Twas the night before Christmas...

And I dont give enough of a shit to come up with a rhyme about how i am getting drunk at the moment. Well here we are at the eve of Christmas and the dawning of a New Year. Well "Fuck all" says I. 2009 blew goats for the most part and I am glad to be done with it. So here, enjoy this...

or this...

Other than that at the moment i have little to say. Look forward to more and my Top Ten list before the new year....

Well, I needed another break to electronically vomit...

So where was I? Oh yes! I have been up for almost 40 hours now and for some reason feel no need to sleep. Maybe I am finally evolving beyond such silliness? I doubt it...
I have finished a paper today on the legacy of philosophical skepticism. I believe that for the most part it was satisfactory rubbish except the section on Wittgenstein's On Certainty and the section on my general response to the problem where I used some good old fashioned Pierce. Basically I find the whole mess incoherent and untenable. If someone wishes to run the most failed thought experiment of all time to question one of the silliest perennial nuisances of philosophy they can be my guest. For my part I am quite content in going on like a dumb ass acting as if "This is a hand and this is hand." Sleep probably would not be a terrible idea at this juncture though... So now I am up to my ears in Foucault... again... I was originally excited about the idea but unfortunately I am not now except the parts where I do some serious Kant quoting which sounds ridiculous except that it isn't.
Back to work. Enjoy some cheese with this whine.

Christmas Reading List...

I have been thinking about what to read over the Christmas break and have come up with a few ideas:
-The Cockroaches of Stay More-Donald Harrington
-Norwood-Charles Portis
-Fight Club- Chuck Palahniuk (I know, shut up)
-After Virtue-Alasdair MacIntyre
-What Computers Still Can't Do-Hubert Dreyfus

While I doubt anyone reads this blog anymore, if you do please give me some suggestions.

The things that keep me going...

I have already noted my misguided love for LoL cats but in this time of great stress I need everything I can to get me through writing my papers. I share with you two things have given me a reason to keep going...

see more Epic Fails

And even better...

Finals and what not...

So I have been attempting to be productive during this holiday/finals season. Mostly this means fretting about my papers without actually getting much done and looking at all of my favorite picture blogs. For some reason cats doing funny things with funny captions makes me weak in the knees with laughter. I cannot explain it. But I do know that I love it. Why is this funny I ask you? I don't know!!! I have also become a fan of Fuck yeah sharks.

Falling down on the job... again...

Well, I really (as I always say after a long hiatus from posting) really need to stay on the ball with this blogging business. It is therapeutic for me in a way and as such I need as much of that as I can get. So where to begin on catching up on what is constituting my life of late. I suppose first thing I need to say is the ever increasing (and always everpresent) angst over what I am going to be when I grow up. I have come back around to philosophy in a pathological way and I am not sure I can shake that off. It is so deep in my veins that I am even considering a return to New York to continue my studies (I am even tempted to try my hand at the NSSR again). It seems that older does mean wiser, or at least more focused and if I am ever going to make money (ie repay loans) with this gig I am going to have to try and go first tier and make my name, whatever the hell that means. I am also considering Vanderbilt and Texas A&M. But we will see whether or not Sophia can be tamed.
So I believe that I now own a cat. Or at least he owns me. This is a step up from our original relationship where by he merely came by once a day to holler until I fed him. He now seems to want in the house. I admit I was much pleased to be having such a casual relationship with him. I imagined that when he was down watching me read he would go back to wherever he sleeps, poor himself a big brandy, put on a fez and smoking jacket and settle down to chuckle while reading Swann's Way. Here is a picture of the magnificent beast (Bear is his name):














Well more to follow. Promise.

Thought:

I sometimes believe that everything I write here is crap.

A brief auto-biographical note concerning something that ruined me.

Sartre once claimed that marxism would constitute the insurmountable horizon of 20th Century thought. Having not been terribly "philosophically" aware up until the beginning of my own century I was not forced to have to deal with any of that. Instead I got something much worse: Heidegger.

I stumbled upon Heidegger as a high school student and even though I would not come to understand it until college (under the tutelage of a Gadamer scholar) I seized upon it and (as he is dead) Heidegger became my great unmoved mover, setting my intellectual career in motion. I studied him and read others against him (esp Derrida and Foucault, with varying degrees of success). My senior yearbook quote was "Questioning builds a way" from "The Question Concerning Technology." My interest in Heidegger subsequently led me to The City to study with those who understood him in even newer and more radical ways than had my previous teachers. It is here that things break down (in a way). My introduction to John Dewey radicalized my conception of not just what a philosophical problem is but what philosophy itself as an enterprise is. The Being of this being that is philosophy came into question if one wanted to guffaw at it. I remember standing drunk on a street corner in the Village trying to explain to a PhD candidate (a much smarter fellow than myself I must admit and the kind of person that only whiskey induced brassiness allows you to talk to) that not only had John Dewey pre-empted Heidegger's thoughts in Sein und Zeit by a decade but that Dewey (to my own surprise on remembering the episode the next day) had rendered Heidegger totally unnecessary. I am still right on the first point and have had to think long and hard about the second in the painfully bright light of day. I rebelled against my own chosen upbringing and (at this point very expensive) path.

It was not until my second year of graduate school that I encountered Richard Rorty in any serious way (via Dick Bernstein's class which pointed me towards Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature). In this book, and others, I came to understand to my consternation and HORROR that what attracted me so much to Dewey were a great many of the same things I found so seductive in Heidegger. This also explained why I had always thought about inviting Wittgenstein to a dinner party if I could live out that fantasy of "if you could have dinner with any 3 dead people who would you chose?" What the hell was I to do? I admit that this constituted one of the dimensions of the "crisis" that caused me to take a break from philosophy, school, New York, etc and move back to my dusty little southern town where people did not worry about such things (and they didn't).

So what has occasioned this reflection now? I suppose it is that I am sitting in the public library working on (another) paper on Heidegger. I could have chosen Husserl or Merleau-Ponty but NOT, I had to come back to The Old Man. I hate the guy and I wanted to write about one of the reasons I hate the guy (his account of death) but then my prof dissuaded me from that and got me on to writing a paper about the (in my opinion) inadequacy of Heidegger's response to the "monster" that is technological thinking. Of course, I have to concede to him that there is a problem and there is. That frustrated me to no end, having to agree with anything he says. But then that brought me around to thinking about the other things that I agree with him about or begrudgingly must concede. This inventory almost drove me to drink bleach. But here I sit, I suppose one could say that I could take my cue from Heidegger. The great criticism and destructuring of his mentor Husserl's work that was Sein und Zeit was dedicated to Husserl. It would be silly to do something similar to this in a graduate level paper but the thought is a happy one.

On the matter of having employment (Or how I learned to stop worrying and whore myself out)

As part of both my new found geography and and my old found profession I have found a job. It is the kind of thing that (probably) seems as alien to you as it does to me. I am a tutor for the Athletics Department. I sit around and do my homework and wait for athletes some of which are deemed "somebodies" in the world of sports. For the most part they do not come. I sit. I read my Heidegger. I glance through Eagleton's After Theory. Essentialy I read things which merely cause the absurdity of my "job" to reverberate through my head louder and more distinct than it would be if I were simply reading the paper.

I am embarressed at how I sneer. It is against my nature to feel this way. These kids (I call anyone who hasn't gone to class all fucking semester a "kid") are treated as work horses first and humans secondly (and only at the demands of the NCAA mind you). Can they really be held at fault when academics are not emphasized but getting by so you can play ball is? I would also assume that they stand before me as the product of at least a decades worth of grooming, training, and other things that should make most parents ashamed of themselves. But this is how you get by. Being from the durty south (where college ball is king and even I understand how deep it goes in the veins of those of us below that M/D line) playing ball was the dream that not only motivated many people who were not destined for the life of the mind but also put them in a much more financially stable position then myself. One of my kids is a basketball player who will probably get picked up first draft round next year. I would imagine his contract will stipulate that he make 100 times more a year than I currently hold in student loan debt.

Am I complicit in this? These tutoring services (which range from teaching tennis athletes english to schooling football player in algebra to myself attempting to explain Socrates to a basketball player) are not open to other students at the university. Should I be offering my services at the "Center for kids who have jobs so they can pay for school"? I would but no such instituion exists. And I doubt that those kids generate enough income for the school to justify the University creating it. I suppose this is what I get for not staying where I was.

I did have one bright moment. The afore mentioned basketball player did seem to care about his studies (unlike my other kids). He wanted to understand the Socrate's Apology. That the way we way die is as (if not more) important as the way we live. We must all come to terms with the great equalizer. I would enjoy watching a conversation between this man and an old professor of mine who specializes in this kind of speculation. But he isn't here now. I suppose that is what I get for not staying where I was.

But now my 7pm appointment is a no show and I can dismiss myself and go on with my life of the mind while my wards go on worrying about their lives of the what the fuck ever they call it.

PS- I should be getting a laptop tomorrow so I will be more assiduous about posting from here on out... Promise.

I told a friend today I was going to quit blogging...

But I didn't realize I was going to end up at the public library sans the cash necessary to copy out my readings for wednesday. Thus, the heat outside keeps me looking for things to do inside and this will suffice until the back of my neck dries...

I have have mentioned before how uncanny it is to now live in a college town in the mountains. Everything breathes and sighs and moans the University. I enjoy watching it. Sorority girls (shit tons of them, their fathers should be ashamed, and I am not even kidding), a decent college radio station (though the NPR stations play news for 2 hrs in the morning and 2 in the evening), and a main drag of bars that provide for some of the most provocative people watching I have ever experienced. It is a spectacle. I have been trying to wrap my mind around "Game Days" when the town will swell to cheer on the football team. These have always been alien things to me. The town my college was in was a desert and we occupied a terrarium inside of a bell jar inside of it. The City did not seem to care to much what you were studying and prefered it if you got out of it's damn way. It is just so jarring. This is not to say that I don't like. Anything but to be honest. Everythings is within walking distance. The elevation means it is 10degrees cooler here than anywhere else in the state. It is full of life in a way that only a town full of young people can generate. My public library card bears the quote, "In our youth our hears were touched with fire." That is Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. (This card is red, the blue was a much nicer color but had a T.S. Eliot quote, which I can do without) I suppose this to be the case.
(Rambles somemore)
First class of the day, of the semester, of the school year, of my career at this institution. Since so few of my NSU credits transerred I am, in essence, starting my MA over again. I decided against taking Symbolic Logic (since I know NOTHING about logic and this course would be easy I was told if I was any good at college level math and since I chose philosophy I think we know how that went). So what was my first class? "20th Century Continental Philosophy." I must be quick not to judge or despair. I sat through the entire class maybe taking 3 lines worth of notes, maybe. The topic for today? What is 20th Century Continental Philosophy? I must be quick not to judge or despair. I suppose I decided to play to my strengths. I had no idea that I was truly going to be starting over. I have read everything on the syllabus except the Husserl (which I am only nominally excited about being exposed to). It will be review. Relearning how to read for both myself and others. This summer has been about me. I have torn through many books. I have been working on all the back issues of The New Yorker that have escaped my reading since the spring (even the Fiction). So the idea of having to read for anything other than enjoyment is, well, hrmm, not too exciting. It feels intrusive to me now. Especially since I have formed my own opinions (some more learned than others) about what I have to write about again. This sounds arrogant or repugnant I am sure but its how I feel.
Oh well, cheers.

A new chapter in my life...

Well for the first time ever I am living by myself and living in a true college town. It is a whole other beast. I have always lived in towns that had schools. Little Rock had a few. Conway had 3. New York, well, it had a lot. It is a whole different vibe up here. It's in the mountains. It's fill of hippies, dirt punks, and of course frat boys (which is good because that means I can get rid of the truck to some chump who voted for McCain and wears "deck shoes").
I have signed up for my classes and I am super psyched. Symoblic Logic, Skepticism, and Explanation. So as such, I feel some momentum for the first time in a while. In some senses I feel as though I had to leave LR but it sorta provided the impetus to keep moving. So we will see. Enough of my drivel. Back the job search.

...

I love ellipsis...
They seem to indicate without doing so. I stupid thing to say out loud but a lot of time it truly is what is unsaid that means more. I look, a gesture: a smile, a hug, etc...
I have had a lot of these of late. Things unsaid and such that I worry about it.
Oh well,
...

Wow, another chance for post-debauchery introspection...

So I went to a wedding in Fayetteville and it was great. Except I have been hungover for 2 days now. I always find that the 2.5 hr drive home from the great North Western frontier provides a chance for some deep thinking (while listening to Ryan Adam's Love is Hell, as is my custom). I realize that in a week I embark upon a new chapter of my life and a chance to try what I failed to do in The City: grow-the-fuck-up. Now some of you might say (from experiencce) that such a mission is doomed to failure in that deranged and depraved town but I can promise you it is a far less dangerous of a beast than Gotham. So I began to think about life, liberty, and the recent free time I came into (not that I am too pleased by this) and decided to make up a list of things to accomplish while living in Fayett-Nam. This are derived from a few premises which I will outline first.
1. I am fat. There is no bones about it. I am sure you can read back through the enthralling archives of this blog and find me mentioning it many times over and how I planned to do something about it. Well, I didn't. As per the last time I see myself mentioning my grand designs to get that svelt thing around my lower abdomen/upper groin that Brad Pitt has (damn his eyes/*see picture below) I have put on about 8 pounds. Way to fucking go dude. I admit even though I was concerned about this issue it was not until last weekend that I had the kind of epiphany necessary for true life changes. But it is too embaressing to discuss here.
2. I have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. This is also simply a fact and it negatively effects many aspects of my life (not least of which is my girlish figure).
3. I don't write enough. And under no circumstances do I count this tripe I am working on at this moment as "writing" (though I do need to do more off this. It is healthy in a wierd way). I mean concerted, structure, intentional writing. While I shall not perish I do need to publish.
4. I am a quitter with poor follow through skills (see 1-3). Though I feel that grappling with #1 will lead to an improvement on this front.

Roommate just walked in. Time to prepare myself a feast of sticks and twigs so that I can garner that sweet bod like Brad's. More to follow.



















* That thing up there!

Summer...

So summer finally arrived here in the durty south and that means many things...
First off, as many of you know I have an odd masochistic streak in me that demands that I spend time during the summer outside with children. I usually hurt myself in this fashion by working at the local Boy Scout Camp for 6 weeks: bossing around idiot underlings, reading philosophy, writing letters, catching up on the New Yorker and all in all enjoying the sights and smells that awaken those old memories which lie in my genes. To catch the smell of sweet grass or the distant stench of decay. To notice the smell of wild roses or that smell that comes from cold droplets of rain frying on the scorched earth. These reach back into what we can claim to be our primal "essences." Stamped in proteins and passed down before the dawn of the language and concepts we use to describe them. But I puff up and digress.... This is an experience I cherish more than almost any other and it has stood as such a formative one that I cannot imagine my life without it in my passt. Needless to say this year "real life" intruded upon my Rousseau-esque idealizations in the form of that need for health insurance. My employer could not spare me for 5 weeks and quitting is not an option at this point. So I figured out a way to tag along as a volunteer with a group of 14 urban youth who had been collated so as to keep them off "the streets." It should be a requirement for everyone to spend a week in close quarters with a group of people whose background is so different from your own (riding the subway does not count here). It was great times and I will have to elaborate more at a later date. I am getting lost in my own silliness....
Summer also means reading and writing and watching movies that are totally sweet. I have already finished 2 Faulkner novels, Sedaris' most recent (which if you listen to This American Life or read The New Yorker) there is absolutely no reason to buy, and am well in to re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in preparation for the upcoming movie. I saw Star Trek twice (tottally fucking sweet), Terminator: Salvation (which was so terrible I loved it), and this past weekend I saw Transformers 2 (also twice, and if anyone can explain where the Air & Space Museum actually is I would appreciate it. It clearly is not where I thought it was).
More to follow....

Too Long...

So I have been absent again from my blogging duties. I am not sure if duty is the right word but I blame that on being forced to read Kant as a small child.
1) A thought on the nomination of Sotomayor. There Republicans have made a huge stink over whether or not personal experience feeds (or should feed) into how one views the law and how one behaves as a jurist. I find this question laughable. The question is moot and reflect an old ideology and a lack of grasp on the reality of legal decision making. Fact: Personal experience DOES have an impact on how you make legal decisions whether you realize it or not. Tell me this to not be case with Scalia or (gasp) Roberts! This does raise other questions which is worth discussing: What kind of experiences do we want feeding into the decision making process? What kind of variety of life experiences do we want on the court? The first question is about individuals. The second is about the make up of the court as a whole. Jeffrey Toobin wrote a great bit in the New Yorker about how the court has always been decided to reflect some kind of electorate balance. In the beginning we had regional seats. Then we had a catholic seat. Then we had a jewish seat. These were facts of the process of nominations and confirmations. It seems ridiculous now to ignore this and cloak prejudice and partisan hackery in terms of "originalism" or accusing people of "reverse racism" (a phrase I am still not sure I understand). The fact that we try and give seats on the high court to women, african-americans, hispanics and hopefully one day a gay jurist is simply an attempt to get brilliant minds together first and second make sure those minds are a reflection of the America in which we live in and (more importantly I hope) a reflection fo the America we hope to someday find ourselves in. As usual though we are missing a chance to have an honest and open discussion about the American legal system in favour of name calling and buffonery. It will only get worse I promise
2)I am thinking about buying a gun...
3)So I dream about The City. The people are all there as I knew them and this is the best aspect of dreaming in New York. Many of you who waste your time reading this are recurring characters. But the city itself is different. It looks different. It smells different. It even tastes different. Yet, it is still New York. The New York of my dreams looks a lot like london. The streets are narrower the buildings squeezed even closer together and the clastrophobic aesthetic gets into your marrow. Below Canal the city is a lagoon. It looks like Lake Ponchatrain. There is green everywhere, of slime, moss, algae and plants attempting to wiggle out of the ooze. There are above ground subway lines that go no where. There piles covered in the slick green of decay. There are ruined boats and the skeletons of destroyed docks. That New York is one that exists only between the hours of 2-4pm but it is mine and that is where I get to meet you all. At least the Red Head is still there but the beer is free and the lights are even dimmer.

Supreme Court Nomination: Day 1!!!

So I am totally giddy about this upcoming confirmation hearings. I will make two predictions: First she will confirmed. Second, the Republican's will make total ass-holes of themselves in the process. We shall see...

A great day...

That cusp of summer is a great thing. Warm but not too warm so that when it rains it is so pleasant that you just want to sit outside and be rained on. I would do this more often but unfortunately most of my books are not water retardant.
I am falling in love with books again. A while without HAVING to read coupled with a job that allows me sometime to read can sure turn your mood around about reading. I wish I was a better reader though. Not that I don't read a lot but I mean I wish I was better at the task itself, at the quality. Not that I don't read quality stuff (and yes I include most of my comic book readingin the "quality stuff" category) but I mean I was better at reading. T.S. Eliot and Derrida were good readers in the sense that I am meaning here. The ability to think beyond what you are reading. I suppose practive makes perfect though...
Now I will go read!

And it pours...

So by my own account I have written more philosophy for myself then I think i did as a graduate student thus far. I admit it is far easier to do it in the comfort of your own home, beer and smoke at hand, without worrying about what some professor will say about your thesis or atrocious grammar. This is good. It also gives you a chance to spin freely in that viscous mess of your own thoughts. Philosophy of mind: lets talk about it. Political philosophy? In the words of the Fonz, "Sit on it!"
I have a love hate relationship with azaleas. For my norther brethren I am not sure if you know what these are. They are a flowering bush and they are southern as magnolias, bbq, and de facto racism and open homophobia. They are beautiful. They are a sure fire sign of spring (along with the birds) and they let you know that rain and sunshine in equal meausre are in the future but in a good way. They flower in shades that range from bright pink to fucia. They have a subtle smell that fills the air. My back yard is full of them (and two dog woods) and I like to sit there when no one else is around and read or sit there with others and try to play dominoes (my new love. fuck video games or metaphysics!). But the problem is that they die. And yes, everything dies but these do it slowly and painfully. They almost rust and turn brown and then your yard is full of brown dead flowers, each a monument to a failed dream or possibility. But I poetically digress and badly at that.
My job goes on. This is how things go over a beer:
Me: "How you doing? "
Them: "Dude. Bitching day. Lots of paper work to do. Boss sucks."
Me: "That sucks."
Them: "How was your day?"
Me: "A mentally retarded kid ripped my shirt of while trying to beat the shit out of me. And I got spit on.:
Them: "Oh."
Me: "Yeah, all and all not a bad day."
It takes a certain kind of hate/love to with stand that. Luckily I am going back to school in the fall.
Ok, that is as much of a facile update as I feel inclined to share in my current state.

Charles Portis...

“A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity”
- The Dog of the South

At the end of the day...

...mental health facilities break down into two categories. Those which are locked from the inside and those that are not. There are many different types but this is one of those dichotomies that pretty much gets it. Those facilities that are not locked from the inside cover a myriad of services and practices while those which are define a pretty specialized sort of facility.
For this week I am working at one of those facilities: a residential facility for children. Their maladies cover the entire spectrum of disorders and symptoms. To find oneself coated in the smell of industrial cleaner seems to add clarity and paradoxically obfuscation to the matter. What do we do with the mentally ill? This is a question that has plagued society since before we had a name for the term (besides being possessed). This remains an important question for society at large and the answer seems to be the same as many other inconveniences: containment. Unfortunately the kritik of this method is the same as that of many kritiks of other solutions for social problems. One simply creates or reinforces those behaviors which you seek to get rid of. The more I work in this field the more I convinced of its shortfalls. I hope something can be done. Write your congressman. Write anyone.


It is not a pleasant place to work.

Damn I suck at this...

So yeah, too long for my loyal cadre of readers to go without an update from me...
It is always good to be reminded of beautiful things. I have spent the last two springs in the City and while this brings its own surprises and delights it cannot compare to those of my home. Cool evenings, warmth that radiates through you, and the birds. There are many ways people use to determine if spring has truly "arrived." Most people point to different plants and when they flower. This is not useful because plants are stupid and have little to add to the conversation. The birds however, they do. I knew it was spring a little over a week ago when I was returning from the midnight showing of The Watchmen and I got home at almost 3am and the birds were all over the place. The tweets and the chirps filling the cool air, mingling with that smell of fresh dirt. Damn I forgot how amazing it is. So I decided to take a few days off of work and here I sit, windows open, shirt off (keep your lunch down folks), drinking a PBR and enjoying the songs of the birds.
So what else is up you ask yourselves because you are finished Youtubing the the Jim Cramer vs John Stewart battle and you are now bored and waiting to get off of work...
I have been transferred again at work and I am now back at the Deaf School. This is sad and great because on the one hand I miss my kids from the Alternative school but on the other hand their appears to be a 4 day work week, a raise and free lunch in my future. I am not sure if I actually accomplished anything with my kids at the Alternative School. The problem with that situation was 2 fold: first cultural has an enormous influence on how we perceive ourselves and others. As such the lessons and help I tried to offer ran contrary to that of my kids cultural norms. Things are to be ajudicated with violence and respect comes from different and maladaptive sources. So what me and the therapist I was working with were doing was being undone outside of the school. The cultural milieu cannot be underestimated... The other problem is related to the first, if everything about your life reinforces your behaviour as normal then you do not see or understand that what you do is not typical or socially "acceptable." Thus you do not think there is anything wrong to fix. I worked hard with these kids and I am little depressed that now, after 4 1/2 months I cannot tell if I actually accomplished anything. I worry, and mostly believe that I have not. And to say that I tried does not seem to make me feel much better about it.

That which defines a generation...

So thanks to my Tivo and MTV showing other than real people without shame I have been able to revisit that time when Beavis & Butthead were a part of my cultural fabric. It would seem now that the national debate has been pulled to a more erudite level but I doubt that to my core. It seems more that while culture has become more self-referential it has ceased to be more self-critical. Only an idiot would not realized that B&B is making fun of itself while much "reality tv" does not have any such space. Its a shame. And I wish we got you use the word "nads" more often.

I bought one of these for myself for my birthday...

You should get one...

Getting Older..

I am aware that many of you who read this blog are older than me so I pray you indulge me for these musings. All of us are a product of our different experiences and as such any musing on age would have to be different from the musings of an other...
Well, I have reached the 25 year mark. This age has only recently come to resound in my ears and send shivers over me. It seems to be an age which connotes, no demands, a watershed moment. I would not go so far as to say it is that point where the wave breaks and begins to roll back into the see but it is moment that demands you to scan the horizon and try and take in the vista before you with all of its shadows. It seems to demand a cutting away, a cuttin' loose as we might say here in the durty south. Or an emandation as I like to say. I have begun a systematic plan of how to go about getting ready for the rest of my life. I would like to think that I have my youth but years of abuse and ideas about the future simply demand that I begin to no longer think about my time as infinite or that my body can sustain its current level of abuse (or sponging as you might call it). I do not think of this as a depressing thing but more of a liberating sensation. Because every avenue we decide to close makes the others more deliberate and clear. I know this all sounds kind of dramatic but it is. I am not one who things about age in terms of wrinkles or bad backs but simply in terms of how much time do I have left to do the work I have set for myself and more over what work is there which I hope to set before myself. Of course, the Heideggerian point of the ever-presence of death looms always but it is now an even more serious point of consideration when I consider that I am on prescriptions for seemingly everything at this point and that I drive like a depraved loony. The end may not be nigh but it is not taking a nap. So what does this all mean practically? What "work" do these considerations due? I am not totally sure but I cleaned up my desk today and burned a bunch of old notes and papers so I deem this to be a good start.

You know it takes a long long time...

So, here I am on thursday. I have just applied for my second job (as a supplement to the first) and that leaves me feeling not so great. I grew up with the idea that the Leave It To Beaver kinda life was a baseline. That things should improve with time, that progress would prevail. This has shown to not be the case. I have cut out all of my fun spending (the local comic book store is now $20 a week short thanks to the recession). What is one to do. I admit that in comparison to some I am a lucky SOB. My friend who works for Goldman Sachs lost his job a while ago and I cannot fathom what it is like to get laid off. The world works as such that hard work does not pay off. Do we create the world in our image? Do our ethos become the world through our will? I am beginning to doubt that.
Anywho, Bush Light courses through my veins because it is my only solace. We make do with what we have.

This is amazing or How William Spanos must right his books...

It is a text generator that produces papers of the "post-modern" persuasion. I think I shall write a paper using this. Chortle, chortle, chortle. How clever and (dare I say) post-modern of me.

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Cheers to Gun Fights in the House God.

It has been theorized better and before me that as we have moved further and further from "the land" that our context becomes more and more social. So much so that what we consider our "self" is merely an aggregate of these social connections and our reflections upon them. There is something to be said for this... Salud!

Self-Awareness....

I admit this is a phrase I hate but I find it far more palatable than self-consciousness. I was just talking with the therapist I work with (he is a neighbor) and we sorta spun-off into this discussion about self-medication. Well, a thinly veiled one. I had invited him in for a beer and he said he had to get home and have a protein shake (He was coming home from an Aikido class) and I said "which one of us will feel better in a half-hour? Me! Because I won't feel anything!" Now, what does it mean that I can identify this behaviour as both self-medication and that I am aware that it is a response to my mood and situation? This becomes an interesting question I feel. I find that notions of self-awareness (I think this encompasses notions of self-consciosusness without all that phenomenological shite) seem to manifest themselves more clearly in some types of people and not others. I would like to attribute it to education or some such nonsense but that does not hold (as simple as it would be). What does it say to know you are doing something anti-social and possibly unhealthy as opposed to just doing it? This is not so much a meditation but an actual question....

Ok, I cannot simply leave that question be. I think there is a profound "ethical" question here. What is it do something and know we are doing something as we do it. I find traditional (ie Sarte/Husserlian) phenomenological questions to be silly here(I find the ethical "dimension" far more interesting and pressing, ie what does Wittgenstein's later conceptions of meaning as use mean about responsibility?). I think this is also a question of responsibility and that a great deal of modern thought has been an evacuation of notions of responsibility (we can replace it with shitty notions of authenticity if we want to be I find this pre-cludes a intersubjective dimension). Oh well. Enough. The drugs are quick.
Enough!

Update from the frontlines of mental health...

Oh no! No medicaid! Drink yourself to stability!!!!!!!!!!

Well, so ends another day as a cog in the great machine of mental health servicing. I admit this is one of the most frustrating jobs that I have ever seen. I would almost rather push a boulder up a hill endlessly because at least there nothing is truly at stake.
I get the chance to see fascinating (depressing) phenomena manifest themselves everyday. An example if you please maestro! Have you ever had the chance to watch a child from the moment they take their medication up to and past the point where it takes hold? It is like watching the life drain out of someone! I am not kidding! The percentage of kids I see who are medicated is an amazingly round one (100% hooray). I admit I begin to wonder if taking add medications for study purposes (I of course do not actually KNOW anyone who does this) is simply a pyscho-somatic attempt to force oneself not be lazy! While most of the kids I know who take ADD meds do actually achieve more school work there is less of exhilarated sense of urgency as that of resignation. A light goes out in their eyes. I see the wisdome of thinkers (from Dewey on) who do not characterize the discharges of physical action in children as evil as just simply natural. The natural response to a boring/boorish situation. I am now surprised a the fact I do not defecate on my trig teacher for lack of something more interesting to do.
I am also begining to truly see the harm that notions that see the mind as distinct from the body has on the population at large. To fight over this fact with philosophers and neuroscientists is a moot point. It is like trying to argue FOR Lamarkian evolution these days. No one actually buys it but when you try to explain it to your average Joe on the Clapham Omnibus it makes perfect sense. And it is here, with this population that that people need to be disabused of the idea. I am reading a lot work about psychological trauma that expands our notions of how the traumatic experience and its manifestations in life are understood. One of the main contentions of this work is that not only do we still come up against stigmas of mental illness but the very way we conceptualize the symptoms of it are woefully inadequate. That we tend to ignore way in which this pain manifests itself in the corporeal body. That we tend to view natural discharges of emotion as signs of weakness, unintellible, not worth studying or even worse the product of an overactive imagination. The way we treat children stifles the ability to properly express our feelings this creating "cultural cages" which produce, promote, and sustain cognitive dissociation in a way that is ONLY found in captive animals. We assume that a lot of things we are do are in no way connected with our "mental state" because (unlike the weak Cartesian attempts to prove causality between the mental and physical) that the mental and the physical are simply discrete domains that are mutually exclusive. A problem in the mind is just that. Alas....
Then there is the part of this where the government gets involved. The amount of hoops, snares, paperwork, phonecalls, faxs, signatures, time, bullshit, redtape and hairpulling mental drainage required to get menial and necessary mental health services provided is one of the darker spectres of the "Welfare State." I have spent the last three weeks trying to get one kids medicaid turned back on (it expired because a simple form was turned in late) so that he can receive necessary therapy and medication (despite my moaning above some medication truly does contribute to an improvement in a great many people's quality of life). Of course, after days I did in fact get it back on line today but there are two kinds of medicaid for children in this state. If you are dirt poor you get type A: no copay. If you are not quite that poor you get B: a $10copay that would still bankrupt a lot of people when you consider that a school based therapist/para-professional will see a kid 5 days a week if such services are necessary. Of course my kid whose type was originally A got it turned back on and it is now B. The childs parent has of course lost his job due to having to leave so often to come up to school and see get his kid because he was out of control because he wasnt taking his meds because his medicaid had expired because a simple form was not turned in in a timely manner. This will of course result in the need for a "change form" which even if it was filled out and turned in tomorrow by hand (to avoid the lag time of mailing it) it woul still take a "minimum of 10 days maybe longer depending on the backlog" (quoteth the civil servant on the phone) to get fixed.
I of course believe in treatment with a guaranteed track record of therapuetic efficacy: Beer for me tonite!

I am tired of editing a Foucault paper and want to talk about something else...

I love ironing. I admit that there are few activities in my life that I find more soothing and constructive than the process of ironing out the creases of my shirts for work and then adding some spray starch. I love the smell of steam and that anti-septic smell of my lemon starch. It reminds me of when my mom used to starch her uniforms when I was much younger. The idea has a very strong (and relaxing) familial element to it that I enjoy. This is what I do: I iron. I iron therefore I am.
I love the smell of coming thunderstorms. There are those few moments before the rain comes when the wind blows away all of the local smells and I imagine that the scents on the wind are from some far flung locale. I believe I can smell western hemlock, burning mesquite and the delight of wildflowers from somewhere in middle of Oklahoma. It may not actually be the case but I simply don't care. I enjoy welcoming the idea to my home.
That will do for the moment.

Jay Z + Radiohead=Jaydiohead and Awesomeness...

Hopefully makes up for the post about talking balls.

My roommate...

I believe my roommate is an idiot savant. A few years ago he was drunk one night and started writing dialogues that involve two testicles. He called them "Ballalogues." Last night my roommate wrote a new one after consuming a few too many beers and I cannot tell whether I am smarter or dumber for having read it. So here, for the first time, in its entirety is a conversations between Lamar and Reginald, two balls:

Lamar is wondering why the fuck Reginald has been on the toilet for 3 hours…

Reginald: Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, oh yeah fucking christ I should’ve taken you to the prom, fuck yeah, just a little more, whew

Lamar: You are probably the most disgusting ball I’ve ever met, maybe only the only ball I’ve ever met you stupid ramshackle excuse for a ball.

Reginald: flakfj;laskjdfsdflj;slkfj

Lamar: How lame, to use the middle line keys only to reply to my bitching.

Reginald: Let’s put is this way. You have been working your little ass off to produce sperm and in reality, Mr. Big upstairs hasn’t been using it too wisely lately in my opinion, and my opinion has been very clouded by booze lately.

Lamar: And so has his…Sometimes I feel like I am the only straight thinker around here. I just re-organized every closet in this goddamn ballsac. By the way, your tomato plant seeds. I flushed that shit down the toilet.

Reginald: Well, I am going to calmly inform you that THOSE WERE NOT TOMATO SEEDS YOU FUCKING MORON. I have been harvesting marijuana seeds ever since big boy upstairs starting smoking weed and cutting down on our production. Now I have no leverage in our existence. I see no other way past this unless you pay for my drinking habit for 1 year or suck my dick, hahaha.

Lamar: You have no dick you fucking ball

Re: The Facebook 25 Things List and this Bloging Mess As Well...

"The subject of an autobiography is just such a self, bent on revealing himself in all his truth, bent, that is to say, on demonstrating his sincerity. His conception of his private and uniquely interesting individuality, together with his impulse to reveal his self, to demonstrate that in it which is to be admired and trusted, are, we may believe, his response to the newly available sense of an audience, of that public which society has created."
-Lionel Trilling
(Sincerity and Authenticity)

A Short Treatise on Experimental Metaphysics:

Metaphysics.
Metaphysics.
Metaphysics.
Metaphysics.
Metaphysics.
Fart.

What is it to lead a life without purpose? What if that purpose was less than honorable or even useless? I have always wanted to be part of something larger than myself but not just anything. Something of import. Not because I am that important but I have this urge to do something great with myself. As I become older I begin to doubt whether this end is possible. Where do you get on board? Should I have started a long time ago or can I still begin the process anew tomorrow when this god-forsaken hangover finally dissipates? These are the kind of reflections I am driven to these days, driven to the point of distraction. Staring at the ceiling worrying about the future. The future has never bothered me before. But now it has come out of the fog and veil of temporality and stands there fucking taunting me.
I should drink less and sleep more. I think that might have to be the start.

So little to speak about!

Well I have been lax in posting duties as you can tell and how much has happened in the interim! Good god, a new era has been proclaimed: Novus ordo seclorum has been proclaimed dear friends! I must admit that I am more impressed by our new president than I thought I would be. No so much because of his actual policies but more because of his ideas about governance! Almost the instant he was president he was to narrow the power and scop of the presidency. A clear repudiation of Bush's policies and philosophy about how the president should govern is underway as we speak. I am also ready for my tax cut though it will have little impact on my paycheck I am also a fan of that J.G. Wentworth spokesman's line, "It's your money. Use it when YOU need it!"
But enough of all of this. Things go well here. My roommate got a dog that hates me and the first inkling of spring is upon us. More to follow...

So I am back from the outdoors...

Well, I went out into the great outdoors and I have returned. It was great. Really. Fucking. Cold. But GREAT!!! I realized that while I am not a billy in real life it is fun to play one on TV. The best part was the silence. I took along a very old friend. A friend that you can have conversations with without talking. So while we were splitting wood, stoking the fire, reading, hiking, etc I could look at him or him at me and exchange a thought and not disturb the silence of the those processes going on around us. We eventually got back to camp and started cooking. I had a windup short wave radio and we listened to A Prairie Home Companion and then whatever nonsense came on NPR after that until 11 when the jazz came on. Then of course I had to put on classic country. Tammy and George. Willy. Merle. Dolly. Sitting there drinking Chivas and a few Guinness Extra Stouts. It was great. The moon was huge. I admit that I was really cold that night but luckily I had enough whisky that the first few hours I actually slept and didnt wake up freezing my you know whats-its off until about 4. Then at the crack of dawn it was time for coffee with Baileys and Weekend Edition. Yes, you can be a billy-cracker-ass-mofo and still listen to NPR. Damn it was awesome. I admit I do not think that Simon Critchley's work has ever been consumed around a camp fire in Arkansas but I do like to think that I can get my name in the record books for that. Self-involved philosophical camping that sounds mildly Brokeback Mountain-esque... Gotta love it.
And then we shot guns.


On a more somber note: I went to go see the doctor last week and it turns out my cholesterol is bad. I admit that this is not too terribly surprising as I almost seem to take sport in destroying myself but this time it turns out I am actually doing some irrepairable harm. So I have actually taken upon myself to do something about it. I have been experimenting with cutting pork and beef out of diet (or at least cutting almost all of it out ) and in doing so I am discovering how much I love fish. I made a simple spread today of sardines, lemon juice, black pepper and garlic with a touch of olive oil. It turns out that sardines are rich in Omega-3s and nutrients and because they are small do not have that much mercury in them. It is pretty delicious. I would recommend it. It is also cheap: an added benefit. But I suppose that this all boils down to the that crisis of grappling with my own mortality. That I too will someday die. I do not think that I was ever unaware of it but that Heideggerian concept of the closeness of death (possibly his sole great addition to western thinking) has really snagged me. So green tea, fish, and a sense of finitude it is for me...

So I have time to dash off a quick blog post...

So I am finally getting the hell out of this town. I am almost done packing for my camping/quiet/gunshooting/chivas drinking trip. It is well earned after this week I can tell you. I will be sure to put up pictures to remind you all about how awesome the sticks can truly be.
We will see how things go... If I am not back in 2 days time please send a St. Bernard with lots of liquor looking for me.
xo

So I have been derelict in this blogging business

But here I am in 2009 busting it out big. Yes, I feel that this shall be my year of raising myself up from lost-psuedo-intelletual redneck to a psuedo-intellectual redneck with some sense of direction in my life and preferrably also a lighter psuedo intelletual redneck with some sense of direction in my life. Yes boys and girls an honest appraisal of my girth has brought me to the conclusion that I am fat. Now, I am not sad about this in a way that most might be. I have not resigned myself to a steady diet of only camel lights and diet coke. No, I have not even considered pilates or yoga. That is all silliness in my eyes. Spirtuality and the body? Poppy-Cock. What truly motivates me is not even a fear of death (which there is an inordinate amount of floating around me these days). I suppose it is simply that one should live well and that does not include weakness of the kind I worry about it. But this is a work in project and there will be updates as they arise...
I have no lists to share here. I made a list of sorts. It was a list of predictions for 2009 but it was in a letter that I sending to a friend of mine tomorrow so tough titty as they say on that one. I will point a few high points of 2009 but it is not numbered or scored in any fashion but you should think about them none the less. My friends' band The American Princes put out a record this year that was amazing. It was so amazing that it beat out every self-involved doofus who put out a record this year (and some truly talented people as well) on Magnet's top records of 2009. It is called "Other People" and it is truly a great album. Also we had the movie "The Dark Knight." While no Frank Miller tale (whose on box office attempt was terrible!) it was pretty solid and reminds me of why I love that crazy psycho/socio-path in the black cape. As to the death of Heath Ledger or any other famous person this year I have no comment and I am sure if you asked them they would declare 2008 a total bummer.
2008 was also the year that I think as far as my thoughts go I came into my own. The interesting mix of NYC's love of the post-metaphysical and my discovery of the American Pragmatic tradition of anti-metaphysics coupled with my own profound love and respect of Democracy and hate of bull-shit coalesced into some twisted thinking but one which I am in love with and can truly call my own. I have to give credit where it was due here. To those great and far more adequate thinkers whom I am lucky to call my friend I bow. Time spent at parties, on Bushwick roof-tops, front porches, and in at least two bars spent gave me my greatest insights ( Though that bald guy and that guy who kinda spits when he talks were pretty fucking good too). A lot of thinking was worked out with you over tequilla shots, beer, crawfish, whiskey, malbec, PBR, pigs ears with blood sausage and beans, gin and tonics, whisky, Camillo Punch, biscuits and gravy, that awful white stuff, solaplexis punches, naked back flips, drop kicking of trash cans, and much, much, much, much more booze. And those people and these things were as important to the process. I think that is what willd 2008 will always mean for me. I wonder sometimes if I ever write a book if the words will smell like Whiskey and 13th Street?
Read the Comic Book DMZ. Great.
I make no predictions for 2009. I would say that things cannot get any worse but I know damn well that is not the case. But I think the situation is more in our hands than we would like to believe. I was watching this DVD tonite. It was that bald guy of previous mention having a chat with this French guy. The Bald Guy says that our modern notions of governence seem to make us think we have no place in process and this leads to European Buddhism or something sorta odd and smart and ridiculous. Well, I think that instead of politics of this that or the other we should, I don't know, get involved with the politics presented to us. But alas. Who knows. I am going to do a little bit more and see where that gets me and the rest of you.
But I am going to name this drink I am having right now the 2009: equal parts Perrier and Chivas, a squeeze of lime and a dash of fuck-all and doom.
Cheers!