In One Eye...

“All of you know about 20 trifling people in your lives, that after a whole long year, still don’t know there’s a presidential election coming up. You have to pick up the phone.”

- Talking Points Memo | NC voter registrations surge

She said trifling. Good for her.
I am damn sad I missed her speaking her Raleigh. Although I saw Barack in Durham, shook his hand, and made an ass out of myself by thanking him for existing. And remembering the Constitution. He laughed, and said “I’m glad I exist too”. I made Barack Obama laugh. Pictures of the Durham event, way back in October.

Love: thoughts on, now.

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:42:38 +0100

Love is not absolute; love is contingent. Love is not perfect; love is finite. Love is not the inevitable joining of two destinies; love is a chaotic dynamic between two persons who in close alternate universes may have never met.[1]

Love does not abide in the world of what-must-be; love lives in that which is.

We begin in error when we ask “is this my true love”? A better assessment is simply: “is this a true love”?

This is not “giving in”; this is accepting that, despite the mythos disseminated into our collective consciousness, there is not some higher being who preordained that you and your mate were to be together, forever, in blissful union. If we cast our eyes down from idealized worlds, perhaps we will be in a better position to evaluate the realities that face us, not only in love, but life in general.

[1] See David Lewis for further on distance between alternate universes. I do not endorse David Lewis.

Apparently, because of the day of the week, and my totally sweet...

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:32:21 +0100

Apparently, because of the day of the week, and my totally sweet inebriation, I can post this absolutely rad (editor’s note: author was born in 1985, is deeply confused regarding cultural parlance) picture of me in Glendalough, Ireland. AND YOU MUST TAKE IT LIKE MEN.

Oh god. My computer needs a breathalyzer.

cultrvultr: A so-called “mash van” in the UK shows off its new...

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:44:23 +0100

cultrvultr:

A so-called “mash van” in the UK shows off its new “mash cone” with sausage, mashed potato, gravy and peas in an ice cream cone (via BBC NEWS | In Pictures | Day in pictures)

Oh cripes that is so British. I say this having eaten white pudding for dinner.

Speaking of which…I am tired of all this NYC tumblr meetup stuff. NYC is my favorite place. But I am currently not there. Can I get a hellz yeah from people in the greater London area? Why are we slacking on this? I DEMAND MEETUP.

Beg The Question // Get it right.

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:37:21 +0100

Beg The Question // Get it right.:

scotth:

Explains what a “begs the question” fallacy really is.

Thank you!

Beg the question =/= invite/raise the question. See above for details.

Baaaah...baaaah!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:39:15 +0100

Name: Julianne

Sign: Aquarius. Aquarius! (Sing it. SING IT.)

Job: Graduate student/failure

City: Cambridge/London, UK

Status: Not on fire? Yay! (Happily enmeshed? Mysteriously ill? Overfond of adverbs?)

Dream job: Getting paid to tell other people how abysmally wrong they are. Prospects: consulting or philosophy.

Curious

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:34:00 +0100

There appears to be an inverse relationship between the seriousness of my posts and my getting unfollowed rate.

In other news, a friend from long-ago contacted me, on the premise that “he’s always had a thing for needy women” (and, if you haven’t noticed, I am going through a shit time). How in the bleeding anal fistula am I supposed to take that?

EDIT: as though there’s a point of editing on tumblr. I’ve also been reblogged into a private group! Possibly for hatred of me! Dare I dream, fellow tumblrs? Dare I dream?

Mea Maxima Culpa

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:25:13 +0100

I’ve been distracted by some rather pressing personal issues, and thus, posting has been light and, worse, shallow. My apologies. To make matters even more dire, I may currently be drunk. Mea maxima culpa.

I spent yesterday watching the Petreaus/Crocker Senate hearings. I was impressed by the following:

-Sheer number of Republicans expressing skepticism, dismay, or downright outrage. Hagel we all saw coming, but Luger? Props, man.

-Senator Clinton’s demeanor. She gave an opening statement that was terribly run of the mill and clearly campaign posturing, but she conducted herself in a confidence-inspiring way. My purely subjective and emotive response was quite positive. I too am concerned about this hand-binding treaty that Congress apparently doesn’t get to vote on.

-Senator Obama’s specificity and intelligence. I am always impressed by the level of conceptual depth that Obama brings to any argument. But I was expecting some grandstanding, and instead he launched directly into a line of questioning that pressed on the testifiers to define success, por favor. Alas, it’s “complicated”. Senator Clinton alluded to the same point (as did several other Senators), but in the process of his questioning Obama was able to glean additional information from Petraeus.

-Joe Biden made a funny. I still like that guy. He reminds me of me in lecture. Maybe I too am an arrogant blowhard. But I’m a funny arrogant blowhard, bitches.

-My fellow sane human beings. For the love of all that is sacred and holy. Say, life. Senator McCain is off his damn rocker. First off, he can’t keep track of whether Al-Qaeda is “Shi’ite, or Sunni, or whatever.” Second, his questioning consisted of attempts to conflate Al-Qaeda (and that natural hatred that Americans feel when that name is invoked) with “Al-Qaeda in Iraq”, a marginal paramilitary force by anyone’s estimation. To say that his questions were leading would be a minor understatement. And, of course, we have the attempts to make Iran look evilevilevil and bombbombbombomb-able

-The usual amazing Senators did an amazing job: Senator Biden (already acknowledged for his humor), Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold, Senator Boxer (forgiving her numerical transgressions…sweetheart, that’s *billions* of dollars a week, not millions). Why can’t you all get together and quietly carry Harry Reid off to an undisclosed location and get A BETTER MAJORITY LEADER?!?

Awhile back, my friend in Obamamania and college colleague, squashed, asked why Democrats hate America, on the premise that, Democrats refuse to acknowledge that the surge has worked. We need to define what we mean by “worked”, here, and further, the conditions under which troop levels can return to pre-surge status, let alone the beginning of a reduction. From the administration’s PR department, with poor Gen. Petraeus stuck between the apocryphal Scylla and Charybdis of his job as a military general and his newfound role as a propaganda machine for the war, we learn that violence is down. But at what political cost? The whole point of this endeavor was to create “breathing room” for the Iraqis to reach political consolidation. Instead, they seem more fractured, more “sectarian” (I keep hearing that word tossed about…”a multi-sectarian government”…as though that has the remotest prospect of success), and, as Petraeus himself said, the progress is fragile and reversible. So. Without invoking the whole whack-a-mole metaphor, on the face of it, securing Iraq is leading to the kind of tribalism and local fueding that can only end in…further violence forever. I’m not saying I have a genius plan to unify the country. I’m just saying, denying that the surge has worked, even in the face of shiny graphs, doesn’t mean you’re gunning for disaster in Iraq because it would validate your politics.

I am sick of reading about General Election match-ups. Right now, they are about as meaningful as contests between pancakes and waffles. To the vast majority of Americans who aren’t following the election with agonizing scrutiny, the candidates are like brand names. McCain: I’ve been around a long time, I got tortured, plus I’m a “maverick”. Obama: the future is me, fogies to the back of the bus. Clinton: remember the 90s? That didn’t suck. When (in all probability) Obama and McCain get down to it, and the people who plan to vote, I dunno, watch a debate between the two, they’ll realize that a) McCain, for all his longevity, doesn’t know shit from shinola when it comes to the Middle East, b) McCain, for all the media infatuation, is, yes, a totally unhinged warmonger, and c) Obama is not promising “more wars, lots of PTSD to treat” and jobs that will never come back, but a new optimistic version of America, I honestly think there is the potential for a Reagenesque landslide in November. If he plays his campaign as well as he has thusfar.

Stuff Hill People Like

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:52:18 +0100

Stuff Hill People Like: When I first saw this, I thought they meant folks living in trailers in Appalachia. As in “Today we were captured by hill people, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.” (Firefly, sorry, if you didn’t see it you AREN’T COOL ENOUGH FOR ME.)

"If we’d just made him Commissioner of Baseball in 1983, everyone would be happy now."

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:48:04 +0100

“If we’d just made him Commissioner of Baseball in 1983, everyone would be happy now.”

- Keith Olbermann, on GWB.