But the U.S. threat to invade Iraq might prompt Saddam to establish ties with any enemy of America. The threat of an invasion is already starting to undermine the global campaign against Al Qaeda and its associate groups.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:43 a.m.
Song of the Day
"My Dream Girl Don't Exist," by Neutral Milk Hotel. I've recommended this one a couple times before, but even after a million listens it's still amazing
One would restrict local governments' acquisitions to properties that are officially in a slum or blighted condition. Current law allows cities and counties to use eminent domain for properties in redevelopment zones. That gives the local economic developers more latitude to come in and take properties as they try to revitalize and redevelop areas.
Farnsworth's other proposal would bar governments from selling eminent domain-acquired properties to private users for 10 years.
Brevity: Soul of Wit and Lingerie
In my Economics classes, assignments often were a maximum of two pages. None of my professors wanted to bother with filler sentences and repetitious conclusions. It isn't the length but the density of a work that determines one's skills. A good writer is a substantial writer, and one who can pack a punch in every sentence.
Of course, those of us who communicate economically have to work much harder for the distinction given to the verbose. Regardless of whether or not someone actually reads their work, we can at first glance identify it as "long" and therefore something laborious. People do not tend to assume a verbose writer is deficient in editing skills, even if a chunk of his work is the written equivelency of "umms" and "uhhhs." If you made it this far, then I guess I'm doing ok.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003 12:07 p.m.
As If The Nobel Peace Prize Weren't Already a Parody of Itself Bono is a nominee.
Among these paragraphs were such indicators of Iraq's cooperation as creating their own inspection commission (led by the former minister of oil) and their passing of new legislation to aid the UN inspectors, and signs of flaws in the intelligence reports given to the United Nations. Also included were reports of interviews conducted in Baghdad, and reports that those who refused would consent if they were given a copy of the interview or were allowed to have an official present.
Eyeless in Exile
National Review persona non grata, John Derbyshire nevertheless has a good piece on my favorite mussed-haired dreamer
Aldous Huxley for The New Criterion. He describes Huxley as possessing a "scientist’s tireless curiosity and passion for classifying." I guess that could be tied into to what I wrote about Pynchon a few posts down.
Sunday, February 16, 2003 07:27 p.m.
Day Late, Dollar Short But no less touching .. aww And here is a great "love conquers all" story
"If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss. As a matter of common sense, if you can't intercept it and you can't move people out of the way in time, there's nothing you can do in terms of reducing the costs of the potential impact," he said.
Yeah, but I doubt they could keep something that big under-wraps. Not that I'll ever find out.
Sunday, February 16, 2003 06:41 p.m.
Misery is a Muse Newtopia citing the Scientific American Book of The Brain notes, "artists experience up to eighteen times the rate of suicide seen in the general population, eight to ten times the rate of depression and ten to twenty times the rate of manic-depression in it's milder form." This correlation comes as little surprise, but I don't agree with the writer's conclusion that it's simply illustrates an average artist's personality type. This finding is an example of cause and effect.
Art is a way to silence the demons, or just put them in the back of your mind. I find my happiness and creativity are inversely related. The other day I revisited some of my old essays and then tried with difficulty to recreate the smoothness of the prose. I couldn't do it. The good news is, that means I'm a lot less under the weather than I was just a year ago. The bad news is, I'm less talented. Someone please break my heart so that I may finally complete my novel.
Sunday, February 16, 2003 05:17 p.m.
My Favorites
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Devotion - Botho Strauss
Man Withut Qualities - Robert Musil (ahhh, once I've wrapped it up)
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
V - Thomas Pynchon
Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Idiot - Dostoevsky
1984 - George Orwell
Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Joke - Milan Kundera
Lolita - Nabokov
The Trail - Franz Kafka
Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
Requiem for Fanny Goldmann - Ingeborg Bachmann
The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
Walk on the Wildside - Nelson Algren
Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust - Nathanial West
Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Omon Ra - Victor Pelevin
Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence
Identity - Milan Kundera
Eyeless in Gaza - Aldous Huxley
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Supper-Cannes - JG Ballard
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger
Pan - Knut Hamsun
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Custom of the County - Edith Wharton
Factotum - Charles Bukowski
The English Patient -Michael Ondaatje
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
Mill on the Floss -George Elliot
Everybody's Autobiography - Gertrude Stein
Look Homeward Angel - Thomas Wolfe
Count Zero - William Gibson
Exiles - Philip Caputo
Moon Palace - Paul Auster
The Comedians - Graham Greene
After about the first ten, the order ceases to matter. It's funny how I hardly remember those classics I crammed down my throat in high school, like Henry James and Thomas Hardy.
Oh well, I'm no English major.
The Secret Integration
I found an example of Thomas Pynchon's work for Aerospace Safety magazine online today. It reminded me of Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, when a character based on Howard Bloom tells his friend why his physicist ex-wife was never worth his time. He explaines that her intellect --while extraodinary in her field-- lacks the charm and wit of someone literary-minded. Math/science-oriented brains sadly often accompany boring personalities. That's why the most original and compelling ideas often come from those who can tap both, like Pynchon can.
Saturday, February 15, 2003 11:22 p.m.
Birds Migrate
I'm rereading Catcher in the Rye for the seventh time since I was twelve. What I can't understand is why-- if so many people adore this book-- there are still plenty of "phonies" neurotic over the quality of their suitcases, and Sir Laurence Olivier is still regarded by plenty of intellegent people as a man that actually did anything important with his life.
Isn't this now required reading for every public school ninth grader? Was it not a self-help book for anyone else as it was for me, teaching me to avoid using personal insecurities as a rationalization for "phony" veneers?
But if there's one book that could kill an intellectual's vice of bad behavior it is Aldous Huxley's unforgetable Point Counter Point. It changed my life; for the better, but also for the lonelier -- if you take it that knowledge is isolating
The fact that dealing marijuana and controlled substances is illegal does not exempt it from taxation. Therefore drug dealers are required by law to purchase drug tax stamps.
The drug tax is due as soon as the dealer takes possession of the marijuana or controlled substance. Payment of the drug tax will purchase the drug tax stamps. Attach the stamp to the marijuana and/or controlled substance immediately after receiving the substance. The stamps are valid for 3 months. Drugs seized without stamps or having expired stamps may result in criminal or civil penalties which may include fines, seizure of property or liens against real estate.
A dealer is not required to give his/her name or address when purchasing stamps and the Department is prohibited from sharing any information relating to the purchase of drug tax stamps with law enforcement or anyone else.
Purchasing drug tax stamps does not make possession of drugs legal.
Feussner, a native of Munich and an expert in search-engine technology, is known for his outgoing personality and waist-length dreadlocks, which he claimed had not been cut since 1987.
