Dogeared

From Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle:

For a while I wanted to be an opera singer. Even though they were fat they could wear extravagant costumes, nobody laughed at them, they were loved and praised. Unfortunately I couldn't sing. But it always appealed to me: to be able to stand up there in front of everyone and shriek as loud as you could, about hatred and love and rage and despair, scream at the top of your lungs and have it come out music. That would be something.

(What is dogeared?)

O Cæsar! these things are beyond all use, And I do fear them

This is terrifying.

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_3.html

Yes, you read that link correctly. This is from Forbes. Not Rightwing Extremists' Weekly. Not even Fox News. Forbes. I am really frightened for us.

ho! A foe to tyrants, and my country s friend

I am considering renaming this blog "Ratquest: The Resistance" or "The Bureau of Rodent Control: A Case Study in Ghost Payrolls of the Chicago Political Machine" and using it to chronicle my vain attempts to get the city to bait the rats that have colonized my alley. My alley is like Eden before the fall, if Adam and Eve had hairless tails: vacant lots full of weeds and restaurant garbage that has to be violating multiple city codes.

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In other news. One of my webmail accounts was hacked, for the second time in like two months. Is it paranoid that I think someone is cyberstalking me? Is it ever normal to be paranoid?

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Also, I seem to be doomed to romantic entanglements with men who obsess with DFW. What is it about me that appeals to men who love self-sabotaging hyper-intellectualism? That is certainly not me, self-sabotaging part aside. Maybe it's my footnotes.

Caught

My nemesis. One of many. Gross.

Enter Hymen

I don't understand why the deus ex machina gets such a bad rap. I could totally go for some contrived, unconvincing, and gimmicky resolution right now.

***Please combat the recidivism of youth offenders in Illinois by voting at http://www.refresheverything.com/TabulaRasa for my nonprofit to win $250K from Pepsi to build a transitional living center for teens leaving jail!***

Dogeared

From Jonathan Franzen's Freedom:

She was a grave and silent little person with the disconcerting habit of holding your gaze unblinkingly, as if you had nothing in common.

As she talked on and on, he found himself admiring her determination to survive without success of the sort still plausibly available to him.

He could see this person so clearly, it was like standing outside himself. . . . This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual and definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.

(What is dogeared?)

***Please combat the recidivism of youth offenders in Illinois by voting at http://www.refresheverything.com/TabulaRasa for my nonprofit to win $250K from Pepsi to build a transitional living center for teens leaving jail!***

All is but toys

Best birthday gifts for a two-year-old boy or girl who is obsessed with firemen, trucks, trains, and construction:

1. Sand table, big enough for trucks but small enough for our balcony

2. Fire truck, with working water hose

3. Train Table Set, compatible with Brio & wooden Thomas

4. Fire Rescue Playset, complete with lounge chair, basketball hoop, computer, and--is that a barbeque?

5. Ride-on Exacavator, so your spoiled child can dig his way out of the mountain of toys ...