Finding the lightFinding the light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP7DCXIrY2E
Category: Verandah
For those moments when nothing else will doFor those moments when nothing else will do
Up above our headsUp above our heads
A fortuitous happenstanceA fortuitous happenstance
Some lads from LondonSome lads from London
Fifty years ago today, The Rolling Stones released their first record: a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV62UcqbcQA
Deconstructing the hegemonyDeconstructing the hegemony
Strike anywhereStrike anywhere
A tongue in which to speakA tongue in which to speak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVnW94Z2L8I
You figure out what’s importantYou figure out what’s important
“As you get older, you start to realize that what actually holds relationships together is just liking the other person in the relationship, wanting them to be around, feeling like they increase the value of your time and that you, despite your evil cursed nature, can do the same for them.” — Jeanne Thornton (interviewed in Bookslut)
Shake this houseShake this house
You make me dizzy, Miss LizzyYou make me dizzy, Miss Lizzy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV37BKk3Dr4
A break from dutyA break from duty
Look at that windmill, SanchoLook at that windmill, Sancho
“I see people who do not read: they are so limited in their lives, even in the good things. They do not see beyond their immediate surroundings; they are incapable of changing anything because they neither know what there is to change, nor how to go about it. They don’t understand other people, not even their own loved ones, because they do not have the habit of reflecting on the yearnings, motives, and passions of human beings. And whatever thing they experience makes much less sense than it does for someone who reads. Besides, what would a man see in the fields of La Mancha who does not know who Don Quixote is? Dusty roads, nothing more.” – Agustin Cadena, “Why I Read” (trans. Mayo)
Me an my friends, we was juss talkin about this yestidayMe an my friends, we was juss talkin about this yestiday
“Facebook can seem at times an enormous simulacrum of the Pussycat Lounge, full of voyeurism and cynical, semi-professional exhibitionism, but obviously the divide between performer and audience that structures the flow of money, power, pity, and contempt in strip clubs has been largely obliterated online. Instead, there is the ambiguous simultaneity of consuming and producing spectacle, of performing the self, of spectatorship as performance, in a medium that immediately allows you to substitute yourself for any performer with broadcast responses of your own. This stew of contradictory and self-negating impulses makes up what now often gets described simply as sharing. It’s sharing when we confess something; it’s sharing when we link to someone else’s work; it’s sharing when we simply express approval for something; it’s sharing when a social-media service automatically announces some action we took. Online we all have a million hearts to give.” – Rob Horning, “The Failure Addict”
Fooled youFooled you
“Art requires suffering, just not the kind you thought.” – Hugh Sheehy, “Getting Outside”
Outside the peanut galleryOutside the peanut gallery
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic: ‘Man in the Arena’”
Been that, done thereBeen that, done there
“When it comes to writing, the despairing perfectionism known as alcoholism can be as tragically inhibiting as it is sordid to witness.” – Terry Castle, “You Better Not Tell Me You Forgot”
Find some words that will make it interestingFind some words that will make it interesting
“It’s never enough to have lived through anything, you need to have a je ne se quoi about the way you put it into words.” – Michelle Tea, quoted by Jessa Crispin in “Sister Spit: Writings, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road”
Then there’s thisThen there’s this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9J2WAlN-0
Gotta git awayGotta git away
“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.” – Oliver Sacks, “Altered States”
Jump, jump, to the ones who came firstJump, jump, to the ones who came first
Pas auf!Pas auf!
“Most of the time, we try to tell ourselves ‘I’m confident’ or ‘I’m doing well.’ But then, in a moment alone at home, you feel how close you are to some kind of abyss.” – Christian Tetzlaff (quoted by Jeremy Eichler in “String Theorist”)
Sshhh… don’t tell anyoneSshhh… don’t tell anyone
“An artist is a monster that thinks it is human.” – Colson Whitehead, “A Psychotronic Childhood”
The normal sortThe normal sort
“A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.” – Colson Whitehead, “A Psychotronic Childhood”
Mira!Mira!
“Look at the history of innovation! If people don’t call you nuts, then you are doing something wrong.” – Peter Eisenberger (quoted by Michael Specter in “The Climate Fixers”)
Gone boxingGone boxing
“Only the boring are bored.” – Tommy Lee Jones (quoted by Meg Grant in “Fighting for Love”)
The promise that you don’t have to keepThe promise that you don’t have to keep
Happy New Year, you sweet Druid, youHappy New Year, you sweet Druid, you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kx8wGRNZX4&list=ALBTKoXRg38BD32LxD4xV3RePKu1nQIetB
Pardon me, but do you have the time?Pardon me, but do you have the time?
The Law of the LandThe Law of the Land
There is these days much discussion in the United States regarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The text of this amendment is short: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
There has been much debate over the years as to how this sentence is to be interpreted. The debate is now very prominent. It is now, as it generally has been, characterized by passion, anger, accusation, fear, and often no small amount of confusion.
I don’t know what we, as a nation, are to do. In the wake of the Newtown, Clackamas, and Aurora and other shootings, and against the background of constant gun violence–I read the front page of the Chicago Tribune nearly every day and it seems that city is under siege from gun violence–it is clear that we must do something.
It is important that what we do is as right as we can make it. Some people would ban private ownership of firearms altogether. Others would find some way to “amend the Amendment.” Still others will tell you that they will accept no change and that you “can pry their firearms from their cold, dead hands.” Somehow all, or the significant majority of, these people must be brought together in agreement for any change in current law to succeed.
It may be significant that the Second Amendment does not specify what type of arms the people have the right to keep and bear; nor does it specify what keeping and bearing may mean. I’m not trying to split hairs here. The flexibility available in defining these terms may be the key that unlocks the troubling question of what are we to do now?
I am of a military background, was raised in Texas, and have been a gun-owner since my father bought me my first rifle when I was fourteen. I was an officer cadet through all four years of high school, qualified on what was then the U.S. Army’s regulation bolt-action, single-shot .22-caliber target rifle, and fired the M1911 pistol, M16 assault rifle, and M60 machine gun during advanced training. I note this to demonstrate that I have a certain acquaintance with and knowledge of firearms.
It is forbidden in the United States for private citizens to own most types of military weaponry, including the M16 and the M60. The firearm I currently own is a .22-caliber bolt-action, magazine-fed rifle. What this means is that it does not fire a bullet every time I pull its trigger. It has to be operated with two hands in a simple but specific manner in order to fire a bullet. It could conceivably be operated with one hand, but this would be slow and unwieldy.
My point is that there are types of firearms that the citizenry is currently allowed to keep, and types that we are not allowed to keep. Semi-automatic firearms, which fire a bullet every time their trigger is pulled until they run out of bullets, and which can be and often are fired single-handedly, have been used in all the mass slaughters and are used in most urban gun violence. They are a type of firearm that, within certain restrictions, private citizens are currently allowed to own and use. It may well be time for us as a nation to consider semi-automatic weapons to be weapons which possess a power which should be reserved to the state and not placed in the hands of private citizens.