Envy

Jack, as an English major you definitely get an education that provides you with eloquence and cohesion with your words. I will say that I wish I had the creativity and vocabulary to write as you do. Unfortunately, engineering majors don't really provide you with classes such as yours. However, deep into last night I realized that I learn a different type of poetry. Here is a sample of engineering poetry.


#include
#define FOREVER 1

code char *welcome = "Hello Mike and Greg! Today is 10/14/08 and this is Lab 7.\n";
char *pmsg = 0;
char nullTerm = 0;
char upper;

int counter = 0;
int rate = 3;
int reload1 = 0x87;
int reload2 = 0x6F;
sbit portbit = P2^7;
sbit portbit0 = P1^0;
sbit portbit1 = P1^1;


void init(void);


main()
{
init(); /*initialize UART for serial comm mode 1 9600 baud*/
while(FOREVER); /*run forever*/
}

void init(void)
{
EA=0; /*disable interrupts*/
TMOD = 0x21; /*Mode 2 Timer 1, Mode 1 Timer 0*/
TH0 = 0x87;
TL0 = 0x6F;
TR0 = 1;
TH1 = 0xfa; /*9600 baud reload value*/
TL1 = 0xfa;
TR1 = 1; /*turn on timer 1*/
SCON = 0x50; /*mode 1 serial port TI=1*/
portbit0 = 0;
ET1 = 0;
PS = 1;
PT0 = 0;
ES = 1;
EA = 1;
pmsg = welcome;
SBUF = *pmsg;

}

void SPISR(void) interrupt 4
{
if(TI==1)
{
TI=0; /*clear interrupt flag */
if (*pmsg != 0)
{
pmsg++;
SBUF = *pmsg;
}
else if (*pmsg == 0)
ET0 = 1;
}
else
{
RI=0; /*clear receive flag */
ACC=SBUF; /*copy recieve character */

if(ACC >= 0x61 && ACC <= 0x7A)
upper = ACC - 0x20;
else
upper = ACC;

if(upper == 0x53) /* S */
portbit0 = 0; /* Enable */

else if(upper == 0x4C) /* L */
{
portbit0 = 1;
portbit1 = 1; /* Direction - CW */
}
else if(upper == 0x52) /* R */
{
portbit0 = 1;
portbit1 = 0; /* Direction - CCW */
}

if(upper == 0x30)
{
rate = 3;
reload1 = 0x87;
reload2 = 0x6F;
}
else if(upper == 0x31)
{
rate = 30;
reload1 = 0x87;
reload2 = 0x6F;
}
else if(upper == 0x32)
{
rate = 15;
reload1 = 0x87;
reload2 = 0x6F;
}
else if(upper == 0x33)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0x0E;
reload2 = 0xDF;
}
else if(upper == 0x34)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0x4B;
reload2 = 0x27;
}
else if(upper == 0x35)
{
rate = 6;
reload1 = 0x87;
reload2 = 0x6F;
}
else if(upper == 0x36)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0x87;
reload2 = 0x6F;
}
else if(upper == 0x37)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0x98;
reload2 = 0xA8;
}
else if(upper == 0x38)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0xA5;
reload2 = 0x93;
}
else if(upper == 0x39)
{
rate = 5;
reload1 = 0xAF;
reload2 = 0x9F;
}


SBUF = upper; /* echo recieve character */
}
}


void TOISR(void) interrupt 1
{
counter = counter + 1;

if(counter==rate)
{
portbit = !portbit;
counter = 0;
}

TH0 = reload1;
TL0 = reload2;
}

Dear Mr. Poet
by Jack Escobar

I envy the fractal perfection of your well-balanced lines.
You think I don't see the effortlessness of imperfection
in casual
line-breaks,
the rigid introspection demanded by form?
If my lines are leaves
carried by breezes,
I'd see them smashed
beneath your earth-grasping feet,
the powder thus inhaled by your fat nostrils.
Nothing is nothing
next to you,
the way you pull the levers that
shake the world;
the bright gravity of your ebullient star
driving mine out of commission.

How can one man stand upright
in the furious gulf?
How can I fight back
against Bukowski's drunken fists?
"unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
don't do it."
So I made up my mind.
I drowned the baby in the bath.
I knew not the sun:
so I didn't do it.

Dream On
by James Tate

Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

I kissed a man.

I didn't really do that but I thought my first post should have something eye catching.

Anyway, I'm sitting in Aerodynamics I and I just thought I should give Jack the gratification of knowing that his friends kind of somewhat pay attention to this shit. Jack I love you.

Side note: If Jack weren't a man, I'd propose to him ten years ago.

To the main point. While sitting here in my thrice-weekly aero-coma I have been contemplating what makes people happy and how to achieve said happiness. Now, I am not sad or depressed in any fashion and in fact I have quite a wonderful life. But I'm curious as to what people think make people happy. What do you guys think?

According to the late great Mark Twain:

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."

On finding them in bed together.

tired breath
comes crystalline

cymbals rumble
beneath the

closely-worn
fabric of denim shirts

-- there's blood
on the pockets--

"yes I'm lonely
wanna die"

if yr burn-hole
hadn’t made

her apparition
go away,

I could've forgiven
your face

hidden
in her wallet

Summer

My song isn't anything but a nightingale riding out a gust of northerly wind when the twelve dulcet bells toll midnight. That's what I learned from Shelley, perched desperate on her ledge the night before the working-men came and tore her house down. Even Abbey, whose hands built her namesake brick by brick, she was inconsolably deaf-mute when I tried to talk her down from the letters John had cut from her poem. Blue paint? Frank had had that in spades until the hotel lobby, where his cheap guitar had failed to win him applause. Deadly venoms coursed through all of us back then; we were sweating out the vodka of 1994, crusted around our livers from a summer spent in dark alley bars reveling in the inevitability of death. Only Hal and Erin stayed away from sickness--they'd just fallen in love and needed no intoxicants other than each other. Erin in particular could not get enough of William, ever since he sang her to sleep one humid night with the ballad of a woman by him happy, and happy but for him, had not their hap been bad. Yes, no woman is safe from heartache, though her particular illusion was that the strength of her heart was more or less equal to the power of her warrior's arms. Don't get me wrong, I had lifted a car or two in college on a dare, but those were just frat-boy tricks and her taste ran towards something more in line with disaster. Aster? Hal opened up her front door, and cold September wilted away just at once. Good for her--long darkness had never been much her style, though it seemed to suit me just fine. Did I nightwalk? Nothing that base and desperate; my skin too taut and face too pretty to endure common debasement. My illusion was that I held myself to higher standards. Shelley hated bulldozers, and Frank, why did he bring himself down to die in a place so far from home? At once in that moment, I realized that for me, nothing could ever beat counting my lover's eight golden rings at least three times a day.

Jack Escobar's Dream

When I came back from the dead, the

Only thing worth having was

One clean bite, the first real break

I'd ever known from breathless

Want to have furrows run through me

Like cold breath blown through salt.

I dreamed that in front of the angels some-

One had set a microphone;

Though my voice was thin and reedy,

Through me came the sound of ages,

And in Jack Escobar's dream,

Pauline lost herself

Down dark desert highways

And reading dense poets was less of a

Chore and more of a lightness.

Even the devil

in his thick forest of nicotine

Fireflies found the sound

Of forks and glasses in

Jack Escobar's vast hall

Strangely pleasing; and I

In turn recognized that the first choice--

Made before heat congealed into

Disparate matter--

Had been mine alone;

And Jack and I danced in the garden

Where ephemera rose and fell

Between branches of the yew.

Soon Dawn rose up (for Jack had met her with

Morning quickness);

The stars collapsed, and then I slept.

Ten Seconds of Consciousness

Here's the idea. Me and Erik are in the ASU Computer Commons joint-blogging. The game is simple:
1. Jack starts by typing out a short thought
2. Erik has ten seconds to think and type out a different thought
3. Jack has ten seconds, you get the idea
4. This goes on for two minutes.
5. Enjoy our large brains.

or : Gather, think, repeat.

--

1. Technology is eventually going to outpace our ability to control it.

2. I don't think that if we were going to have the type of technology that would be able to take the control from us, that we would not want them to have it. If I was going to have a robot overlord, I should certainly hope that the overlord would know best. That's the saying right, overlord knows best?

3.I can't help how bored I feel inside most modern buildings. I mean, there's something about all the impersonality of the way we've designed the modern world to look that I get very bored very easily. I think that that's the same way we're going to come at creating the things that are going to imprison us in our gilded, robot-run cages. Are we fucked? Probably not. But we are definitely shaping up to be not an evolutionary endpoint alone, but more like the seed of the greater intelligence we will soon create.

4. I wonder how much shapes really do influence us. I once wrote an article that had to do with the angle at which we see things. Not in the high-school sociology "writing slanted articles" bullshit way, but in the direct mathematical angular measurement way. Like, so you could calculate the cosine at which you were viewing any particular object in life. I guess that all came to me one day when I saw an ad on TV that showed a bald eagle's face looking directly into the camera. After living in America for 20+ years that marked the first time that I had ever seen a bald eagle's face straight on. I think it was decidedly more intimidating than looking at the side of the face. Angles might be more important than I previously thought- I gotta figure out which is my good side.

5. Logarithms tend to make things more beautiful, whether it's natural things like flowers, human faces, or the way that chair armrests look. Marcus Aurelius, who is leaving his Roman fingerprints over pretty much everything I write and think these days, would say that the world is ruled by logos, an overriding logic of the universe that basically ensures everything continues the way it has to. Most people get irrationally pissed about that, because we generally like to assume that we have control, or at least input, into the way our lives look. I think that what we're gradually finding out is that we have less control than we imagine, but that in the end that works out for the best.

6. Sometimes I get irrationally pissed off. Usually it is about nothing more than a simple blow to my most prized possession, my ego. You were expecting me to say my penis, weren't you? That's your most prized possession. My point is that I wish that I could understand better why it is that I get angry over things like that and not over things that are important, like the economy, the homeless, or why it is that I think my penis is one of your possessions. And I just realized I am not entirely sure that is how you spell "possession."

7. I lie, not often, but from time to time. Sometimes it's to cover my ass, but lately I find that I'd rather get caught so I can learn something about why I do. I find myself holding myself to high standards these days; when somebody else is a dick, or does something stupid. When I lie or make a mistake, it's me betraying myself. I read a couple seconds ago a one-liner out of an essay I found really boring: "I lie so I do not have to trust you to believe." Maybe next time don't say something that makes me think you're dumb if you don't want to be lied at.

8. I do think of people as dumb sometimes. But, on the flip-side of that I occasionally meet someone that I think is much smarter than I am. And that is an interesting experience. I start to feel like JD (from Scrubs) in that I spend all day reminiscing about the moment that I had their fleeting approval. I suppose that goes for anyone that I view to be better than me in any category. Whether it is the "good question" approval from my neuroscience teacher, the laughs at my embarrassing story from some newly-non-strangers, or the smile from a girl that is far too cute for me. I don't think I crave acceptance like I did when I was 7, but I definitely still appreciate it when I find it.

9. 22 years old and trying to make somebody laugh makes me feel like I'm 90 centuries old, circling some metaphysical drain. That shit makes me tired, so I usually delegate the laugh-duties to Erik when he's hanging out. I'm on top of a mountain most of the time, riding a Han Shan kind of thing; sometimes people make the trek up to bring me cake and cider, but for the most part they mill around at the gift shop level (right above the base) and I'm content to let them do that. If more people made the hike there wouldn't be enough room for the campfire and cell phones would start going off and at that point, why even be on a mountain--I wish I was rich enough so Al Pacino would fly up (helicopters only) and tell me Jessica Alba's new number. I would make her some cake. Pacino would stick to water.

10. Humor is interesting to me. Often times I get into arguments (in the non-abusive way) over what is "funny." I am one of those people that happens to laugh at a lot of things. I don't think Katt Williams is funny, or Louis Black, or Carrot Top. But I do laugh at them, sometimes. I also don't think it is funny to laugh at racist jokes, or other unpalatable things- but I do that too. I will even give someone the obligatory laugh after a joke/story that I know they take a lot of joy in telling. I do this completely and totally for their benefit. (If you know me, that was a joke too.) Of course I laugh, because laughing is fun. It fun to accept that Katt Williams' jokes about living the ( shortest, ugliest, least believable) pimp life are funny. Fine, so it is actually not funny, but laughing is fun. And enjoyment is fun. And scoffing at a joke for the context is not going to hurt the joke- only you. And man, do I wish Jack had told me he knew Pacino. I just sold my helicopter to Drew Carey, and that guy is a total tool.

11. A fat guy with glasses? Once I heard somebody plinked him with a BB gun from their childhood-style treehouse--although the guy was probably in his 30s, people who shoot BB guns at celebrities are like that--and I laughed, but I didn't think it was that funny. Sometimes I find myself not laughing at things I laugh at, I don't know how to describe it. I would describe it as an internal chuckle, or a feeling that the hairs on the back of my head stand up and give the attempted joke a courteous bow. I can respect the humor or enjoy the cleverness, but it's not all the way there. It's Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. What's the point anyway. If you want funny you should watch Jon Stewart. Get out of that treehouse. In the future, less than twelve months from now, someone's going to get mauled in a zoo for trying to put socks on a tiger. I am almost certain that's true.

12. And I laughed, because I mean come on - a tiger with socks?! That's comedy gold.

Thoughts on the financial situation

Brad DeLong just put a post up on his blog suggesting that the proposed $700 billion bailout might function as a large carry trade, in which the US Treasury would sell a number of risk-free(ish) Treasury bonds at relatively low interest rates to finance the purchase of risky assets from failing banks. Press coverage on this idea has mainly focused on the $700 billin number, which I find misleading. Reading only newspaper headlines, a person would likely assume that the situation was that the government is taking $700 billion dollars and giving it to troubled institutions to finance their day to day operations, lest they all go out of business and create a "credit crunch" where no bank will lend money because of the extreme unpredictability of the loan market. That's different from reality.

What's really happening (or is being proposed), is that the government sell off bonds (interest-bearing instruments backed by the equity of the US Government) with yields of 3-4% to invest in "toxic" assets that, due to their volatile nature, will likely yield somewhere in the area of 10% (after the massive discount of worthless securities and loans) . $700 billion is just the total amount of money that Congress is considering making available to the Treasury Secretary to make the initial asset purchase with. In the end, the government will almost certainly recoup some of that money--but there is also the possibility that, in the long run, this may be a net money maker for the government in the absolute rosiest scenarios. What is more likely to happen is a minimization of catastrophe--"losing the minimum" in poker speak--and the long-term gains of a more efficient system*. We're trading safe, low-return securities for high-risk, high-reward assets. Since most people seem to take the $700 billion as a sunk cost, hopefully we will be seeing some very pleasant surprises once all the bloodshed is done.

Or, to blockquote Brad Delong blockquoting Bloomberg:

Do the arithmetic. Suppose the government buys $700 billion worth of assets after a 50 percent haircut, holds them for four years and then sells them for 40 percent of par. That would be a capital loss of $140 billion. Meanwhile, the carry trade has earned perhaps $50 billion a year, or $200 billion over the four years -- an overall profit of $60 billion -- and lower budget deficits. Remember, there are no taxes affecting this deal.... [T]he risk to taxpayers is much less than you might think based on the congressional debate over the plan offered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson...

Like a number of others have noted, what we're facing here is completely unprecedented; before this is all over, you may see the government taking substantial, even controlling, interests in a number of Wall Street banks. I doubt it, though. Despite some in Congress grumbling that the government may not be asking for enough equity in the companies it's bailing out, I don't think Republicans will allow any systemic absorption of Wall Street by Congress. We'll see.

Side note:

In this video, shot about a year ago, Jim Cramer is screaming for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to "open the discount window" to banks--essentially to loan entities like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers liquid capital to refinance their operations. A lot of people have been tempted to proclaim Cramer a prophet--including me and Cramer himself--at this point it's spilt milk. Had we gone through with Cramer's idea of low-interest recapitalization, the "credit crunch" that we're experiencing--if we're even experiencing it; Tyler Cowen has yet to find much evidence for it--would have been staved off temporarily, though the housing bubble would still have burst. He's still a cool guy, but my "oh shit he's brilliant" moment has passed.

*This is my dangerous idea: Though nobody knows at this point how bad the market contraction will be, from the damage we've seen so far this may be a relatively painless(!!) process of correcting some systemic problems in our financial system. This weird socialist-capitalist hybridization of the US has yet to sort itself out, but in the end it may prove more market-efficient than many commentators currently forecast.

Thoughts? I truly don't know my ass from my elbow in economic anything, but this is my first reaction.

Written for a poetry class

Real GDP

Denomination is domination.

Sacajawea in her gilded cage
might be a match for Washington;
but til she’s tied up in a burlap sack
with 99 of her sisters,
she’s nothing next to Franklin’s
wry-lipped rictus.
The whole tribe a spectacle
of smooth golden edges
and heft beyond metaphor,
something real and tangible,
like long-lost artifacts of a time
when debt was a lightness
and even Providence had its burdens.

Your green-tinged want and need
to get your paper stacks in order?
Give me the sun-bright shine
of the Shoshone’s copper body,
her heavy admonition that
wages have a weight
statements cannot say
and pure numbers somehow lack.

Unlike Roman soldiers
and Venetian porters,
we put flax into our wallets,
blissfully unaware.
They knew, as we don’t:
when the arrows come down,
you can’t afford to carry;
when the boat turns over,
good fortune isn’t.

The best poem about a dress I've ever read

From the Best American Poetry Blog:

To Your Pink

Your pink dress pleases me. The way it clings
to your tits, juts your throat, shows off your pits,
and coats you like a swarm of wet bee wings,
bee wings from wet pink bees. It really fits

you well, this satin dress. Where’d you get it?
Did you shed it, like a pink snake, in your sleep,
find it on the floor, decide to slip it
on this evening to make sure I’d want to peel

it off you again tonight? Where’d this pink
come from: flowers, nipples, Venus’s plate?
Or did it arise like a blush in your cheeks,
and then whelm your figure, just to desecrate

the modesty that tinted it? I doubt,
actually, your pink is that devout.

after Theophile Gautier’s "A une robe rose"

– Jason Camlot

A Meditation

"My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application--not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech--and learn them so well that words become works."
- Seneca

Marcus Aurelius was a consummate pro. His writing is always smooth, can be jaw-dropping at key moments, generally burns off the pages when I read The Meditations. I have an already-dogeared copy on my desk I grabbed from Border's last week. I heard somewhere that he is a "standing reproach to our self-indulgence", which is something I've been dealing with a lot recently. Ryan Holiday has endless praise for Greg Hays' translation, so when I decided to get it, I knew which version to pick up. Having never really given a shit about individual translators before, let me just say: jesus. I was blown away. I'd tried to read The Meditations on some shitty website for a long time, but couldn't because it was so fucking boring; but Hays' version? It's written so clearly, lucidly, that it almost feels obscene. Which it is. The Meditations were written by Aurelius for Aurelius alone; they're a notebook where he reminded himself of what's good in life and why. (Reading it is like peeking into the daily struggles of a great mind--the same concept as this blog, except extremely much better.) It's a diary of sorts, meant as a way for Marcus to reinforce his thoughts by arguing them rhetorically. If he were to find out he was listed as one of the great authors of all time, his first reaction would be, "What do you mean? I never wrote a book!"

That feeling doesn't come across in any translation except for Hays'. The others are weighed down with a thick syrup of pretentiousness, where it sounds like a Roman emperor declaiming Real Truth from on high, trumpeting righteousness into the ages. Here, see for yourself. This is the same passage, the first version from the Internet Classics Archive, the second from Hays.

ICA:

Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things which are and the things which are produced. For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still. And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear. How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and makes himself miserable? for they vex him only for a time, and a short time.

Hays:

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone--those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the 'what' is in constant flux, the 'why' has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us--a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.

Oh shit!! Did you feel that? Did you get some of that Aurelius??

I know I am. I'm only a short way into it, and reading it in tandem four or so other books, but there's just something about it--about simple wisdom, beautifully and repeatedly argued--that I can actually feel changing the way I look at the world. It may or may not last (and now, I know, I shouldn't care), but I tossed my smokes in the trash a couple of days ago, passed on hanging out and getting lifted with a friend of mine a few days back. I haven't had a drink in a week, and even things like junk food and Coke are beginning to lose their luster. I'm slowly turning into an ascetic.

A lazy, fuck-you kind of ascetic, but I'm getting wasted a lot less. There is so much world out there to see, so much yet undone, and it is so rewarding to be able to take myself seriously that I can't see the point in fucking around any longer.

The best part, hands down, of Aurelius is his revelation that you don't avoid doing bad shit because you're going to get caught, but because it damages your character. Even if no one sees you do it, you're still the kind of person who would do that thing. And now you have something to hide when you talk to others. You'll find yourself looking over your shoulder. When you open your mouth, you can say the right thing but you'll still be a hypocrite. And the world at large won't really mind it, hell, might even encourage it--so you'll never become greater than they are. If you do what they want, and you lie like they do, you'll very conceivably get away with it. But then shit like this happens, and all your success and money and everything else you used to make up for your stultifying lack of self turns on you, it becomes a liability whose only worth is to make the punchline funnier. It's hilarious when it doesn't happen to you.

GodDAMN

Is anybody else watching the USA vs. Spain men's basketball match?? This shit is BRUTAL. It looks like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the remedial school B team. Or like an AND1 mixtape being broadcast over a live feed. It's...it's beautiful.

Focus

Like a wobbly projector, I slip in and out of it. It's a firework igniting an inch away from my face, a white-hot burst of light blinding and burning, that fades to smoke as quick as it lit. An attention span like I'm a prizefighter who just took the last punch of the night. Missed calls and irate voicemails, bills past due and I don't even know what they are. Focus. I slip in and out of it.

To get to this sentence, you read over roughly a day's work. I started this post about this time yesterday. In between I: took a final exam, gave a presentation in Spanish, did someone else's Spanish homework, played Max Payne 2 a whole shitload, started reading The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, flirted with girls in my class, flirted with girls in my phone, slept, shit, and worked my way through a couple thousand breaths, among other things.

The enemy is within.

I get this ants-in-my-pants feeling whenever I sit down to write a post or do my homework or anything else strictly "productive". It's like trying to stare at the sun, you just have to look away. I can't work on one thing at a time because I have this irresistible, irrepressible urge to do stuff. I can't stop reading, which makes doing work on an internet-connected computer impossible. My weird mind wanders from topic to topic, leaving in its wake a trail of half-eaten apples--napkin sketches, one-page book ideas, to-do lists pockmarked with eleventeen neat (if empty) little checkbox squares. My mind is impossible. If I could invent a Jack jack and plug a set of headphones directly in my brain, it would be like listening to a hyped-up five-year-old switching all the radio stations in the car fast as humanly possible, faster even.

The enemy is in your head.

I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, but I was born in a state of information paralysis and stayed that way. The downsides can be vicious. I'm sorry I forgot to call the company about refunding that thing, but I just realized that Baby Fratelli is in the key of G so I had to sit down and tab it out. I would have remembered to come to your thing, but somebody else asked me if I was free the same night and I said yes because I wasn't thinking. I can be insensitive, I will be forgetful, and I am prone to selfishness when not paying attention. And also when paying attention. So I often end up breaking promises, which leads people to not be able to take me seriously, which is why I'm still in college wrestling with bullshit instead of already being out there, doing.

My enemy is me. Your enemy is you. It's not money, time, or mistakes. It's not your job, your government, or someone else's religion. As Ryan Holiday put it, "Let's not kid ourselves, there is more to good and bad than just perception. It's not honest to pretend like you have total control over your emotions. We scientifically do not. You do, however, have the ability to create perspective. Almost nothing takes away your ability to inject that into the situation. So use it."

"Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone--those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the 'what' is in constant flux, the 'why' has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us--a chasm whose depths we cannot see."
- Marcus Aurelius

Scats and Shirts

Have you ever done something so moronic that it becomes astounding to even yourself that you've survived 21 years of living in Western civilization? Perhaps it was a routine act, like tying your shoes, which this time around took you eighteen tries and half as many minutes to perform (sober). Or otherwise, maybe when talking to a member of the other sex, you tilted your head forward into your dominant hand -- the intellectual's pose to indicate that he is searching for a most elevated item of his vocabulary -- only for the word to never materialize. And when you got home, the word at last presented itself to you: "trough."

Well, I suppose that today I had such a folly. Luckily, it didn't take much time out of my day, nor did it ruin a chance I might have had with a girl. Since no one but I witnessed the act, I suppose I cannot say that it was embarrassing, either. But certainly, it still -- hours after the fact -- haunts me with a feeling that I can only call shame.

The incident was this: I was in a hurry to get to work, and since around the house I generally wear the same holey, stained T-shirt, I had to change into something more presentable. So I grabbed a nicer shirt out of my closet and, running into the bathroom where the laundry hamper is, stripped the old shirt off and confidently tossed it into the toilet. I then spun around, so far unaware of what I'd done, and left off for work as quickly as I could.

During the school year, when I live in a Tempe apartment, such an act would go unnoticed, and I would either return home later in the day to find out about the rather foolish thing I'd done with my pajama shirt, or otherwise assume that my roommate Patrick was trying to tell me something by scatologizing my wardrobe. But during the summer I live with my parents to save money, and so an hour or so after arriving at work I received a text message from my mother: "Shirt in toilet. Give to Goodwill? Y/N." After staring at my phone for a few seconds, I at last realized what the matter was, that I had in fact become confused in my rush to get out the door (Oh God, did I shit in the hamper?, I wondered). I didn't text her back, and when I returned home the shirt was wet but no longer dripping, draped over the shower curtain rod.

Top Notch Accommadations

I'm not a writer. Or, that is to say, I'm not a good writer. And before you sappy hearted lap satchels try to support my sack and remedy my sadness- I mean I am not a technically good writer. My spelling would be unreadable if it weren't for spellcheck, my grammar is acceptable at best, and (very clearly) my punctuation is that of a FOTB 4th grader. Although, to be fair, the schooling in English overseas is really rather rigorous. I have no idea what I am doing when I'm writing, but I figure since I can tickle the enamels rather righteous in real life then at least my writing will have intrinsic value. 

Then this happened.

"I really doubt that you are very intelligent" said the girl to me via instant messenger.

Now if it wasn't for the rock-hard ego I keep on staff with my rock-hard-on then I would have been pretty hurt. I won't say it wasn't a bit of a shock, I was pretty sure this girl thought I was smart. Or at the very least witty, I did recently clobber her in the face with a barrage of witticisms. Ontological proof of the existence of my wit by that very statement, no? 

So, what did I do wrong? Riggity-riggity-rewind.

Everyone should read this blog. And quite a few should write on it, but not as many as should read it. Now, despite my entries being enough- there is other good shit on here. Clever prose and wicked philosophy and even a few videos. And there will be more. So I tell people that.

"Hey, I wanna write on this blog. Any ideas? No talking about my penis or my attractiveness, that's already been done."

Man, not a strong choice with my opening line. Maybe this is where I lost her.

"How about whether you're liberal or conservative?"

I'm liberal for the record. But, here's the thing about politics. It's not funny. People only laugh at politics when it is facetiously presented with cool graphics and a theme song, or frustratedly (?) yelled at them from a stand-up's mic. So, I don't like to write about it. Not to mention, I just think my friends are better at it then me.

They're better for a few reasons. Let's start with how I had to google "facetiously" to make sure it was spelled right, or "ontological" to make sure I knew what it meant. And, on top of that, if you're going to present a truly piercing piece on politics then you should at least not misuse a comma- it's too distracting. 

"Nah. I don't think so. My friends who blog on there with me are much smarter than me so I leave the really serious musings to them."

Come on ladies! I'm humble and I'm witty. 

"I really doubt that you are very intelligent."

-This is bullshit! I am a smart guy. Hell, I went through this whole train of thought in like...15 seconds!

"Ouch."

But it turns out, I misheard her. Or whatever the appropriate e-version of that is.

"I really doubt that, you are very intelligent."

Well, fuck. I totally sucked the shine right off of that compliment. 

Which brings me to my point. I've decided I am going to have to re-learn how to use commas appropriately so that I don't accidentally jump-the-shark/nuke-the-fridge/ruin-everything the next time I am talking to a girl.

I also need to learn how to not look like a jackass when I wear shoes and shorts. That's a whole different community-college class though.

The Grind

Six days before today, I'm lying in bed. Miserable & just barely awake, alarm clock just out of reach, screaming about the time. I take a look as I switch off the noise--8:32 am, a few hours later than when I closed my eyes, but I don't feel any different than when I went to sleep. My skin's still too heavy on my bones, brain still like a sheet of paper had an eraser dragged over it too many times. Well, no. I don't feel the same; worse, if anything. Like a body rotting before it's died. Not insomnia, exactly. Past that.

I keep telling people we're living in the middle of a watershed moment in history, and this is one of the reasons why. Our understanding of how our minds work is exploding, kaleidoscoping, sending out branches into places we never even thought were possible. The guesswork, instinct, and assumption of millenia are being replaced with research and nuance. You already know that stress & sleep & depression all link together somehow, stress bad, sleep good, depression some kind of imbalance between the two. But now we're finding that stress might be part of why you'll get Alzheimer's at 60, sleep (or lack thereof) why you can't taste your lunch today. Depression isn't just one widespread disorder, it's hundreds of separate conditions, it's brain-death in miniature, an inability of neurons to repair themselves efficiently. Your frame of mind and the underlying physiology feed into one another. We just discovered that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder causes physical changes in the brain. And that's something we can see with our relatively crude brain imaging technology. Imagine what we're going to find next.

I was thinking about all this six days ago, as I went through the torture of the morning routine to prepare myself for another shitty day in an educational institution I loathe. I thought about the millions of us choking ourselves into neckties to work jobs we hate. I thought about everybody trying TV and celebrity magazines, philosophy and indie music and collections, all that other bullshit, to anesthetize their lives and get through the grind so they can make rent. And it's supposed to be one of those things you just do, suck it up, that's the way the world works--maybe it is. But it's not how we work. And the more you deny that, the faster you're killing yourself. You weren't meant to have a boss.

I'm quickly realizing I'm either going to be either a millionaire or penniless someday. Maybe both, but probably never something in the middle.

Lost at Sea: Excerpts from the Diary of Lionel Vorb

Compiler's Note:
Three weeks ago, while I was working in the stacks of ASU's Hayden Library, a cart full of WWII-era folios spilled over and injured a pair of small children. Since I was the person who had been pushing the cart when it spilled on top of the youngsters, as well as the one who had lured them down to the basement floor, I figured that I owed it to the lads to shelve the books before reporting them for trespassing. Luckily, whatever it was they were saying to me was in Spanish (what the hell does "hombre misterioso" mean?), so I wasn't distracted as I put the folios on the proper shelves in call number order.

Anyway, aside from the fifty or so large books that spilled off the cart, roughly one hundred sheets of worn, loose-leaf notebook paper were scattered over the floor and children. The pages were not given specific dates, but nevertheless I was able to put them in order because the entries -- written in an astonishingly crude hand -- were marked "Day 1, Day 2, Day 3," etc. On top of that, the author wrote his name at the top of the first page, along with several poor drawings of sea creatures, both real and imaginary (unless you're holding your breath that "Coral Sex Goddess" might some day be discovered in the reefs off of some Caribbean island). Thinking that the diary must have some value, I have extracted excerpts and am reprinting them here. The title, Lost at Sea, is mine, but all the rest is verbatim transcription.

With the assistance of a handful of devoted historians and librarians at ASU, who must remain anonymous because of their involvement with terrorist organizations, I was able to find out the source of the diary. Its author is the late Lionel Vorb, a combination grocer and haberdasher who made a small fortune when he patented a single device which could serve as either a cereal bowl or a yamulke (a Pilsner glass/Catholic mitre model was in the works at the time of his passing, I later found out). With this sum of cash, Mr. Vorb purchased a small yacht, not fit for long-distance travel, and set sail from Galveston, TX for the shores of St. Bartholomew's island in the Caribbean Sea. The diary, along with the ship's deceased Captain Vorb, was found when The Mabel was spotted by tourists on Key West several months later.
--K. R. King, ed.

Lost at Sea: Excerpts from the Diary of Lionel Vorb

Day 3
A mild start to a maiden solo voyage. The sea is the color of blue topaz, and so clear and calm that I feel as if I can see nearly as far down into the ocean as I can when looking up into the cloudless sky. Weather has been beautiful and warm, and a steady, sturdy breeze has kept my sails consistently taut, so that I am moving towards St. Bart's as if being pulled by a long, invisible cord. Setting out three days ago, I'd figured that bringing along a modest surplus of food and drink would be a good idea, but so far -- in spite of the exercise, which includes not only ship work but also several lengthy swims in the ocean per day -- I have consumed no more calories than the average dachshund would have. My sleep, though several hours shorter each night than it would be on land, has nevertheless been rejuvenating, and though for the past two nights I've used the aid of three fingers of brandy to help me fall asleep, I have not woken to the ill effects of consuming alcohol. I expect to land just after dawn tomorrow, and though I'm enjoying maritime life, await a fresh bed and the delights of the indoors on land.

Day 5
Never will I forgive myself for confusing magnetic North with geographical North ever again. Damned compass, and damn me for being such a slave to my instruments! I ought to have learned to use the stars; when I land at St. Bart's (or wherever I land, whenever) I will ask around for some quick pointers in elementary celestial navigation.

Hunger and thirst have still not become problems, and I have plenty of food and drink if they ever do; the sparse eating and drinking of the early voyage has paid off in that respect. I imagine I still have four days of good nutrition left, no doubt long enough to hold me over until I strike land or spot another vessel. Currently, the two demons haunting me are Boredom and Loneliness. I haven't masturbated so much since I first discovered autoeroticism in middle school.

A final note: I must purchase a radio in harbor. I have had no cell phone service since entering international waters. A slave to my instruments!

Day 8
Two days of food and drink remain, and I have decided to save it until I feel as if I am about to keel over with hunger or pass out from thirst. I've also filled two bottles with my own urine, which is the color of peanut butter, though I have no idea yet what to do with it (nor whether I'm brave enough to follow through once I figure it out). Luckily (to speak of luck at times such as these!), on the same day I decided to quit masturbating in order to save energy and body mass, my libido dissolved like an ice cube tossed out into this vast, warm sea. It's hardly worth mentioning that my boredom has gone up intensely as a result.

Perhaps it's best for my mental health to close each entry with a statement of optimism, so here is today's: The more empty waters I sail through, the more likely it becomes that I will strike land soon, so long as I do not backtrack or go in circles. I'm gradually increasing my chances of reaching shore and decreasing the possibility of remaining asea, simply by keeping on as I am. Of course, I've no other choice.

Day 10
I saw my first shark today -- miles out, popping up from time to time like the target in some carnival game. Only, of course, the target is I. How fitting that the day I run out of food should be the one that I become prey! Of course, the predators could have only been an illusion; I feel the beginning effects of dehydration and, perhaps, heat stroke. I don't know which I prefer: being hunted by vicious sea beasts or succumbing to delirium. There are six bottles of urine now, and half a bottle of brandy.

Day 12
The sharks have continued to follow me, but dare I say that with them they've brought a blessing? For just this morning, as I was gazing out and shaking my fist at those terrible creatures, I witnessed a frantic splashing, which grew ever nearer, and soon I was able to make out a human form swimming towards me. As the person neared, I found that it was indeed a beautiful woman! I reached out and helped her aboard, and once on deck, she threw herself upon me and kissed me as I've never been kissed before. Rather than undressing me in the conventional sense, she tore my clothes off with her teeth, and we made love passionately before she (cursed as I am!) flopped back into the sea, never to reemerge. Upon inspecting myself later in the afternoon, and piecing together what I could of my tattered clothing, I found several of her triangular, barbed teeth embedded in my flesh, and my penis looks as if it's gone through a street cleaner. I must be awfully dehydrated, for my body to be so damaged.

Day 16
Ther isn no more BRandy. I'd drank it all.

Incredible keyboard solo + RAD guitar solo = you just came

Billy Preston and Eric Clapton perform at the Concert for George.

The Business End of My Attention

I have a mirror face. It's a face that I make every single time I look in the mirror. One eyebrow slightly raised, eyes a little squinty, lips pursed. Like I am being coy. I am not sure why I developed that face, but I did. Here's the thing though, I didn't know that. I just thought that's what I looked like. How was I supposed to know any differently? It wasn't until my 11th grade production of a sketch comedy show in high school, in the dressing room when Ben Kultgen said "Dude. Seriously. What the fuck are you doing?" that I even realized I was making a face. 

Do you know what it is like to see what you really look like after being mistaken for 17 years? Well, I do. I am balding more than my dad's 58 year old colleagues, and my forehead seems to have taken the manifest destiny approach to aging. My eyebrows have caught on and seem to be taking to the coasts. That, or they've just grown bored of each other's company. 

Strangely, when you break down that one image you have of yourself you see right through the other veneers you had. Speaking of which, my teeth are fake. Insert cut-and-paste from my Myspace blog for a story of my teeth-

------

Some of you may know this, some of you may not. I have fake teeth. The front six are all fake because when I was younger I would grind my teeth so bad I would wake myself up thinking someone was using a rock tumbler in my bed. In general, I like them. I smile in family pictures instead of making a weird pervert-looking closed mouth smile. They're good. Except, I still grind my teeth when I sleep- so I have to wear a night mouth-guard. Which isn't really all that inconvenient except that means I have to carry a fucking football style mouth-guard with me at all times in case I want to pass out. 

I remember a time when I went out drinking and I caught 3$ Long Islands. I was all fucking excited because the bar was close enough to where I could walk back to my buddy's place and crash on the couch. Except that walking was a big fucking problem for me following 21$ worth of Long Islands. (That's 3 Long Islands and a drunk guy tip for the bartender with the nice rack.) I get halfway home, entirely without being mugged or hobo-raped, and I manage to find the only fucking puddle in the city and step in it. So now my socks and shoes are fucking soaked and I take them off. I roll up my pants like Huckleberry Finn because somehow I figured that would make me look like I had planned the puddle situation and nobody would think I was drunk. 

Finally after like 20 minutes walking home trying not to puke in the shoes that I am holding I make it back to my buddy's place. I manage to pull out the extra key he loaned me and get inside. I was fucking pumped so I walk over in front of the couch, drop my shoes on the ground and put the socks in my pant pockets because I didn't want to lose them. That's when I remembered - I grab my clear mouth-guard out of my pocket and put it in my mouth. Then I tried to take off my pants. I say "tried" because I only got them to just below my knees.

Then I puked. 

At this point I am hunched over with my pants pulled down below my knees and rolled up above my ankles in the complete darkness, trying not to wake up my friends who graciously allowed me to puke on their carpet - and I have puked out my mouth-guard. Which means I can't sleep. Unless I want to wake up with a hangover and huckleberry teeth to match my pants. So, making the best of my situation I took off my shirt and tied it around my head, in my mouth, to keep my teeth from grinding together. Ignoring the puke taste, reinforced by the gag which probably caught some of the puke, I tried again to get my pants off. This time I got them almost completely off before I tripped and slammed my gagged face into the couch- at which point I decided that I had made it. Fuck it. My head is on a cushion- I am home free. And I went to sleep.

When I woke up I had my mouth-guard, a trashcan, a blanket, and I was laying on the couch. Which means that one of my friends took pity on the man they found black-out drunk, stinking of puke, pants wet and around his ankles, gagged on his knees with his face buried in the couch. 

None of them ever said a word about it.

------

So, all of a sudden I start to see myself.

And today the abs I had in high school are now covered in what must be the world's least graceful accumulation of black curly hair. And, it's not even the 70's thick manscape that I could tend into some kind of Zangief chest-wolf. It's closer to if Will Ferrell took some of Colin Farrell's hair dye and artificially added a bit more comedy to his man-tle. So, often times I shave my chest and stomach. If I am lucky and I don't develop the ingrown-hair herpes look, I get to rock the adolescent chubby guy style.

I know you're already turned on, but let me toss one more oyster on the proverbial crotch-fire. All of this, all of my chubby, gag-mouthed, naked chested, chrome-doming glory... it has made me more confident. Because every time I look in the mirror and see what I actually look like, I realize that all of you have been seeing that the whole time. And with just a sarcastic, fake-toothed smile or witty. bold-faced statement I managed to get you to ignore all of that. I've gotten many badass friends, and given the business end of my attention to women completely out of my league. 

I guess there's still something left to what I've got underneath all that forehead.

I spent last weekend volunteering at an old folks home and I've finally decided that old people are not disgusting. They are pretty great. 

If you want to seem like a psychic, just ask them questions. In a minute they will forget and you can "guess" anything about their lives. If you want to be an athlete, run 6 or 8 bingo cards at once. They will be endlessly impressed at your boundless agility and quickness. Double points if you can scoot your own chair in, strongman. If you want to funny, smart, courageous, handsome, interesting, or really anything else- just volunteer at an old folks home.

Don't get me wrong. I am not going back there. But, like Bender Bending Rodriguez, I have a little picture of all of them hanging in my center compartment.

Stop the chairs!!!

Lately I have taken to sending pictures of my penis to people on the Internet.

--Backtrack- 

A while ago I was talking to someone that I met randomly on the Internet. One of those people that will undoubtedly end up listed as Jessica Facebook in my phone, receive 3 drunken text messages and be soberly (and shamefully) deleted. 

"So, what are you up to tonight?" - Me

"Oh- just studying. Studying and maybe going to watch some TV."- Her

"Wow. That gives me a gigantic hard-on. I am jealous."

"Well, I am jealous of your hard-on."

"You shouldn't be. It really doesn't take much work."

And, that is the context in which I gracefully eased my hard-on into the conversation. And with incredible finesse I managed to maintain a conversation 100% about my hard-on for a solid fifteen minutes. Note : I did have a hard-on at the start of the conversation, but it was not due to her homework. It was due to the pornography I was watching while mindlessly adding smiley faces to our chat window to prove I was there. Secondary note: To my female friends, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I am also ignoring you and watching pornography while we talk online. Final note: I am doing the same right now.

"You can't be that interested. For all you know, I was kidding. Maybe I do not have a hard-on and I was just saying that to seem cool." -Me (luckily)

"True. Send me a picture of it."

Of COURSE I did it. How could I not. 

--Forwardtrack (?)

Lately I have been sending pictures of my penis to people on the Internet. I am not sure that I can describe the excellence that has resulted from these pictures. Instead I just encourage all of you to send pictures of yourself naked to each other. I promise it is worth it.

"Double the market price?? What a bargain!"

Shrink Talk is great. It's funny, (ridiculously) well-written, down to earth, and updated like a motherfucker. The latest post mentions an article from the New York Times about superwealthy therapy patients and the psychologists who treat them--and how insane the money they make is. Or as he puts it, "What is this shrink saying for 45 minutes that could possibly be worth $600? 'Your mother is the sole cause of your neurosis. You have both my ethical and legal permission to kill her.'"

Since I just finished The Logic of Life, I took a stab at justifying why, if anything, those therapists make too little. I'm not Tyler Cowen, so see if this makes sense to you:

I don't think that saying that rich people are simply "more willing" to pay a lot for therapy really makes sense. The wealthy people mentioned in the article have high-level executive jobs, not trust funds--positions that require intelligence, creativity, business savvy. Based on that, you would think they would be more likely to negotiate a good deal on therapy, not less. Their goal, like anyone's, would be to get the best possible therapy at the lowest possible price. Let's say you want to open a practice aimed at very rich clients, so you call a prospective patient in to discuss terms. You say, naturally, that you would like a million dollars per session; the executive opens up the Yellow Pages to the "Counseling - Cognitive Therapy" section, filled with many, many competing psychologists, and offers five bucks for two hours, plus you wax his car. However, you counter by pointing out all the reasons he's even in your office in the first place--your shiny credentials, the convenient location, the word-of-mouth from the other rich clients you've had. That alone is enough to ensure the basic going rate for your services. But here's your trump card--because the client has such a well-paying job, his/her time is dramatically higher-priced than the average person. You are offering them the opportunity to rid themselves of a psychological condition that is almost certainly making them less productive--in overspending due to depression, lost productive time due to stress, lower quality of life--and thus, your services are worth the value of whatever money-making capacity you restore to them. The only reasons these therapists aren't making far, far more (I was surprised that they were getting as little as $600/session) is because of how hard it is to quantify how much time you gain when you are mentally healthy, much less put a price on a higher quality of life, not to mention that therapy is by no means a sure way to "cure" anything. If anything, it's a testament to the negotiating savvy of those clients.

Do You Sing?

A while ago, in Dan Levitin's great book This Is Your Brain On Music, I came across the story of Jim Ferguson, a professor of Anthropology specializing in African tribes. Jim, like most of us, doesn't sing in public; naturally shy and by no means a professional singer, joining in the chorus "happy birthday" on special occasions is probably the closest he ever comes to staging a public performance. His doctoral fieldwork sent him to the tiny, tiny nation of Lesotho, an African country entirely surrounded by South Africa, where he patiently and painstakingly documented, interacted with, and earned the trust of the locals. So one day one of the Sotho villagers comes up to Professor Jim and invites him to join in one of their songs--not unusual, since the Sotho "consider singing an ordinary, everyday activity performed by everyone"--and gets the reply, "I don't sing." The villagers' response was classic: "What do you mean you don't sing?! You talk!" Jim explained, "It was as odd to them as if I told them that I couldn't walk or dance, even though I have both my legs."

Levitin makes the point that in our country, in Western culture, we make a distinction between expert performers and amateurs. There's John Lennon, and then there's you. There's Jimi Hendrix, and the rest of us. The mere mortals. It's not just music, either--if you can think of it, there's someone who's a pro at it. Professional cooks, even though we all eat daily. We have professional storytellers, comedians and actors, doing shiny, polished versions of the exact same thing we all do whenever we meet up with our friends at the bar. People like Malcolm Gladwell and Stephen Levitt get paid very handsomely for being professional thinkers--their job is to be (incredibly) smart for a living. Not that this is a bad thing; I love to see real pros at work, witness all that creativity and passion and practice come together into a finely-crafted whole.

But there's always that temptation to compare yourself to them, to undersell your own work and effort and say "I don't sing" even if there's nothing wrong with your voice. I'm only 22, but I could have filled a library already with all the lines and phrases I've thrown away because they 'weren't good enough', whatever that means. How much have you lost to the overwhelming urge to self-edit, to clean and scrub and polish your work until all the personality and spontaneity is gone?

Speaking of Malcolm Gladwell, here's him giving a talk at TED 2004 about the pursuit of perfection--and how massive a disservice it is. There is no perfect singer; there's no perfect anything. We live in a world of seven billion humans, each with their own preferences, tastes, ideals. You can't please them all--but it's not really about them, anyways. Don't be "technically excellent". Be you.

The Chuckle of Truth

"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce


I go for comedians over pundits and experts every time.

It Begins

Thanks for coming. I'll be quick, so here's the 60-second pitch: Culture Invisible falls somewhere between being a meeting house and a sketchbook; it's the question "what are you thinking?" as answered by the best and the brightest, the most intelligent, belligerent minds I could find and convince to post here. It's a live documentary of what ideas, big or small, we happen to be grappling with at the moment, what pitstop we're at on the road forward. The only rule is: be interesting. Curiosity goes.

Out there in the real world, I keep meeting the same person, someone creative, driven, young--and increasingly disaffected, increasingly haunted by the idea that they are actively being duped. He, she, is tortured by the vague sense that the package deal of the soulless job and the settled-for relationship and the house filled with useless shit bought for no other reason than that's what you do with money is a scam; maybe, just maybe, it's all a set-up, a high-fructose-corn-syrup con, a slimy-sweet, ready-made substitute for real life. It used to be that all those great minds either took up rock music or suicide as hobbies, that if society wasn't doing it for you, get high or die. Thanks to the internet, we can catch those malcontents as they fall through the cracks and put them to work. Culture Invisible is for them, for us. We want out of the system, and this is the best way we have to find an exit--try something new, tell the smartest people you know about it, and see if it sticks.

That's my take on it. Other contributors are free to say fuck Jack and write their own manifesto.