Every precious human being's been a precious parent to you

Well my friends. The time has at last come for adios. I don't think I'm the same person I was when I started The Blog, and so it feels weird writing knowing about all the posts that precede me. All the posts. I'm having extreme difficulty reconciling my voice now with my past voice, or the way I view the The Blog now compared with how I used to, and these things I think, in turn, produce a sort of confusion that affects what confidence I have in how my voice has evolved. I used to think of The Blog as extremely private. I don't know why. Obviously it's not. I guess with blogs, there's a sort of private publicness at hand, which I don't know if I completely endorse without rigorous editorial standards. But I've almost completely stopped thinking of it as private. So what I'm saying is, not only do I not have the time to write posts anymore, but I don't know that I think of them the same way that I used to. I'm going to be embracing the fragmented self and kicking it on Tumblr for the time being, because it's fun and easy, and hopefully when I have more time on my hands I'll be collaborating with a friend on a new blog, a place for cohesive thoughts that Matter and are Important. Right now, I feel like I'm going absolutely mental, completely incapable of cohesion. But every time I come back here I feel as if I'm attending to some tumorous old version of myself, some reminder that this has all been linear, that I've been responsible, yes, me, and that I've transcended jack shit. I like to think that we transcend old versions of ourselves, and the internet allows us the illusion of this possibility. Although, lesbihonest, it'll just be more of the same shit, won't it?

http://thatssubjective.tumblr.com/

I'd say it's been real, but this is the internet, and nothing is, and how liberating.

How does this exist

The definition of Internet Gold-



"Cuz me nan's boyfriend, Derek, 'im always tell me nan that he is cunnilinguist. How many languages does that mean 'im speak?"

Oh, I remember you!

Are we really doing this then?

"This time Gucci is back in the slammer for some ridiculous traffic violations including; Driving on the wrong side of the road, running a red light or stop sign, damage to government property, obstruction, no license, no proof of insurance and other traffic charges, according to Curtis Davenport an Atlanta Police Department spokesperson."

"BUT WHERE ARE THE INDIANS??"

A few thoughts on this Dimal Thursday Afternoon, carried over from Wednesday:

-The workmen listening to the radio on the roof; it is turned low and there is lots of static and someone is talking, there is no music. i can also hear a heavy squeaking sound every now and then, which is louder than the radio, and usually accompanied by some light banging.

-Claude balled up somewhere inside the immense, crumpled quilt. I reach my hand in to find him, to make sure he is alive. He is buried deep within it. I make out fur and warmth, and I prod it until I feel him move. I can feel by the way his head is tucked into his body that he is balled up soundly and small, as if he is in a womb.

-The fungus that grew on the side of that pumpkin was actually beautiful even though I thought it was disgusting. I wish I had examined it longer. It's like I was afraid of it. Looking at well-developed fungus can sometimes be like looking at images of space.

-The pumpkin was sitting on a bookshelf, and the fungus only grew on the side that was facing the inside of the shelf, where the light did not hit it. While these things are probably definitely related, I'm more interested in the fact that it endowed the pumpkin with a sort of Jeckyll and Hyde type of quality. Again, I wish I had examined it longer. I spent weeks just staring at the nice side of that pumpkin. I didn't notice that it had begun to rot until a few days ago, and I let it sit there, and was surprised with how quickly the fungus appeared to be developing, taking on more intensified forms which I was only able to detect from the small edge of the fungus that could be seen from the pleasant side of the pumpkin. I could only see a tiny hint of it, but I knew it was growing, and I imagined what it could be like, and perhaps that's why I was so fearful of it, why, when I finally faced it this morning, lifted it down from the shelf to throw it away, I only glanced at it hurriedly, and then held it facing away from me as I carried to to the trash. So that now all I can remember about it are some colours. A deep teal in the middle, seeping out into sprawling patches of lighter blues and greens. Now it sits in the trash, a wall between us, and I still have no idea what it was really like.

-Claude dragging the sock dramatically across the carpet before laying into it. He attacks it wildly for a few seconds, then lies silently and still with it clutched in his mouth, slack-jawed, frustrated with anti-climax. I'd say it makes me feel bad to see him having to resort to hunting my dirty socks in order to express his sense of animalistic purpose, but I'm worse off. What do I get to hunt? Everything's been replaced by words.

-That kid in my class had ~Crèvecœur~ quotes on his phone. First of all, it's been weeks since we talked about ~Crèvecœur~. Second, this is how it went: so we were discussing the importance of laaanguage versus wriiiting in Willa Cather's My Antonia, and he made a point relating it to a passage from ~Crèvecœur~ to which the the professor responded that it was an excellent point and that he should find it and use it. Then he pulled out his phone, literally fiddled with it for like thirty seconds as the conversation carried on, and then when there was a pause and he was like, 'Oh I have that quote here it is guys,' and then read it out in his voice which is just like Hugh Grant's but better, and we are all just like, what a hessian. Like, what went on there? First of all, it's not like ~Crèvecœur~ is so mainstream that you can just find a specific passage that easily and that quickly on the internet, or even in a fucking book. Did he purposely save the passage on his phone because he planned on making that point? Did he have it on his phone anyway? Was it filed away in some easily accessible document that he had the motivation to remember? Does he know exactly in what part of ~Crèvecœur~ this passage is located and thus was able to google the document and locate it effortlessly? Does he have a research assistant to do shit like this for him, ready to strike at any moment? Did he actually have it memorized but was just pretending to read it off his phone so we didn't think he was weird? Is he a literary überhuman? What is most exalted then: him, the speed of the phone, or the passage?

-How did I not know Andy Samberg was doing Rahm Emanuel impersonations?

Though you can't help thinking about it nearly all the time

Came across this story last night and wept. Wept. I get so sentimental about it. I remember the first time I heard it read, I thought that nobody had ever or would ever understand love, at least the way I saw it, like Lydia Davis. I got very emotional about it, and I still do. Her work could very possibly be more of a relieving comfort to me than anything in my life, maybe besides the first few drops of coffee in the morning and whisky after a particularly trying afternoon, which are in themselves, remarkably capable. It's like reading your own thoughts without having to do any of the work, and it's so. beautifully. cathartic. Which is an important thing for a writer to be able to do. Her story "Kafka Cooks Dinner" is pretty much a play by play of what goes down every time I reach out to someone. Books are important, bro. They have many reasons for being, and serve many different purposes, just as each of us seeks different things from them. More about this later.

On the World Series: A Nationalistic Dispute Over the Nature of Perception

As usual, Peter playing the wild card.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

So all plans for fall mixtapes, awesome blog posts, etc etc have been STUNTED due to the fact that I have no time to do anything but work and think about work goddammit I can't even sleep all I think about is rhetorical devices, and deadlines, and scary misogynistic professors, and did Brutus really have that in him or did Cassius put it there goddd just RELAX Cassius seriously, he is like a hyperactive child without his ADD medication. And it's about to get worse. ESSAYS, my friend, and, consequently, spending an outrageous amount of time and energy devoted to a very specific, very arguably inconsequential, set of material. I'm starting to forget why I think literature is important. If I think it's as important as other things. A big part of me feels it's an incredibly narrow niche to settle oneself into For All Of Time. The "Where Will You Be in 10 Yrs" Facebook quiz says I'm going to be a goddamn surgeon! It says I'm going to be someone's hero. And all I want to do is sit on a warm porch somewhere writing history plays. Not enough people writing history plays, these days, and so much good history despite it all!

Thinking about Political Science tho.

I want 2 b herd.

Anyway, this is more or less what my Halloween looked like, but with more PCP obviously, although perhaps the PCP is just implied always:

Claude has three pairs of socks going at once right now. He opens my sock drawer and steals them and hunts them. He rolls around on the floor with them tucked up into this frantic grasp, and teeths them mercilessly, feverishly, the most genuinely untamed thing I've seen ever in real life maybe. Sometimes I put catnip in the socks and he loses it completely. I love him so much, and respect him, perhaps, more than I've ever respected a person, although that's probably not true. He is the best. The Unmoved Mover that Caesar never was. Oh, he's incredible. At the end of everything he just lies there triumphantly on top of this pile of limp socks.

Oh also, I'm going home for Thanksgiving. What, the idea of jetting across the ocean for a few days just to achieve some sort of nostalgic wish-fulfilment in the form of a nationalist archetype is just simply ludicrous, you say? Well I'd have to agree. But I've been irrationally encumbered by this fervid will toward the sentiment of the romanticised American homestead, and these arms, they stretch, unbelievably so, under the guidance of delusion. Speaking of delusion, that's awl LyFe is lolol!! But one must allow oneself to seek false importance in some things, or else this is all just blank space, you know. I mean, I get it, it's blank space always no matter what we tell ourselves, we must look within etc etc. But one must allow oneself the indulgence of at least a couple metaphysical apparitions of Meaning, or else give way to, if nothing else, a vacuous, harrowing boredom.

See this is why I don't have time for this shit anymore. Can't we just keep it light? Purpose is the Cat. And going home for a fake holiday that is symbolic of many things it wasn't, and which I, despite everything, hold instinctually dear.

Lastly, and to add another brick onto the "holy shit these are all the implications of Facebook on our current lifestyle" heap, what do we think of the idea of judging, and knowing, that someone is perfect for you simply by looking at their Facebook? Can it be done? How far do these representations of ourselves extend? Can they ever amount to any form of authenticity? Can I myself ever amount to any form of authenticity, in terms of the perceptions of others? There is my authentic self, and there is the person I am able to communicate into being. So much is lost in between. No matter how candid or personal we might become with someone, one can simply never know the actuality of another person. Because it is physically impossible. I have no idea who my friends know. Some half-assed version of Paige, an impression based on some compilation of fragments of myself, limited always by time and place and circumstance. How does Facebook fit into this? Are the internet representations of ourselves really any less "authentic" than who others perceive us to be in "reality," or do we just think they are, because we haven't fully come to terms with the falsities of human interaction, and how they actually remove us further from ourselves? What about Facebook romance? What about real romance?

Christ, somebody get this bitch some segues.

too many clauses should be avoided

Rhetorical Device of the Week: THA ZEUGMA

Someone should really tell that girl she can not pull off that color

Rediscovered this photo, taken by Brigid at some party over spring break, back in New York. I'm going to tell you why it's a good picture. First of all, whose hand is that? It's literally as if Lisa Greco has a phantom artist hand to constantly promote her work while allowing her full use of both her hands. Second, the composition is fantastic. Third, that monster is doing a pretty good rendition, down to the sunburn (it was unusually sweltry that weekend, for April, and I spent a lot of time falling asleep on Lisa Greco's roof). Fourth, lightweight mustard yellow anorak. Fifth, if we can't sell you on Blackberrys being cool, I don't know who can. Speaking of cans, that one's pretty solid.

A Couple Points Regarding the Beginning of the Week

-Somebody needs to upload the intro to Gravediggaz's (unsure of exactly what to do with the apostrophe there) The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel to Youtube so we can talk about whether it actually makes any sense or not.

-I started reading McSweeney's again, having unconsciously stopped sometime at the end of my senior year of high school. It's probably the funniest shit out there right now. Funnier than 30 Rock. Funnier than Portnoy's Complaint. Funnier than Charlie Croft talking about Native Americans via text message at 8 in the morning. Funnier than the Autobiography Ziggy Stardust's Personal Assistant. Wait. But it's also subtle, and ever wise. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite recent pieces entitled, "Miles Davis's Container Gardening tips" (written by Ryan Abbott):

"This is it, this is the most important tip, so wrap it in tissue paper and take it out of here when you go. The space around everything is more precious than the items occupying the space...The space around your plants is what defines them. Save that space, relish it, drink it in. Give your plants room to walk, to be seen and heard, to develop deep and hungry roots with their own space to explore and invent, the freedom to create new shades and shapes, arms that reach through the empty air to carve fresh pockets in which to build an entirely new kind of fruit or flower. A type never tasted, something unheard of."

More impressive, however, is James Felming's Selections from the Cosby Codex, which, "represents an attempt to offer the definitive theoretical reading of The Cosby Show, a foundational text in Late Postmodern Western Culture, or a multicultural, post-cognitive text par-excellence," and which I'm not going to quote from because I'm pissed I didn't write it, it's so genius.

-This week's gonna be amazing.

-We're doing a radio show, on Mondays, starting next week. Don't really know who "we" entails at this point. Elliot and I and some meth heads. Forget what time it's at. The title of the show was supposed to be "Songs About Jesus," which is snappy and fun to say (with Nietzschean undertones), but Elliot managed to reword that into some bulkily sarcastic reference to the bible or some shit, which wasn't even the point. Will probably spend the majority of the first show bitching about this and discussing the Camden Family's views on marijuana, which will actually tie in, as Mr. Camden's obstinant response to the herb likely stems heavily from a certain paradigm of "morality" propagated by the church to which he is tied and his views on the implication of God. (In fact this kind of melodramatic outburst proves to be, when observed against the image of Mr. Camden established by the show --for the most part a"cool reverend" (and the WB's closest rendition of Atticus Finch): non-judgmental, understanding, and actually sometimes helpful; the sort of guy that you'd expect to respond rationally and judiciously to this kind of situation-- surprisingly out of character. For more on glimpses of deeply embedded socially constructed prejudices savagely bursting through the astute façades of archetypal television fathers, and the social implications, see Howard Cunningham Flipping Out When Richie Brings a "Beatnik" to Dinner (Happy Days, Episode 1.13.)) Link to show/less lofty details to be posted.

-If you're ever faced with the opportunity to take an English course centering on "Western American Expansion Fiction," decline immediately. You will read one really good Mark Twain book, some Cormac McCarthy (maybe) and Annie Proulx, and the rest will be bull shit yet require an enormous amount of your time and effort, because while a very good book does demand a heightened level of, well, mental work, a bad book is nearly fucking impossible to get through. Yes, I'm looking at you, James Fenimore Cooper: for all your grand ambition, you are a cliché, and a lousy writer, and getting even halfway through Last of the Mohicans was like pulling out my own teeth in front of an enormous screen with American landscapes projected on it. I think it was your underlying fear of miscegenation. (Actually, for an amazingly ruthless roast on Cooper, see Lawrence's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels," which is full of wit, as well as a couple valid arguments regarding the aforementioned text.) I understand the importance of some shitty texts in the context of the history/evolution of certain kinds of literature. But I don't really get why one should be required to read them. So heed my advice, children. Study Chaucer.

-"If I wanted to watch an arrogant nerd act passive-aggressive for two hours I'd sit at home and Skype with my ex-girlfriend." A friend, on the Facebook movie, which I am officially done talking about.

-Bacon, egg, tomato, avocado, and Gruyère on toasted fucking wheat bread is the best fucking sandwich of all time I do noooot want to hear it

Beers for years

After two weeks of acting like a dick and a string of embarrassing conversations and monumental hangovers, I propose two weeks sober, at least, followed by an entire lifetime of Puritanical Moderation. Shit's getting out of hand. Bleghhhhhh

Things we could talk about now:

-How every electronic device I bring into this apartment seems to magically break, inexplicably, from somewhere deep inside itself, which cannot be helped (lamps, televisions, electric mixers, etc.)

-How Laura Mulvey's essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," applies to me and my viewing of the season finale of Mad Men

-The trials of domesticating another living thing, and attempting to maintain an affectionate mastership, and taking it all way too seriously

-How to fail at making a birthday cake

-How to waste an entire day failing at making a birthday cake

-Ways to avoid checking last night's awkward texts (outbox)

-The Facebook Movie, reasons I was hyping it so hard, how I spent the majority of my time in the theatre wishing I was watching The Squid and the Whale instead, those dreamy Winklevoss twins, or better yet, that ridiculous video of Mark Zuckerberg taking off his hoodie that is honestly the most lumberingly uncomfortable thing I have ever watched on the internet, and how it's affected the progress of my campaign for matrimony (on hold until further notice)

-Autumn's abrupt arrival and the necessary outerwear

"IS SUBJECTIVITY TEMPORAL OR AFFECTIVE?"

On top of a filing cabinet in room 6.11 of the English department in David Hume Tower, there are a few stacks of enormously thick, oversized leather-bound books, which upon further examination turn out to be a set of complete archives of the New York Review of Books. Shitloads of volumes. I feel like this is some sort of important discovery. Who is using these? Can I use them? Who do I speak to about using them? Does anyone know more about this?

And while we're on the subject: while I used to dispute with Shaun over whether or not Lee Spinks is the biggest hessian in the English department (I was always on team Millard, which is funny), I have indeed been swayed after today's lecture. Holy shit. Dude said more profound things in the last few minutes than most people say in their entire lives--it was literally is if he were competing in some contest to say the most esoterically intelligent things about lyrical poetry in under two minutes. I think everyone in the theatre experienced some sort of existential epiphany; I personally felt like my head was going to explode with them. I don't think there's enough words, at my immediate disposal anyway, to articulate how good this guy is at talking about literature, and making it seem important. I'm pretty sure he knows everything, and could talk about it, beautifully, all the time, forever. Absolute madness. It's like he turns a thing completely over to reveal the absolute truth of it, in perfect clarity.

Nerd alert.

Start the Hype

We had some conflicts with Prince Erudite drawn out on spreadsheets

The other day I showed up slightly early for a class and ended up chatting with my professor for a bit. He asked me how I was finding third year, and I told him I was pretty stressed out. That there only seemed to be time for half of the things I'd like to be doing right now--the monotonous/stressful/awful half-- and that I'm rarely finding the time to consider doing anything other than sit in my apartment, plowing through reading. I told him I'd become very solitary, without even meaning to or noticing it. And he assured me that was okay, and that he could pretty much sum up his entire life with the notion of solitude. He's a total hessian. Has written mad books on everything he's teaching us, which he subtly adds to the secondary reading lists but never mentions. But, why would you want to spend your life all by yourself just thinking about fucking Renaissance rhetoric? What does a life like that imply? Sometimes I lie awake at night absolutely plagued by a vacuous uncertainty that seems to suck all my courage out through somewhere below my navel. It dissipates by morning, but usually creeps back by dusk, as if each passing day were it's own little microcosmic existence inching its way closer to infinite termination with every minute. Ohmygoooooood I don't even LIKE existentialist literature somebody shut my brain off. Have no idea what's going on! Also when did men and women exchange mentalities seriously can't we just go back to the fifties I just want to be objectified and told what to do what is this why does everyone have so many emotions by the way how stoked are you for the Facebook movie it's getting good reviews like when that guy at the Times called it the "best movie about business ever even better than Wall Street even better than Up In the Air" or whatever and I'm probably gonna agree with him because I really never thought Office Space was that funny and the trailer is all super well edited and it has the kid from The Squid and the Whale in it but I mean I bet it's gonna have a lot less prepubescent masturbation than that movie which is good because that means I can prob watch it with my parents whateverrrr duuuuuude just keep drinkin black coffee and listening to Deerhunter and soon it will be Christmas.

"Leave a message on my phone I'm only sort of home, the rest of me is sort of in the zone where the dodos roam."

Things that Happened in Manchester:

I fell over on a bus. Somebody lost a ferret. We saw them filming the Pride & Prejudice zombie film. I mean. Don't ask me! We were seriously there for like twelve hours and spent the majority of them just drinking vodka in different locations.

"You don't understand what it's like to disappear! To be nothing; to be annihilated!"

Edward Hermann's character is one of my favorite parts of this film.

Always move forward, never sleep, like a shark, bro

This album has straight defined my year. I rock my Wesleyan sweatshirt on the reg for theez dudes.

The Best Thing on the Internet Right Now

[The Awl]

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