Ah, the internet.

Artist Ahmad Sabbagh has his own take on Muammar Qaddafi's claim that he and Queen Elizabeth II are just two peas in a pod.

"To avoid complications, she never kept the same address. In conversation, she spoke just like a baroness." (incidentally, Queen was the first rock band whose music was permitted in Iran. Sometimes the world just hands it to you [and yes, I just put a link in a caption {and a set of brackets inside of parentheses}. What of it?], you know?)

A message from this blog.

Something's changed around here. According to the Google tracker, my traffic's gone up in recent weeks. In fact, it's gone up dramatically in the past few days. And since I mostly stare in dumb amusement at the map showing where my readers check in from, what I'm struck most by is how geographically dispersed this new readership is. I've got readers in Texas! China! Russia! Belgium! Egypt!

What can it all mean? Are you new readers interested in anecdotes about time spent in North Africa? Do you want to know what I think of labor disputes in Wisconsin? Perhaps you'd like to read one of my few attempts to act like an academic blog.

Oh, God. I hope you're not here to mock! I mean, what if you're reading this right now and snickering at my prose, guffawing at the reductive simplicity of my ideas, the lack of originality in my design? Maybe that's what it is! Perhaps you came here just to see how bad a blog I really am!

Or maybe...

Give me validation!

Maybe you like me. Maybe, right now, you like me. Maybe you really like me!

In any case, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Thoreau as blogger.

From Walden, chapter 1:

“We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”

Don't let me down.

According to the widget that lets me read the readers of this blog, one of the search terms that leads people here via google is "perennial disappointment." This has yielded exactly one visit, which lasted 0:00 minutes. It appears that, in this case, google led to exactly what was requested.

Why I ♥ the internet.

The internet is useful. This is, I think, pretty generally accepted. Yet, despite my own dependence on the utility of this wondrous series of tubes for pretty much everything, I think I only really love the internet at its most useless. The frivolous internet has the capacity to delight me in three ways: by providing hilariously wrong information, by answering questions I would never care to ask, and by informing me of my membership in communities I would never seek on my own. Does any of this improve my work or my quality of life? No. But sometimes it improves my day.

Here's what I mean...

I found this gem of wikipedia vandalism a few days ago and captured it before the fact police got to it:

Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. His sermons such as "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" inspired his parishioners to coin what has now become an American colloquialism: "Ain't no sermon like a J. Edwards sermon, 'cause dem J. Edwards sermons don' stop."

I also found this blog, which is dedicated to a largely unpopular food which I've always quietly enjoyed: http://www.sardinesociety.com/

And finally, did you know that Andy Griffith once played Sir Walter Raleigh in a film titled The Lost Colony? Neither did I, but I do now.

Hey there.

Yesterday a friend informed me that, since I've linked to her blog, five of my readers have migrated over to read the tales of her Parisian escapades. This delights me for three reasons: First, her blog is a lot of fun and certainly deserves its audience. Second, I had no idea such information was traceable, and promptly set about finding a similar module for my own blog so that I can better track the demographics of the people of Bloglandia. Third, it appears that I have at least five readers! That's excellent news!

So, to anyone reading this, hello and thank you for stopping by. I will try my best not to bore you, but if I do, you may notice that to the right of the page there's a list of blogs by people with intelligent, funny, interesting, and useful things to say. Check them out (and then maybe come on back later).

I'm avoiding work, so here's a list.

Following up on the previous entry's postscript, I'd like to submit for your perusal a list of things experienced in the past week that make me want to punch Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor in the face*. Let me know if I've neglected to mention anything important.

- the Republican Party.
- the Democratic Party.
- mealy apples.
- my loud neighbors and their weird schedules.
- the shoddy construction of my building, which makes my neighbors seem louder than they actually are (I can hear them pissing).
- Julia Roberts.
- The Castaway, starring Tom Hanks.
- students who want to talk about Ayn Rand.
- the Portuguese national soccer team's inability to win a major tournament despite consistently having some of the best players in the world.
- Ed Hardy clothing and the people who wear it.
- Newport Beach bars and clubs.
- Irvine. The whole thing.
- Pat Robertson.
- Rush Limbaugh.
- broken traffic lights.
- Che Guevara t-shirts.
- Che Guevara t-shirt parodies.
- people who get visibly offended by Che Guevara t-shirts or Che Guevara t-shirt parodies.
- Glenn Beck.
- Keith Olbermann.
- Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
- the fact that my iPod is broken.
- stomach issues.
- sleep issues.
- car issues.
- money (or lack thereof).
- health insurance deductibles.
- John Boehner's "tan".
- Eric Cantor's smug, stupid face.

*disclaimer: I don't actually want to punch this clown in the face. He just happens to be a perfect distillation of everything I hate about our species.

The blog that wasn't there.

It appears that this blog has hit its inevitable identity crisis. That's not to say that I've run out of things to say, but that any attempt to organize a statement into a well-formulated journal entry has been thwarted by my "real" work on one hand and summer lethargy on the other. And therein lies the identity crisis: I didn't necessarily start this up to post well-formulated journal entries complete with citations and in-depth analysis, unless, by chance, such entries happened to be immediately possible and convenient. When this blog was more active, I was just as happy making quick observations as I was launching into involved political diatribes or musing about my hometown. The point was just to keep writing, to keep thinking, and I didn't quite accomplish either this summer.

But it's fall now, so...forward.

An unintended hiatus.

I was recently told by a dear friend that if I claim to have an active blog, I'd better at least have an entry posted during the current year. I think he's right, but I've also got student papers to grade, a seminar paper to write, taxes to file, applications to complete, and a series of exam lists to compile. 2009 started badly for me and, although things have actually begun to look up, there is not enough time in a day to do the things that I need/want/hope to get done. So here is my first blog of 2009. Consider it (assuming I still have readers) a written vow to put down my thoughts more frequently.

And now, in case you have not yet seen it, I give you Bobby Jindal as the GOP's human sacrifice. Poor guy.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Small world.

Over a year ago (July 28, 2007) I found myself in an enviable position: having joined a friend on a cross-country drive from Brooklyn to Oakland, I was given the opportunity to take in both days of the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival from onstage in Randall's Island, NY. During Wu-Tang Clan's first day set, I clicked the following photo:


I realize it's a terrible shot, but it was taken merely as a souvenir of where I stood during an incredible show. There were quite a few people onstage at the time, several of whom appeared to be professional photographers and individuals with press passes. I was rather shocked just to be there, and didn't exactly jostle for position when it came to taking pictures. A few days ago, during some random clicking that stemmed from a search for who knows what, I came across the Flickr album of a photographer who apparently stood a few feet to my left and captured a much better shot of the same moment:

photo credit: "Undisputed Wes"

I don't have anything terribly interesting to say about this. I just got a kick out of it.

"...words from the heavy set..."

The last blog I put up was posted at 3:32 this morning. Had I been more lucid I would not likely have typed it the way that I did. I certainly wouldn't have admitted to ogling a stripper that went to my high school, but hey, that's how it goes when you can't sleep.

I was up, I think, because of allergies. I haven't the slightest clue what I'm allergic to, but for a week now something has been causing me to sneeze and cough throughout the night and then wake up with a sore throat in the morning. Yesterday one of my coughs was apparently a bit past my throat's limit, causing irritation that resulted in a pretty bad coughing fit that didn't let up until around 5 am.

It was around 8 pm when I got home from the Chariot Festival and I was exhausted. I was thrilled by the prospect of getting to bed early and being productive. I was going to get a full night's sleep and wake up at six. I was going to go to the gym (belly's going soft), I was going to do quite a bit of reading, I was going to type something thoughtful on here about the recent uproar over Obama "playing the race card." But I didn't sleep. I coughed. I got up and typed a blog about Venice Beach. I tried to sleep, but just coughed more. I gargled hot water with salt, drank chamomile tea, tried sleeping sitting up.

I woke this morning with a swollen throat, having slept about three hours. I paid my rent, and I've been a zombie ever since. So now I'm turning my phone off and hoping that tomorrow I can be a real human being again.

91°F

Ninety-one degrees outside. Not a whole lot cooler inside, and yet I've got a paper to write on secularization, political theology, bodies natural and politic, legal fictions, magical language...
I don't know what I'm writing about, frankly, because I can't formulate a thought. Tubes are popping and crackling inside my skull as though somebody just turned off an old TV, no amount of water helps, fans aren't doing the job. So I covered the windows in my bedroom with foil, cooling the temperature significantly so that maybe--maybe--I can actually get some work done today. My apartment looks like a tweaker pad, and inside this den of iniquity I'll be trying frantically to pound out the last paper of my first year of graduate school.
First, though, I'm going to finish watching this game between Spain and Italy. European Cup quarterfinals. Tied 0-0 in the second overtime period. I hate the Italian team and, fully admitting that sour grapes play an important role in my distaste, I just want them out of this tournament. Now.
In related news, the commentators keep trying to wax poetic, dropping amusing, badly-placed literary references from time to time. Two gems from this game:
(1) Regarding the timing of the game and its impressive matchup: "Truly a midsummer night's dream."
(2) Discussing the fact that the oldest teams (France and Sweden), both with several players approaching their early forties, were disqualified in the first round of the tournament: "Switzerland has proven to be no country for old men."
The last line was delivered by an Irishman, so I'm going to pretend that he's actually making a Yeats reference. It's a comforting illusion.

Season opener.

This is simply an opening blog to see how it works. I have never been a faithful journal-keeper, though I've always wished I were. Perhaps my internet time-wasting habits will manifest themselves in chronicling my life and thoughts from now on. We'll see.