beyond the push/pull of hedonism, ascetism

Find the melancholy dialectic of concrete and prairie on a campus
full of 20 somethings in sweatpants and inner-directed compasses.

OR


Find the line in the book of poems that states: [Proposition regarding
the existence of fun] / when we weren't sure our lives were worth
surviving.














OR

Find sibilance on reruns of Imus episodes from the eighties, back
when shock jock meant something more: much more, much less.
Do it on a radio with a dial that actually turns.









Beg for conjunction

AND


Get "you dipshit" cute with the typesetting.


AND

Find a story involving characters whose lives are an
obscure reggae song and spread it like syphilis in the
house of De Sade.


AND

Run 12 miles today, tomorrow, the day after that, and the next
day too. Regret smoking for so long. Regret not having that
regret sooner.

When the book club got to its epistolary novel

1. Sports

Be advised that the Minnesota Vikings may go 0-7, and the seven babies named
Tavaris in the last six months will soon go by Tavis and/or Smiley and are doomed to multiple Wedgie recesses and a future in which no bras are ever fumbled with and no babies are ever procreated. Nice Gus Frerotte exegesis, stupid Fox North pregame production eggsuckers.

Be advised that another six White Sox players could break their own respective wrists in petulant post-foul ball lapses of judgment and the Minnesota Twins may still not
resurrect themselves into their mid-00s early exit from the postseason form.

I am confused. Does Dan Uggla's All-Star meltdown bear glad or ill tidings vis a vis postseason possibilities?

2. Politics

is not what it used to be. Which may be good. I am not sure - try not to pay attention.

3. Culture

see supra. also, according to a report summarized in a soft news story I read in what passes as a political/cultural magazine, the secret to the Danish levels of happiness, which exceed all other countries' levels of happiness, is having very low expectations on a consistent basis and being pleasantly surprised when they are not met.

Danes pay the highest taxes of any nation in the world (starting at 42 per cent, rising to 68 per cent), enjoy fewer hours of sunshine than Britain, have a higher divorce rate than most Europeans, live only averagely long and smoke and drink far more than is good for them. So what's going on?

In 2006, researchers from the Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark examined a range of possible factors, from genes to cycling habits to cuisine. In a charming report, they offered two explanations: the Danes have never got over their rapture at winning the European football championships in 1992 (their happiness rose to new peaks that year, and has stayed on a plateau since), and - the main finding - Danes, unlike the woeful Greeks and Italians, have very low expectations of the immediate future. "Year after year," the researchers write, "they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark.

So - moment of synthesis - the difference between being a Vikings fan and a Danish national lies in the degree to which pessimistic expectations are realized.

Jeff Spicoli-Style Vans Slip On Shoe, Deposited in Sunless Clime

1) Current onslaught of cuisine/cooking related materials continues. No Reservations, by that Anthony Bourdain guy with the TV show and the constant cigarette dangling (completed) - does not make me want to become a heroin addict or a line cook. To one degree or another, did inspire militancy and desire for unilateral uptick of my life's intensity (for instance, four hours of sleep, aided and abetted - once again - by neighbor's nascent relationship). Plus makes for vivid version of imagination's constructed notion of New York City blunt, a kind of eccentric honesty and You-couldn't-pay-me-more-to-care-less-ness. Of course I have spent about 17 hours, total, in that metropolis so all notions get filtered through countless viewings of NYPD Blue and the early poems of the Confessional type guys and gals with drinking problems and hangups that stick out like goiters on sleepy southeast asian women on a pilgrimage to some holy goiter-shrinking shrine.

New York theme cont'd - a re-re-reading of Kissing in Manhattan, first discovered in 2003 and devoured in a sitting. Found in library today, to be the accompaniment to warmed up chicken and potato with 2% milk dinner. Also found at library today: 12 old New Yorkers, circa 1982-1985, and subsequently absconded with.

Other book:

Maximum City. About Bombay. Or Mumbai. Good epigrams. Author interview over at the Believer may be worth your time, if you have excess amounts of it.



2) dark muck on slowly evaporating snow drifts, plus every morning starts with ice, metls a bit, then freezes again by the time I'm out ambulatory and socializing. Makes for large yellowing bruises and waking up unsure of where exactly that came from.




UPDATE: having read Kissing in Manhattan in a sitting, once again, it seems like it's worthwhile to at least ask the question: do you, dear reader, have a book or a CD or a movie, even, to which your attentiveness to your own list of TO DO and your day-to-day goings on constantly crumbles in importance? What kind of thing is an obsession when it's completely temporary and sated in a sitting? Is it even one? Discuss.

Occurrences: IM participation, sports knowledge, beauty, Jim Rice

Much to my surprise and momentary elation, it turns out putting "Pedroia" on your intramural seven man football jersey, participation in which consists of smoking Marlboro Lights on the sidelines and periodically calling for the trips formation, may yield the approach of a member of the opposite sex owning objectively jaw-dropping beauty, make you subject to the subsequent inquiry into your views on Pedroia's possible ROY chances, and avail you the opportunity to hear said opposite sex beauty's opinion that Jim Rice is seriously underrated. And then play commences again and buttonhook patterns continue to be effective.

Subsist on purple passages at your own peril

1)

Yesterday I read a book called “The Making of A Chef,” which was about – ahem – the making of a chef at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), parent institution to the Food and Beverage Institute (FBI). Aside from having a lapidary effect on my ability to scramble eggs, the book made me think about the notion that work reflects character and character determines success. Now I want you to think about it.

2)

quote of the week, courtesy of SE: I just missed the days when the Republicans' main priority was fucking over the poor.