I think I am finally over World War II.
The Opium Wars, I’m still working on.
Archive for January, 2011
I post in spurts.
camera gone
I sold my camera the other day. I decided that since I was not traveling anymore, and since I spent most of my free time avoiding happiness (ha ha, that is a lawyer joke) , that there was no point to owning a device hurtling towards obsolescence. So I sold it on Craigslist. I took that camera through India, China, Bali, Argentina, Cambodia, and lugged its 1.15 lb ass all the way through the Swiss Alps, and now it’s gone. Whatever. I am trying to learn to be less sentimental about my material possessions. Saving my emotional energy for that which truly matters, like the warm, asphyxiating embrace of inter-human relationships.
When you do a web search for “python“, you realize, by god, the nerds have won.
blue ocean
Humans terrify me. I try to put on a brave face, but I have distilled a single truth of life, which is that humans are stubborn balls of concrete rolling down a hill. Immutable. Petrified. Inflicting maximum damage in contact. Has anyone actually tried to speak to a human and try to change their mind? It’s like whispering to a locomotive. What’s the point? I miss the ocean. In the ocean, one’s tears are a positive contribution.
upgrade ate my taglines
Apparently upgrading my WordPress installation caused my tagline plug-in to swallow all the taglines I was using. So they are lost to Aether, and I cannot personally remember any of them.
If you have a favorite, post it in the comments, or suggest a new one.
Things I Learned: 2010-12
Sorry for the post-facto posto. I might be losing the heart to keep doing this crap.
- Korean chopsticks were made of silver initially to discourage assassination, as silver may tarnish in contact with poison in food. [wikipedia]
- Adventures in laughably inadequate Wikipedia entries: “Etiquette in Asia”
- skeuomorph – a derivative object which retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. e.g. such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with circular town name and cancellation lines.
- Writer Jonathan Safran Foer was originally studying pre-med at Princeton. On a whim, he took a creative writing workshop. His instructor, Joyce Carol Oates, was so impressed, she wrote a letter to his parents telling them he was literary gifted. [source]
- emetophobia - an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting [wikipedia]
- Former starlet Denise Richards is emetophobic. [source]
- kummerspeck – German phrase for “weight put upon by emotional eating”. Literally translates to: “grief bacon”. [source: Laci]
- Rupert Murdoch has an Asian wife that has a very upwardly mobile history of marrying white men. [says: nymag, vanity fair, and telegraph]