nothing like a college education

c/o Abby:

XXX at CMU

not everything you learn in college can be found in a book...

kid space

what's the matter with kids today?

"These kids are so extremely stressed from the academic load they're carrying and how cloistered they are and how they have to live under the watchful eye of their parents," Dr. Mogel said. "They have no kid space."

and they laugh at me when I say I don't wanna grow up... even kids don't get to be kids much these days. i say real life can wait. stick an ice cream cone in your back pocket on sunday and just go for it.

news bites

no footing at all in this muck

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.

the birdcage

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a phone-book-thick proposed rule yesterday that would give the federal government new powers to track the comings and goings of individual travelers and expand the circumstances under which passengers exposed to a serious communicable disease could be isolated or quarantined.

angry Deadheads?

To the fans, the move signals a profound philosophical shift for a band that had been famous for encouraging fans to record and trade live-concert tapes. The band even cordoned off a special area at its shows, usually near the sound board, for "tapers" - a practice now followed by many younger jam bands.

someone stole Gregory Peck

Thieves equipped with a concrete saw cut through terrazzo and concrete to hoist out the pink, five-pointed star that frames a movie camera emblem and the late actor's bronzed name, authorities in Hollywood said Tuesday.

Cheney's head is so big, he needs his own air space for it

Cheney's new home is on the Chesapeake Bay in St. Michaels, Md., about 30 miles east of Washington. The restricted airspace has a radius of one nautical mile and was established Nov. 22.

when you see the elephants, go straight

Recent input has confirmed that this is a mostly angry blog. booooo. So here's a little goddamn cheer.

I went to the new Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History this weekend (and highly recommend it). Apparently Darwin was studying to be a clergymen as per his father's wishes before embarking on the round-the-world boat trip that changed his life and sparked his ideas about evolution. Oh, irony.

Despite skepticism among my boyfriend and other crazies, evolution is, in fact, a fact; evolution by the process of Natural Selection remains a theory.

Darwin himself was a fascinasting character whose rigor puts my laziness to shame. I could do without the beetle collection, though. He also took pleasure in eating just about every species of animal he came across, including an armadillo.

And the crisis of a Christian scientist investigating the origin of species is one that seems not to have been resolved in any clear way. Maybe there's little hope for our current clash of ideologies...

Anyway, ideological crises aside, a live iguana and some cute little frogs make the trip to the museum worthwhile.

maybe the E.T.'s will eat the neo-cons

ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

READ

by Jules Feiffer

The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of the Year

the story of my life

Central Park. August, 2005.

(photo by: Me.)

i never make people read my poetry

There are many moments in a day where I look at the ground and say
I should be writing.

Confusion is a state of mind and my mind has
many states, un-pioneered because
Confusion is a bitch.

Let’s take a step back. It feels like
I am on the wrong side of a window.

i don't wanna grow up

oh, neglected blog... i'm sorry...

So, I have nothing worldly to say today. Only a little whining disguised as pensive philosophizing (yes, i made it a verb) about this awful thing we call growing up. it seems there's this moment in your life when you're supposed to give up ignorance and bliss and 'join the real world.' heh. from the looks of it (as is sometimes documented in this very blog), the real world a-sucks.

no i do not want to trade in my ripped jeans for a business suit, thank you.
no i do not want to wake up before noon.
no i do not want to grin and bear it.

hedonism? yes.
change the world? oh, certainly.
truth, beauty, love? you got it.


how is an idealist supposed to get any work done with all of these realities in the way? a little peace and quiet on this cloud, please? sheesh.

'most of us get old without growing up'

twenty years ago today

oh my friend

how did you come
to trade the fiddle for the drum

Men of power and "regular people" must be of a different breed. How breathing human beings could look at a massacre as simply bad for their image, and not bad for humanity, is beyond my faculties of reason.

You want to help your image? Stop killing people. Stop lying. Stop stealing. Just stop.

everybody look what's going down

'a huge step back for civil liberties'

"The agreement ensures the extension of all 16 provisions of the law that were set to expire in six weeks. Fourteen will be extended permanently, and the remaining two - dealing with the government's demands for business and library records and its use of roving wiretaps - will be extended for seven years."

walking backwards, facing the future.

war pigs

observing the hypocrites

"Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful... These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears... it could burn right down to the bone."


We went there to find chemical weapons? or to use them?

The Pentagon's nomenclature is irrelevant. It is a chemical; it was used a weapon. What do you think "incendiary" means? burn, baby. burn.

"'It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants,' spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said."

Right. And what about the Fallujah doctor, who says he "treated people who had their skin melted."


"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." -Aldous Huxley

rock

What do you do at work when you've just been employed by another company, your first dream job position? As little as possible...

goodbye grey office.
hello rock n' roll.

ok, ok. I am trying not to jump the gun. I still have to not screw up at today's sound check. but today I will say this: life is sweet.

woman

hear her roar

"The women in Liberia, by and large, ignored those boys and made Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a 67-year-old grandmother, the first woman elected to lead an African country. I wasn't surprised that Mr. Weah immediately said the vote had been rigged, although international observers said it had not been. In the half-century since the Europeans left Africa, its men have proved remarkably adept at self-delusion."
- Helene Cooper, The New York Times

awoken

oh, right. this blog is supposed to be about creation, not destruction. enough about the men of war. in the great words of Shanty Mishaan, "It's all a bunch of bullshit."

Here's to a little positive newscombing.

Cool shit of the day:



Performance artist Nambla walks around with a crown of burning candles. Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada. (1998) Photo by Peter Menzel.

Talk about prometheus burning. Menzel's images of fire are luminous, to say the least.


And, a book about what the world eats.

Also, meet the guy who has the right idea.

chin up

News that doesn't make me want to cry:

Discovery of an ancient alphabet.

The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.

Fly on, my sweet angel.

And a little Humor:

Sage, Ink- by Sage Stossel














And this, c/o winking in the sincere light
is all the politics I can stomach today:

The White House's Political Enemies

you don't get paid to watch the clock

A new discovery:
Harvey Lloyd


A man of energy and color.

***

Today's other sensual delights include The Mars Volta, half a twix bar, and the Gripmaster.


my office has no windows.

good morning, hangover.

Ugh misery morning. I am contemplating crawling under my desk and taking a nap, Costanza-style. Go Steelers for whooping the Packers. Go me for drinking a third of a case of beer followed by a hearty game of Spinning (which I lost) with sugary jug-wine. Why, oh Why. Breakfast was dead serious today- egg in a window, strawberry-mango smoothie and three glasses of water. 3 more hours until I get to crawl back into bed.

time go f a s t e r

cogito

I feel the need to say this: ranting is not my style. I am, one, an optimist and two, a peacemaker and skepticism has only entered into my mental vocabulary in the past four months after a series of successive disillusions.

There are things I read that concern me, notably the news. The headlines. The public debate that sees nothing of ideas, nothing of hope, but plenty a daily dose of anger, accusations and a running death toll. I don't mean that such good things are nowhere to be found, only that they've become secondary to the perpetual rant that calls itself "news," when there is nothing new about it.

So I hire out a small slab of digital space and rant myself at what I cannot get a handle on. There seems a necessary sorting out- a separating of the frustration from the hope- the ideal that does not manifest itself in the real world but only in the theoretically possible. But it is not where I want to be.