Kroger is now selling Energized! Red Rock Endurance Formula: High Performance Energy Drink, a very cheap energy drink which was previously only sold at one gas station in Atlanta.

It is a 16 ounce drink, sold for 99 cents.  It comes in banana flavor, as well as other flavors which taste worse.

Sitting at a cafe on Edgewood, blowing one of my gift certificate prizes on things which eat my brain and rot my teeth.

There are some middle-aged white guys sitting on the couches next to me with very good looking briefcases. They are discussing:

1) opening a new restaurant.

2) whether one of the guy's frequent post-midnight calls to an employee are grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit.

-

I'm considering getting into a fight with this guy.  Over a girl.

Yes, batshit insane... but strangely tempting.  I doubt it will happen.  In my (second-hand) experience, it is very hard to start a fight.  Also, most fights, once started, do not come anywhere near a satisfying exchange of blows.  They generally become two combatants rolling around on concrete - at most, the worst damage done is a face smashed into the ground (never very hard) or some scraping punches to the ribs.  I haven't been in many fights, but I find that the most pressing concern is keeping clothes clean and glasses unsmashed.

Anyway, there's no particular reason this would happen.  I think I'm entertaining the possibility because I'm annoyed that I've put myself in this situation in the first place.  Getting in a series of fights with an imaginary opponent is a good metaphor for: "Ben, don't be fucking retarded."

-

I've been paying special attention to the way my bike handles since the crash, trying to figure out what sort of damage it took, and I finally realized it today: my handlebars and fork (the thing the front wheel is attached to) have gone slightly askew.  That explains why I've been feeling unbalanced lately.  And, coincidentally, this makes my drunken, stopped-by-police-for-running-reds, robot-armor-wearing second place win much more amazing.

"The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is "more communist than China right now" but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday."

link.

The article doesn't do much to add meat to that statement, but it's still a pretty interesting thought exercise.

Maybe I'm stuck in the 20th, but the idea of corporation is really fascinating to me. I think it's something a lot of people are in to (see, for example the Penny Arcade guys' Dungeons and Dragons sessions, where their adventuring party uses the name "Acquisitions Inc").  Sometimes I get the idea that economics-types are just as amazed by the idea as us poor people.

I dunno, the more I hang out in the real world, the more I realize that pretty much no one has a plan or knows what the hell they're doing, much less multi-national corporations.

PS: check out these tags - is that the perfect combination or what?!?

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex:

A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world's seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the "nonprofit industrial complex" and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt politi-cal movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden expos of the "nonprofit industrial complex" and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

Amazon link.

---

I was helping some friends move this morning, and one of them mentioned this quasi-word-related-job that her company had open. It doesn't sound amazingly fun or anything, but I'd be working downtown, be insured, and have (to me) fantastic amounts of cash. My current to-buy list includes a big doggy and a new bike. The to-buy list is also a pretty damn good approximation of my mental age.

First. I'm probably going to spend more time prefacing my thoughts on anarchism than I will actually say something.

Second. I don't know what I'm talking about. My experience with political and economic systems is along the lines of your standard university education. I've read bits of all the social contract theorists, and a few of the big philosophers. Some political theory related names that spring to mind: Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Marx, Kant, Khaldun, Smith, Bukinin, and Nietzsche. So I haven't really read anything about modern anarchism.

Third. I'm not a political animal. I'm an English literature major, and, I realized recently, this means that the main thing I focus on in my analysis is the meaning of an action, and that meaning's relation to a larger narrative/lack of narrative. When a person tells me they're hungry, the first thing I wonder is, "What do these words mean about the person speaking them? What are they trying to indicate about themselves with these words? What do this person's words mean to them?"

( Read more... )

Mainly armadillos and hedgehogs.

Currently Reading:

Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism
Continental Philosophy Since 1750
The Metamorphoses of Metaphor
A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory
On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism
The Portable Stephen Crane

This reader-response stuff is pretty fascinating. Though most of the criticism I'm reading addresses only writing, it's interesting to consider how a reader-response type approach is used in other media.

I still haven't decided what I think of Stephen Crane. He's a Naturalist, and I've never found that movement very interesting except in a historical sense. In certain ways (which I hope to expand on later) the movement is similar to the "lowbrow" art movement we've been miring through since the 80's [not sure if this date is correct]. Basic similarities: predominance of single philosophy throughout work, unquestioned nature of said philosophy, emphasis on visual "richness", art as representation/"voice" of previously unseen portion of the population.

Anyway, here's the opening to Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets [subtitled "A Story of New York"]-

  A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting him.
  His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.
  "Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.
  Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."


Isn't this shirt great?

Product description, from the side of a can of FREEK energy drink:

Move your psychie
to the ULTIMATE!
What an experience?
What FREEKiness
have you FREEKed
out on? What kinda
FREEK R U? Boob
FREEK, Grub FREEK,
Sleep FREEK, Hairy
PitFREEK, Love FREEK,
Foot FREEK? FREEK is
'OBSESSION'... YOURS!

How do you fly
your FREEK Flag?
How? That's WILD!
Well grab your
FREEK, Hold tight
and... Get Your
FREEK ON!

You now R a...
FREEK-FREEK!

That's what I'm drinking this morning.  My todo list reads "math homework, read, win that prize".  And the party was switched from Friday to Saturday - as always, you should be there.  I'm making decorations.  I thought I'd print out a few hundred pictures of my face and use 'em to wallpaper the apartment walls... but that might be a bit FREEKy.  Last time I had colored paper chains hanging everywhere, which went over well.

I don't know what I'm doing this Friday.  I could use a camping trip.  A few nights ago, I had a dream about roasting Vidalia onions onna stick over a campfire.  It's the season that does it to me.  Fall.  There's a concert in Athens next weekend, and that town's always reminded me of the colder seasons.

Now I'm gonna go pray to my heathen Jew-gods.  I think we may be blowing shofars today.  I don't really pay attention.  Mainly think of whatever I could be writing.  It's a shame that synagogues frown on note taking.

I have so much coffee in me.  I feel brilliant.

If you've ever written a paper with me, you know how much I wanna go for a walk and talk about how smart I am/curious properties of my private parts RIGHT NOW.  NOW.  NOW.  Right now.

The coffee maker is busted, so I have placed a big spoonful of ground beans in a mug, then covered beans with boiling water.  Tastes gritty, but full of go-juice.  Also, this is my second mug in the last 45 minutes.  If I was drinking whiskey, this would be "a cry for help".  I'm pretty sure body-part-which-processes-coffee will be crying for help in another hour or so.

The guy in the apartment across the street from mine was playing some pretty damn good punk music, but he has turned it off and left.  Sad face.  I do not write about Steinbeck unless I have loud music.  Up the punx.

Do you know that British people talk funny?  It continues to amaze.

Friday!  London!  I have already started washing my BEST PANTS.

Damn right they're better than yours.

POSTSCRIPT:  I was reading random journal entries, and these are my current favorites:

Zing!
Pow!

Also, pretty much anything tagged 'people' will be good.

Drinking "Full Throttle: Blue Demon" energy drink, which is apparently flavored like something called "Blue Agave", AKA horrible crap that burns the mouth like hobo-blood.  I have trademarked the flavor horrible crap that burns the mouth like hobo-blood.  When I develope my line of future food pellets, that flavor will be the only option.  I will go bankrupt.  It will be great.

7 more pages to write.

So, a question for you people out there, you people who need an excuse not to study/write papers.  How much freedom does an individual person have?  I mean, in the long run?  Do you have a good idea of the rough shape your life will be in 25 years from now?  Is personal freedom something which has increased or decreased over the last few hundred years?

Why yes, I am comparing realist v. naturalist influences in Henry James' writing.  Thanks for asking.

EDIT:  Finished the first page.  (8:15)

EDIT:  Finished second page.  (10:50).  Have begun adding random endnotes to paper.  Example:  "Interesting discussion of this phenomenon in a Scientific American article entitled “The Tyranny of Choice”(www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AD38-D9FB-1055-973683414B7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa006) and a lecture entitled “The Paradox of Choice” (www.glumbert.com/media/choice)"

EDIT:  Finished third page.  (12:47).  Two fucking hours each.  Damnit.  Weather update: it will be in the upper 60's and sunny until Sunday.  Why couldn't we have this weather next week?

EDIT:  Finished fourth page.  (1:57).  At least I'm getting faster.  Gonna get to sleep, see what I can finish in the morning.  See, if I could just get around to trying aderal, I'm sure the paper would be done by now.

I don't really get this "being sorry" thing. I mean, I understand that it's possible to regret past actions. I try not to regret my past, as a rule, but I can think of a few things I'm not too happy about. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing worth spending much time on. I mean, you did this thing, you might or might not do it again, now let's move on. This attitude becomes a problem when people seem to expect me to show some sort of deep emotional sorrow about something I did, or something that happened. What the fuck? It happened. What's next?

A List of Behaviors Which I Generally Follow:

1) Don't take self seriously.
2) Don't take other people seriously.
3) Assume everyone thinks I'm great.
4) Accept the results of my actions.
5) Always move.
6) Try to leave self open to as many mistakes as possible.
7) Do what I want.
8) Don't do what other people want, unless compelling reason beyond "because I want it" exists.
9) Don't be an asshole.
10) Solve problems.
11) Happy in Spring, sad in Winter.
12) Non face-to-face conversations only as last resort.
13) Understand that people are often mysterious, or very simple.

Yes, I am aware of the many problems and contradictions in this list.

"hey guys!! i am a fun person to be around!! i love to just hang out with my friends and have a good time!! i love to go out and party and just be myself!! i definately love to laugh and make people laugh!!"

From profile on HotorNot.

I must be grouch.  Lets build a rocketpowered tree climbing device with six legs.

Oh sweet mother of mercy I just drank the last of that energy juice.

Question:  which is worse, writing paper drunk, or writing paper cracked out on Brain-Go-Faster Juice?

From the paper:

Isabel's meditation represents a movement away from her earlier view of the self as cut-off from outside influences, a movement towards a more mature viewpoint of the self as an amalgamation of outside influences, one's nature as an object which cannot “touch” another's nature without reacting.

That's right mother-fuckers, I said amalgamation.

The title of my paper is:

Bright Lattices of Logic Unfolding Across that Colorless Void

I'm not sure if the teacher will get it.

My last Henry James paper was entitled:

Henry James is Watching You

Fuck yes.  I think I'll quote Moby Dick for the next one.  Or, maybe something uber-naturalist.  Which reminds me - how does Henry James relate to the naturalist, realist, and romantic movements?

Note to self:  why am I still sober?

Let's build a bicycle out of TNT, than stick a salamander on the pedals.