May 2012
3 posts
“We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But...”
– Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”
Go read the whole damned thing.
(via inothernews)
April 2012
27 posts
Listen
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“Total outstanding student loan debt in America is expected to exceed $1 TRILLION...”
– http://hr4170.com/
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“The Occupy movement has raised important questions about rising inequality, and...”
– We’re chatting live with Harvard’s Michael Sandel about capitalism and morality. Come join us. (via cheatsheet)
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Suggested reading from my father: "How Romney Can...
Another email from my conservative father with a link to a story that he feels would enlighten me. (See: What Would Clint Eastwood Do?)
Girls: Here’s an article by Karl Rove in todays Wall St Journal. Of course he writes from a partisan position, but this column provides some interesting numbers to consider as you are coming to grips with how much you pay in taxes, and just how much...
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Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? - The Atlantic →
Another article supporting my decision to quit Facebook. “We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are….
It’s a lonely business, wandering the labyrinths of our friends’ and pseudo-friends’ projected identities, trying to figure out what part of ourselves we ought to project, who will listen, and what they will hear.
Our omnipresent new...
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OkCupid Gone Wrong: “It's not always sunny with me...
So, I recently reactivated my OkCupid account after a long period of dormancy, and WOW there sure are some psychos on there.
Most notably, the English-as-a-second-language sharp-toothed-cackling-clown dreamer of a boy who got overly emotional and impatient with me and then demanded culture lessons on threat of violence.
For your reading pleasure:
March 15
Him: What were you doing last fall in...
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The "Ashley Wilkes" Man
Attracts you with the whiff romantic possibility, but never fully consummates
Embodies some sort of idealized virtue that you want to posses—what you see in him is what you’d like to see in and of yourself
The coolness of his nature (passion, boldness, etc) burns at a level lower than yourself
Couples up with the safe choice
Unavailable
All of this (and more) are characteristics...
March 2012
13 posts
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“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but...”
– Milan Kundera, Immortality (via weepling)
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Montaigne--I like this guy
I am currently reading, among other things, Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, and liking it and him—Montaigne—a lot. Although I’ve barely begun, there have been a few snippets of text that have stuck out that I thought I’d share.
If you become depressed or bored…, he advised, just look around...
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“There has never been any question as to your “value” as a...”
– F. Scott to Zelda
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Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also...
Bad Adjectives To Use At A Wine Tasting
meganamram:
Curdled
Chubby
Shrimp-flavored
Like white wine but red
Boiling
Deep-dish
Circumcised
Like bad wine
Black
Tastes like what I had as a kid in the orphanage
Wife material
Like booze-gravy
Winey
Gay
“Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Essays From the Edge: The Jazz Age novelist’s chronicle of his mental collapse, much derided by his critics, anticipated the rise of autobiographical writing in America
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WatchMy step-mom thinks that this woman’s hard-knock life story might resonate with me. That deserves an LOL if ever. (I find humor especially in the part where Trina details the mental abuse from her mother.)
“Sixties counterculture made it an icon of all that was wrong with Amerika, and...”
– On white bread, an article by Aaron Bobrow-Strain.
Thoughts: I remember when my now-roommate first moved into my old apartment in Carroll Gardens and we all were shocked to see Wonderbread in the fridge. Who was this girl? She was from the land of Iowa.
Do you judge people by the bread they...
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February 2012
9 posts
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Sa Ta Na Ma—My February Meditation
This...
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Those.Dots.Mean.Nothing.FYI...
Every so often over the past few years I have received errant emails obviously not meant for me, but clearly addressed to me. The first and last name would be correct, so would the email handle, minus the dot (.) I put in the middle. Sometimes they would be invitations to go tubing in Texas with Bill, Sue and the gang. Other times they would be shipment notifications from Jewelry Television or the...
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thejuliedaniel asked: Would you rather have 5 foot long arm pit hair that you could never cut, or an eyebrow all over your face that you could never shave, pluck or wax?
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projectklove asked: Hey Bear. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on how to successfully court an office crush. One that other coworkers are clearly pursuing as well. Maybe you have some experience.
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What Would Clint Eastwood Do?
Today I got the following email from my father, who had sent it out to each of his three daughters along with a link a WSJ article
Girls: I guess I’m getting more and more like Grandma … but in digital form: she used to send me letters stuffed with articles she had clipped out that she thought would be good for me (many from the Baptist Standard magazine), and as I look back on it,...