Let's Share the Blame!

The Mistletoe Disco Band - We Three Kings

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:51:30 -0500

The Mistletoe Disco Band - We Three Kings

[An ensemble known only as] “Chinese Kids Choir - Hark the...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:15:41 -0500

[An ensemble known only as] “Chinese Kids Choir - Hark the Herald Angels Sing”

Another holiday gem from the audio motherlode!

HFP, this goes out to you, you crazy sinophile Jew!

“Inpatient Music Therapy Program, University of Michigan...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:28:44 -0500

“Inpatient Music Therapy Program, University of Michigan Medical Center, Children’s Psychiatric Hospital — Oh Come All Ye Faithful”

“Marshall McLuhan… what’re you...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:00:00 -0400

“Marshall McLuhan… what’re you doin’?”

[Two and a Half Men on a Samsung PS50B450 50” plasma display television]

“Even in Kyoto hearing the cuckoo’s cry I long for...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:14:20 -0400

“Even in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo’s cry
I long for Kyoto.”

[Dinner at Benihana restaurant]

“Well, if invisible was a number, it would be that.”

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:59:00 -0500

“Well, if invisible was a number, it would be that.”

[The Boston Globe]

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:59:50 -0500

[The Boston Globe]

The annual “Timor mortis conturbat me.” Cable teevee...

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 02:18:53 -0500

The annual “Timor mortis conturbat me.” Cable teevee made me weepy.

I have no idea what is going on here. If it looks like the Fox...

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:21:00 -0500

I have no idea what is going on here. If it looks like the Fox News Channel is now staffed by depressive, squabbling alcoholics—then that’s because that’s exactly what this is.

I have no problem with this.

Courtesy of nevver: Jeanne Moreau / Hollywood, 1970

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:03:49 -0500

Courtesy of nevver:

Jeanne Moreau / Hollywood, 1970

[From illustator Patrick Moberg]

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

[From illustator Patrick Moberg]

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary,...

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:17:38 -0400

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.” [NYT]

I’m leaving my job this week. I have loan moneys to...

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:11:26 -0400

I’m leaving my job this week. I have loan moneys to survive on for a bit. But what should I do after?

Photo

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:46:48 -0400

(A demonstrator behind Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed...

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:09:04 -0400

(A demonstrator behind Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke at this morning’s Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee)

Related to Below: Evidently, Spain has its own civil war...

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:29:00 -0400

Related to Below: Evidently, Spain has its own civil war reenactor hobbyists, which basically involves dressing up like filthy communist hobos.

[Antonio Gisbert Perez, El fusilamiento de Torrijos, 1888,...

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:24:00 -0400

[Antonio Gisbert Perez, El fusilamiento de Torrijos, 1888, (click to enlarge)]

Video

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:40:41 -0400

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they...

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:50:00 -0400

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods to them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a a bit, and then eventually one of them looks at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’

[…]

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving […]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

‘This is water.’

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.”

(David Foster Wallace [1962-2008], “Commencement Speech to Kenyon College,” 2005)

Photo

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:35:00 -0400