Puppets X Bloggers = Smiles

Thank you Ms. Wonderland and Mr. Cooper for making my day. (psssst, Charity is my . . . er . . . close friend)

Ms. Wonderland I am slowly trying to help you conquer your fear of puppets with this video from Interpol, the marionette scene from Escape to Witch Mountain, and other various puppets with senses of humor.

Someday when you've conquered your fear we can enjoy a Thunderbirds marathon. Okay those marionettes kind of scare me but . . . still loved them. I wonder what that series goes for nowadays. And the Murder She Wrote DVD full-series collection cost $60, not $10. So bite me. Rawr. :)

Meaning and Being and Harmony: Losing a Member of the Band

I’ll admit it; some students, me included, may have taken the class entitled Meaning and Being in the hopes of finding a little meaning in being in a time when things seem a little nihilistic. Of course these hopes were slashed after the first reading of Husserl’s The Paris Lectures, which upon first glance just seem like some extreme version of Decartes whirlpool of doubt, sucking us down into some deep, dark void. I mean you can keep your cogitationes, Husserl, I want my sanity. Upon having Husserl’s epoche “[the] ubiquitous detachment from any point of view regarding the objective world” (The Paris Lectures, 1929, Husserl, 8) explained to us one day one classmate commented to me as we exited class, “That’s great, but where’s the meaning in all that?” It didn’t occur to me then, and it certainly didn’t occur to me when I sat down to write this paper the first time, that the "meaning" is what it’s all about. See I understand (I think) where my fellow classmate was coming from. I was still starting from the idea when you figure out what “real being” is you will find meaning in it. Maybe Husserl’s right. Maybe we should suspend any judgment on the “reality” of the world and examine the meaning we ascribe to our experiences of the world, whether real or not.

I got . . . annoyed at a friend once for describing philosophers as people who “assign meaning to everyday things.” There seemed something so arbitrary in his notion of philosophers and philosophy that I was insulted. You see I had this experience this past week. And along with this experience I had a theory about it that I thought went along so nicely with Husserl’s notion on

. . . the phenomenological attitude, with its epoche, consists in that I reach the ultimate experiential and cognitive perspective thinkable. In it I become the disinterested spectator of my natural and worldly ego and its life . . . The phenomenological reduction thus tends to split the ego. The transcendental spectator places himself above himself, watches himself, and see himself also as the previously world-immersed ego (Husserl, 15).

For the last few years, I’ve been begrudgingly visiting my Godfather suffering from Alzhemiers. He meant (this is just a side note, upon rereading this section of my paper, I just noticed the subconscious grammar change to the past tense, it was slightly unnerving, amendment, "will always mean") the world to me, but as of last summer the disease has finally taken over. He has no recollection of who I am or who he even was. He sits in chairs and stares out windows. That spark of life that had drawn me to him is long gone. He is just a man waiting to die. I thought that perhaps this “transcendental ego” of mine was the bubble keeping me from breaking down. It was my higher understanding of the phenomena of disease and his eventual release from suffering that allowed me to be strong. I thought it was this same transcendental ego that was going to let me write about the American flag for this paper and never actually explore the sense of loss I was feeling.

I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t at the “transcendental ego.” I was still swimming around that sea of “primordial phenomena” only choosing to look at the event in contexts less painful to myself. I was telling myself how to interpret the events unfolding in my life and I was acting in accordance to how I thought I was supposed to feel. On top of all that, I was left wondering where all the meaning in his suffering was. I was stuck imaging the short obituary that would run in some local paper upon his death.

And then it hit me,

I was looking at too much at once; I was looking at things I had no experience of--- all I know is my experience of him. I, the phenomenologist for a day, was given access to “. . . transcendental subjectivity (7) . . . I am not the ego of an individual man . . . I am the ego in whose stream of consciousness the world itself . . . first acquires meaning and reality” (8). Through my transcendent description of my experience of him I can present an explanation of how his being had meaning to me. Oliver Saks in his story, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” describes how a patient of his lost the capacity to perceive the world in the same way we do. His eyes worked fine, but his mind could only recognize and make sense of movement and rhythm. By all conventional means of perception, we were an odd pair to be so fond of each other when I was growing up. He was from a much different time and culture, but our ideas were harmonious. I suppose I shouldn’t be so pained to lose someone who has already lived so much. It’s the natural way that life works, we live and we die. But my transcendental ego lets me “know” that I’m sad because I’m losing a member of the band. Things just aren’t going to sound the same anymore. That’s not a good or a bad thing (no judgment), it’s just an observation.

To Live is Beautiful

In love with lilacs miss The New York Botanical Garden

Candy always makes me happy.

When the what if's

and the maybe's
and the probably's
weigh me down . . . I sing myself a little tune. I focus on it and it helps to get me through.
When I took my SAT's I sang The Thong Song. Yep.

Here's a good one, that helps me get some sleep.

Saturday Night Lullaby . . . Today

Signing off for the weekend.





P.S. This came by way of THE red head. Guess they are good for something. Like giving you the kick in the arse you needed. Spanks.

Story

I've been dying to tell this one since October.

The scene: Winnie the Mini-Van, driving along 95 to a New Hampshire Wedding, with me at the helm and as Sara my Navigator

The song: Cookie Jar, by Gym Class Heroes

Me: I love this song.

Sara: It's about a guy being unfaithful.

Me: Noooo. It's a song about cookies.

Sara: Noooooo. It's a song about cheating . . .

Me: Prove it.

So Sara breaks down the lyrics like the fantastic English Major she is.

Sara: . . . and so, you see "cookie" is Travis' metaphor for "women."

I'm just sitting there with a huge as grin on my face.

Sara: You knew that the entire time didn't you?

Me: Yep.

Sara: So I just rambled on for nothing.

Me: Nope, you got a chance to use that BA you worked so hard to get. ::silence for a minute:: And Sara . . . I like cookies more than man-whores so . . . deep down, on some level, I like to think about it in the literal sense. Besides in a few years Nabisco will use it for a commercial or something and it really will be about cookies.

Sara: Wow. Cookies are deep.

Me: You have no idea.

I love Cookies.

Everyone's In On It

So waaaaay back in November, I wrote a post on my myspace blog about how I felt like I was cast in some sick play. I was getting at things more metaphorically . . . actually, more specifically I was thinking about Goethe's Faust. But I was thinking about that, I realize because of some of the events unfolding in my life.

It really is all fun and games until someone gets hurt. I don't want to hurt people anymore, and I don't want to get hurt. Shitty jokes, anecdotes aside.

So in the famous words of some crazy black lady that my silly little brothers quote all the time, "Imma do me, and you do you."

Amen, sistah.

Aaaaaaand that was my stance until I was perusing my old Logic and Philosophy text book (I must have been seriously bored in that class, the doodle-work in the margins is epic) and I read a humorous example for Inductive Arguments whose true premises DO NOT ensure the truthfulness of their conclusion,

For example, in 1986 after the success of Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, it was a pretty safe bet that the next film produced by George Lucas would be a box office hit. So movie-goers in 1986 could have constructed the following inductively strong argument:

1. All of the movies produced in recent years by George Lucas have been successful.
2. The latest film produced by Lucas will be successful

Unfortunately, the film turned out to be Howard the Duck.

Amazing.

Dear Paul Tidman and Howard Kahane,
Do you blog?
WTF.
Sincerely,
Cindy Mayweather

We all exist in shades of Gray.

I like the heat.

But I'm usually not allowed in the kitchen, on account of the fact I almost burned the house down three times because I forgot I was boiling water (yep, I've ruined 3 tea kettles). When I do cook, I still need to look at recipes for such things as pasta, rice, mashed potatoes and these suckers . . .

Live . . .

Who Killed Amanda Palmer?

Paul Weiss: the Original Scenester

I fell in love with a fugly little Jewish man from New York about . . . 7 years ago, and our affair has not ended. I think if Prof. Paul Weiss knew that in college campuses and house parties across the nation he would be deemed the ever so demonized, "scenester" he would get a good chuckle. Paul Weiss integrated himself into particular "scenes," most notably the one of the "creator" or "artist," in order to better understand the roles played out in those scenes. Method-philosophisizing. He wasn't doing it to be a dick or to prove any particular theory. He simply wanted understanding.

He would probably be a poser about being a scenester . . . woah, my head just exploded a little. I've never considered it to be a problem that I like a lot of different things. Nor have I ever felt a need to justify liking different things.

I will take the time to justify one of my loves: poetry.

Simply stated (though I could argue with my fancy schmancy training in Formal and Informal Logic) if you like music, then you like poetry. Please don't make me break it down for y'all.

::folds arms with a defiant head nod:: So there, you closeted Beatnik, you. Don't have a cow, man!

3 Cheers for JSTOR!!!!!!

Why yes, Walrus made my day.

A coworker, Ana, reads Spanish romance novels at work. I always adore looking at the cheesy covers (and the beautiful men). Yes gentlemen, women are hounds too, if you're not Raoul Bova . . . trust me, she's not into you for your looks (and that's better anyways).

Thank you Walrus for providing me with some pretty entertaining thoughts with Don Gillmor's Harlequin Romance Cover Gallery. I love that a genre designated for women took so long to start to objectify the "men" in the same way women have been objectified since . . . forever? I love the last frame. Save a horse, ride a cowboy.

Ahhh yes, insert Big and Rich here. There's just no excuse for that music video or the title of the website that post is found. Love it. "Y'all Wire." I wonder what the wireless options are in the Open Range.

And a little Trace Adkins talking about booty. Honky Tonk Badonkadonk. Slap your grandma!!!

Aaaaand I've never seen this video until about 2 minutes ago . . . but was Chesney's sexual orientation thaaaaat much of a question to anyone else who saw this?

Keep on keeping on.

Bottle it up.
My mom made her and I lunch today. BLT's. I hate bacon. But I love company.
Thanks, Mom.

The truth shall . . .

set me free.

Favorite Post Secret

Saturday Night Lullaby (x2)

And because clowns scare some one of us (Thanks Mr. King for It!) here's another.

There are some things worth living for.

Robert Mapplethorpe loves Patti.
Birdland

Butterflies are free.