Never Happen Here

Things are happening in Spain, but I guess it is the summer semester, as BLCKDGRD keeps saying, so only a few people are on campus.

Me accepting me

Not sure why the clip cuts off so aburptly, but maybe it is just me. Via thecubsfan, I find a clip of Cassandro on a BBC morning show. Rihanna, minus her pants, was on Good Morning America this morning. Perhaps I should watch more television in the morning.

Clawing . . . Gasping

Drowning in rain or withering in heat, death is upon us. Bleached bones of a faithful servant, long past useful. Like a Georgia O'Keefe: New Wu-Tang Clan album coming out next month.

Slag

When some scary old guy is shot in the head, people have things to say and I wish I could also join in with something to say. Is it insightful to say "blah blah blah terrorism still?" I will, if needed. Some upper torso on the television was talking to a head. The two were discussing how the military (presumably they meant "soldiers in the military" but they said "military") felt about Osama's death, presumably unaware that the two of them were often referred to as "journalists" and have the entire information collecting apparatus of a large television network at their disposal. How is a rarely updated blog to compete?

Rock Bottom

From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

A man seen in a YouTube video being beaten and sprayed with pepper spray by a St. Louis police officer has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

. . .

Joyce said what the video did not show was Ginger grabbing onto Ries's ankles and refusing to let go, even as Ries struck him on the legs with his baton. She said that is deserving of an assault charge, over resisting arrest.

"If you watch wrestling, that's a move that knocks people over," Joyce said.

If you watch wrestling, hopefully you know that the outcomes are predetermined, or as some would call it, rigged.

Dispatches from Beyond

Argentinian electoral politics are the new craze, and our only hope for the future.

If Only I Were a Poet

If I were a poet I could probably come up with some fitting verse about the beauty of this tractor, or maybe use the video to illustrate some point about the cruelty of our world. However, I am too busy for poetry, and too tired.

Bears repeating

Really, it cannot be said enough that "our" government is speeding past the point of hypocrisy into a previously incomprehensible realm of pure contradiction.

On Wednesday, the Army announced 22 additional charges against Private Manning, including “aiding the enemy.”

The charge sheet did not explain who “the enemy” was. . .

I guess they know them when they see them. I await with some anticipation the new ground in legal thinking in which we are told that revealing the enemy aided will grant them further publicity, thus aiding them even more, so the prosecutor has a legal duty to not mention their name in court documents.

Who was the first human being to look out a window?

I wrote this book for myself, and even that I can't be sure of.

- Roberto Bolano, in his introduction to Antwerp

Not having read anything but 2666 and a few short stories previously, I checked out a stack of Bolano's books a while ago, and just started reading them. Tragically, I seem to have chosen the best first. (it is the shortest)

2-line Movie Reviews #1: Monsters

Gareth Edwards's Monsters is definitely not disaster-porn, and does an excellent job depicting real, human reactions (alongside institutional reactions) to impending apocalypse. It is, however, emotion-porn and the main characters drag it down into the contrived almost too often to be enjoyable.

Tyranny with style

Eye of the Storm is correct to point out that reactive, repressive government responses are not limited to the Middle East, Africa or the Persian Gulf, or the rest of the world outside of China in general, but tell me China doesn't have a delicate style to their scenes of repression:

At one point, the police surrounded a young man who had placed a jasmine flower on a planter outside the McDonald’s, but he was released after the clamor drew journalists and photographers.

Also, is it hypocritical to wish his line about us (or U.S., if you prefer) harboring a just so secret desire to emulate China garnered further development?

Thought Clutter

While I like the name of the blog, this post is not so much identifying any new emotions, much less *breathlessly* emotions created by the internet, as much as they are accounts of inner experiences, using previously existing emotions to describe new situations. Like, waiting for the bus is similar to waiting for the train is similar to waiting for the Pony Express is similar to waiting for returning Crusaders. Here is another "new" emotion: the aching knowledge that you need to come up with a pithy blog post to get Digg's attention to drive up GoogleAd rates.

You didn't have to tell it like it is!

While I am busy making purposely inane predictions about a child's game turned national opiate, Feral Scholar connects the dots pyramids.

Baseball Predictions #1

One of the most humanizing rituals in the world of sports punditry is the constant flood of predictions. There is, of course, the incessant augural columns on division and league winners, but sports seasons, and baseball in particular are long and full of all the mundaneness of any other aspect of life. This gives plenty of material for our syndicated seers to divine deep meanings from. So, in an effort to create without creativity, I will be making numerous and near-constant predictions on anything even tangentially related to baseball this 2011 season.

Baseball Prediction #1 - This was the biggest week of news for the St. Louis Cardinals.

First, a brief description of all the news:

1) Cardinals refuse/neglect/prove incompetent in their attempt to sign an extension for World's Greatest Baseball Player Albert Pujols. The local, daily mouthpiece of Cardinals' ownership has a few different deals supposedly offered, while a local radio gadfly reported the Cardinals presented a shockingly low offer.

2) Stan Musial is awarded the Medal of Freedom after a successful campaign by St. Louis sports fans, perhaps finally removing a humongous chip from their shoulder.

3) Jim Edmonds retires. The probably-not-a-Hall-of-Famer (unless there is a Hall of Fame of running into the outfield wall/diving onto the warning track) just signed a minor league deal to return to the Cardinals, but hurt his foot before reporting to spring training.

Any one of those three stories could have fueled the local media for at least a week. I think it is safe to say that no 7-day period will have three stories objectively (????) as big as this week. Even if you think "insulted free agent opts not to re-sign with cheapskate and chronically average team" is a big story, and it happens in the same week as a World Series victory, that is only 2 of 3.

Every clock I hang on my walls quickly grinds to a halt

I used to blog (Digression: I hate that word as a verb. I know one should try to avoid hate, for a variety of reasons, and even then one should try to avoid hating the inconsequential, like words, but I hate that word as a verb.) about synchronicity. While reading this, I received an email referring to a class from 14 months ago as "upcoming." If only I would get such second-chances.

Anyway, in this present, I have to consistently remind myself that with age, wisdom does not come to all. Nearly everything I have written in the past seems putrid when I read it today. Vocabulary peacockery masquerading as insight. I still look back on the finality of the writer's block that hit me about 10 years ago with frustration, though. Every once and awhile a real gem would shine through, even if it were a brief clause. Was that all wasted time, though? I mean, I remember looking at beaches or mountains or simply the serene joy of riding a back around a foreign town without any worry of necessary appearances. Sometimes I, too, think 'i could have been writing or reading this or that.' I don't publicly flail myself for having such digressions, though. We live in an age of fetishes. Reading, formal education (and how to organize it), our own lives, etc. This list is as long as their are ideas. In my young age, with my gray hairs, I have learned that life is happiest not spent focusing too closely on what one is doing, rather than doing it. (with all connotations intended)