Tag: reflections

Looks like fun, right? Probably. But a tube of powdered candy of that size might as well be a loaded gun. It’s frickin dangerous. I know.

When I was thirteen and tried putting the whole mega-Pixie Stick worth of flavored sugar in my mouth, I laughed and inhaled and the moisture in my throat hardened the sugar into a moist sugar ball lodged squarely in my trachea.

One my friends knew the Heimlich maneuver and managed to dislodge the bright blue coagulation into a psychedelic pool of vibrantly scarlet regurgitated Big Red Cola. It was the last time I touched either Pixie Stix or Big Red.

It wasn’t my time but I think, when I’m ready, that is exactly how I want to go.

Only once in my life have I lost my keys and returned home late at night and found myself in a situation where I needed to climb my apartment building’s back-alley fire escape and "break in" to my own apartment.

Only once in my life has there been a Hollywood movie, complete with cameras, floodlights, and dozens of people, being shot in my building’s back alley.

In an ideal world, they would have fallen on different nights.

I was speaking to a friend last week and I said managed to mangle a sentence and confuse the words "prostate" (the urinary gland) and "prostrate" (lying down). That little ‘r’ makes a big difference. A little searching on google shows that many other people have made similar error:

• "When Allah commanded him to prostate himself before Adam, he refused."
• "Unfortunately, Jim will never prostate himself low or long enough to satisfy the disturbance he caused with his First Class client."
• "Bush needs to crawl back to the UN & prostate himself NOW."
• "We could go on about countless Christian horror stories where grown adults fall prostate on the altar of Jesus and plead."

I’m not exactly sure what any of these sentences mean but I’m having a fun time imagining.

All of the buildings I’ve lived in (not counting dorms at college), are simply called by their numbers and street name. Swanky buildings have names. Really swanky buildings have names with definite articles like, The Ellington, or The Market Steps. If they’re ultimately swanky, they get to name the street or place where they are located and then call themselves something like One Liberty Plaza — with "One" written out.

My friend Lizard lives in what appears to be a great building. You can tell because it’s called The Centennial. I was thinking it would be a great place to live until I, like everyone who entered or exited the building that weekend, saw this in the building’s entrance:

Cruel.

Even with a definite article, I would never want to live in a building with managers who tempt and torture their tenants like this.

Yesterday, I bought a book called "Animal Weapons" by Philip Street at the Strand.

I used it to kill a cockroach.

Today, I removed the word "tetrinet" from the list of highlighted words in my IRC client.

It’s the end of a (slightly less productive) era.

I usually only shower ever day or two unless I am sweaty, dirty, or smell bad. This seems very sensible to me.

Several days ago, under criticism by Mika, I defended this behavior by arguing that the fall of the Roman Empire was brought on by the fact that Romans took too many baths. Now many people argue that Roman decadence, of which Roman baths are a major example, was a leading cause of the fall but I used the term "bath" quite literally.

I argued that the Romans were overzealous bathers and we’d be wise to learn from them if I intend to avoid their fate.

The truth aside, I thought this was an excellent argument.

Normally, I do not publicly make fun of my girlfriend or mother.

It is only with that disclaimer that I present pictures of myself wearing this hat designed by my girlfriend and knit by mother. I’m not sure which one to thank for this bold fashion statement.

…maybe the punk-rock muppet toupee look is popular in Europe.

I once met someone who thought that Chlamydia would be a pretty name for a baby girl.

A few years ago, I bought what I thought was a tea strainer from a Chinese restaurant supply store. Yesterday, I saw a similar tea strainer being used to filter cigarette butts and other solids in a urinal in a Chinese restaurant.

I’m slightly worried about this. Either this restaurant has repurposed a tea strainer as a urinal filter or I have repurposed a urinal filter as a tea strainer.

Sorry for the papal double-header but I’ve read a number of interesting things in articles on the pope recently. One was this comment:

Popes cannot delegate some things, including their ability to pronounce with infallibility on matters of doctrine.

Imagine if popes could delegate infallibility.

I don’t think I’d want this for two reasons. First, I learn a lot from my mistakes. Being wrong is an important part of human growth and think the less infallible people we have, the better.

Second (and excuse the Disney reference), it reminds me a little bit of the trap that Jafar fell into at the end of Aladdin when he tried extend his ultimate power by gaining the ability to delegate that power. He ended up stuck in a lamp. I don’t wish that on anybody.

I noticed a series of articles (here’s one example) about the ailing pope that were all based off a single AP article. I know because they all used this phrase:

With the pope hospitalized, most of the Vatican’s day-to-day operation are handled by the Curia: a well-oiled bureaucracy with centuries old roots.

Each time I read this, I reflected on the fact that they are not only well-oiled in the sense that their operation runs smoothly and without metaphorical friction, but also because they are all high ranking church officials who have doubtlessly been anointed several times and are, quite literally, well-oiled.

I want to learn to speak and understand Greek fluently so I can say, "that’s Greek to me," to mean that I know something extremely well.

I wouldn’t mind knowing Greek either.

I read Daniel Silverstone’s recent blog entry and misread the phrase, "So what’s the use of falling in love?" as "So what’s the use of failing in love?"

In theory (and in theory, theory and practice are the same) copyright extends to expression but not to ideas. This is useful line to draw but (a) comes with a constantly revised list of exceptions and clarifications and (b) merely makes the difference between idea and expression (more) contested.

In any case, the distinction is a problematic one. I’ve always been intrigued by the way that similar, even identical, forms of expression can convey radically different ideas. I’m interested in deriving works through minimal, even programmatic, modifications that convey very different ideas — things that are unambiguously on the wrong side of copyright but perhaps shouldn’t be.

Which brings be back to failing in love…

One little regex and I’ve applied this same mistake to Elvis Presley’s I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You and created a new work I’m calling I Can’t Help Failing in Love With You:

Wise men say only fools rush in
But I can’t help failing in love with you
Shall I stay
Would it be a sin
If I can’t help failing in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can’t help failing in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can’t help failing in love with you
For I can’t help failing in love with you

I think it’s fantastic how a series of one letter changes, in my estimation at least, turns a love song into the quasi-suicidal lament of a man begging for death.

Elvis and Co.’s lawyers know where to find me.

I think it’s fun to pronounce "Jag" (short for Jaguar, the British car brand) the way you would in Spanish.

It sounds a whole lot like "hog," the nickname for Harley Davidson motorcycles, but I’ve found this confusion is of the Good Fun sort.