List of Lists

1. List of government encyclopedias of ethical failure
2. List of top 7 comedy podcasts
3. List of top 20 hurricane names starting with b
4. List of top 13 Italian apertifs
5. List of top 8 frozen french-fry brands
6. List of 32 vacation spots in the southern hemisphere
7. List of nonfatal hairspray accidents
8. List of Hollywood actors named Gene
9. List of international sports bureaucrats convicted of corruption
10. List of books read by President William Jefferson Clinton
11. List of ethical questions inspired by cricket matches
12. List of charities providing address labels more than biannually
13. List of lists of lists
14. List of sports websites
15. List of fictional dentists
16. List of incorrect horoscope predictions
17. List of chess puzzles solved by computers
18. List of future accounting conferences
19. List of yet-to-be-conceived artworks
20. List of French Elvis impersonators
21. List of Dilbert books
22. List of decisions made by Chicago police chiefs
23. List of decommissioned summer camps
24. List of hat manufacturers
25. List of broken mirrors
26. List of audio cues
27. List of deceased Malaysian film directors

Soft & Chewy Candy

The beat goes on. The great job search of 2011 goes on. The chaos in Libya goes on. Other people keep having conversations, and I can't focus on what I'm doing because of how highly attuned I am to their topics. Maybe I should start interrupting. That might not go over so well.

The lady serving me clam chowder today in Ipswich asked if I was okay. Do I look like I'm not okay? I might ask you the same question. Better, I might ask it of your chowder, which often has bits of sand in it. Maybe that's how you know they're real clams.

Can an outside chance of something happening ever be turned into an inside chance?

If this whole enterprise doesn't make sense to you, understand that you're not alone. I am alone with these thoughts. Your choices are to pity me or envy me, which will it be?

I wrote up to three jokes on the train today, while closely monitoring the conversation happening in the seat next to me. Are they worthy?

The battery level monitor on my computer is lying. It also defiantly notes that it is (plugged in, not charging). Why should I even offer you the pleasure of direct connection to current? It is wasted on you, voltaic pile of garbage.

Scrabble in Hausa.

INVERT SUGAR

This is a poem I'm working on eventually:

This was the fear they scooped out of Admiral Ackbar's head

It had concessions made to it

It was real, like xenotransplantation or peach trees

Don't steal it.

A Fat Free Food!

"True love is priceless. For true love we pay a price. There's nothing can keep me from loving you, not fire, not ice." -B. Harper

cryptic, now is it?

Try as I might, I would be unable for some time to commit to a serious regime of verbal economies.
I had been warned that as a rule, one should beware of people who treated others according to a sliding scale of preference and status. A person wholly kind and honorable will treat everyone with kindness and honor, so this line of thinking went. Aren't we always, though, making exceptions to rules, for ourselves and for those we want to love? So I now saw her through this lens. That, and she was something of a fabulist. She only did it sometimes, I covered. Andrea is different, though. This assertion I have based entire worlds on, worlds. She really is genuinely nice. This could not be denied, either, for based on it were other worlds, presumptions, years of life tenderly lived in advance. These were not to be undone under any circumstances. She's not an airhead, she's substantial, unlikely to float away on an unfortunately timed thermal. This is no joke, either, I am not what's called an unreliable narrator. Self-deceit is for the birds.
I would say I was proud of being a good soldier for her, but that wasn't really the case; I didn't need to be the good soldier because I wasn't even thinking about it very much. She crossed the street, and looking back, smiled and waved again. Her smile is close to me, always.

An afternoon spent laughing

-We'll start with a quotation of one of Barthes' parenthetical references which struck me:

(A squeeze of the hand -- enormous documentation -- a tiny gesture within the palm, a knee which doesn't move away, an arm extended, as if quite naturally, along the back of a sofa and against which the other's head gradually comes to rest -- this is the paradisiac realm of subtle and clandestine signs: a kind of festival not of the senses but of meaning.)

This is from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes, published in 1978. It's an amazing book. It describes in minute detail all the sensations of being in love, simultaneously from a detached philosophical perspective and from the perspective of one who has been in love. Barthes has been a lover, but is viewing love in a cold, dispassionate, academic manner. The juxtaposition of the two within the book is fascinating.

-The way it feels to wake up an hour before the real post-time, and put a pillow over your head, with utmost confidence that you'll be able to get back to sleep. So much confidence that you don't know you have confidence in it; you experience it as knowing you'll get back to sleep, as a fact. How many things can we really know with this kind of certainty? These moments are valuable when they happen, because they are so rare.

-Feeling of waking up in a cluttered, dirty apartment, wondering mostly why? Why bother with all this again? This feeling had passed by the time I was showered and getting dressed, but I remembered the panic there was in it. Not getting anywhere is what it felt like. This coffee cup I left on the corner of my desk was there when I went to bed last night, it is still here this morning; Nothing ever changes, nothing I do means anything. I don't know why the feeling passed so quickly but I was happy to let it go. Something in the bustle and work of getting dressed and ready to leave felt significant enough to reassure my nervous heart.

-Heaven help me, but the best thing I did yesterday was to let myself pass out at 11. I always wake up too early on Saturday anyways. This time I was prepared, though. Woke up at 6:30 feeling well rested, and I thought it had to be about 10 until I looked at the clock. Went back to sleep until 7:45, when I woke up with about 8 and a half hours of sleep under my belt (It's only 11:30 right now, and I've been up for four hours. What a lark!). It felt great, and it makes for a day of limitless potential, which I will now proceed to squander.

-Emptiness of the train seat that was full a minute before. Now, sun shines freely through a window that had been obstructed by the face of a stranger. She is gone now, to God knows where. I'm almost sad to see her seat unfilled. I had nothing to do with her, why do I grieve her absence? Is it that any trace of a loss hurts us as humans? Was it the way the light fell, that it just looked sad? I don't know, but it hurt me that she was gone. Human emotions are baffling.

[semi-appropriate lyrics that I was thinking about on the train while pondering the above incident:]

The person across from me, sitting in her train seat, reminded me of you.

And I looked out, past her cheeks, through the glass light conduit. The sun had sunk, disappeared into New Jersey; Oh why don't they have phones on these things?

What can I do? I'm stuck thinking about you.

Did you know my sweet, yeah that I once took the liberty of watching you in your sleep?

Coyness is nice, and coyness can stop you from saying all the things in life you'd like to

May was a momentous month. It was long, hard sometimes, easy others, pretty. I liked you, May of 2010, you were solid. Thanks for the memories.

This is basically just to keep up with my self-imposed baseline of 10 posts per month for 2010, but I was hoping to maybe stumble on some truth in the process. Doesn't look like I've succeeded, does it?

I bought four books at the Rodney's closing sale yesterday. The titles:

-The Rising Sun in the Pacific 1931 - April 1942 (History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, volume 3) by Samuel Eliot Morison

-Salvation in Death by "J.D. Robb"

-Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game by John Feinstein and Red Auerbach

-War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean January 1943 - May 1945 by Harold Macmillan

I bought the Morison volume because it was a pretty nice hardcover edition and I had previously done a book review paper on his Leyte Gulf volume from the same series. His stuff is very readable and heavy on facts, so it seemed like something worth having around, to get to sooner or later. I bought the "J.D. Robb" book as a joke, mainly to tell A that I bought it next time I talk to her, so we can laugh about Nora Roberts and her insane productivity. Yes, I am the kind of person who drops two dollars on a paperback "futuristic suspense" novel just to use it as a conversation piece. So sue me. Also, I had noticed that the book makes a pathetic, mainly symbolic attempt at playing it coy about the true identity of its author. I quote: "J.D. Robb is the pseudonym for the number one New York Times bestselling author of more than 170 novels including the futuristic suspense In Death series. There are more than 300 million copies of her books in print." As if there is anyone who would buy this book and not know who actually wrote it. Plus it says copyright Nora Roberts 2008 inside the front cover. Don't insult my intelligence by still attempting to maintain the facade that your about the author section could still deceive people. The Red Auerbach book I bought because he's bound to have tons of really good stories, and the guy is one of a kind. There could never possibly be another Red Auerbach. I bought Harold Macmillan at least in part because everything in the store was fifty percent off. Exactly what do I have to lose in buying an enormous volume of per·spic·u·ous·ly detailed diaries of life and war in the Mediterranean during the years 1943-1945? Space in my already cramped apartment, you might say. Well so be it.

Did I mention that every book in the store was fifty percent off?

I'll leave you with a spot of appropriate Housman, the first two and last verses of "The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux". Good luck in June.

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of your little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

...

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

More Adventurous

I felt the wind on my cheek coming down from the east
And thought about how we are all as numerous as leaves on trees
And maybe ours is the cause of all mankind
Give love to make more, try to stay alive
-Rilo Kiley

Eyes of an angel

I like to lose myself in these pop songs and little poems. Remember what it feels like to be lost? Pour yourself into something bigger; that's dangerous, you might get swallowed up in another. Forget who you were when you started. Isn't that everything we do? Give ourselves away to get someone's self back in return.

I dreamed you paid your dues in Canada

Random thoughts on Thursday evening:

-I'm quite familiar, from my train commute, with a very narrow swathe of Eastern Massachusetts. I'm quite familiar, from my whole life up to this point, with a much larger swathe of the same.

-If the world is fallin' down, it may as well crash with me.

-I've never completely understood the phenomenon of people hanging out in bars. It's cheaper to drink at home and you don't have to be surrounded by a crowd of sweaty strangers. No-brainer, right? Is it just that they make really good settings for sit-coms?

-Never knew until this year how good Brussels sprouts and plantains are. Where have you guys been all my life?

-Once you quit making excuses for yourself, losing weight is much easier. Obviously I'm young and it's easier for me than someone say 25 years older, but still, once you stop all the rationalizing and get into some good habits, losing weight isn't the hardest thing to do.

-I'm really not comfortable with people cursing out loud in public places. It's still so off-putting to me. Not that it offends me personally, but I'm offended on behalf of the sanctity of a public place. And embarrassed on behalf of the person doing the cursing. You really do come off looking like a fool when you do that. And I'm not a prude, but it is offensive. We have certain standards in our culture. When you go and curse all the time within earshot of the polite, reasonable people who are simply going about their business, you are breaking the rules and lowering the bar for everyone.

-Went for a fantastic run today at the Appleton Estate. Treadmills are very convenient and all, but they can't hold a candle to a nice hard run in the woods on a brisk spring day. This in spite of the heavy odor of manure.

-It's good to be alive.