05/16/04 02:53 - ID#35524
Trip to the movies
Thanks stickboy and robin for trying to help me with my precise accuracy. I do feel I have a better grasp now. And a non-dictionary grasp which makes it more real, more down-low if you know what I mean.
Permalink: Trip_to_the_movies.html
Words: 200
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/14/04 07:00 - ID#35523
pic of sarah
Permalink: pic_of_sarah.html
Words: 10
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/13/04 01:10 - ID#35522
Good ole' Vonnegut keeps it up at 81
some excerpts (but really just read it all, it's purty darn good):
"Dr. Vonnegut <referring to his son Mark, author of Eden Express [inlink]terry,192[/inlink]> said this to his doddering old dad: 'Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.' So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one."
"My government's got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals."
Permalink: Good_ole_Vonnegut_keeps_it_up_at_81.html
Words: 340
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/11/04 11:24 - ID#35521
Precisely accurate-fuck the dictionary!
Permalink: Precisely_accurate_fuck_the_dictionary_.html
Words: 349
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/07/04 05:24 - ID#35520
liz's house
Permalink: liz_s_house.html
Words: 215
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/06/04 07:41 - ID#35519
Georgia bans female gential piercings
Permalink: Georgia_bans_female_gential_piercings.html
Words: 37
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/05/04 11:02 - ID#35518
Moore's movie cancelled by Disney
And they've finally created "custom-made" babies . An American lab used fertility treatment and in vitro fertilization to select fetuses that matched critical DNA components of their siblings. It is for a good cause in that all the siblings are suffering from chronic illnesses (anemia, leukemia, etc) that can dramatically benefit from the stem cells of their new siblings' umbilical cords. But who knows what's next...?
Permalink: Moore_s_movie_cancelled_by_Disney.html
Words: 106
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/04/04 08:58 - ID#35517
Only in-state residents allowed to marry
Permalink: Only_in_state_residents_allowed_to_marry.html
Words: 207
Location: Buffalo, NY
05/03/04 11:15 - ID#35516
Geo-seer Bridgette
Permalink: Geo_seer_Bridgette.html
Words: 277
Location: Buffalo, NY
04/28/04 09:13 - ID#35515
Another entry about a book
-on poets, philosophers, and such:
"At first I hoped to find a somewhat more direct understanding of life in some novelists and some poets; but, if they possessed that understanding, I must confess they hardly showed it; it seemed to me as if most of them weren't living at all, but were contented with seeming to live, and almost considered life as an annoying obstacle to living. And I couldn't blame them for it; and I won't affirm that the mistake wasn't on my side.... Anyway, what did I mean by "living"? That is exactly what I would have liked someone to tell me. This group and that spoke deftly, about the various happenings of life, never about what motivates those happenings.
As for the few philosophers, whose role it would have been to instruct me, I had known for some time what I could expect from them; whether mathematicians or Neo-Kantians, they kept as far away as possible from reality, which might disturb them, and were no more concerned with it than the algebraist is with the real existence of the quantities that he measures."
-and on what they were/should be (this one comes from a man who has already "learned" of real life as Michel now understands it to be:
"'Do you know what makes dead letters of poetry and especially philosophy today? It's because they're detached from life. Greece created idealism directly out of living reality; so that an artist's life was already a poetic accomplishemt in itself; a philosopher's life was an activation of his philosophy; so that, in addition, mingling with life instead of being unaware of one another, philosophy nourished poetry, poetry expressed philosophy, and they had remarkable powers of persuasion. Today beauty no longer acts, action is no longer concerned with being beautiful; and wisdom operates on its own.'"
and more about the same topic (ie: intellectuals in general):
"...most of them think they can't derive anything good from themselves except by restraint; they're only satisfied with themselves when they're disguised. Each one strives to resemble himself least of all. Each one chooses a pattern, then imitates it; in fact, they don't even choose the pattern they imitate, they accept one that's already chosen. And yet, I think, other things can be read in man. No one dares to. They don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation; I call them laws of fear. People are afraid of finding themselves alone, and they don't find themselves at all. This moral agoraphobia is hateful to me; it's the worst kind of cowardice. And yet it is only when alone that people are inventive. But who here is trying to be inventive? Whatever a man feels to be different in himself is precisely the rare thing he possesses, the thing that constitutes each man's wotrh - and it's that very thing they try to eradicate. They imitate. And they claim to love life!'"
-on culture:
"'...I depicted artistic culture as an emanation from a given people, like a secretion that at first is diagnostic of a plethora, a superabundance of health, then immediately co
ng
eals and hardens, cutting off all direct contact between the mind and nature, hiding the diminution of life beneath the persistent semblance of life, an unyielding sheath in which the confined spirit languishes and soon withers, then dies. Finally, carrying my train of thought to the extreme, I stated that culture, which is born of life, becomes the killer of life."
-this can't be the first time it was said, but:
"'A man thinks he owns things, and it's he who is owned..."
In all, this book is much more than a description of Michel's attempt to rid himself of morals. The word "morality" is used to express everything made by man and constrained by man's rules. Michel constantly bumps into these rules and by breaking them reaches a state of being he never expected to encounter. Alas, once there he finds that living without the rules is, while more pleasureable at times, more difficult by far than conforming. Where does the purpose of living come from if not from society? Searching for one's own answer to that question is perhaps the end in itself. I automatically distrust those who claim they've already found it (or at least more than partial bits of truth), isn't there always more? And I exit with a nod to Michel as he utters this last query to his listeners, a pessimistic ending if ever, but one that reveals that for all of Michel's so-called immorality, he still bears some burden, if not quite guilt, for his knowledge.
"What frightens me, I confess, is that I'm still very young. I sometimes feel as if my real life hasn't begun yet. Rescue me from this place now and give me reasons for living. I can no longer find any. I've won freedom, possibly, but what for? I'm suffering from this freedom that has no purpose. Believe me, it's not because I'm worn out by my crime, if you wish to call it that - but I must prove to myself that I didn't claim more than what was due to me."
Permalink: Another_entry_about_a_book.html
Words: 1007
Location: Buffalo, NY
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