"The key to understanding and critiquing so much of human culture is total depravity." So if you like watching Simon tear into Buzz from Omaha after he just butchered Aerosmith, read on.
So here I am. A description of my current state could include the following items without a sacrifice of integrity:
*Cooped up in my office.
*Thirsty but too lazy to go to the water fountain.
*Tired.
*Beset by the nagging one gets after having planned to get caught up on projects but having fallen flat on his face in unproductivity. That feeling tells me I had better get some homework done fast. That feeling can be likened to a small dachsund who is yapping at your bed at 6 in the morning to let you know that he very urgently needs to go outside. You desire to punt him toward the upper 90 of the doorframe of your bedroom, and perhaps shout "Score" as if you had just secured a winning goal in a soccer game. But you know that if you do not heed his urgent yips you will greatly regret it in the near future.
*Desirous of the cookies back in my apartment but too slothful to walk all the back to my apartment.
*Convinced that if someone were to ask me what is the essence of life, for a reward of $50,000, and I answered "repetition," I would win all or at least a lot of that money.
*Certain that if I were to win a large sum of cash by answering metaphysical questions quickly and succinctly, I would use that money to buy a treadmill. Then when people started deep ontological arguments, I would nod toward the treadmill and wink knowingly.
*Fond of the following items, among other things: Birkenstock sandals, Converse All-Stars, Starbucks coffee, Express Men's Clothing, Mini Coopers, Levi's™ Low-Slung™ Boot-Cut™ Jeans™. Alas, I am revealed to be the sniveling toady of the big corporations.
*Thirstier than I was a few items ago.
*Positive that some but not all of the following attributes, revealed in the preceding paragraphs, will be remedied soon: cabin fever, fatigue, laziness, cynicism, sniveling toadyhood, thirstiness.
An interesting article on what's shakin' in the arts right now.
A cool wind wafts through open window, rustling through the papers I was trying to avoid grading. I watch as the tiny hairs on my arm wave in the breeze, performing what appears to be some sort of ritual dance celebrating the elements.
Nearby on my desk crawls a beetle. How he entered my office I have yet to discover. Most people use the door, but my multi-legged friend lacks the opposable thumbs necessary to turn the knob.
He looks busy, whatever it is he's doing. I imagine that he's aware of the meaninglessness of his life. It's hard to tell though, since the little guy does seem so sincere about his work. He's fast. I suppose that if I were equipped the triple my current number of legs I'd be pretty fast (though I'm guessing I'd be the butt of many jokes from my biped friends).
I hear these little fellas can lift 20 times their weight. He makes me look like more of a flabby nerd than I am. A cursory glance at my musculature will be enough for you to guess that I can't lift 20x my weight. What he doesn't realize, though, is that the joke's on him. He'll live another week or two, chomp a few leaves, and then bite the dust, leaving his exoskeleton resting in somebody's windowsill long after his soul has left his body.
I just don't think he sees the absurdity of it all. He runs around frantically, gathering food, doing whatever business bugs occupy themselves with, eating and breathing and perhaps sleeping. He'll go through several mating seasons, spawn a couple thousand larvae, and cry a few tears over the gorgeous but unattainable aphid who lives down the lawn. He may take a deep draught from the cup of bug-life and be a better bug for it. But in the end, he's just a dead bug. (I don't have the heart to tell him--he seems so happy running around with that big smile spread across his mandibles.) I tell him to be a nice bug, suspecting that he probably doesn't understand me.
He'll be lucky if he makes it through the next couple weeks. Outside he's got to worry about garter snakes, robins, and small bespectabled boys with magnifying glasses. Inside he may meet his Maker under the feet of some bug-deploring human. Or my pal may live to a ripe old age, seeing several generations of larvae and grandlarvae, who I hope will revere his grey head. Sooner or later, though, he's gone, and no one will give a flying flip what he did with his bug existence.
For now, though, I let him run around happily across my desk. When it comes time for me to hit the sack, I'll place him outside, give him one last look, and try to remember to be nice to the bugs.
The Jean-Paul Sartre cookbook. I posted this before several years ago, but I just rediscoverd it and I thought it funny, slapping my expansive belly as I rocked back and forth and bellowed out a hearty roar of laughter.
No doubt it's horribly pedantic of me to pontificate like this. Read on only if you want to hear me ramble as if I wielded any authority.
"Nuclear" is pronounced "nuclear," not "nu-kyu-lar."
Even if you are gigantic and can stand under a basket and dunk and get paid millions of dollars by the L.A. Lakers to do so, you should not attempt to become a rap artist.
Mick Jagger is probably not considered to be very handsome.
It's unethical to go 40 in a 55 zone.
People who say they know they mean but can't put it into words don't know what they mean.
People who reminesce about the good old days have both a good imagination and a bad memory.
Fines should be issued to those who use the word "pregnant" in a non-literal sense. For example, "The poet's second volume pregnant with hidden meaning."
We've had doomsday prophets in all cultures at all times. They've always told us people are getting stupider, the world is getting worse, the arts are declining, education is going down the tubes. Ignore these people and delete their chain emails without passing them on. We're not getting dumber or wickeder; we've had plenty of dumb people and bad people in every culture.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is weird, but delightfully so. It is satisfying, like an after-dinner mint accompanied by an espresso.
Expresso is not a drink. Espresso is.
Gloria Naylor is a great author; Zora Neale Hurston was not. You are allowed to dislike her work and still like African American fiction.
Jean-Francois Lyotard may have written very insightful works on postmodernism, but his name is still most unfortunate.
Wearing white socks with black wingtips is not good, ever.
Supporting a child through Compassion International is not a bad idea. I'll bet you can't give me a single good reason you shouldn't do it...
You can very easily ruin Christian art if you insist on spoon-feeding the moral to your reader. You insure that your message is not lost on the viewer/reader/listener, but then you just might lose all your viewers/readers/listener.
Cats are better than dogs. Allow me to elaborate: cats learn litter-training very young, cats do not embarrass you through intrusive sniffing, cats do not yap, cats do not stink, cats do not drool, and cats generally don't ruin your furniture.
People who are prone to use gestures representing quotation marks should be forced to watch themselves in a mirror. They would probably stop doing it.
There has probably never been, in the history of all cyberspace, a profitable blog argument. Have fun on your blog, un-polemically.
Mullets are proof of the Fall. Probably Cain had one.
Studies have shown that lawn ornaments are rarely a wise property investment.
Eschew verbosity.