When I know my friend is lying to me
I just look at them like,
Patience
Writing, like nearly anything, can be an exercise in patience, which is something I’m beginning to think I desperately need. My inability to focus on anything for longer than a few moments at a time is a bit disconcerting to me. It’s scary in the same way that way that environmental change is scary: I can’t really see it, directly tangible consequences are fleeting at best, and it’s normally more or less a theoretical issue that I can’t just deal with and fix at a moment’s notice. I’m beginning a type of personal project in which I will attempt to write everyday for the next month. I’m hoping this project/exercise will help me understand my thoughts while also attempting to understand the world around me that influences me constantly in a very real way.
For a time I thought that a person who is able to work through complicated issues or respond to a comment with the sharpest wit was intellectually superior to whoever was the butt of the joke or anyone who didn’t know as much about a particular issue as this “leading” individual. But- like with everything in life- I’m beginning to see the complications and falsities that I’ve ignored while building up this tidy and douchey framework. Patience is meritorious in its own right as well as not entirely parochialized from a sharpness of wit or quickness of tongue. This is an essential lesson to a person who has been scrambling around trying to learn everything possible, while really only absorbing the most elementary of random facts across the American spectrum of formal and social education; I am truly the intellectual version of the Wilde’s definition of a cynic: “a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
2 days ago on May 31, 2012 at 01:47am
Visualizing a Full Day of Airplane Paths in the U.S.
How many airplanes are above our heads during the height of the day?
Aaron Koblin knows the answer: It can be more than 19,000 in the United States. And thanks to his wizardry with FAA data, we can see how these aircraft drift from city to city in this mesmerizing computer visualization.
I have a problem sometimes with concision, communicating only what needs to be said in a brisk efficient way that doesn’t call attention to itself. It’d be pathetic for me to blame the exterior for my own deficiencies, but it still seems to me that both of these problems are traceable to this schizogenic experience I had growing up, being bookish and reading a lot, on the one hand, watching grotesque amounts of TV, on the other. Because I liked to read, I probably didn’t watch quite as much TV as my friends, but I still got my daily megadose, believe me. And I think it’s impossible to spend that many slack-jawed, spittle-chinned, formative hours in front of commercial art without internalizing the idea that one of the main goals of art is simply to entertain, give people sheer pleasure. Except to what end, this pleasure-giving? Because, of course, TV’s real agenda is to be liked, because if you like what you’re seeing, you’ll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it’s its sole raison. And sometimes when I look at my own stuff I feel like I absorbed too much of this raison. I’ll catch myself thinking up gags or trying formal stunt-pilotry and see that none of this stuff is really in the service of the story itself; it’s serving the rather darker purpose of communicating to the reader “Hey! Look at me! Have a look at what a good writer I am! Like me!”
Now, to an extent there’s no way to escape this altogether, because an author needs to demonstrate some sort of skill or merit so that the reader will trust her. There’s some weird, delicate, I-trust-you-not-to-fuck-upon-me relationship between the reader and writer, and both have to sustain it. But there’s an unignorable line between demonstrating skill and charm to gain trust for the story vs. simple showing off. It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art. I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just that art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art. This seems like a poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with. And one consequence is that if the artist is excessively dependent on simply being liked, so that her true end isn’t in the work but in a certain audience’s good opinion, she is going to develop terrific hostility to that audience, simply because she has given all her power away to them. It’s the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: “I don’t really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it. But since your good opinion is the sole arbiter of my success and worth, you have tremendous power over me, and I fear you and hate you for it.” This dynamic isn’t exclusive to art. But I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.
—David Foster Wallace, from Larry McCaffery’s “An Expanded Interview with David Foster Wallace”
Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I care about America, Americans and most importantly American Craftsmanship. That’s why I’m so excited about David Rees’ new book, How To Sharpen Pencils.
Rees spent nearly a decade in an uninspiring corporate drone job as an independent satirical political cartoonist. In 2009, he quit and dedicated himself to the craft of pencil-sharpening. Today, he’s a master of a dying art, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on bringing the inner beauty of a pencil’s sharpness out using a traditional straight blade.
When Aladeen was just a child, his father Omar died in a tragic hunting accident when he was hit by 97 stray bullets and a stray grenade. Shortly afterwards, Omar’s Chief Advisor suggested that Aladeen should be officially declared the successor. The supremely-humble Aladeen responded by accepting the position. He then shot Chief Advisor for challenging the rule of his father
The biography section of The Dictator movie website
The entire thing is pretty brilliant
(via john)
(via john)
918:
MERCY. Good Friday, 2012
Something to look forward to this week, guys. Good Friday dropping on…Good Friday. April 6th.
In the state where I live, Nebraska, this is apparently a policy position loudly and proudly espoused by a pro-life politician who is supported by a pro-life electorate:
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman says he’s strongly opposed to a bill that would restore prenatal care coverage for illegal immigrants.
The Republican governor said in a statement Tuesday that he objected to the use of taxpayer money for benefits that would go toward illegal immigrants.
Lawmakers are set to begin first-round debate on a measure that would reinstate coverage to the unborn children of mothers who were deemed ineligible for Medicaid. It also would cover women in prison.
With this in mind, I think there must be two problems:
- Our elected officials are morally-bankrupt, opportunistic liars who will say anything in order to capitalize on the stated beliefs of the people;
- Very, very few people are consistently pro-life.
That Governor Heineman wants to take this position in the first place, I think, speaks to #1. This policy saves an absolutely tiny amount of money, especially when we consider how much money the same man is perfectly happy to spend on attempts to execute people. This speaks to #2. There is no chance that Governor Heineman actually believes in the pro-life position he espouses … or else he simply doesn’t understand the meaning of words in the English language.Of course, if Governor Heineman can make statements in opposition to prenatal care without fearing the political consequences in a staunchly pro-life state, this means that people either hate undocumented immigrants more than they care about protecting and nurturing human life, somehow believe that the fetuses are blame-worthy for the crimes committed by their mothers, simply don’t understand what prenatal care means, or just don’t care.
At bottom, this is why people who identify as pro-choice tend to be dismissive of pro-life arguments; they seem only to be trotted out sometimes, not on all issues that are clearly pro-life issues. If pro-life advocates don’t stand for the sanctity of human life when the fetuses are inside undocumented immigrants or once a person has committed a crime, why should we listen seriously to arguments made by these same pro-life advocates when it comes to abortion or contraception?
There weren’t too many people who were very supportive of my being a lesbian. Homosexuality wasn’t something people talked about at my school and wasn’t an OK thing for most people there, so they bullied me for it.
I had over 200 kids in my grade and everyone found out and they all had the same attitude about it. I would overhear things in the hallway and people would say things directly to me—even in the classrooms.
Katy Butler, who’s pushing a petition to have the ‘R’ rating from documentary Bully (trailer) removed, tells us about her own experiences being bullied.
There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of greed self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success….. Perhaps no other animal form is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox.
John Steinbeck
2 months ago on March 26, 2012 at 04:00pm
