05:48 pm I know Sharpton has taken a lot of flack for various reasons; I don't know them all. Mostly, I know he's ridiculed for being a joke of a Presidential candidate. But God damn if he doesn't say the exact right thing better than anyone else at the exact right time. In his famous Crossfire appearance, Jon Stewart spoke of his admiration of Sharpton, saying he was the most impressive candidate of the lot:
CARLSON: Of the nine guys running, who do you think was best. Do you think he was the best, the most impressive?
STEWART: The most impressive?
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: I thought Al Sharpton was very impressive. I enjoyed his way of speaking. I think, oftentimes, the person that knows they can't win is allowed to speak the most freely.
So, today, what did Sharpton say?
"He created a comfort level, where people that felt they were separate became interconnected with his music. And it was that comfort level that kids from Japan and Gauna and France and Iowa and Pennsylvania got comfortable enough with each other till later it wasn't strange to us to watch Oprah on television. It wasn't strange to watch Tiger Woods golf. Those young kids grew up from being teenage comfortable fans of Michael to being forty years old and being comfortable to vote for a person of color to be President of the United States of America."
"There are those that like to dig around mess, but millions around the world, we gonna uphold his message. It's not about mess; it's about his love message. Sometimes as you climb up steep mountains, sometimes you scar your knee; sometimes you break your skin. But don't focus on the scars, focus on the journey. Michael rose to the top. He out-sang his cynics. He out-danced his doubters. He out-performed the pessimists. Every time he got knocked down, he got back up. Every time you counted him out, he came back in. Michael never stopped."
"I want his three children to know: Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with."
08:01 am - Edward Hopper - Early Sunday Morning I wonder if Edward Hopper took photographs or if he just sat outside and painted for an hour or so at the exact time of day he needed to.
04:03 am - Stars & Stripes "We're takin' those casualties so casually, so naturally, his flag, you see, it's on fire."
"Got a question for Lou Dobbs: If Mexicans do jobs that Americans don't want, who carries the blame? You call 'em criminals, but you would do the very same if it was you; listen Lou, you sit in your big house, tell 'em to wait in line, so we can take our time and pick and choose. Meanwhile, they kids missin' shoes and life's passin' them by, but you still askin' why they don't listen to rules. Well, if it don't make dollars, then it don't make sense, you don't really want a fence in any event. Let's be real: this country was built on cheap labor and greed for paper; you can try and send them home, but they gonna keep coming like __________. That's the only chance they coulda had at a better life. So, give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses. It's the American dream."
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." - Emma Lazarus (inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty)
12:21 pm Look at the size of that forehead; you can tell elephants are intelligent, have an awareness. Any animal that mourns its dead is intelligent in my book.
I thought turtles had separate compartments for the head & arms; I guess I was wrong. This one looks as though that front flap could pull all the way up to completely enclose the arms & head; I wonder if it can.
1. Should I include sections for graphic design, photography and childhood (though clearly these are not my strengths)?
2. Are you able to easily read all the text on your monitor?
3. Do you consider $200 per square foot a reasonable rate for an oil painting? Too low or too high? Do you know anyone who would be willing to pay this?
03:11 pm "You've got the butterfly part down, Brother Michael. And you sing most sweet to complete the cycle. But before you can sting people out of their wits, You got to put on some meat and keep on eatin' your grits."
11:03 pm "Oh, a lot can happen?! All of a sudden you can just quit believing in God?!"
"Yeah."
"All of a sudden, there is no God?!"
"Yeah."
"Well, let me tell ya, you wanna know there's no God? Then, you're gonna get absolutely nothing, nothing for Christmas! 'Cause that's what Christmas is about— is Jesus Christ!"
(Scrolling down pg. 1 is how I found out what happened.)
(For those of you who don't know, Mark Sanford is the governor of South Carolina who went missing for about five days, without telling any of his co-workers, friends, associations, fellow politicians or EVEN HIS FAMILY where he was going OVER FATHER'S DAY WEEKEND. When Sanford finally emerged, his excuse was that he likes nature & he went hiking. But, TODAY, dude gave a press conference to further clarify the matter.)
05:53 am Northeastern US weather patterns make no sense. Yesterday, clouds were moving in a clear West-to-East pattern. Now this morning, all the clouds are moving in a clear Northeast-to-Southwest pattern. It's like the movement of a tropical storm. I suppose it is hurricane season.
04:10 pm - comparing v. equating It's been my experience that people don't like for me to make comparisons because they assume my comparisons virtually equate the two people or things being compared or at least they assume comparison is one slippery-slope step away from equating (but it's really nothing of this sort).
(You have to time the video & audio yourself by making sure both start up at the same time; YouTube & the copyright holders of the Waits' song made me remove the audio from the vid.)
I am fine with rules accompanied by good argument / sound rationale. But I honestly have a hatred of rule following for the sake of following the rule.
05:06 pm - I's a posting machine today According to a study on proficient violinists conducted by FSU Psychologist Anders Ericsson, the truly expert had at least 10,000 hours experience. Since, any and every one has attempted to generalize this "10,000 hours" assessment to all areas of life in which a person can become proficient or "expert."
So, here's my thinking: In order to marry a person, you should have 10,000 hours experience with them. If we're talking 8-hour days, every day, that'd add up to 1,250 days, or about 3 & 1/2 years.
(I really think people should live with people before they marry.)
03:15 pm - Argument Clinic I very much appreciate Monty Python but the skits don't make me laugh. I've watched about five or so of them today. My favorite is the argument clinic:
Man, I don't even understand the significance of this or the political strategy behind it. But my first reaction is to say, "That Obama is a crafty one." He pulls some weird stuff, e.g. Clinton for Sec of State or Gregg for Sec of Commerce, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Now he just took away the most progressive Republican governor in the US from Utah to be an ambassador to China.
07:21 pm - Print Job The printer that I've been unsuccessfully trying to get to print for three days now just printed. And thus, I'm a little happier than I otherwise would be. Going to be going out tonight with some grad school friends I haven't seen in months. And I have a job interview tomorrow. I better get this thing. If I don't— I just better get it, is all.
08:29 am - Of Facebook and Storytelling Oh man, Facebook's interface is much friendlier than I remember. I feel I'll be spending more time there. I don't know how I feel about this just yet. It seems more personal— like I actually know all the people there from ... DUN DUN DUH, IRL. But I needs me some LiveJournal to type out my treatises. Facebook is like some slightly superior amalgamation of Twitter and a typical but handicapped blogging site— I'm seeing very tiny pictures on my Facebook homepage. I'm not seeing anything much longer than three lines. But I'm seeing people I know with whom I should probably forge better relationships. I mean, we all die someday; I should be communicating with more people. But they don't want to hear about the latest current events. They don't want to see random photos I find on the net. They don't want my mini-dissertations, novella-length entries or whatever it is you want to call what I do here.
We're at a turning point, folks. I don't know what's going to happen. Probably nothing much. I've decided this morning, at about 8 AM or so, that I'd eventually like to work to become a teacher. I want to storytell. I'm not good at it, but am interested in improving upon my admittedly-at-the-moment weak skills. What's more fun than improving upon something you suck at? So, that's what you'll get here! You'll get videos of me talking— me improving upon my storytelling. And storytelling necessitates life-living and, well, nothing bad can come from this.
He's the adorable, opinionated grandpa—somehow simultaneously brilliant and dopey—who sometimes says things that are off. He's the tactless complement to Obama's tact. (For, no matter how much detractors deride Obama for his uhs, his pauses, his teleprompters, his stumbles, his "elitism," his handshakes, his bows, his fill-in-your-laughably-contrived-controversy-here, Obama's obviously got some super-savvy political skill that is itself a rarity. He plays the game well. He's a good politician. He wins elections.)
The above cartoon is in reference to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyY2wVRfVn8 "Vice President Joe Biden tells "The Today Show" that he plans to avoid flying or taking the subway for fear that he might get the swine flu."
09:59 am - Update So, I go through phases with bord_du_rasoir. If you check my archives, you'll see there are some months-long stretches where I only post a few times a month, while other months, I post a few times every single day. It's somewhat erratic, I know. But I never abandon it. I won't go down till LiveJournal itself goes down. I'll always have something to say, no matter how infrequent. I don't think it'll ever get to a point where I update less than once a month, unless I do something wild and join the Peace Corps or something like that.
I have an interview Thursday for a job. Also, I'm going through a happy phase. As an inherent skeptic, I question how long this will last. The happy is simply because I realized how much greater life is when you're open with the people around you and the people you love. Open but tactful. (You can't run your mind through your mouth unfiltered and expect that to work for you, obviously.) But anyway, I think this happy is based on something more sustainable. The real challenge will be when winter comes or bad things happen. I think simply talking to people about your difficulties in a fun unbeat manner is what gets people through these things.
For now, the weather's nice; good things are happening all around. I am happy.
(Maybe I shouldn't pay so much attention to the news all the time. Maybe that's another trick. Keep an eye on it, but not absorb myself in it.)
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