Andy's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 121-140 of 280).

I think my plan (hastily devised in the library stacks) was to read some earlier stuff then read something from the late eighties or early nineties...

So the newer ones are more open ended and experimental?

When was Free Radicals written?

I wonder what the PSY OPS conspiracy theorists have to say about 24?

Yikes, I just took out her Dance of the Happy Shades on Tuesday.

I liked the story "Thanks for the Ride."

Ooh, ooh, how was Marilynn Robinson? I'm reading her essays (Death of Adam) and I'm surprised learn that she sounds like old Ames. Lots of "That's an astonishing fact to consider." Etc. Does she say things like that in person? I bet she does... Did you take notes or did you just soak it all in? Did they all talk or just read?

Wow. Looks like an amazing trip. The hotels look amazing. I also like the choir uniforms. Cienfuegos is a beautiful name. Is it 100 fires? I wonder how it got its name?

I know the whole trade embargo prevents Cuba from updating its fleet of American cars, but why not import cars from Asia or Europe? I've never understood that...

Ha ha ha. I thought the meaning of life was written on the head of a pin somewhere...

One more off the topic.

Chris Berman meltdown (contains many curse words, not safe for work).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TLG_LtWh...

I could watch meltdowns on youtube for hours.
There's a good one of O'Reilly, too.

There was a used bookstore near me that had this great display of self-help books. My favorite title: What's Wrong With You

Actually, I kind of want to get this one so I can read the case studies. I like to read case studies.

My roommate is studying to be a psychologist. (Ugh. The last person I'd ever tell my problems to, BTW.) I've been devouring his group therapy textbook. The case studies are brilliant, they remind me of the basic structure of short stories: Person has a problem. Person interacts with other people, different energies exposed to each other, their problem presents itself in an unexpected manner. More interaction. Person either sees his problem in a new light or doesn't. Person changes for the better or person changes for the worse. I hope he gets some more case studies books soon, they are a lot of fun. I'm hoping specifically for some examples of borderline personality disorder, that's a fun one...

Oh dang, it sounds like you had a great time. I should have come along...

Greener pastures.... Good one, Ruth.

No self-help books?

I was recommended Feeling Good about eight years ago. Manic Andy enters stage left.

I was also into the whole Tom Robbins American Mysticism thing when I first started college.

One of Vonnegut's characters makes a bid for Brothers Karamozov in the Slaughter-House Five:
"Everything there is to know about life is in 'The Brothers Karamazov'... "

And my favorite quote from Octavio Paz:
"Poetry is the secret religion of the modern age."

That is a nice point, Philip.

Joy, I had to look up inchoate, but I agree that fiction is the place for inchoate thoughts. Otherwise, the author could have just written an essay.

He and Costas would zing each other every once in a while, we always appreciated that...

I suppose Dickens used the rhetorical device called antithesis. I think in Dickens times, rhetorical flourishes were an important part of the upper class education. Rhetoric passsed out of favor in American education with the advent of the industrial revolution; arguably because education became available to a previously non-existent class of middle managers. (Prior to the industrial revolution, rhetoric was important because those being educated: lawyers, politicians, doctors, ministers, business leaders, and teachers, had to be able to defend the status quo).

It's interesting that this Dickens antithesis foreshadows some fun philisophical thinking that is current today:

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." -Neils Bohr

According to post-structuralists "meaning is never found in the presence of a single term but in its relation to a term not present, an absent term. At the most obvious level, when we use a term, we do not indicate its binary opposite, although this term too is at play in establishing meaning." -James Berlin _Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures_

Count me in as one of the non-tv people. I think i'm going to time my internet usage, though, during the week in question, just to see if I can make some improvements on that front.

I'm fairly strict with my time, but Internet is something that can just run wild, like television.

Ugh. Somebody recently pointed out to me that I gave five stars to The Da Vinci Code. I think I had my reasons at the time...

I have since stopped rating books on the star system altogether. Rating books with stars is like judging your friends on a scale of one to ten in an olympiad of niceness, humor, and supportiveness; that's a series of games I don't want Chris Collinsworth commentating upon.

I gathered that you had been involved with this program before you moved, that's terrific. I looked at your blogs and it does look like a great group to be involved with. I'm really impressed with the international program--things like this are one of my favorite things about the city, there's a lot of big ideas that seem like they'd have a lot of obstacles, but people aren't afraid of following through and making things happen...

I'll be around, see you later..

I'm from Wisconsin. It is a land of big freezers.

People will buy whole cows (they usually have them butchered, so the cow arrives in neatly wrapped and labeled packages, which saves you a little space, you're not having to store the unedible parts, that's all sold for gelatin and live-stock feed, presumably.) People might also split a cow between family and friends, kind of like a food co-op. I have never purchased cow this way, but I've eaten cow that has been procured this way. My brother's father-in-law has a hobby farm with a few shaggy cows, they'll send one to the butcher shop every once in a while and then split the meat up. They all have families and large freezers, so it makes sense (if you're a meat eater, which they all are.)

From Annie Proulx, In the Pit:

"She looked at him as if he were a fortune-teller who had already pocketed the fee."

Huh?

From Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers:

"I felt like some Maidenform dream in an airport for Kamikaze pilots saying farewell."

Not really surprising that LC would come up with a few bizarre similes, I'm trying to decide if this one makes more sense based on the fact that Kamikaze comes up a few pages later:

"I hoard you like the stuff of my chronic disease, I sentence you to National Anthem hard labor, I deny you martydom in tomorrow's Hit Parade, I turn you into boomerangs, my little Kamikazes, you long to be the Lost Tribes but I burn arm numbers, I pour miracle drugs in the Death House, from bridges I hang suicide nets."

I've been skipping around this "novel", but I think even with more context, many of these passages barely cling to the slippery edges of sense--Cohen treats the story like a rock climber falling from his tenuous hand holds, only to be caught by his ropes, unharmed; he saves the story just before it shatters to the earth, only to begin climbing again.

ha ha

Hey Candy,
This all sounds very exciting. Let me know if you do need a hand with anything, I have some free time during the weekdays. I like to volunteer, too. It sounds like a really neat program. How did you find out about it?