yet another reason china is a giant pile of suck

Leave it to me to ask a Chinese grad student in my lab if she had any sisters or brothers at lunch in an attempt  to make conversation. Just try to imagine the saddest little asian face appear as she said, “Ohhhhh I wish I did! My parents’ generation had siblings so I have lots of cousins? “

 

I’m such an asshole.

regarding my triumphant conclusion of college this week

one J. A. Ivers says:

“i’m having a very surreal experience just thinking of you being finished . . . i can only hope you’re sitting in a kiddie pool in the middle of your apartment drinking cocktails from some kind of oversized vessel . . . or at least, as i was, writing a faulkner paper on nothing but coffee, lots of coffee, so that when you finally finish it all you have to do is have one beer and dance to a rolling stones song in order to be intoxicated in every sense of the word.”

Ev’ Pluhar is a Crazy Beezy

Hello blogreaders!

 

Come  see me give a talk on human moral superiority at the Philosophy Senior Seminar tomorrow at 11 AM in the Humanities building, room 142 at Saint Louis University (a swell place, to be certain) in St. Louis, MO.  Jeff Tweedy says I’m ‘a real good talker,’ you know.  He knows these things.

Apocryphal Stories of the Presidents

An excerpt from the Shouts & Murmurs section of the February 23, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, by Yoni Brenner (who is really awesome).

“Pirates!” the young sailor Andrew Jackson cried. He and MacGraw skittered down the mainmast and in a heartbeat a hundred and twenty men, all sweat and sinew, swarmed the deck, priming the cannons, affixing bayonets to rifles.  In two minutes, they were ready.

   The captain probed the misty horizon, his lips contracting into a taut frown.  “What pirates?” he shouted.  “These are otters! Who is responsible?”  His fearsome eyes searched the crew and came to rest squarely on Andrew Jackson.  But Andrew Jackson did not shrink.  No, he boldly returned the captain’s gaze, and with a single bony thumb, he gestured over his right shoulder–in the direction of MacGraw.

May envy

As much I totally disapprove of Angelina Jolie’s existence in general, the giant emeralds she championed last night at the “Oscars” (if you can even call it anything other than an unwarranted Slumdog party) made me swoon. Emeralds rule.  The folks at the academy drool.

the stuff tears are made of

um.

 

ubiquitously superior

Here is a list of terms/phrases that come up in my British philosophy text, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Readings with Commentary by Peter A. Morton—they’ve yet to cease grabbing my attention and affections and holding on tight. I find these lovely alternatives to lowly American English nothing short of adorable and when I come across them, the words stay stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. And that’s okay with me.

A list:

1. defence
2. sleight of hand
3. analyse
4. judgement
5. fibre
6. learnt
7. manoeuvre

Henry Higgins was onto something when he said as basically an aside in the song “Why Can’t the English?” , “Well in America, they haven’t been speaking it [English] for years.” I sincerely apologise then, Henry, for contributing to the demise of the English language by speaking it, in this dreadful midwestern American way my whole life.

transient attention is better than none?

Somehow, I’ve managed to escape doing the whole ‘central west end weekend night’ thing for awhile (with the exception of going to Brennan’s at every possible opportunity, of course), despite residing in the heart of it. Well that blissful streak ended last night, when my friends and I found ourselves wandering from one shitty bar to the next, trying to hold on to each other in the ocean of middle-aged county people. At one point in the evening, Julia, Ellyse and I were sitting at a table—in an establishment so horrible that I refuse to name it here—when a group of three dudes, obviously from either Wash U or Israel, approached us and said (cheerfully), “We’d like to buy you ladies shots.” I suppose our response wasn’t emphatic enough, because moments later, they retracted their offer. Claimed that they were looking to have a good time tonight, and we obviously weren’t into that. “Have a good night,” they said in a huff.

I think I’m still laughing.

the absolute worst

I’d like to report on this blog here that two times a week, I’m subjected to a materialized atrocity. A trainwreck of a 20-year-old woman sits across from me  in my Biology and Mind seminar every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 am. Allow me to paint you a little picture. She’s approximately 5 feet and 3 inches tall and she has long and mostly straight strawberry blond hair, parted exactly down the middle (and you thought Sienna Miller was the only one who could sport a middle part, ha!). Her skin is the same color as her hair—strawberry blond. I think she said she studies analytical chemistry and philosophy, but for some reason she manages to bring up talking points/questions about psychology all the time in our discussions of the philosophy of mind—in case you didn’t know, this is something of a crime to real philosophers on account of the field of psychology being comprised by nothing more than a crowd of behaviorist pseudo-scientists/wankers. For someone who is blond in the hair and blond in the face, she has unusually dark and creepy eyes—through which I constantly notice her staring me from across the table. Today she walked into class late and casually said, “Good morning everyone,” with some sort of bagel/cheese/egg/unidentifiable-deli-meat combo in her right hand and her usual flavored milk container (it alternates between chocolate and strawberry). After watching her consume her ‘breakfast’ with a stagnant look of disgust on my face today, I noticed something worse than her choice of caloric intake— namely, her partially exposed stomach. Upon even further examination, I confirmed another suspicion I’ve held for three weeks now: her D-cup sized breasts were definitely just hanging out unaccompanied underneath her “I’m Tiger, hear me … ” t-shirt.

…

I actually jumped a little in my seat when my mind processed that visual stimulus—I was so startled that I nearly solved the problem of dualism in that instant. Unfortunately, said solution was fleeting and now is completely forgotten. Thanks, nip-tastic chemistry girl. THANKS.

you kill me more

Is anyone else hopelessly in love with 2009? I’m typically suspicious of odd-numbered years, but this one may eradicate all existing superstitions. I started the new year by essentially residing in an epic fort built in my living room for a bit longer than intended—which was as long as it takes to drink two bottles of sangiovese and watch Marie Antoinette. The 30 days following that one are a brilliant haze of cocktails and gorgeous dinners and friends and dancing. 2009 is so great it scarcely allows me to get down even if I get into a car accident with an off-duty lesbian St. Louis City cop in an SUV filled with homos like some sort of amateur. 2009 is resilient. 2009 has orchestrated nights like the last which float from Lebanese feast to Mahjongg to dancing around like an idiot with my cats to Jay in my living room at 4 am—and 2009 is so lovely that she allows me to remain awake for all of it!

I know it’s only February and everything, but I sincerely hope this swirling dance around what seems like a fountain of vino with my lovely friends called 2009 doesn’t end until December 31 is over. 2010 is already doomed to totally suck.