Monthly Archives: April 2007
scared straight
Alright, after seeing this I no longer believe pot should be legalized. This is 4-20 in Vancouver. If I ever saw anything like this in Philadelphia I’d be deeply embarrassed. Not because of the drug use, but because of the absurdity.
I’d hate to be a clerk at the closest 7-11. I like how everyone’s coughing and no one’s doing anything:
Good Morning!!!
Filed under General, Photo, pretentious
Seeing nuclear blasts makes me feel very ‘emo.’ Fortunately, while I am in healthy collaboration with my emotional life, not much else gives me that ‘emo’ reaction. Either way, I feel like there’s something very, very wrong with detonating nuclear weapons. By wrong I of course mean destructive. With the first ‘very’ I mean the destruction we know and can measure. With the other ‘very’ I’m talking about the destruction that we’re too ignorant to see or understand.
Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project became well known for quoting very significant passages from the Bhagavad-Gita after the successful test of the first atomic bomb. Like Lincoln at Gettysburg he solemnly proclaimed: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…” and “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
He only actually thought of those quotes. According to his brother, he actually said:
“It worked.”
But anyway, the point of this entire post was to rerun a few images that I posted here before. Taken by Harold Edgerton at a distance of 7 miles using a lens with a focal length of 10 feet and a shutter speed of 100 microseconds, here are the first microseconds of an atomic bomb blast:
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Pjornipol (pure-nip-ole) Kid: part I
Filed under General, Pjornipol, short story
Not too long ago, a boy named Michael Pjornipol looked puzzlingly into his bathroom mirror and wondered why anyone was looking back at him. He was vaguely high off the lingering effects of dirt-cheap weed spiced with rock cocaine. His nerves weren’t healthy and his hands shook like young maple branches in a spring breeze. He was afraid, but not of anything in particular.
He turned on the sink – cold only – and put water on a face that didn’t feel like his own. He looked again at the mirror and couldn’t quite believe that was him either.
Michael took three deep breaths and felt a little better. He squeezed his hands and pulled on his fingers one at a time. The tremors that shook his body before had faded into that slight twitching in his fingers. His stomach felt empty, but he didn’t feel like eating. Michael used the familiar hand towel draped over a small bar above the sink to dry his face. The towel felt nice, almost transformative.
He looked out the window and watched traffic pass by. He lived on a quiet suburban road, but could see the highway in the distance. He pushed the window up on silent felt tracks and pulled out the screen set behind it. Leaning out into the warm night air he listened for the highway. With his head beyond the walls of the house, he could hear the steady stream of traffic, punctuated by a truck downshifting or a car with bad exhaust system.
The sound relaxed him. The idea of the motion, its energy, the order of the traffic and the miracle of its liquid functionality made him feel better. He listened until his hands stopped shaking and he was too tired to care who or what stared back at him through the bathroom mirror.
bitter, bitter
Filed under General, Philly, political, pretentious
OK, back to normal commentary. Today I take on war and public education. Here are a few things that will crush your will to care.
The whole thing is broken by design.
All wars, every single one that’s ever been fought has been fought over either land, resources or a combination of these two things. Leaders and power brokers of the time create wars by claiming that they’re about other things like God, ideology or the nation. This is true from from Egypt to Osama bin Laden. Anyone who says it isn’t true is wrong. Sure people fight and die for other reasons, but none of those dead people ever started a war.
Moving on, Public Education is under funded on purpose. An educated population is not in the best interest of the state. This is well understood across the third world. No one in the U.S. seems to notice or care. If you don’t believe me, then why are public schools funded by local property taxes? Why do private schools exist at all?
I was once in a class at Penn where all the students from countries across South America (the elite of their respective countries) made this point to us stupid Americans. “Why is it so hard for you to believe. You’re no different.” And we aren’t. I’ve mentioned these things before on this site, but they’re worth repeating.
With all that said, I endorse Michael Nutter for mayor of Philadelphia. Thank you and goodnight.
strange weather
Filed under General, pretentious
If posts dissipate and/or descend into bizarre confusing strings of prose, I apologize. I don’t believe in ‘blogs’ and still wonder why I have one. This site isn’t about my personal life. That would just be weird.
At the same time, my personal life finds ways to leech into my writing.
As a person who writes, I have a ‘voice.’ It’s that narrator that talks to you while you read this. Hopefully it connects with you and makes you want to know it better. That voice isn’t quite me, but it is a very real version of myself. It has my sense of humor and mode of observation. It’s honest, but guarded. It isn’t me; it’s a consciously constructed reflection. Sometimes – like now – that voice consumes all else, becoming overtly self-absorbed. The more self-centered it becomes, the closer this site approaches a legitimate personal weblog.
At the same time, as the division between objective and subjective begins to dim, details become scarce. I start writing intensely personal things about nothing. Like this. The result is a deeply inspired intellectual experiment. The fact of the inspiration makes this worthy to post for your (the reader’s) objective consumption. By the time you’re done reading it, you’ll have absolutely no idea what you just read, or know anything behind why I wrote it, but hopefully it was interesting.
In closing, here’s a song about waiting that’s been in my head for weeks. That’s all for now.
at jury duty
Filed under General
Hey everyone, I’m posting from Jury Duty. Actually I was granted a 2 1/2 hour lunch and came home, so in reality I’m just posting from home. What case am I on? Well I’m not allowed to say anything about it, but here’s a little clue:
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Donkey has his bray in court
POSTED: 1025 GMT (1825 HKT), April 19, 2007
DALLAS, Texas (AP) — Faced with complaints that his donkey was too loud, attorney Gregory Shamoun decided to bring his case directly to the court: he had the donkey testify.
Buddy the donkey appeared in court Wednesday. He walked to the bench and stared at the jury, the picture of a gentle, well-mannered creature and not the loud, aggressive animal he had been accused of being.
Shamoun was in a dispute with oilman John Cantrell, who had complained to the city about a storage shed Shamoun was building in his backyard in Dallas. Cantrell said Shamoun retaliated by bringing the donkey from his ranch and putting him in the backyard.
Cantrell complained of donkey noise and manure piles.
“They bray a lot any time day or night. You never know when they’re going to cut loose,” he testified.
Despite the donkey’s appearance, neither jurors nor Buddy had the last say — the neighbors settled their dispute while jurors deliberated.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Time as seen by a human
Filed under General, pretentious
* Warning: self-reflective bloggy post.
Three years ago today was 7 days before the life I’m ending first began. I opened an old journal and turned back to three years ago today. Stuck between the pages was a 4-leaf clover and a bunch of words about leaving Rittenhouse Square.
“Well it’s been 10 years and I can finally say it,” I wrote. “Fuck Rittenhouse Square… I’ve been looking for something down this path for the last 10 years, I’ve filled these books with writing, I’ve met girls I’ve loved, girls I’ve lusted after, girls I never liked. I’ve drawn on the ground at 4 in the morning, listened to music, met friends, gotten drunk, high and watched 40 seasons come and go all from this bench.”
I went on to describe how I was sick of waiting. A month later I wrote, “I’ve felt sedate for a while now. My mind is keeping its inspiration to itself.”
A month after that I wrote, “I like to pay attention to my senses. Remain alert. I also enjoy dulling my senses. Numbing them. Numb hunger with food. Numb a day by relaxing on my porch with a beer. Numb desires with satiation. Eyes with sleep. Mind with dreams. Chaos with silence.
But tonight I have indigestion and a chill.”
A month later I wrote, “ Yesterday I touched the Atlantic Ocean, the sun setting behind me, turning the sea into a plain of silver.”
And finally, a month after that, on August 17, 2004 I wrote, “Why is the dude in the cowboy hat over there videotaping me?”
That’s all for now.
Strangest moment of the day
Filed under General, TOYNBEE IDEA
Today I was at a meeting full of people from cultural institutions across Philadelphia. It was a meeting about geocaching, otherwise known as scavenger hunts for techies. My place of employment will have a cache in an upcoming promotion put together by GPTMC.
Towards the end of the meeting, the guy from the Independence Visitor Center – completely unsolicited – leans over to me and says, “have you ever seen the Toynbee letters?”
This was the strangest moment of my day. My answer was probably the strangest moment of his. By the end of our conversation, he was headed straight for 4th and South (to see the last Philly original tile) and looking forward to the documentary.
