Category: Words

YOu all need to go read Junot Diaz’ book “Drown” … short stories of mostly poor dominican folks doing things that don’t quite work out right. People failing to live up to their ideals. Doing stupid things for love or lust or desire to be properly manly.

Department of light verse: If Paris Hilton Wrote Poetry.

In other news, Vomitola is now the number one search result for the phrase Lindsay Lohan’s Underpants. I don’t know why that’s funny, exactly, but it is.

Vicious, clever, and accurate characterizations of critics and writers… although I really did like “My Life in Heavy Metal.” I thought it was well-written and well-characterized, even if it was self-indulgent. Maybe it’s because, (here comes the annoying syntax of the liberal-arts student), as a self-involved twenty-something, his work speaks to me in a particular way.

Ugh, excuse me while I go wash my hands. I feel disgusting for saying that. I liked the book because it was about the confused search for happiness and the miserable results of desire. Probably The Torturer’s Apprentice and Drown treat those themes a lot better, but I liked Steve Almond too.

Self-involved, yeah, sure. They’re young writers. They’re people. We’re all self-involved. I mean, I hate David Foster Wallace as much as … well, not as much as I dislike Ben Stiller.

But the thing is: when I see these narrators coming to grief because they’re unable to empathize and unable to understand the perspective of others, I understand their perspective and I understand that mine is fundamentally skewed. Maybe just a little, but a little is enough.

In a fit of brilliance, Slate Magazine has chosen Henry Blodget to write a column about how to be a savvy financial services consumer.

Also, Ad Report Card has a good note on the Dodge Hemi campaign with good links to information about what a Hemi is (big engine with hemispherical combustion chambers) and why hemispherical combustion chambers are good, but not as good as other types of combustion chambers.

I myself am drowning in email.

I come back again and again to Romance Sonambulo. It’s melodramatic, which I normally hate, but that’s part of the appeal for most of Lorca’s work. He was an incredibly melodramatic person, but the world really was out to get him, and sooner rather than later it did. Here’s the part where the bleeding highwayman comes to the house of his beloved seeking refuge and is turned away:

Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando
desde los puertos de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿ No veis la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo.
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

The other day I was talking to bookdwarf about how I should do more structured activities– take a class, maybe join a book club or something. She thought maybe we could start one together, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic– I’d feel too competitive and intimidated, and I’d want to be the one with the most insightful comments or whatever. So she said, fine, we can each start our own book clubs, and we’ll see whose is better.

Hers, obviously.

At that point, I thought, damn, I should put this conversation on my blog. And I looked at her, and she was thinking the same thing. And we realized we’re a couple of great big nerds.

SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server is often abbreviated “SLES.” This should be pronounced “Sless,” as in “SLES is More.” Do not pronounce it “Slez” as though it were a short form of Slesbian, presumably meaning a SLES system administrator. First, it sounds like an insensitive schoolyard taunt. Second, it distracts me from whatever you’re talking about and makes me wonder about how one ought to pronounce abbreviations. Then I wonder what kind of reject marketing campaigns you could come up with based on those pronounciations. For example, “SLES is more,” or “Get more with SLES” or “I’m a SLESbian and I’m proud.” No, I don’t think any of them would work. The first two are lame, and the third is so tasteless and insensitive it would offend anyone within a hundred yards of it. Then I wonder about the implications of making a joke about how it’s pronounced, and if that’s a violation of various rules of conduct in the office. Then I wonder what you were saying because it’s several minutes later. So, say “sless” or “enterprise server nine” and let’s get on with the rest of the meeting. What was that again? I couldn’t hear you through the static on the phone.

Item one, useful: OpenOffice.Org has its own diff tool. Select Edit -> Compare Document.

Item two, useless: Of all the f-word-related headlines today, the best so far is “Cheney Drops F-Bomb.”

An entrepreneur says “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” A bureaucrat says “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”

Which are you? What risks are you willing to take, and what risks are you not willing to take?

It is said that happy children, beause they are optimistic about their abilities and the risks that they take, climb too high in trees, swim out too far, run too soon into streets, and therefore die more often than the scared and unhappy little ones, who tend to stay at home hiding under the blankets crying.

Which child were you, and which child would you like to have been? As an adult, do you overestimate your capabilities, and does that get you into similar, if not as life-threatening, trouble?

Snivelling waste of space, so self-conscious you can’t stand still and be inconspicuous, wishing you could, wishing you could be the center of attention like your rivals, wishing you could be vivacious and bubbly and silly and fun like the rest of them, you stupid shit, why do you care, it’s not like it matters, except to you, painfully, in the pit of your stomach, you feel sick all the time, why do you take it so seriously, have you ever laughed in your entire life?