Awesome

I begin calmly, though my voice may rise as I go along. Sometimes it seems as if things could instantly be altogether different and more admirable. The times be damned, on still wants a man vigorous, confident, bold, resourceful, adjective, and adjective. One still wants a woman spirited, spacious of heart, loyal, gentle, adjective, adjective. That man and that woman are as possible as the ones in this miserable story, and a good deal realer. It's as if they live in some room of our house that we can't find the door to, though it's so close we can hear echoes of their voices. Experience has made them wise instead of bitter; knowledge has mellowed instead of souring them; in their forties and fifties, even in their sixties, they're gayer and stronger and more authentic than they were in their twenties; for the twenty-year-olds they have only affectionate sympathy. So? Why aren't the couple in this story that man and woman, so easy to imagine? God, but I am surfeited with clever irony! Ill of sickness! Parallel phrase to wrap up series! This last-resort idea, it's dead in the womb, excuse the figure. A false pregnancy, excuse the figure. God damn me though if that's entirely my fault. Acknowledge your complicity. As you see, I'm trying to do something about the present mess; hence this story. Adjective in the noun! Don't lose your composure. You tell me it's self-defeating to talk about it instead of just up and doing it; but to acknowledge what I'm doing while I'm doing it is exactly the point. Self-defeat implies a victor, and who do you suppose it is, if not left blank? That's the only victory left. Right? Forward! Eyes open.

----

From "Title", a short story reprinted in John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse".

Yaz.

Jazz festival.

Saturday and Sunday night.

Piedmont Park.

Free.

Interested? Call or email me before 7 tomorrow.

My Hump

Me: With sex, I'm like a camel.
Adam: You have lots of humps?

Grades, Summer, Writing

Got my grades back, B-ish in everything. I'm a bit annoyed that I only got a B+ in Creative writing. The class seems so trivial, and the grading system used entirely arbitrary. I might try taking a writing class at State in a few semesters, but I have a feeling that writing isn't one of those skills that can be taught easily. Sometimes I worry that I'm trying to bypass some crucial and very basic stage of writing, move straight to something that actually matters, but then I spent a few mental moments cussing, and everything's okay again.

Something I've figured out about the type of writing that works for me - I really hate any conjugation of the verb "to be". Seems to slow writing down.

Trying to keep myself occupied over the summer, really want to spend some time sitting on rooftops.

I've been reading a lot of Hemingway's short stories lately. He's pretty cool, and a very strange thing to be reading right after Kundera's "Book of Laughter and Forgetting".

I'm never quite sure what to make of Kundera. I really enjoy many of the stylistic elements of his writing, but something about the guy bugs me. It's like the bastard's cheating.

I'm still working on writing something which isn't crap. It's a slow and painful process.

That my imagination...

I made the mistake of looking up the lyrics for "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" (one of my top 10 favorite songs), and now the thing's stuck in my head. I've been slow dancing with my cat all afternoon.

She is very irate.

Gives me all your Moneys

Actually, I might need a job. Current prospects: dancing in a banana suit. Pays 12.50 an hour!

The Opposite of Drunk is not Better than Drunk

q: how many cups of coffee did I have?

a: lots.

I think I'm going to do this New Orleans trip that Oglethorpe's sponsoring. You should do it too. They have scholarships.

Last time I went on the trip, I didn't really get the writing inspiration I expected. The opposite, actually. This may have been based on the lack of good pens and graph paper.

My Favorite Writing Aids:

- Good black thin point pen
- Graph paper (tiny squares)
- Whiskey
- Sleeplessness
- The five minutes between being awake and falling asleep
- Rain (pounding)
- Naked girls
- Rum (only when combined w/ energy drink)
- Cigarette smoke (other people's)
- Coffee

CORE!

My paper question for Core 202: What is your conception of the human nature? On the basis of this conception of human nature, what is the best achievable social order?

My first few sentences:

Many social theorists and philosophers write about their conceptions of human nature. These conceptions each share a common problem: they are closer to the author’s dream of human nature than to actual reality. Even authors who are conscious of their bias, like Nietzsche, tend to quickly abandon their attempts to discern and describe true human nature. I find myself running into this same problem as I try to build my theory of “life, the universe, and everything”. Human nature is hard to describe. People do stupid things for stupid reasons. Any attempt to describe human nature will be forced to ignore some of these irrationalities, plucking the most commonly repeated patterns of thought from the small fraction of observed life, building something which will at best describe only a small part of the motivations and consequences of human nature. So, I’ll be attempting to describe human nature as cynically as possible. I’ll try to focus on the stupidities and illusions we develop, as I find these things provide a much greater motivation than any “big concepts” ever could.

Blah Blah Blah Materialist Dialectic

I'm hungry, and I really want to take some theory classes. Also, I think I'm either becoming better at writing papers, or better at writing bullshit.

Things I Don't Like, pt 2

Sticky fingers, glasses, sand in my shoe, poetry, creaky leather, hats, that headache you get from tto much or too little coffee, hymns, ice in my mouth, sweatpants, mangy cats, chalk, playing foursquare with only four people, receiving gifts, cake which is mainly frosting, swimming in the morning, wind which tosses sand in my eyes, leaches, pine trees, lists, "hoodies", grammer, laptop mice, direct lighting, plastic, new condominiums, ants eating my food, pants that don't fit, greasy silverware, goths, split tongues, visgoths, the Japanese educational system, Maoists, and flat tires.