February 2012
1 post
I think that, pending a suitably fitting personality, I should one day name a cat Kermit and then always call him Kim. Then he would embody all the sweet domesticity of the muppet, all the mischief of Kipling’s protagonist and the man who orchestrated the Iranian coup of 1953, and have both one and two syllable options for when I call him. Yes, that would do nicely. I want a cat.
January 2012
1 post
December 2011
2 posts
“Fact is, this rivalry has so little on-field history that it rivals the Invasion...”
– some dude writing for Yahoo sports. And yet, you gave it a capital I. One paragraph in the history books is infinitely more than zero. History 1, sports 0.
(I can’t say ‘say that to Grenada,’ because the article was about New York, which has to be an order of magnitude bigger than...
November 2011
2 posts
“All of us around Stalin were temporary people. As long as he trusted us to a...”
– Nikita Khrushchev
October 2011
4 posts
In which James Blunt preserves the existing...
So as far as I knew when I woke up this morning, James Blunt is the guy who wrote that one song about how beautiful you are, which is a little catchy, though I always expect the final note of the chorus to do something more minor or interesting than it ends up doing. That was the extent to which he was relevant to my life. Then, I find out that he also has the following kickass claim to fame:
At...
“I am non-party, married, with a 5-year-old son. I work as an engineer and have...”
– An editorial printed in Izvestiia in May 1936, months before abortions, legal since the revolution of 1917, were banned in the USSR. The wheel on these ethical debates keeps on getting reinvented.
“We know that at this moment we do not yet have a communist system, and that it...”
– A. A. Solts, Communist Ethics. There you are, Dinah.
“Do not imagine that the Five-Year Plan is wholly the work of grown ups…The...”
– A Soviet elementary school book from 1931. So, toddler, what have you done with yourself lately?
September 2011
6 posts
“Thatcher was here yesterday. She was beautiful, extraordinary, feminine. It is...”
– Anatoly Chernyaev, aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, 1989
J.A.O.
So, Josef Stalin’s solution to the problem of dozens of non-Russian ethnic and national groups all existing within the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic was to give them each their own autonomous sub-republics on their hereditary lands. Probem: the Jews had no concentrated hereditary lands, because, well, we’ve historically had trouble holding onto those. Solution: The Jewish...
“Over the course of the 1990s in Russia, total direct investment amounted to just...”
– Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted
The following conversation just took place between Shelby, my director, and myself, her lighting designer:
Shelby: Just letting you know that Norvis said we don’t have a strobe and I think it seems unnecessary to pay/rent one. So work your party scene magic.
Me: What do you think about just playing some Ke$ha at the beginning of the party scene to set the mood, that’s what we did...
Discover just sent me an email with the subject line “regarding the recent disaster in your area.” There was no need to scare me like that, Discover. If you wanted to talk about Irene, I wish you had just said it outright, rather than leave me to panic, even for a few seconds, about what exactly my credit card-related disaster du jour might be.
August 2011
1 post
ants, man
Given, that ants can carry things 20 times heavier than they themselves are, and humans can only carry, say, a quarter of their own weight. That sounds impressive, but…well is it impressive?
How much you can carry is indeed correlated with how much you weigh, which is a function of volume, which increases cubically. Many things integral to the structural integrity of a living thing, like...
June 2011
6 posts
Just played some tennis with several older generations of Finkelsteins. Most of the tennis I’ve played has been the Nintendo variety, and there were a pleasant/uncomfortable number of occasions when I thought to myself, “this is just like Mario tennis!” Is that good?
And it turns out I rely on my backhand slice and my better-then-a-middle-aged-man speed, just like my homeboy...
my big b(r)other just came home and he WON'T...
я делаю что-то я хочу
May 2011
3 posts
do you know what i hate?
nowiknowwhatimean:
blogs that are completely made up of reblogs.
no original posts, no texts.
just over hyped, over edited reblogged photos.
“I’M EXPRESSING MYSELF THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S ART.”
fuck that.
March 2011
3 posts
Back at Wes, and found the long lost Ipod! This quarter is already showing promise.
“I think you listen too much to the soldiers. No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologian, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have the strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid...
I submitted my first real applications since college yesterday. Six of ‘em. I’m told I’m supposed to find a dozen things more before the day is out. That is just too many things; the nation’s ambitious need to take it easy so the rest of us can.
February 2011
5 posts
Political Fight Over Unions Escalates →
itoodislikeit:
Whoa, what country do we live in all of a sudden? What world, even?
Not that I’m saying unions are universally a force for good over evil, but it’s refreshing to see working-class Americans stand up three years into a recession caused by the rich collectively fleecing the rest of the country and announce that they’re tired of being kicked around. And it’s hard to argue against...
Word of the day.
eleemosynary adjective of, relating to, or dependent on charity; charitable.
This will come up. Ticket purchased for the pretension express.
I hurt
Saturday:
6 am: wake up.
8:30 am: arrive at volleyball tournament in Lincoln, Rhode Island
9 am-3:30 pm: play 4 volleyball matches
5 pm: get back to Wes
6:15 pm: Leave for frisbee tournament in Waldwick, New Jersey
8:30 pm: get there
9 pm-midnight: play 2 frisbee games
Sunday:
midnight-6 am: play 5 more frisbee games
9:30 am: get back to Wes.
Point being, I...
“The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they...”
– Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. One of a small number of his arguments that crosses over into non-economics land fairly readily.
“…so explain to me which aspect of Dollywood does NOT appeal to you?”
– random person at late night
January 2011
7 posts
Weekend thus far:
2PM: Classes end.
2PM-5PM: work on problem set that I already spent hours on, turn it in without totally satisfactory answers.
~5PM: Taran leaves to go ski, not back til Sunday.
5:02PM: Get immense cold chill as I push the door to leave the building where I turned in my problem set.
5:12-10PM: In bed sick and miserable.
Woo!
Watchitoodislikeit:
Marijuana catapult: posted for my little brudder.
(Way more fun than getting hit with other big, heavy, possibly on-fire catapult-ammo!)
That might seem anachronistic, but when you think about it, Mexico is basically devolving back into a feudal system, so in a way it’s kind of fitting.
Just got my first two tutoring assignments.
itoodislikeit:
One child is named after a Phonetician God/sub-Olympian figure of Greek myth. The other’s name is a sometimes-proper noun designating one’s position as a prominent member of a royal family.
I just decided that my children will have boring names. No judgment, just a choice.
I believe you mean Phoenician, unless you’re talking about some sort of super-human telethon worker....
“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. (via the-madame-hatter)
I don’t think anyone would willingly join a “fraternity of the indifferent,” or put out the effort to do so for that matter. Otherwise: point well taken, Dr. King.
(via itoodislikeit)
The point is absolutely well taken. But I don’t see why...
December 2010
2 posts
i love this friend so much.
nowiknowwhatimean:
Not the one in the picture. The one in that tiny line of text at the top. No, not that line, that line. There you go. Not me. Definitely not referring to myself in the third person on my own blog. I don’t care if it’s wednesday.
As I sit to finally start my project due in 5 hours, shuffle throws me “We Are Not Going To Make It.” My laptop would probably be the lead witness for that assertion, as the principle site of my procrastination. But fuck you. Let’s go.
November 2010
4 posts
everything old is new again.
nowiknowwhatimean:
went from 69 to 71 to 66 and back up to 69 followers, all in one week. this just shows that absolutely every element of my life is completely erratic and unpredictable.
Speaking from a standard deviation standpoint that is not really that variable. Let me know when you start oscillating between 71 followers and -4. Psht, some people would kill for that sample...
Inability to read directions strikes again, my paper is a day late despite the fact that I once again pumped that shit out in a continuous 14 hour block of time. And it would have been a 12 hour block if not for citations. 11 actually because I didn’t skip Russian. One of these days we’ll have to ask ourselves whether academic integrity is worth 15% efficiency loss.
Plus side: I found the $200 check I’d misplaced.
Minus side: I found it after I’d put it through the wash. No one actually reads all those numbers at the bottom, right?
How do you even get a new check, no one taught me in adult-school.
October 2010
4 posts
wait. wait. wait.
nowiknowwhatimean:
galeforce:
nowiknowwhatimean:
jake gyllenhaal and taylor swift are dating??
NO. NOT PERMITTED.
I agree. Who’s Jake Gyllenhaal?
only the most attractive actor ever birthed. ever.
You realize Taylor Swift is technically an actress now, right?
wait. wait. wait.
nowiknowwhatimean:
jake gyllenhaal and taylor swift are dating??
NO. NOT PERMITTED.
I agree. Who’s Jake Gyllenhaal?
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/05/seaweed-wool-m... →
Dinah, you can go be a shepherd now! Wool’s gonna be in demand.